WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: However you regard the merits of that letter nine American Jewish groups sent President Trump in April, the language that it used, likely unthinkingly, exemplified how the loaded lexicon’s poisoned pejoratives combine to paint a delegitimizing portrait of the Jewish homeland of Israel. It’s left to us grassroots Israel supporters to contest this lexicon. I follow this argument with a list of as many such pejoratives as I can think of on a holiday weekend.
This Week: Whose Job Is It To Fight These Poisoned Pejoratives? Ours
Of my own three personal objections to the letter that nine major American Jewish organizations wrote to the U.S. President on April 12 of this year, I ask you to join just on the third –
– that it’s not for American Jews to tell Israeli Jews, who defend Israel’s borders, what Israel’s borders should be;
– that the borders that these American Jews did tell Israelis in that letter that Israel’s borders should be are militarily insecure and gratuitously cede much of our Jewish homeland to foes; and
– that the language in which these American Jewish organizations, perhaps unthinkingly, addressed the President of the United States concerning Israel is, shamefully, a language of dhimmitude.
That letter by the nine American Jewish organizations calls on the American President
“… to clearly express your opposition to unilateral measures outside of this framework [i.e., “a negotiated two-state solution”], including annexation by Israel of any territory in the West Bank.” [emphasis added]
It goes on:
“… While that [two-state] solution is unlikely to hew precisely to the 1967 borders, any territorial adjustments must result in a signed agreement between the two sides.” [emphasis added]
This U.N.-worthy language – “the 1967 borders … annexation by Israel of any territory in the West Bank” – is dhimmitude, period. Viz:
*** “The 1967 borders” were 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines expressly declared in their “green line” defining document not to be political borders. They’re no holier than, indeed less holy than, their successor post-1967 war ceasefire lines, and not even I refer to the post-1967 war ceasefire lines as accepted permanent borders.
*** This is the Encarta Dictionary’s definition of “annexation”:
“to take over territory and incorporate it into another political entity, e.g., a country or state.”
*** To twist the knife, unthinkingly or otherwise, in delegitimizing Israeli exercise of sovereignty in any territory of the historic land of Israel beyond the old 1949 ceasefire lines, don’t call that territory what it had been called all through three millennia of history, including by the U.N. itself in 1947, the Hebrew-origin names “Judea and Samaria.” Call it “West Bank,” invented post-invasion by [Trans-] Jordan in 1950, to disassociate that territory from Jews.
I do not know whether these nine letter-to-the-US President-writing Jewish organizations consciously thought about the connotations of these Jewish homeland-delegitimizing terms – “1967 borders … annexation … West Bank” – they were using, or whether they just uncritically used them because most everyone does. The point that I would drive home to you is that the lexicon used, not just by the media, but in common speech about Israel is loaded with poisoned pejoratives consistently delegitimizing the Jewish homeland of Israel. As in these nine American Jewish groups’ letter to President Trump, these poisoned pejoratives work together to paint a delegitimizing picture of Israel.
Whose job is it to fight this in English? It would be nice if the American Jewish powerhouses that colluded in writing that letter, and others, took the position, in favoring, as they do, “the two-state solution,” that it represents a compromise concession by Israel of the Jewish people’s valid homeland claim to the Judea-Samaria part of our homeland across the 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines, instead of urging, as in their letter, against Israel “annexing” any territory of “the West Bank” beyond “Israel’s 1967 borders.” Not likely, in my view.
So that leaves us, grassroots American Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel, as challengers of the loaded lexicon’s poisoned pejoratives. Our job? Recognize that these dirty words work together to paint a delegitimizing picture of the Jewish homeland of Israel and challenge those words – e.g., in Q&A following speakers, and by posting comments to internet articles – wherever you see them.
Here (A-to-Z) are as many Dirty Words as I can think of on a holiday weekend:
“Al Aqsa Compound”: Lately, less-than-Jew-loving institutions of the American media have taken to calling “the al-Aqsa compound” what the West has called “the Temple Mount” for millennia. Cf. UN agencies calling Rachel’s Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs “Palestinian” sites and mosques. Not terribly pro-Christian heritage, either.
“Borders, Israel’s 1967”: Used to sanctify as political borders the 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines (the “green line”), expressly declared in their defining document not to be political borders. These 1949 military ceasefire lines were obliterated and replaced by the 1967 war’s ceasefire lines, and are not now and never were among the Holy Land’s holy places. Eban justifiably called the 1949 lines, nine miles wide in the lowland middle, excluding historic Jerusalem and land of Israel’s Judea-Samaria heartland hill country, “Auschwitz lines.”
“Captured by Israel in 1967”: Used to date Jewish connection to historic Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to 1967. Never mind the pre-existing three-millennia Jewish connection.
“East Jerusalem” (often prefaced with “traditionally Arab” or just “Arab”): Used to push Jewish equity in this city that’s been the capital of three homeland Jewish states, and none others, in the past 3,000 years and had a renewed Jewish majority since 1800’s Turkish rule out of the historic part of the city into only the new part built in recent times.
“European Colonial Implant, Israel as”: Used to deny pre-twentieth century homeland Jewish connection to the land of Israel, an indigenous land in the Mideast, in which Jews and Jewish kingdoms preceded the arrival of Arabs by more than a millennium.
