Is it wrong for a victim to commit a crime against their abuser?
Consider a wife who has suffered various kinds of abuse over many years from her husband. One day she picks up a kitchen knife and stabs him to death. You have seen this story in movies and books many times and one is always split between compassion for the victim and condemnation of their crime of murder.
Now chose a word to describe the action of wife;
Attack? Defence? Pre-emptive? Revenge? Anger? Terrorism?
Most courts would find the wife guilty of murder. Her defence of ‘self-defence’ or ‘after years of abuse’, would be considered as mitigating circumstances and might reduce the sentence significantly.
When children fight they will commonly defend themselves with an accusation; ‘so and so started it.’
They might have been a peaceable victim who was attacked by a bully. In most ethical standards and laws, a violent act permits self defence by the victim. If the bully claimed to have attacked in order to prevent being attacked this is unlikely be regarded as permissible unless the victim had made to strike and the bully blocked the attack before striking back. Children can confuse adults with this simple excuse or ‘defence’ for violence and so do modern leaders!
The abused wife who retaliates in anger is like a country that has suffered abuse from a neighbouring state for many years. If brought to breaking point, the victim state will decide it has had enough of violent attacks and incursions onto their land. They will strike back. The question is, did the victim start the violence by objecting to abuse? Who ‘started it’ becomes almost impossible to define as the origin of the violence and the definition of the first act of violence is difficult to pin point. It probably wasn’t a single agressive act but multiple acts of passive aggression by either party.
In the eighteenth century, the United States of America slowly dispossessed and committed murder and land theft against the indigenous population as had done other European colonisers before them.
The State of Israel was created by occupying Colonial powers in 1945 from which point onwards to the present day, Israel land stole land from and murdered anyone who was in the way.
Are not both of these examples of the ‘wife-beating husband’ and a continuous ‘they started it’ mentality? How much provocation should original and entitled inhabitants suffer before fighting invaders?
Today the Zionist government in Israel is trying to persuade the world that those who fight back against the genocide of Palestinians, are ‘terrorists’.
Over the decades the words ‘Jewish’ and ‘anti-Semite’ have become used as if by an innocent abused wife. It is certainly a fact that Jewish people have had a hard time through out modern and ancient history. They have been the victims of violent and non-violent abuse in many countries culminating in their attempted genocide by the National Socialist government of Germany in the early 20th century.
When the Zionist government uses the defence today of ‘he started it’, the first question is when it started (certainly not on October 7th 2021) and how to reach a peaceful conclusion for this unhappy hostorical marriage of Jews and Palestinians.
The child in the playground who shouts ‘he started it’ does not realise that there are almost always passive options to violence, even if it is public humiliation or martydom. The Christians will tell you stories about this of their ‘turn the other cheek’ Messiah being murdered by the Jews of that time.
The Zionist government of Israel and the United States of America defend their invasions of Arab states over the last few decades by claiming that they are the innocent victims of ‘terrorism’. But who are the true terrorists?
A short detour to examine the word ‘terrorism’ is required. All violence creates fear in the victim but is this terrorism? The term is defined as;
‘…the calculated use of violence, or threat of violence, against civilians or non-combatants to induce fear and coerce governments or societies to achieve political, religious, or ideological goals.’
This is a definition according to AI; so open that it also clearly defines ‘war’ in it’s modern form, with civilians victims rather than military targets. Therefore I believe that ‘terrorism’ is more than this definition. It omits to define who is using this violence against civilians? Is it a nation’s armed forces or a small group of political extremists such as the IRA or ETA in the twentieth century?
Today nation states are deploying their armed forces for extreme ideological goals outside of the international laws of War. By any definition, abandoning law is unlawful and therefore this is terrorism.
As we are examining words used in war, let us consider the difference between ‘killing’ and ‘murder’. You will often hear news reports that civilians have been ‘killed’ by missiles but is this more accurately ‘murder’?
The AI definition of murder is;
‘The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.’
We are told that modern drones and missiles can hit targets with laser accuracy. And yet, photographs of Gaza today are almost identical to photographs of cities ‘carpet bombed’ in WW II.
So if a missile lands on a school or hospital killing civilians, is this a ‘mass murder’ or a ‘mass killing’ – verbally sanitised as ‘collateral damage’? There is clearly a legal question of whether the missile was intended to be launched and targetted so as to cause loss of innocent life.
A soldier killing an enemy soldier is lawful because each expect to fight each other to death but civilians have no such expectation.
Today countries such as the USA and Israel will argue that they do not respect International Law and Courts of Justice as a sort of ‘get out’ clause. Time will be the judge of this but history suggests they will need good lawyers.
Murdering innocent people should not be a subject for debate in countries that consider themselves ‘civilised’ but today leaders use words in such a way that they feel they can justify the most heinous crimes against humanity, by merely changing definitions. Trump has not declared war against Iran and his missiles and invading troops are a ‘military operation’. As there is ‘no war’ he argues that he does not need Congress to approve going to war on behalf of the people of the United States.
In my view, we all have a responsibility to understand not only what we are told but how we are being told it. Using language to alter truth exists in every language but our primary responsibility must surely be to not to manipulate language for
unholy ends.
You can quote me on this…when we do not stand up; we lie.
Matters Blog 