WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: A JNS article this week correctly calls the Jewish party to the Palestine conflict not just “Israelis” but “the Jews.” I commented it’s equally important to correctly ID our adversary – Palestinian Arabs, who aren’t “The Palestinians.” And Zionism contributed to the Jewish homeland’s sovereign rebirth, but Israel’s not “the Zionist entity.”
This Week in the Jewish Homeland Word Warriors’ Workshop: “Palestine” and “Palestinian” Aren’t Dirty Words; “Zionist Entity” Is
“Palestine” and “Palestinian” Don’t Refer Just to Palestinian Arabs
Lori Lowenthal Marcus wrote a strong JNS article this week, You Can’t Say That! Well, They Are Saying It, defending a statement by Justice Amy Comey Barrett, heavily criticized by “left-leaning Jews” and others, that the parties to the Palestine conflict aren’t “Palestinians” and Israel but, as quoted by Marcus, are “the Palestinians and ‘the Jews.’”
Lori focused on our need to see clearly that the conflict is not against Israelis alone but “is a war against the Jews.” Yes, but I think it’s no less necessary for us to define to ourselves and others no less clearly the identity of our opponent. We make a great gratuitous mistake in calling our adversary in the Palestine conflict “THE Palestinians.” Here’s the comment I posted to Lori’s article:
“It’s not the ‘Israeli-Palestinian’ conflict for two reasons. One, as Justice Barrett and Ms. Marcus make clear, the Jewish party is not ‘Israel’ but more broadly ‘the Jews.’ The second misnomer is that the Palestinian Arabs who war against us Jews are Palestinian Arabs, not ‘THE Palestinians.’ As then PM Begin pointed out in his Foreword to the 2d edition of Katz’s ‘Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine,’ as did David Bar-Illan when he was editor of the Jerusalem Post, there’s Jewish equity in ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinian.’ We need to take it back. It’s counter-productive and historically wrong for we ourselves to call our adversary in the Arab-Jewish Palestine conflict ‘The Palestinians.’”
The names “Palestine” and “Palestinian,” so completely today understood as referring only to Arabs, didn’t always do so. Associated Press, 12/11/11:
“[During the Mandate,] Muslims, Christians and Jews living there were all referred to as Palestinians.” [emphasis added]
The United Nations agreed. In its 1947 Palestine partition resolution, it referred to Palestine’s Jews and its Arabs as “the two Palestinian peoples.”
Here’s what then Prime Minister Begin wrote in his Foreword to the second edition of Samuel Katz’s Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine:
“One of the most important services rendered by this book is hinted at in its sub-title: ‘Fact and Fantasy in Palestine.’ The impertinent campaign of the Arab propagandists in appropriating to themselves the name of ‘Palestine’ (as though theirs was the land) and Palestinians (as though they owned it) has unfortunately borne a good deal of fruit. The fact that Palestine was simply the name given over the centuries by non-Jews to the country of the Jews; that Palestine as the Jewish heritage is an ineffaceable fact of world history, indeed of the Moslem as well as of Christian tradition, has been obscured by the weight of heavily-financed and admittedly efficient Arab propaganda. So much so that even many Jews have been drawn into the semantic trap. Battleground provides an incisive corrective to this erosion of the truth. The most moving chapter in the book is that on the continuous Jewish presence in Palestine. I was glad to learn that this particular chapter has been disseminated in special editions in several languages.”
Indeed, the term was more used by and of Palestine’s Jews than of its Arabs. David Bar-Illan, late editor of the Jerusalem Post wrote in its ground-breaking Eye on the Media column:
“The Arab residents of this country during the British mandate resented the appellation Palestinian. They called themselves Arab, and named all of their institutions – from the Arab Higher Committee on down – ‘Arab,’ not Palestinian. Only the Jews, when referring to themselves and their institutions in English used the name Palestinian: The Palestine Post (still the incorporated name of this newspaper), the Palestine Symphony, the United Palestine Appeal are typical examples ….
“Applying the term Palestinian to Arabs of Palestine probably began in the early 1960’s, but neither Security Council resolution 242 of 1967 nor 338 of 1973 mentions Palestinians at all. It was only in the mid-seventies that the term became popular.” (Bar-Illan, Eye on The Media compilation, pp. 166-67)
“…there is a distinct public-relations disadvantage in being a part of the Arab nation: it is difficult to elicit sympathy for people who belong to a nation of 200 million people which possesses land almost twice the size of the US. Nor is it easy to portray them as an underdog against four million Israelis occupying a tiny two-by-four country.
“Distinct Palestinian nationalism was born, then, to separate the Arabs of Palestine from other Arabs. The Arab-Israeli conflict thus became the struggle of the “Palestinian nation” against the Israeli occupiers.” (Eye On the Media compilation, p. 370)
So, “Palestine” and “Palestinian” aren’t inherently Dirty Words. They’ve been hijacked by Palestinian Arabs, who aren’t exactly reticent about claiming all of [western] Palestine “from the River to the Sea,” leaving the Jewish homeland nothing. Is it outrageously unthinkable for us to claim the land of Israel, Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem included, as ours, leaving Palestinian Arabs 78% of the Palestine Mandate, Palestinian Arab-majority Jordan?
Israel Isn’t “the Zionist Entity”
Another reader posted a comment to Lori Marcus’ article that we should stop saying “Zionism” because it accomplished its purpose with Israel’s attainment of statehood in 1948 and our continued use of it allows our enemies to say they’re not against Jews per se, only “Zionists.”
The reader confuses “Zionism” with “Zionist entity.” Our enemies do refer to Israel as “the Zionist entity,” not just to avoid saying “Israel,” as explained on Wikipedia:
“Zionist entity … Zionist regime … and Zionist enemy are pejorative terms for the state of Israel which are used by some Arabs and Muslims. Many commentators believe that the terms are used in an attempt to de-legitimize Israel by emphasizing Zionism, the Jewish national movement which led to Israel’s modern founding….
“The term is described as a means of expressing hostility towards Israel, refusing to acknowledge its existence, and denying its legitimacy or right to exist.”
I posted this reply to that reader’s comment:
“Israel’s enemies call Israel ‘the Zionist entity’ to date Jewish connection to the land of Israel to the late nineteenth century Zionist movement. But as Katz pointed out in ‘Battleground,’ Zionism – popularly quipped as ‘a first Jew giving money to a second Jew to send a third Jew to Palestine’ – didn’t start something new, but just brought modernization to a millennia-long Jewish return to the homeland that had never ceased. Call Israel the Jewish people’s three-millennia homeland, not ‘the Zionist entity.’”
Help Fight the Loaded Lexicon of Jewish Homeland-Delegitimizing Pejoratives
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