Words Matter.
How We Describe What is Occurring in Israel-Gaza Matters
The acts by HAMAS on Israelis last weekend were abhorrent. It was an unprovoked massacre and the largest act of coordinated terrorism since 9/11. HAMAS demonstrated no mercy or contrition regardless of age or gender, and the brutality of the attacks were vicious. Soon after, Israel declared war on HAMAS.
It doesn’t matter what you think about the Palestinian conflict, Israelis, the Middle East or even religion; every word in that first paragraph is accurate.
One of the issues the social justice left is experiencing now is that they are couching the terms of the Israeli conflict in the same language they have erroneously used for the past several years. Whereas many Americans were content to just let them vent their perspectives lest they be labeled something derisive,1 voicing this language in the current context is totally inappropriate and can actually lead to making it worse.
One simple example is the use of the term “anti-Semitic.” The word “Semite” refers to a language and cultural group made up of ancient and modern people. Semitic languages include: Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Moabite, Hebrew, Phonecian, Assyrian, and Babylonian. (Biblically they are considered the descendants of Shem, son of Noah.) According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first usage of ‘anti-Semitic’ solely for a person who discriminates against or is prejudiced against Jews, was in the 1880s (about the same time as the beginnings of modern Zionism). However, if we return to the original meaning of Semitic, it is difficult to call Palestinians and other Arabs anti-Semitic, since they are themselves Semites. It is the reason why most news organizations refer to HAMAS and Hezbollah militantism as “anti-Israeli” or “anti-Jewish.” Words matter.
An example from the past couple weeks, many a liberal academic at elite universities referred to the Israelis as “colonizers” and their occcupation of Gaza as “colonization.”2 This is the language that many social justice advocates have used to describe the American expansion in the New World (accurate), and the European nations splitting up Africa (again, accurate). They usually use it in a negative context, taking the submissive position to speak of the injustices of dominion over local populations, and the horrors that result. In the context of Israel though, it’s completely inaccurate. The region was long inhabited by Jews for thousands of years until the diaspora; it wasn’t like they intentionally left, moreso were forced out as following the Roman Conquest (when they became a minority in the area) and migrated during the Byzantine Period. By the time Saladin conquered Jerusalem, more Jews were in Eastern and Central Europe than in the Holy Land. Following WWI and especially after WWII, Jews returned to the Middle East in large numbers. They didn’t inhabit the Middle East as an extension from another power, they just returned back to their ancestral homeland. Both Palestinians and Israeli Jews have long standing LEGITIMATE claims to the area. That doesn’t make them colonizers. But activist academia uses the term to project Israelis in a negative light.
Likewise, another phrase they used was referencing HAMAS as “resistance fighters.” “Resistance” implies that they were being imposed upon at the time they acted and that was what prompted the response. Again, taking the submissive view, it conveys HAMAS as a hero, someone to look up to, a potential martyr. But the people who perpetrated the massacre were none of these. They were, in the strictest sense of the word, “terrorists”; since they were acting on behalf of HAMAS and HAMAS is the representative leadership of Gaza, its also appropriate to call them “soldiers.” Resistance fighters don’t arbitrarily kill civilians, especially those enjoying a music festival. They don’t slaughter babies and kill elderly holocaust survivors. They don’t shoot whole families in front of one another. They don’t take hostages to be used as human shields. These are affirmative acts of terrorism, plain and simple, not resistance or defense.
On the flip side, Israel was careful to specify they declared war on HAMAS, not Palestinians writ large. Israel does not want to expand this conflict beyond the current Gaza Strip. They are singularly fixed on those who perpetrated the acts of terror, not the Palestinian civilians in Gaza nor those in the West Bank. Broadening the language used could result in disastrous consquences as the situation may spiral out of control to a whole Middle East theater conflagration.
To be sure, Israel is not perfect. The conditions within Gaza, roughly equal in size and population of Rhode Island, are horrendous. Half live in poverty and without clean water. There’s only one power plant and its out of fuel. Gazans have no fishing rights off shore and are confined within the area. Israel has now evicted over a million Gazan Palestinians from the northern half, packing in the entire 2 million population in an area the size if Washington D.C.. UNHCR has been setting up refugee camps on the Egyptian side of the southern border but since there are only two points of egress, the large majority of the population are essentially caged within the southern half of Gaza as a war is about to ensue. Like that first paragraph, these words are entirely accurate.
But in these actions and in defense of their country Israel is totally justified. The actions conducted by HAMAS ensured an Israeli response and in all honesty Israel has even demonstrated a level of restraint that HAMAS did not show to the thousand plus Israelis it butchered. What worries everyone in the world right now is the extent Israel proceeds. Will it resemble a restrained policing action, weeding out terrorists with as little fallout as possible, or will it look like a caged hunt with many false positive Palestinians killed as collateral damage?
We don’t know yet. And we want to make sure we describe it accurately when it does.
PurpleAmerica Recommended Stories
One of the sad aspects of this story is that there are few objective journalists out there providing Palestinian perspective without it sounding like an anti-Israeli screed. MSNBC and NBC News has three of the best muslim news hosts in the business, and according to Semafor, they scaled back their exposure including taking Ali Velshi off his weekly show. NBC has rebuffed the criticism, claiming that Ali Velshi’s show was benched for live coverage on site and that Velshi had been on air longer this week than previously, providing reports on other MSNBC programs. He is already returning to the US. The other two reporters have likewise been reassigned in their coverage. Semafor stands by its reporting.
Whenever an event of this magnitude happens in the Middle East, I always try and scan the headlines on Al Jazeera, the Qatar based news organization that covers the Arab perspective. Needless to say, it’s pretty much the antithesis of most American outlets right now. Just take a look. It’s pretty eye opening. It takes a very pro-Palestinian slant and even calls Israeli actions “genocide.”3 Pay particular attention to the words they use to describe the situation and what other Middle Eastern countries and groups (Iran, Hezbollah, etc.) are using to describe the situation. Based on what I saw, the language being used is sadly angling toward a major conflict.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
The words for “peace” in Yiddish and Arabic are “shalom” and “salaam” respectively.
Close enough. One only hopes they would see how much more alike they are then different.
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
Peace be unto you. And to Israel. And to the Palestinian civilians.
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Footnotes and Fun Stuff
And if you agreed with it you tended to advocate “social justice” as some false moral equivalence, and if you disagreed with it you were labelled as some racist, sexist bigot.
I’ll add, “colonization” and “colonizer” are only accurate in the past context. In the present, to call someone living in America, who was born and lived their entire lives here, a “colonizer” is pretty off the mark.
Something many liberal academics and student groups labeled it as.