Words are magic

A friend pointed this out to me years ago: ‘It’s called spelling, because words cast spells.’

Apartheid state.

Occupation.

Security fence or wall of separation or Apartheid wall?

My first language is Dutch, so I can taste the word Apartheid on a very instinctual level.

Apartheid.

Keeping the subhumans, the virus, the vermin safely apart from the decent ones, the chosen ones, the good ones.

Moshe tells me that about 20 percent of Israelis are Arabs. His pharmacist is Arab. He is being treated for rheumathism by an Arab. He tells me there are Arab judges, doctors, civil servants… Arab anything. They are a part of Israeli society, are represented in the Knesset and have been part of ruling coalitions.

I tell him I read online that they are second rate citizens, that they don’t have the same opportunities and face challenges the non-Arab Israelis do not face.

He lives there, I don’t.

Moshe seems a reasonable man to me.

Very passionate about the topic, but why shouldn’t he be? Very articulate and fast talking. Did I mention he’s from Chicago?

I don’t speak Hebrew, but I have the impression his accent in English has been influenced by the official language of Israel. The k sounds stand out more.

But he doesn’t pronounce Hamas as Khamas, nor does he pronounce it the Arab way, which to the best of my knowledge sounds more Ghamas.

Does the pronounciation of Hamas land a person in a category?

Khamas says the rabid Zionist.

Hamas says the western commentator and perhaps Israelis trying to be as objective as possible.

Ghamas say Arabs and the most dedicated western supporters of Palestine?  

Does it work like that?

The labels they used

Are Israelis killed by millitans or terrorists? And do Palestinians merely die – reportedly – of unspecified causes?

I don’t think I have ever seen a major western publication run headlines like ’49 UN workers killed by Israel’.

Yes, the conflict between Israel and Palestine is very much also fought on the semantic front.

If you want to say you oppose Israel without saying you oppose Israel you can put IOF in your Tweet instead of IDF.

Is it the Israeli Offense Force or the Israeli Defence Force?

Israeli terrorists is also an option.

ZioNazis has started being ‘en vogue’ as well.

I have sent out at least one Tweet where I mocklingly suggest the I actually stands for infanticide.

There is this powerful and captivating Vietnam war book called ‘The things they carried’, by Tim O’Brien (see picture).

Am getting bored with checking if the authors I mention are Jewish, so the reader will please excuse me if I skip a trip to Wikipedia here.

The book mentions every item American soldiers carried with them while they were looking for Charlie in the elephant grass. It’s a lot of stuff. 

One could do an entire book about the loaded words that fly around on the Israel Palestine conflict.

‘The labels they used.’

By the way, is it a conflict? Or a war? Or a clash of cultures? Or a land grab? A colonisation? An oppression? A rift? A loud disagreement? Is it 70 years of torture? A struggle? A divide?

Is what is being done to Gaza by Israel after the Hamas operation Al Aqsa flood or deluge a genocide?

A counter-terrorist operation?

The suppression of a reservation uprising?

Is it what the Nazis did to the Ghetto uprising in Warsaw?

Are they cracking down on the largest open air prison riot in history?

Are they mowing the lawn?

Is it the foreful displacement of an indigenous population?

Is it a purge?

A preventive strike?

A defensive counter-measure?

A sweep against guerrileros hiding in the maquis. Or possibly Mosques.

Are members of Hamas freedom fighters, soldiers, warriors, fighters, militants, terrorists, jihadists, murderers, psychopaths, satanic scumbags, blood thirsty dogs unworthy of life, you know, lebensunwert?

Are the non-members of Hamas in Gaza bystanders?

Innocents?

Supporters of Hamas?

Hamas civilians?

Hamas non-combattants?

Is the entire Palestinian population in the Gaza strip being held hostage by Hamas?

Are all Palestinians in Gaza part of the support system of Hamas?

Only a fraction of the Viking population went plundering, but could they have done it without the peaceful folks at home running the economy?

Are there no innocents in Gaza?

Are they animals?

Is Gaza a terrorist base? A nest of vipers?

Open air prison, concentration camp, reservation, ghetto?

A country with no international recognition?

A pirates nest?

The fiefdom of a tiny local oligarchy squeezing it dry for personal gain and milking the plight of Palestinians to embezzle international funds?

Moshe says it could have been a paradise thriving on the money spent by tourists flocking to Gaza’s beautiful beaches. But they swung in a different direction.

Is it in their genes to enjoy kiling?

Is it a cultural thing?

Is it a deeply human reaction to being systematically mistreated generation after generation?

A good follow up book to ‘the labels they used’ could be ‘the historical context they compared it to.’

Are the Palestinians organizing pogroms?

Was the 7th of October a daylight Kristallnacht?

Is it the other way around and are the Israelis organizing their own version of the Holocaust, but this time with the Palestinians as the victims?

Is bombing hospitals and schools in Gaza the same as bombing Dresden in February 1945?

Was bombing Nazi-Germany wrong because they had children there too at the time?

Was it wrong because not everyone had voted for Hitler?

When the allies tried to bomb the Gestapo headquarters in Denmark, but accidentally hit a children’s hospital – a war story brought up by Netanyahu, or Satanyahu depending on where you stand exactly – wrong?

Is everything fair in war? Did the nuclear bombs on Japan ultimately safe lives by cutting the war short? Or were the Japanese already about to surrender and was this part scientific experiment part deterrence towards the Soviets at the cost of thousands of Japanese lives, many of them – again – children?

Why do we react so much more emotionally when children die?

What changes at about the age of 18 that makes the death of a human being more palatable?

Do we assume that by 18 a human being has packed on enough shades of sin to kinda deserve to die at least a little bit?

Is life downhill starting at 18 anyway? Are adults to be mourned less because the biggest fun was behind them anyway?

Yes, maybe that’s it. Children haven’t had the time to sin yet and adults are de facto sinners until proven innocent.