Why we need a different way to talk about Israel and Palestine
This week I watched with horror and trepidation as Israel and Palestine entered into another bloody conflict. As of today, 12 Israelis and more than 250 Palestinians have been killed — a tragic and unnecessary loss of life.
Much of the criticism of Israel focuses on the disproportionality of these numbers, as well as the desperate situation in Gaza. Israelis, for their part, point out that Hamas has fired some 4000 rockets, targeting civilian areas. If it hadn’t been for Israel’s anti-missile defense system, the casualties on the Israeli side would have been much higher.
Even though I grew up in Israel, and now teach a course on Israeli literature and film, I don’t feel qualified to speak about the politics of the conflict. I haven’t lived in the country for 20 years and have never been to Gaza. Neither am I an expert on military strategy or international law. For this reason, whatever opinions I may have I generally keep to myself or share with friends in private.
However, I know enough about the politics of language to make a few critical observations about the ways in which U.S.-based and European commentators use language to speak about this conflict. Sadly, as I scroll through news headlines and Twitter posts, I see very little nuance and clarity. Instead, the discourse falls into two categories: On the one hand euphemisms obscure the harsh truth of the situation; on the other, hardline ideological statements dehumanize one of the sides in the conflict. Neither of these approaches is likely to facilitate dialogue, which is the only way forward.
In his controversial monologue, John Oliver points out some of the euphemisms American mainstream media employs, referring, for example, to the strife in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem as a “property dispute.” Oliver right to observe that these terms obfuscate reality. In 1946 George Orwell made similar claims in his famous essay, “Politics of the English Language.” Unfortunately, euphemisms are often the default terminology in American journalism, which has trouble handling morally ambiguous situations.
Many on the Left try to break out of the world of euphemism by naming the injustice and violence that they’re seeing. But instead of doing the work of finding accurate and nuanced language — something that, according to Orwell, all writers ought to do — these commentators turn to ideologically-informed jargon. John Oliver does so in that same monologue by accusing Israel of “war crimes.” (I have no idea whether some of IDF’s actions in Gaza fall into that legal category, but neither does the comedian — nor does anyone else at this point).
Ideological jargon that includes terms like “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” has gone mainstream in recent years. Since I spent most of my 20s and 30s in U.S. universities, I’d encountered it much earlier. At UC Irvine, where I was a PhD student, a condemnation of Israel as the epitome of colonial evil was a kind of shibboleth, a way of proving that you’re in with the “in” crowd. It was trotted out even in conversations that had nothing to do with the Middle East. After a while I realized that it was best not to identify with Israel in any way; I stopped telling people that I’d grown up there, thus erasing a major part of my identity and eliminating the possibility of dialogue on the subject.
As a college teacher in New York, in contrast, I had many thoughtful conversations with students and friends outside of academe about Israel. I taught poetry by Israeli and Palestinian authors in diverse classrooms, where Jewish and Muslim students (as well as those who knew very little about these countries) sat side by side. Poetry, literature, and film bring the discussion down to the level of human experience and emotion, distancing it from various ideologies. Outside the classroom, immigrants from countries with their own troubled histories are also more likely to engage in conversation instead of issuing blanket condemnations.
I understand that some approach politics as “war waged by other means,” and that therefore it’s acceptable to use language as one of the weapons. But the Left has been using this strategy for decades with no positive results. As I see it, the intensification of this sort of rhetorical offensive in the last 15 years only pushed Israel further to the right.
Embedded in this strategy is an assumption that Israel can be handled like an unruly child. If you scold it and take away its toys, it will eventually do as told. The reality, however, is that the country is an extremely diverse and — for the most part — well-informed democracy that does its best to protect its interests, the most basic of which being physical survival.
Most of the Israelis I’ve met acknowledge the injustice of occupation and are willing to listen to a variety of perspective. But most of them will also retreat and become defensive if they’re personally accused of atrocities or be told that their country has no right to exist. How would an average U.S. citizen respond if she is told that she bears personal responsibility for civilian deaths in Vietnam or in Afghanistan? Or that the U.S. has no right to exist because the land it occupies had belonged to someone else?
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Everyone has the right to an opinion, and the Israel/Palestine conflict is an especially fertile ground for opinion-mongers. But if we learned anything from the Trump presidency is that what you do with your opinion matters. So, as you get ready to Tweet or re-Tweet your favorite slogan, ask yourself what you hope your words to accomplish? Do you want to get ‘likes’ and a sense of validation from your peer-group? Do you want to put a ‘naughty’ country in the corner? Or do you want to see an eventual peaceful resolution to the Israel/Palestine conflict?
If your priorities align with the latter, then you have to do the hard work of promoting dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians as well as close stakeholders abroad, or else support others who are willing to do this work. There is, of course, a time and place for deliberate political rhetoric. But language that vilifies and dehumanizes an entire nation is unlikely to lead to reconciliation.
