When is a terrorist a rebel ?

[mouthpipette]

Just that really.

Lots of different connotations for each word, so it makes a difference which is used.

I don't do gotcha. I do counter argument. I don't support any designated terrorist organisations which include Hezbollah, Hamas, AL Qaeda and Islamist state.
Imagine if I had posted that I was celebrating with the Lebanese people at the ceasefire announcement. What would you have said?
I don't like double standards.

Any victory in a war comes at a huge price. You can still be unequivocal about one side being better than the other.

I think many of us celebrated with the Lebanese people & tbe Israeli people at the ceasefire agreement i didn't celebrate with Hezbollah & their supporters but I hope a ceasefire will result in people turning away from Hezbollah.

Its all really sad and miserable but tbh I think when it comes to Syria's political parties, there are no "heroes" - either brutal Assad or equally brutal Islamist opposition. However, in this situation I think describing the opposition as "rebels" is the right thing - they rebel against the government with the aim to overthrow it. They are also "terrorists" when they carry out terrorist acts, the Assad government can also be described as "terrorists" (and they are fucking horrible).

I honestly feel so sad for ordinary Syrians. All they want, no doubt, is to live their life as normal, but their country is completely fucked, no matter who's going to be in charge.

When a country has free and fair elections that all citizens can vote in, then people undermining that are terrorists.

When the country is a dictatorship, then undermining that is rebellion.

What will replace it may well be equally brutal, but it will have as much legitimacy as the previous regime.

Until there’s democracy, at which point it will be more legitimate.

It’s not an area I know a lot about, though.

Apologies I haven't RTFT, but I read this very apt paragraph somewhere online, which was so pithy I noted it down:

"Freedom fighters are people in countries you've heard of fighting for causes you agree with.
Terrorists are people in countries you've heard of fighting for causes you disagree with.
Guerillas are people in countries you've never heard of fighting for causes you don't understand."

nobody is saying that. Poster, Myself included, is saying actually the opposite. Nobody should support a terrorist group. Even if they get rid of a dictatorship. We are calling out the hypocrisy of the media calling some rebels and others terrorists when both groups are the same

But they are rebels. They are lterally rebelling against the Assad regime. Its factually correct. Some of them are also designated terrorists. Some of them have links to designated terrorists. Some are not. Some don't. This is brought up constantly in all the coverage I'm watching. There is also huge popular celebration about overthrowing the horrific Assad regime and cautious optimism arising from the way the rebels have so far behaved. Many people have warned that this may change. Why is this hard?

Whoever and whenever the US and Uk decide. They did label the ANC terrorists for fighting for equality against a brutal racists government that killed, maimed and disappeared thousands. And impoverished millions. Then just before RSA got its freedom them switched sides and now keep banging on about how they helped it. So whoever you are wondering about, pick yourself the latest us foreign policy summary or brief on them

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

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

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

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.

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..

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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

Oh good lord.....