Reinventing The Middle East Lexicon:
The Lexical Gymnastics Employed By Israel Lobbyists
25 Jan 2012
By Eric Walberg
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a
scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean
— neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make
words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be
master — that's all."
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (1871)
The lexicon of Israel and its Western lobbyists
constantly needs parsing to know just what is meant.
Most glaringly is the term "settlers", which suggests
peaceful pioneers wishing to integrate with the
locals. In Israel, the word "settlers" is a loaded
term, for they are "aggressive squatters, half a
million of them in over 100 illegal colonies — ugly
blots on an otherwise lovely landscape ... who
terrorise local villagers, vandalise their crops,
pollute their land and harass their children," as
described by Stuart Littlewood. The Fourth Geneva
Convention forbids that an occupying power transfer
parts of its own civilian population into the
territory it occupies.
Most recently we saw casual reference to native
Christian and Muslim Palestinians as an "invented
people". US Republican presidential hopeful Newt
Gingrich revived this insult, repeating Gold Meir's
quip in 1969 to The Sunday Times. At the time, Israel
was basking in its devastating victory in the 1967
war, occupying all of Palestine and Sinai. The eternal
Sinai Bedouin are fortunate that Meir didn't have
enough time — or gall — to claim that they too are a
mere figment of some anti-Jewish schemer's
imagination. Their cousins in the Negev desert are now
being expelled to make way for 10 Jewish settlements
"to attract a new population to the Negev".
Meir was extrapolating on her more famous phrase, also
recorded in the same Sunday Times interview, that
Palestine was "a land without a people for a people
without a land". Not only is this a cruel lie, one
intended to justify theft of a people's land, but it
is a case of plagiarism, as it was Lord Shaftsbury, an
early enthusiast of using a Jewish state in the Middle
East as an imperial beachhead, who first used the
phrase in 1839.
Meir surely knew this, just as she knew that it is not
the Palestinians, a people who can trace their
heritage back to the time of the Prophet Mohammed or
further, but the Israeli people who are the "invented"
ones. Israeli citizenship is barely 60 years old, and
Israelis are a disparate lot, made up most of East
European and Russian immigrants and Arab Jews, most of
whom do not share a common language or even religious
practice. The Russian immigrants, many of whom are not
even Jewish, are defiantly secular.
Even worse than invented people are "unpeople", a term
George Orwell coined in 1984 (1948) to refer to the
complete elimination of people by vaporising them,
leaving no trace. Israel's growing arsenal of nuclear
and white phosphorus bombs actually bring this reality
uncomfortably close for Palestinians and other Arab
neighbours of Israel.
Noam Chomsky points out that in October, Western media
applauded the release of IDF prisoner Gilad Shalit,
kidnapped in 2006 — during an illegal Israel attack on
Gaza — in exchange for a thousand Palestinians,
kidnapped for, well, simply being unpeople in the
wrong place at the wrong time. One almost thinks the
Israelis like to randomly jail thousands of these
unpeople as collateral to retrieve the few "real
people" caught in criminal acts, and then pride
themselves that one Jew is more precious than a 1000
Arabs.
What about the claim of the representative of the Arab
Higher Committee to the United Nations in May 1947,
who said "‘Palestine' was part of the province of
Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Israel
were not independent in the sense of forming a
separate political entity." Yes, the very notion of a
nation state is a 19th century concept, and arose only
as a result of imperialism spreading around the world,
with the result that there are two kinds of
nationalism — the empire's, built on racism and
exploitation of the Third World (hence "Rule
Britannia" and "the Jewish State") and the national
liberation movements in the periphery (hence
Palestine). So, when it comes down to it, we are all
invented peoples, one way or another.
Another lexical sleight-of-hand that Palestinians have
to fight is the now standard reference to "Jews versus
Arabs", which should be "Jews versus Muslims and
Christians" or rather "diaspora Jewish colonisers
versus native colonial subjects", as many Jews are of
Arab origin and "Jewish" in the first place refers to
a religious affiliation. There is no Jewish
nationality, despite Stalin's decision to create one
in the 1930s, just as there is no Muslim or Christian
nationality, but rather a Jewish faith.
Even many Western Jewish critics of Israel such as
Independent Jewish Voices say one thing and mean
another. For them, fighting anti-Semitism is the
primary goal. Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP)
state that they "extend support to Palestinians
trapped in the spiral of violence and repression"
because they "believe that such actions are important
in countering anti-Semitism". In other words, even as
they use words critical of Israeli atrocities, they
effectively condone Israeli actions (as long as they
are not too atrocious). Given that these critics are a
tiny group, they act "to vindicate the Jewish people
of crimes committed by the Jewish State in the name of
the Jewish people", argues ex-Israeli Gilad Atzmon.
