Saree Makdisi – The language that absolves Israel
By Mary Rizzo • Jun 19th, 2009 at 19:24 • Category: Analysis, Ideas and Projects, Israel, Mary's Choice, Newswire, Palestine, Zionism
A special political vocabulary prevents us from being able to recognize what's going on in the Middle East. On Sunday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech that — by categorically ruling out the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state — ought to have been seen as a mortal blow to the quest for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On Monday morning, however, newspaper headlines across the United States announced that Netanyahu had endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state, and the White House welcomed the speech as "an important step forward."
Reality can be so easily stood on its head when it comes to Israel because the misreading of Israeli declarations is a long-established practice among commentators and journalists in the United States.
In fact, a special vocabulary has been developed for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. It filters and structures the way in which developing stories are misread here, making it difficult for readers to fully grasp the nature of those stories — and maybe even for journalists to think critically about what they write.
The ultimate effect of this special vocabulary is to make it possible for Americans to accept and even endorse in Israel what they would reject out of hand in any other country.
Let me give a classic example.
In the U.S., discussion of Palestinian politicians and political movements often relies on a spectrum running from "extreme" to "moderate". The latter sounds appealing; the former clearly applies to those who must be — must they not? — beyond the pale. But hardly anyone relying on such terms pauses to ask what they mean. According to whose standard are these manifestly subjective labels assigned?
Meanwhile, Israeli politicians are labeled according to an altogether different standard: They are "doves" or "hawks". Unlike the terms reserved for Palestinians, there's nothing inherently negative about either of those avian terms.
So why is no Palestinian leader referred to here as a "hawk"? Why are Israeli politicians rarely labeled "extremists"? Or, for that matter, "militants"?
There are countless other examples of these linguistic double standards. American media outlets routinely use the deracinating and deliberately obfuscating term "Israeli Arabs" to refer to the Palestinian citizens of Israel, despite the fact that they call themselves — and are — Palestinian.
Similarly, Israeli housing units built in the occupied territories in contravention of international law are always called "settlements" or even "neighborhoods" rather than what they are: "colonies". That word may be harsh on the ears, but it's far more accurate ("a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state").
These subtle distinctions make a huge difference. Unconsciously absorbed, such terms frame the way people and events are viewed. When it comes to Israel, we seem to reach for a dictionary that applies to no one else, to give a pass to actions or statements that would be condemned in any other quarter.
That's what allowed Netanyahu to be congratulated for endorsing a Palestinian "state," even though the kind of entity he said Palestinians might — possibly — be allowed to have would be nothing of the kind.
Look up the word "state" in the dictionary. You'll probably see references to territorial integrity, power and sovereignty. The entity that Netanyahu was talking about on Sunday would lack all of those constitutive features. A "state" without a defined territory that is not allowed to control its own borders or airspace and cannot enter into treaties with other states is not a state, any more than an apple is an orange or a car an airplane. So how can leading American newspapers say "Israeli Premier Backs State for Palestinians," as the New York Times had it? Or "Netanyahu relents on goal of two states," as this paper put it?
Because a different vocabulary applies.
Which is also what kept Netanyahu's most extraordinary demand in Sunday night's speech from raising eyebrows here.
"The truth," he said, "is that in the area of our homeland, in the heart of our Jewish homeland, now lives a large population of Palestinians."
In other words, as Netanyahu repeatedly said, there is a Jewish people; it has a homeland and hence a state. As for the Palestinians, they are a collection — not even a group — of trespassers on Jewish land. Netanyahu, of course, dismisses the fact that they have a centuries-old competing narrative of home attached to the same land, a narrative worthy of recognition by Israel.
On the contrary: The Palestinians must, he said, accept that Israel is the state of the Jewish people (this is a relatively new Israeli demand, incidentally), and they must do so on the understanding that they are not entitled to the same rights. "We" are a people, Netanyahu was saying; "they" are merely a "population." "We" have a right to a state — a real state. "They" do not.
And the spokesman for our African American president calls this "an important step forward"?
In any other situation — including our own country — such a brutally naked contrast between those who are taken to have inherent rights and those who do not would immediately be labeled as racist. Netanyahu, though, is given a pass, not because most Americans would knowingly endorse racism but because, in this case, a special political vocabulary kicks in that prevents them from being able to recognize it for exactly what it is.
Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. He is the author of, among other books, "Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation."
Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times
Mary Rizzo is an art restorer, translator and writer living in Italy. Editor and co-founder of Palestine Think Tank, co-founder of Tlaxcala translations collective. Her personal blog is Peacepalestine.
Email this author | All posts by Mary Rizzo
I took Obama's response to the statements by Netanyahu as measured and hopeful of further progress to come. As diplomatic and tactical.
Netanyahu's speech was reported here in Canada, with Obama's response being that it shows the "possibility we can restart serious talks." In the same article, the term "hardliners" was used to describe those in Benjamin Netanyahu's government who backed his position. That's fairly negative.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/06/15/netanyahu-speech-palestinians015.html
I may be missing your point, although I think the distinctions and limitations inherent in language that you point out are eloquent and insightful.
The world is pulling for peace between Palestine and Israel. It sounds like you don't believe that, or that you think we (Americans) are mislead by political rhetoric.
In the US they would be called illegals, demonised and vilified and sent back across the border.
An old song called "Deportees" sang by every decent folkie and their dog describes the US attitude to anyone non-American.
Yet they allow these jewish people in Palestine to get away with murder as illegal immigrants in a state that has never existed and never will.
The original illegal partition left 40% of the jewish sector as arab Palestinian but the jewish terrorist gangs kicked them out and destroyed their villages.
The resolution 181 was a sham aided and abetted only by Truman who then allowed the genocide of between 9 and 13 million German civilians and the ethnic cleansing of 16 million from Eastern Europe to Berlin.
by necessary need, a win-win result in expalestine is obtainable; however, neither US not majority of christo-judeans want that kind of an agreement,
the alliance is determined to obtain a win-lose arrangement. And no land wants/can lift a finger in protest let alone be able to avert in any degree the final 'solution'
the 'solution' is not known yet. It may not be known at least for decades. And as i have said often before, even the optimal 'solution,' future israel cld only house about one third of 'jews'.
in addition, it wld be quite a dependency on the west for most of its needs while being abhored by much of the world; probably for an eternity or until it evanesces. tnx