When is a terrorist a rebel ?

It wasn't actually. It was a direct reflection of what several people have told me many times over many threads, that the reason people are so active about the conflict in Gaza is that Israel is our ally whereas various other states are not so therefore people don't get involved in activism on behalf of other groups. In other words it is who the percieved oppressor is that matters, not the perceived victim.

I will leave you to it.
Mumsnet doesn't allow charity or fundraising links as far as I am aware, but for anyone who wants to help there are many British charities who are assisting the Syrians affected by the current conflict.

That was to @SharonEllis

No, Your message was a not so subtle dig at me. You really don't need to do things like that you can just be upfront as we are all adults here.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

No I don't think its witty & certainly not funny. I think its deeply depressing & immoral that people care so much about Palestinians when they are a stick to beat Israel with but look the other way when the context changes.

No there is not. What you wrote made perfect sense.

Oh good lord.....

Is there something historically inaccurate in what I wrote?

You might think that's witty but it's not. Once again you are wilfully misunderstanding what I meant in terms of government pressure on allied countries but you do you.
I know what I have and i am still currently doing to assist the displaced Syrians in this harsh upcoming winter.

Oh good lord.....

I wonder where Assad has fled to? My guess is perhaps Iran

Ah but this has been explained. Its only when Palestinians are harmed by our allies that it matters i.e. Israel. When others harm Palestinians there's nothing we can do.

Except noone with any sense or understanding of history believes that Israel is a settler-colonialist state that should be occupied only by Palestinians. Its purely an ideological position.

Plenty of people understand it exactly that way, and with some justification. The British plans to create it date from 1917 and include consideration of its importance to British and western interests in the area. In creation, it was largely considered "terra nullius" (as other great settler colonial projects like Australia and North America were, the original inhabitants' rights having no importance due to their subhuman status) and where necessary those inhabitants were simply cleared from the land and sent elsewhere. That is settler colonialism in a nutshell.

But to be clear when I said they view Palestinians as the rightful heirs to the whole of the land, I wasn't excluding jewish Palestinians from that.

"From the early stages of the conflict in Syria, major Western countries such as the U.S, France, and the UK have provided political, military and logistic support to the opposition and its associated rebel groups in Syria."

So OP to answer your question, I think governments just decide depending on what suits them politically. Many people have forgotten that the rebels initially had the support of the west.

You can't support the Palestinians and support Assad knowing how many Palestinians he killed, tortured and locked up. Have you not seen the videos of young women and children being freed by the rebels from Assad's prisons.

Except noone with any sense or understanding of history believes that Israel is a settler-colonialist state that should be occupied only by Palestinians. Its purely an ideological position.

Didn't the UK initially support the rebels against Assad? Or have we forgotten all of that.

Well there is one grey area. From the point of view of Hamas and many of the people they represent, they are the rightful heirs to the whole of mandatory Palestine, one large section of which is being temporarily and illegally occupied by a bunch of settler colonialists who have the audacity to call themselves a "state", and the rest of which is being deprived of true self determination by the restrictions imposed by those same settler colonialists. In this sense Hamas would not even be rebels, but simply a government controlled armed force conducting a just war against invasion.

Not saying I necessarily agree with this view per se: the fact that the conflict can be seen from such widely different angles and give rise to apparently sound, but completely contradictory, conclusions depending upon which angle is chosen is after all one of the things that makes is so intractible. But it helps to at least understand what those angles are, rather than just taking one of them as gospel truth because that's what our side says.

None of which addresses the question of deliberate targeting of civilians of course. But while that might be a clear definitional difference between terrorism and legal warfare, it could also be argued that such a definition inherently favours the more powerful, who have the means and resources to win legally fought conflicts easily (and, in the case of Israel, plenty of willingness to go beyond the bounds of legality when it suits them and just control the narrative enough to not be branded the same way.) Immediate and unashamed recourse to "terrorism" seems to be taken by those who see their cause as just but have no other option with which to pursue it.

As opposed to Russia, China, N.Korea, France, Germany...would be interesting to hear the discussions in those countries, the ones that allow free discussion of course.

I think that's quite a useful way of looking at it actually.

Am simply acknowledging their power in defining the global narratives. For better or for worse.
If we look at Syria now, there is almost muted celebration that Assad is gone. The "rebels" have also been called Islamist rebels. I wonder what that means? I wonder about the implications for human rights etc. Yet we are not - at least in the press - calling them terrorist. But I do wonder what they will contribute to the elevation of women's rights in Syria or whether they will terrorise women..

But sometimes the ‘authorities’ are doing, or also doing, the above. British army forces, expanded by Auxiliaries who were mostly WWI veterans, were notorious for their arson attacks, reprisal shootings and civilian murders during the Irish war of independence. Attacks against women (rapes, assaults, head-shaving) were carried out by both ‘rebels’ and Crown forces.

I do, but I also brand the IDF as terrorists. They certainly match the description of terrorists given near the beginning of the thread.

You don't seem to like UK & US very much.

HTS are a terrorist organisation.

Unfortunately the issue we have is a lot of Western media, especially anything left aligned, have succumbed to wokeness and seem to like to dance around the subject and call them "rebels"... a la the BBC.

Whether this is a step forward for Syria or a step backwards for the area and a step back to 2014ish we'll see.

Having seen it mentioned, HTS aren't Al Qaeda. They were affiliated and connected in the past but did have a public enough split. Although still ties between members, leadership, organisation and TTPs remain slightly different.

Oldie but a good read:
https://www.csis.org/programs/former-programs/warfare-irregular-threats-and-terrorism-program-archives/terrorism-backgrounders/hayat-tahrir