After the massacre at Mar Elias Church in the heart of Damascus, carried out by a jihadist suicide bomber, the Syrian state media’s use of the term ‘victims’ to describe the dead, who were Christians, was striking.

This wording might have seemed normal, were it not for the fact that the same media consistently uses the word ‘martyrs’ when referring to members of the General Security forces killed in clashes.

The roots of this distinction are clearly religious and ideological, which has sparked widespread discontent among many Syrians over how terms like ‘martyr’ or ‘casualty’ are selectively used in reporting on bombings, massacres, or attacks, reflecting unmistakable biases.

This debate over ‘martyr’ versus ‘casualty’ is not unique to Syria. It recurs almost daily across the region’s war-torn and deeply divided societies. During the latest Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, journalists, especially women, faced harassment and were even expelled from locations for allegedly not using the word ‘martyr’ when reporting on victims.

In one case, a video surfaced showing a heated exchange where the assailants accused journalists of failing to use the term, prompting the journalists to defend themselves: “We do use it, we don’t say ‘killed’.”

These journalists had already fallen into the trap—the debate had become about whether the word was used, rather than about the validity, professionalism, and ethical implications of its use.

At Daraj, we’ve frequently faced criticism for not using the word ‘martyr’ when publishing about victims of genocide in Gaza, Lebanon, or during confrontations with Israel.

The martyr-victim debate extends to a wider lexicon, especially the word ‘resistance’. Hezbollah, for example, is seen as a resistance movement by some in Lebanon but viewed as a sectarian militia in Syria. The term ‘resistance’ has been diluted to the point where it now includes factions involved in civil wars across Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria.

Why Does this Debate Never End?

This isn’t merely a linguistic or professional dispute. It is a profoundly political and ethical one. To rank the dead, label their fates in this life and the next, is what should truly be under scrutiny—not the journalists.

The word ‘killed’ is a neutral descriptor. It carries no moral judgment against the victim, and it doesn’t absolve the killer, on the contrary. A person who is killed is the victim of a crime, and that presupposes there is a perpetrator who should be held accountable.

It’s a simple idea, but one that understandably angers people in the context of war and massacres, where emotions are raw, and those who have lost loved ones or leaders often cling to symbolic words that offer comfort or perceived elevation in death.

Naturally, grieving people may seek to place their loved ones in paradise or find someone to blame, and journalists often become the scapegoats.

As a media and as a society, we have failed to agree on the fundamental notion that a killed person is a victim, and that siding with the victim should not be reduced to a battle of lethal identities, a battle that has haunted us for decades. Aligning with the victim also implies that the killer is known, and that we, too, might be their next targets.

There’s no such thing as absolute neutrality in media. That’s what sets one outlet apart from another. Some institutions mix expressive and ideological language, tailoring their terminology to suit political agendas. If the victim is from the ‘friendly camp’, they’re a martyr; if they’re from the ‘enemy’, their death is either dismissed or framed as marginal.

This is why Syrian state media’s use of ‘victims’ for the Christians killed in the Damascus church bombing, while using ‘martyrs’ for state security forces, reinforces the same ideological and sectarian logic that underpins how we relate to violence.

This debate is not uniquely Syrian. It is replicated constantly amid the wars, divisions, and civil clashes tearing our region apart.

A Long-Standing Divide

The rift over terminology isn’t new, but it sharpened with the rise of pan-Arab satellite media in the mid-1990s. Deep political polarization spilled into major TV networks, which became both symbols and engines of this polarization.

Al Jazeera emerged as a mouthpiece for ‘resistance’ and ‘defiance’ movements, pioneering the use of certain terms from Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Other major outlets followed suit, each through its own political lens.

During the recent Israeli war on Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Arabic website published two stories on the same day: one referred to victims in Gaza as ‘martyrs’, while those in southern Lebanon were labeled ‘casualties’, even though the perpetrator in both cases was Israel.

What criterion did the editor use to decide that Israel’s victims in Lebanon were ‘casualties’, but in Gaza were ‘martyrs’?

These contradictions are especially visible during large-scale wars like those in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, or Iraq, but they almost vanish when the victims are in Sudan or Yemen. There, hundreds or thousands are killed without receiving the same symbolic rank in death.

How do we, as journalists sitting behind screens, justify assigning different statuses to victims based on identity, geography, or political/religious affiliation?

This emotional inconsistency shows we’ve learned little from the endless death that has exhausted us, as nations, as individuals, and as communities. The dead over there are not our dead, just as our dead are not theirs.

To be clear, this isn’t a uniquely Middle Eastern problem. After 9/11 and the Iraq invasion, similar debates surfaced in the West. International media outlets struggled to differentiate between terms like ‘terrorist’ and ‘gunman’, ‘regime’ and ‘government’, ‘jihadist’ and ‘fighter’, ‘ISIS’ and ‘the Islamic State’.

Professionally, journalists must adhere to a simple rule when choosing terms: the description must be provable, neutral, and not alter the legal or symbolic status of the person being written about.

The public deserves clear, accurate, and impartial reporting. Any deviation from that only feeds the very debates we are trying to rise above. Clarity in language doesn’t negate bias—it reveals it. The way we frame a story still defines who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.

But when will we, as journalists and societies, have the courage to treat death as it is without ranks or titles? Can we admit that, in the end, perhaps we are all victims?

When we call someone a ‘martyr’, we’re not just labeling their death, we’re harnessing it to serve a political narrative, erasing the individual and human contexts around the event. This is exactly what happens when the language of death becomes a tool of polarization, not a gesture of dignity for victims, but justification for continuous killings.