“Exiled, Jews were by Rome”: E.g., Jimmy Carter put this in the introductory chronology in his Peace Not Apartheid book, but even we, by me foolishly and inaccurately, say we were “exiled.” We weren’t, as Roman-Byzantine era synagogues unearthed all over the land, Roman recognition of the Patriarch until the fifth century, scholars writing the Mishnah and Palestinian Talmud, Jews fighting alongside the 614 Persian invaders, etc., clearly show. Historian Parkes was right that the continuous, tenacious presence of the homeland Yishuv wrote our time’s Zionists’ “real title deeds.”
“Founding of Israel in 1948”: Used to date Jewish connection to Palestine to post-Holocaust 1948. Denies ancient, modern and in-between homeland-claiming presence of Jews.
“Greater Israel”: Used to mock Jewish homeland claim to areas over the 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines. Never mind that the area defined in the Palestine Mandate, with its recognition of historic Jewish connection and call for close settlement of Jews on the land, didn’t stop at the 1949 “green line.” “Lesser Israel” is what these “Greater Israel” mockers seek.
“Holocaust, Israel was created because of”: Used to convey “So why should The Palestinians suffer for Europe’s mistreatment of Jews?” Jews have had a continuous homeland claim for 3,000 years. Israel & Judah, Maccabean Judaea, Jerusalem’s renewed Jewish majority, the Zionist movement, the San Remo Treaty and Palestine Mandate all preceded the Holocaust.
“Judea-Samaria, Biblical name of West Bank”: Used to make “West Bank,” invented by invader Jordan in 1950, seem to have been the name in use all since biblical times.
“Occupation”: Used to misportray Israeli possession of Judea, Samaria and historic Jerusalem as foreign seizure, not homeland presence of Jews.
“Palestine”: A dirty word only when used in exclusive reference to Arabs. On defeating the last Jewish revolt, the Romans renamed Judaea as “Palestine.” After WWI, the League of Nations used it to refer to today’s Israel and Jordan. Israel is a Palestine state.
“Palestinian and Jewish States, UN partition of Palestine into”: Calling the UN attempt to partition Palestine between “Palestinians” and Jews is like partitioning the ex-planet Pluto between Plutonians and Jews. The UN said “Arab and Jewish states,” not “Palestinian and Jewish states,” over and over.
“Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem”: These are the charming words of UNSC 2334, adopted in the Obama administration’s final days, with the shameful joinder of England, France, China and Russia, and shameful abstention of the U.S. If before that resolution’s adoption it wasn’t incumbent upon us emphatically to stress our claim and to call these places not occupied but contested, it is since.
“Palestinians, The”: Palestinian Arabs aren’t “THE Palestinians.” The UN’s partition resolution called Palestine’s Jews and its Arabs “the two Palestinian peoples.” Jews used “Palestine” and “Palestinian” more than Arabs – the Palestine Post, Palestine Electric Co., Palestine Symphony, American League For a Free Palestine, all our names, not theirs.
“Palestinian Refugee Issue”: Used to suppress that Israel absorbed more indigenously Middle Eastern Jews displaced from vast Arab and other Muslim lands in the wake of the 1948 war than Arabs left tiny Israel.
“Refugee Camps, Palestinian”: Used to portray the grandchildren of Arabs who left Israel, if not always Palestine, in 1948 as living today in makeshift tents and not permanent dwellings.
“Right of Return”: Used to portray as a “right” the claim of descendants of Arabs displaced from Israel in the 1948 war to “return” to Israel. Ignores that most left at the urging of the Arab invaders, that local Arabs joined those invaders in seeking extermination of the land’s Jews, and that Israel absorbed more Middle Eastern Jewish refugees than Arabs left Israel. Arab insistence on “right of return” contravenes the “two-state solution,” which the U.S. and Israel define as “two states for two peoples.”
“Settlers and Settlements”: Used, alas even by us, to contrast Jews living in historic Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria from nearby “Palestinian residents” of “neighborhoods, villages and towns.”
“Two-State Solution”: Used to portray as an equitable partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states the severance from the state of Israel of that portion of the land of Israel over the 1949 ceasefire line into a western Palestine Arab state. Ignores that the pre-1948 severance from the Palestine Mandate of the 78% of it east of the Jordan River as all-Arab Transjordan, today’s Jordan with its Palestinian Arab population majority, had already effected that Palestine partition.
“War that Followed Israel’s Creation, the”: Used to blame the partition-rejecting multi-nation Arab invasion for Israel’s destruction on a supposed baseless sudden artificial “creation” in Palestine of a Jewish state. Israel accurately calls its 1948 war, in which its homeland army threw back that Arab invasion, its War of Independence, not of Creation.
“West Bank”: Rechristened name coined by Jordan in 1950 to disassociate Judea-Samaria from Jews. “Judea-Samaria” is not, as the media puts it, “the biblical name for the West Bank.” It had been in use, including by the UN in 1947, for three millennia. Wake up, Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel: “West Bank” is not a synonym of “Judea-Samaria.” It’s an antonym.
“West Bank, Annexation of”: Annexation: “to take over territory and incorporate it into another political entity, e.g., a country or state.” Used in referencing Israeli assertion of sovereignty in Judea-Samaria to expunge pre-existing Jewish equity.
“Zionist Entity”: Used to date Jewish connection to the Jewish people’s historic land of Israel homeland to the late nineteenth century Zionist movement. And to suppress that Israel’s Jewish population today is majority Middle Eastern origin.
Rule-of-thumb: If the media uses a term or expression in referencing Israel, that term’s connotation is likely slanted against us.