Defining by naming: Israeli civic warring over the Second Lebanon War
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066110366057 |
| Author | Piki Ish-Shalom |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
Article
European Journal of
International Relations
17(3) 475–493
© The Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066110366057
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JR
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Corresponding author:
Piki Ish-Shalom, The Department of International Relations, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus
Jerusalem 91905, Israel.
Email: mspikiis@mscc.huji.ac.il
Defining by naming: Israeli
civic warring over the Second
Lebanon War
Piki Ish-Shalom
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Abstract
Politics is a public effort directed at the allocation of resources, both material and
symbolic. Quite often it involves conflict in the form of a public struggle over the
allocation of resources. Informed by Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this article
offers a political reading of constructivism (a theoretical perspective here called Political
Constructivism). It maintains that politics is guided by a conscious effort by political
agents to control the commonsensical understanding of social reality using the media
of political concepts, metaphors, symbols, and — the focus of this article — names and
definitions. Political agents regard controlling the commonsense as one of the most
effective political tools. They understand that it can be controlled by attaching meanings
to political concepts, by linking metaphors and symbols to ideas, and by linking events
to classes of events through naming and defining. This article examines the civic warring
in Israel over the defining and naming of the Second Lebanon War as a case in point.
Defining and naming the event involved a political struggle to frame the commonsense,
gain the upper hand in the political process of constructing socio-political reality, and
reap the political gains. The article argues that the political struggle was resolved by what
I call a weak Kripkean-like defining, in other words, defining by naming.
Keywords
discourse, Critical Theory, hegemony, Political Constructivism, power
Introduction
In summer 2006, there was or was not a war in Lebanon. This is not an outrageous
Baudrillardian-like statement. There was indeed a fierce armed conflict which claimed the
lives of hundreds of people, both combatants and non-combatants, on both sides of the
conflict.1 Yet, in Israel, a fascinating public debate emerged over the question of naming
476 European Journal of International Relations 17(3)
and defining the event which took place: was the fighting a war or was it merely a lengthy
military operation. The public debate represented a form of civic warring over the war, a
political campaign to make sense of the events of that summer.
What made this public debate so interesting was that the stakes were not self-evident;
the instrumental rationalities driving the debate were not very clear. The warfare was
over by the time the debate took place so that no one could claim the event’s definition
as one thing or another could affect Israeli security interests. Economically speaking, the
Israeli government had decided as soon as 30 July 2006 to compensate Israelis who had
suffered injury or damage as though the warfare was a war (see, for example, Israel
Government, 2006b). The government simply insisted on not defining this warfare as a
war. Opposing the government’s stance were various groups, dominated by the bereaved
families, who led a fierce struggle to define the fighting in Lebanon as a war. This civic
warring was a struggle over important symbols relating to the status, political capital,
and social standing of the government and fallen soldiers. On the one hand, the govern-
ment sought to reduce its political losses. The Israeli public regarded the fighting in
Lebanon as something between a failure to secure an unequivocal victory and an all-out
defeat, and since it is one thing to fail in a limited conflict but quite another to lose a war,
the question of definition was vitally important. The government therefore had a political
interest in defining the warfare as a non-war since it would affect the political price it
would have to pay. Ipso facto, the political opposition had every political incentive to
define the warfare as a full war and reap the political benefits of the government’s failure
to handle the war efficiently. The bereaved families had a different stake in the civic war-
ring over the definition. In a nation where death in battle commands the highest respect,
the families of the fallen wanted to secure the highest status of collective remembrance
for their loved ones and thus needed to define the circumstances surrounding their death
as a war and not just a limited clash. The two camps thus faced each other in a political
struggle over symbols and symbolic rewards.
Following the bereaved families’ success in mobilizing their special status, political
capital, and social prestige, the government capitulated within seven months. In March
2007, the fighting of summer 2006 was finally defined as a war. It is interesting to note,
though, that the families’ success involved an indirect political rout. The events were
defined as war through their popular naming as ‘the Second Lebanon War’, so that the
official definition followed the act of popular naming. Compared with the act of naming,
defining is more official and publicly-oriented, and thus perhaps more politically contested;
naming is more informal and private and settled in fuzzier ways. The political entrepreneurs
who contested the official government view realized that in order to prevail in the matter of
defining they had better harness the issue that was already popularly settled: the naming.
The article explores the theoretical implications of the civic warring that arose as a
result of the confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. Advancing a political
reading of constructivism (a theoretical perspective here called Political Constructivism)
the article explores a number of points: how symbolic issues can become prized interests
to be politically struggled over; how politics can consciously mobilize and utilize the
subconscious to secure prized symbolic rewards; and, more specifically, how naming
and defining can be used to attach meaning to events and frame the commonsense in an
attempt to prevail in such political struggles.
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