So it is hardly any wonder that Egyptians are looking
closely these days at the meaning of the word "peace",
as in "peace between Israel and Egypt". An important
part of the 1979 Peace Treaty was the clause that
guaranteed "full autonomy" for the Palestinians within
five years. For 27 years, Israel has been violating
this clause. Instead of "full autonomy", three decades
on, the Palestinians are being called an "invented
people", and the US patron of this treaty is winking
as Israeli leaders prepare to ethnically cleanse this
imaginary people.
Following Egypt's revolution last year, the treaty
immediately became a political football, with just
about all politicians talking about revising or
cancelling it. The alarm bells rang in Washington and
Tel Aviv and there are ongoing secret negotiations
between the US and the Egyptian military demanding
ironclad assurances that the treaty will remain in
force before the generals hand over power to a
civilian government. This was confirmed last week by
Egypt's most respected statesman and presidential
hopeful Mohamed ElBaradei, who told the Iranian news
agency Fars, "The negotiations were completely secret
and confidential ... I believe that the Americans
wanted to ensure that the deals signed between Egypt
and Israel will remain intact if Islamists ascend to
power."
No Egyptians want a US-backed military coup in Egypt,
especially the Islamists. Hence, Salafist Al-Nour
Party spokesman Yousry Hammad was quick to tell
Israeli radio that "the treaty is binding because
Egypt has signed it," while explaining that the
Egyptian people want to amend certain articles to
enable Egypt to better control Sinai, "and that we
must be able to send aid to our Palestinian brothers
in Gaza without problems."
Interestingly, the Muslim Brotherhood is more nuanced
in its political platform, referring to criteria for
examining international agreements based on Sharia law
and the degree of Israel's compliance with the
agreement. Re-examining the treaty is embedded in the
Freedom and Justice Party's (FJP) platform and calls
for any decision on the treaty by the new parliament
to be put to a referendum. Muslim Brotherhood
spokesman Rashad Al-Bayoumi says, "We weren't party to
the peace treaty; it was signed away from the Egyptian
people and thus the people must have their say." FJP
Secretary-General Mohamed Saad El-Kataany reaffirmed
last week that the FJP respects all international
treaties as long as they achieve their goals. Which of
course leaves the fate of the Camp David Accords of
1979 very much in question, given Israel's violation
of it for the past 27 years.
Nobel Peace Prize winner ElBaradei is dismissed by
some Egyptians as a liberal who served the US world
order as head of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, though in fact he has called for former
President George W Bush and his cabinet to be tried by
the International Criminal Court for war crimes for
the "shame of a needless war" on Iraq. We must do
this, he writes in his memoirs The Age of Deception:
Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times, to answer the
question, "Do we, as a community of nations, have the
wisdom and courage to take the corrective measures
needed, to ensure that such a tragedy will never
happen again?" ElBaradei also warned Israel in April
that as president he would consider taking the
ultimate "corrective measure": "If Israel attacked
Gaza we would declare war against the Zionist regime."
If this liberal Egyptian politician is to be believed,
then a Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist dominated
parliament will most certainly support him, as would
virtually all Egyptians. So all the US intriguing with
the military behind Egyptians' backs will not save
Israel's bacon. Nor will all the lexical
sleights-of-hand about "settlers", "invented people"
and even soft Zionist criticism of Israel. And when
the imperial project of colonising Palestine by the
invented Israeli people inevitably ends, many of the
latter will decide to dust off their European and
American passports, brush up on their French, Russian
or American slang, and rediscover their ethnic roots
in the lands of their forefathers.
No less an Israeli icon that Theodore Herzl wanted
just that. Herzl's original idea about ending
anti-Semitism is found in his diaries in a letter he
wrote the pope offering to arrange a mass conversion
of Jews in Hungary as the beginning of a total
conversion to Christianity and complete assimilation
of Jews into European secular society. When this
didn't pan out, he then turned to mass migration to
Palestine as the fall back solution.
For all the lexical gymnastics employed by Israel
lobbyists, Israel is really just the latest
manifestation of the Jewish diaspora, a colony, the
brainchild of British empire and Jewish dreamers, and
is fated to remain so until it disowns its imperial
origins and learns to speak the local lingo, which
just happens to be Arabic, not reinvented Hebrew.
Recall Humpty Dumpty's fate, despite his clever use of
words in the pursuit of power.
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