What’s in a name? Everything!
Sadly, much of the world's media have adopted the vile motto of Joseph Goebbels: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will begin to believe it!"
For those who haven’t noticed, there are two Israel wars going on presently.
The first, conducted by our dedicated IDF soldiers, is with G-d’s help, largely proceeding to plan, except for securing the safe return of the hostages for which we pray daily. The second is the hasbara (advocacy) war in which every committed Jew has a potential role to play. Sadly, that one isn’t going so well.
A key reason for this is that our opponents and detractors play the misnaming game very well. Many of us haven’t caught on to it and may have even been complicit in their devious disinformation strategy.
Jews have been called the “People of the Book”. More accurately we are traditionally the “people of the word”. Words matter to us! More than 3500 years ago, Isaac declared: “The voice is the voice of Jacob while the hands are the hands of Esau” (Gen. 27:22). Of necessity, we have, since 1948, abstracted Esau’s hands while unaccountably at the same time muting our own voice.
Sadly, much of the world’s media have adopted the vile motto of Joseph Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will begin to believe it!” No better example of this has manifested than the great canard that Israelis are latter-day “colonialists” and the “victimised” Palestinian Arabs are historically indigenous to Eretz Yisrael.
Fact #1: in June 2023, Professor Yosef Garfinkel of the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University published his evidence that King David ruled over a well-developed kingdom centred around Jerusalem but also incorporating Gaza (later to become part of the northern Kingdom of Israel) around 1000 BCE, 1600 years before the founding of Islam. Fact #2: there is not a shred of evidence linking the Palestinian Arabs with the ancient Philistines, as some attempt to do.
It is high time we upped our hasbara game. And we won’t get off first base unless we understand the power of words to enlighten, mislead or even brainwash.
Here are some key misnomers that have infiltrated our consciousness by dint of constant reiteration in the world’s press and on social media. Some have been so effective that many members of our tribe will utilise them without thinking. If we duly reflect, we shall surely be more cautious about the terms we use and those to avoid, while encouraging others to do likewise.
The Palestinians. Rather say “Palestinian Arabs”. Prior to 1948 there were Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews. My machatainista a.h. was a Palestinian as she was born in Jaffa in 1947. She was also 100 per cent Jewish!
Palestine. There is no such internationally recognised sovereign nation or state. At best it is a political entity.
Occupied Territories. This loaded term implies illegality whereas the final status of the territories captured in 1967 has yet to be decided. Proud Jews will say “liberated” territories; but we are all safe with the neutral term “administered territories”. (Note: Palestinian Arabs now openly refer to the whole of Israel as “the occupation”. If this misnomer is allowed to go unchecked, it will become terrifyingly mainstream.)
West Bank. Why not call it by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria?
Settlers. A derogatory name implying illegality, slapped by the world’s press upon those Jews who have made their home in the heartlands of ancient Israel. The world would like to see these areas Judenrein. Maybe we should counter by using the term “resettlers” – what they historically are!
Colonisation. A particularly mischievous misnomer of relatively recent vintage, the Jews of the whole of Israel – not just the administered territories – are branded “colonialists” wanting to take over the entire region! Surrounded as tiny Israel is by 22 Arab states, this dysphemism would be hilarious if it were not so insidious.
Militants/fighters. A euphemism for “terrorists” when applied to Hamas forces.
Proportionality. A weird doctrine that accords moral equivalence between perpetrators of evil and their victims, and thus expects losses of lives to be numerically similar. Israel is engaged in a war of self-defence against Hamas genocidal aggression. That more Gazan Arabs are dying than Israeli Jews does not make it morally correct for Israel to weaken its resolve and lay itself vulnerable. If the Palestinian Arabs would lay down their arms there would be peace. If Israel were to lay down its arms there would be no more Israel.
That we must protest against the twisted accusations against us of genocide and apartheid is obvious. Iran and its acolytes Hamas and Hezbollah wish to liquidate Israel. That is genocide! And before and after the creation of the State of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to flee from Arab countries. No Jew today can safely reside in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya or Algeria. That is way worse than apartheid!
It pays for us as Jews to keep a careful watch on the language others use – and the language we use.
Rabbi Chaim Ingram is the author of various religious books.
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