When is a tunnel not a tunnel?

Yesterday, The Jerusalem Post reported that the IDF had destroyed what it called Hezbollah’s largest “tunnel” in southern Lebanon, writing that “the tunnel runs two kilometers in length and 10 kilometers in width, and was capable of fitting thousands of terrorists.” (https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-894497)

The Times of Israel similarly reported that the IDF destroyed two “vast Hezbollah attack tunnels” in Qantara, describing the underground systems as “spanning 2 km” and reaching depths of 25 meters. One tunnel reportedly had “some 10 rooms, each with several bunk beds,” while the total system included around 30 rooms and 30 separate shafts, including shafts with rocket launchers aimed at Israel. (https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-blows-up-2-vast-hezbollah-attack-tunnels-built-with-direct-guidance-from-iran/)

This is obviously good news. Any Hezbollah infrastructure destroyed in southern Lebanon is good news, especially the kind built with Islamic State support and apparently designed to house fighters, weapons, launch positions, and the kind of cozy invasion logistics that Al Jazeera, the BBC, and CNN often seem strangely uninterested in. Still, I have one small, pedantic, but I think important objection.

Can we please define “tunnel”?

A tunnel, in normal human language, is a passage. It is usually long, narrow, directional, and built to take people, vehicles, weapons, or supplies from one place to another. It can be reinforced. It can be deep. It can be dangerous. It can even be part of a much larger system.

If something is described as two kilometers long and ten kilometers wide, I’m sorry, that is not a tunnel. That is an underground complex. A subterranean base. A terror metroplex. A mole man (Juan Topo) fortress. It is almost anything but a “tunnel.”

A two-by-ten-kilometer area is 20 square kilometers. That is roughly six Central Parks, about one-third of Manhattan, around 2,800 soccer fields, or more than forty Vatican Cities. The media is really stretching the word “tunnel” here.

Also, not to continue the nitpick, but if it is 2 km by 10 km, shouldn’t we call it 10 by 2? If the “width” is five times the “length,” then maybe you have it backwards.

This may sound like a joke, but wording matters in our “Islamic State not Iran” and “it’s antizionism, not anti-Zionism” world. “Tunnel” sounds so simple. “Underground complex,” a more apt term, sounds strategic. It suggests planning, money, engineering, time, civilian shielding, regional coordination, and an entire military doctrine built beneath homes, roads, villages, and borders.

That distinction matters because this is not only a Lebanese problem. These underground militia bases are all over the region, and they are scarcely reported on.

Syria, the other country to Israel’s north, has its own underground-network problem. Yes, Syria, that country people forget has a giant coast North of Lebanon.

Reports from Syria have described tunnels running under homes, schools, and public buildings, weakening structures and complicating reconstruction. In Tel Rifaat, residents reportedly returned to ruins and underground networks that had damaged the foundations above them. In Deir ez-Zor, residents feared tunnels under homes could collapse or be booby-trapped. (https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5110551-syrians-returning-town-tel-rifaat-find-homes-ruins-and-underground-tunnels)

And yet, when these tunnel systems lead to civilian danger, ruined neighborhoods, cracked walls, unstable homes, and the militarization of civilian space, the international outrage machine rarely knows what to do with it. They spent so long defending these Hamas outposts in Gaza that it became hard to speak clearly about their dangers. There is no neat headline until Israel is forced to get involved.

So yes, I am nitpicking. But I am nitpicking because words shape the story.

A “tunnel” sounds like a hole in the ground.

A 20-square-kilometer underground system capable of holding thousands of fighters sounds like a war plan.

Maybe we should start defining things on our own terms.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)