 "President" Arafat (L) with "Prime Minister" Abbas. |
Excuse me, but prime minister, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, means the "head of the executive branch of government in states with a parliamentary system." Despite tens of thousands of references to Mr. Abbas as prime minister, he in not a single way fits this description.
Oh, and there is also the matter of there being no country called Palestine. Arab maps show it in place of Israel. The U.N. recognizes its existence. So too do certain telephone companies – for example, France's Bouygues Telecom and Bell Canada. Nonetheless, no such place exists.
One can dismiss use of these terms as symptoms of the same unrealism that has undermined Palestinian Arab war efforts since 1948. But they also promote the Palestinian cause (a polite way of saying, "the destruction of Israel") in a vital way.
In an era when the battle for public opinion has an importance that rivals the clash of soldiers, the Palestinian Arabs' success in framing the issues has won them critical support among politicians, editorial writers, academics, street demonstrators, and NGO activists. In the aggregate, these many auxiliaries keep the Palestinian effort alive.
Especially in a long-standing dispute with a static situation on the ground, public opinion has great significance. That's because words reflect ideas – and ideas motivate people. Weapons in themselves are inert; today, ideas inspire people to pick up arms or sacrifice their lives. Software drives hardware.
Israel is winning on the basic geographic nomenclature. The state is known in English as Israel, not the Zionist entity. Its capital is called Jerusalem, not Al-Quds. Likewise, Temple Mount and Western Wall enjoy far more currency than Al-Haram ash-Sharif and Al-Buraq. The separation barrier is more often called a security fence (keeping out Palestinian suicide bombers) than a separation wall (bringing to mind divided Berlin).
In other ways, however, the Palestinian Arabs' wording dominates English-language usage, helping them win the war for public opinion.
Collaborator means someone who "cooperates treasonably" and brings to mind the French and Norwegian collaborators who betrayed their countries to the Nazis. Yet this term (rather than informant, mole, or agent) universally describes those Palestinian Arabs providing Israel with information.
Refugee status normally applies to someone who, "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted . . . is outside the country of his nationality," but not to that person's descendants. In the Palestinian case, however, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of refugees also merit refugee status. One demographer estimates that more than 95% of so-called Palestinian Arab refugees never fled from anywhere. Nonetheless, the term continues to be used, implying that millions of Palestinian Arabs have a right to move to Israel.
A settlement is defined as a small community or an establishment in a new region. Although some Jewish towns on the West Bank and in Gaza have tens of thousands of residents and have existed for nearly four decades, settlement, with its overtones of colonialism, is their nearly universal name. The same applies to settler.
Occupied territories implies that a Palestinian state existed in 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza. That was not the case, making these areas legally disputed territories, not occupied ones.
Cycle of violence, a term President George W. Bush has adopted ("the cycle of violence has got to end in order for the peace process ... to begin"), implies a moral equivalence between the killing of Israeli civilians and Palestinian Arab terrorists. It confuses the arsonist with the fire department.
The peace camp in Israel – a term that derives from Lenin's usage – refers to those on the left who believe that appeasing mortal enemies is the only way to end Palestinian aggression. Those in favor of other approaches (such as deterrence) by implication constitute the "war camp." In fact, all Israelis are in the "peace camp" in the sense that all want to be rid of the conflict; none of them aspires to kill Palestinian Arabs, occupy Cairo, or destroy Syria.
Arabs may have fallen behind Israel in per capita income and advanced weaponry, but they lead by far on the semantic battlefield. Who, a century back, would have imagined Jews making the better soldiers and Arabs the better publicists?
Jan. 4, 2005 addenda: The above article does not deal with three terms.
(1) Palestinian: Several points about it:
- I do not consider using Palestinian a victory for the enemies of Zionism because the Zionists themselves abandoned the term in 1948 when they adopted the terms Israel and Israeli. On their doing so the words Palestine and Palestinian became available. Israelis after that date no longer sought to have their country called Palestine or they to be called Palestinians.
- That the British in 1920 carved out a mandate in the Holy Land and called it Palestine was a signal Zionist victory.
- The year 1920 also marked the beginning of the Arab recognition – out of necessity, not enthusiasm – of the territory called Palestine, a topic I cover in depth at "The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine."
- Nearly a hundred years after 1920, a Palestinian nationality exists and cannot be denied.
- No synonym for Palestinian exists. Some editors confusingly prefer Palestinian Arab but that misleadingly implies that something called a Palestinian Jew exists, when there is no such person.
(2) Pro-Palestinian: I take up this insidious word in a separate blog, "Anti-Israel ≠ Pro-Palestinian."
(3) West Bank: This is a complex topic that requires separate treatment; see my blog, "Why I Use the Term 'West Bank,' not 'Judea and Samaria'."
And another two points: For a 1981 discussion of terminology, see my article, "Understanding the Middle East: A Guide to Common Terms."
Finally, the above article came out once before, under the title "Language: The Other Battlefield," at WorldNetDaily on the unfortunate date of Sep. 12, 2001. Figuring that not a person in the world noticed it then, I kept working on it and a bit over three years later, here it is. Note that the first version had a quite different introduction, about India and Pakistan:
When the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers met for one of their rare summit meetings this past July [2001], each insisted on formulating the main issue between them - their rival claims to the province of Kashmir and Jammu - his own preferred way. For the Indian prime minister, the topic at hand was the ending of "crossborder terrorism," while his Pakistani counterpart wanted to discuss the "Kashmir dispute." Disagreement on this point torpedoed the summit, which in turn led to a dramatic upsurge in Kashmir-related violence
Aug. 13, 2012 update: Philippe Assouline offers a delicious lexicographic study of Palestinian English titled "Palestinese Lexicon," where Palestinese refers "a parallel language ... that Palestinian activists and their allies have indeed invented," today at the Times of Israel. Here is the first entry:
Aboriginal/Native: Any non-Jew, preferably Arab, who has immigrated to Israel/Palestine within the last 150 years or is a remnant of Arab colonial conquests. For example, Yasser Arafat and Edward Said who were both born in Egypt are "Native" Palestinians.
N.B.: The latter link is to an article by me.
Oct. 23, 2013 update: On a far more earnest level, the Vienna-based International Press Institute brought six (unnamed) journalists from the Middle East and had them work on finding neutral terminology for 150 words and phrases used in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the result of which has been published as the 59-page long Use With Care: A Reporter's Glossary of Loaded Language in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict. As Al-Monitor explains,
Each term is listed in English, Arabic and Hebrew, along with a phonetic transcription of both the Hebrew and Arabic words in Latin characters. Alongside every term are two or three paragraphs explaining the meaning of the term, how it is used and why one side or the other might find it problematic. Finally, another column suggests alternative terms.
Sep. 17, 2014 update: Michael Weiss offers a snippy "Lexicon of the Contemporary Middle East Expert" that covers narrative, political solution, facts on the ground, imperialism, anti-imperialism, resistance, soft landing, and neocon.
Nov. 5, 2014 update: The PLO has issued a directive today instructing journalists to call the most holy place in Jerusalem not the Temple Mount or even the Haram ash-Sharif but Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, a neologism. All other terms than this one, it pronounces, are "null and void."
Aug. 1, 2016 update: Khaled Abu Toameh documents in "A Guide to the Palestinian Lexicon" the terms that the Palestinian Authority uses internally to describe Israel, including such delights as "the Other Side," the "State of Occupation," the "Government of Occupation," "Prime Minister of Occupation," "Prime Minister of Tel Aviv," the "Minister of War," and the "Occupation Forces."
Oct. 15, 2020 update: Manfred Gerstenfeld updates this discussion at "Language As an Anti-Israel Tool," where he considers such terms as boycott, divestment, and sanction, land for peace, apartheid, occupation, two-state solution, Palestine refugees, and colonists.
Aug. 16, 2022 update: Alan Baker offers his take at "False and Malicious Catchphrases and Buzzwords in the Israeli-Palestinian Context."
Dec. 13, 2024 update: Daniel Greenfield brings his wit to bear at "Everything in the Middle East Means the Opposite."
