Palestine: call it by its name

‘Fire and thunder fill the night sky as Israel’s Iron Dome is tested’, proclaims the New York Times. The accompanying image is one that many Israelis have claimed tells you “all you need to know'' about what is going on right now.

Faithful to the Rule of Thirds, the image purports to tell three stories. In one third, strands of amber streak out of the right edge. Suspended in the night, they seem the delicate bristles of a fibre-optic glow toy. The text explains that they are, in fact, rockets fired by ‘militants in Gaza’ – straight, steadfast lines, captured just before they enter the middle-third.

On the other end of the image are the trailing tentacles of Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ Defence system. The heads of each limb are little orbs of light – celestial full stops, marking the end of a rocket destined for Israel. Between the two thirds is the clear night sky – the space occupied by the rest of the world – waiting, wondering why the two sides just can’t get along.

At this point, to call out most of Western media for biased journalism on Israel’s war-crimes is to defrost a cliche that is already overcooked. First, the casting: ‘Hamas’ the rabid aggressor, Israel the cautious defender. That Palestine, or the Palestinian people do not figure into the equation is not incidental: Americans ask fewer question when the bombs they pay for are dropped on a herd of Lady-Liberty-loathing terrorists.

The present violence has seen the loss of five Israeli homes, and twelve Israeli lives, two of whom were children. In Gaza, the death count is close to twenty times that. Sixty-two were children. Eleven of those children were already in therapy for the trauma of past bombings. Over seven thousand homes have been destroyed. Since the year 2000, sixteen Palestinian children have been killed for every Israeli child. As sordid a task as trading coffin-counts is, there’s just no comparison.

And how could there be? Israel receives more US aid than all of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined – which is just a fraction of its total military budget. It then unleashes incredibly sophisticated weaponry on a caged, refugee population that has no army, no navy, and no air force. Meanwhile, the ‘rockets’ from across the fence are quite often, to quote Norman Finkelstein, ‘enhanced fireworks’: projectiles salvaged using repurposed lead pipes – not infrequently without even a warhead.

But the present is just the beginning; this narrative also gets everything wrong about the past.

That is so by design. Here’s Ruth Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature at Harvard, admonishing American Jews at a 2019 conference: “Your job is to make us look good... you have got to serve two or three years in the army of words...to fight the political battle which is even more important, at this point, than the military battle.”

Ten years earlier, US pollster Frank Luntz prepared a 112-page ‘Global Language Dictionary’ for “those on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel''. Even today, the content is rather familiar. Chapter 4: “To [Americans] Hamas is evil and hostile...For now, your rhetorical quarrel needs to be with Hamas, not the people of Palestine.” Compare that to CNN's recently leaked ‘Guidance on Gaza Facilities’, asking reporters to “be transparent about the fact that the Ministry of Health in Gaza is run by Hamas.” (This, right after Israel bombed Gaza’s only Covid testing lab.)

It is telling that Luntz’s ‘Dictionary’ was prepared right after Operation Cast Lead, in which close to 1400 Palestinian lives were lost to Israel’s nine. Words build the conduits that allow blood to flow freely.

And so, the murderous toddler-targeting Israeli army becomes the Israel ‘Defence’ Forces. The Iron-Dome’s mid-range missile interception system cousin becomes ‘David’s Sling’ (which would make Goliath an entrapped population without bunkers to seek shelter in or clean water to drink). Ethnic cleansing, apartheid and shooting at unarmed worshippers become Israel’s right of ‘self-defence’. And when all else fails, the evergreen charge of anti-Semitism is just as effective a shield as the Iron Dome.

Writing ‘Permission to Narrate’ some years ago, perched on the other side of history, Edward Said suggested a linguistic challenge to Israel’s narrative monopoly. From Twitter to Tiktok, the idea seems to have caught on. Infographics urge ordinary people to call Israel’s crimes by their true names, and to return the odious ‘both-sideism’ back to the bin where it belongs.

Part of the desire is easy enough to understand: to refer to your killer by name is a dignity so basic that even the Palestinian people may hope to be allowed it. But, as the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has written, it's deeper than that.

It affects time: to call Zionism ‘settler-colonialism’ allows the Palestinians to choose their rightful beginning. It refuses to gloss over the ethnic cleansing in the late 1940s, when half of the region’s population was displaced, and over five hundred villages were destroyed. It affects space: that ethnic cleansing took place not in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, but where Israel now stands.

And while language tethers the present to the past, it is also a crucible for the future. To refuse to acknowledge the ‘peace process’ is to disavow a servile, status-quo serving screensaver that allows Israel to steal more land, yet, as the world wags its tail. To reject the neutrality of a ‘ceasefire’ is to avert Israel’s consolidation of the spoils of its latest rampage. To call out Israel’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ is to demand reparations and rightful return.

All of this may seem a neat little academic theory, but it is hugely important. Change is not about to come from within Israel. Despite its differences, the South African apartheid tells us that pressure will have to come from the outside.

As long as it lives in the warm bosom of the United States, Israel can continue to act without fear of consequence. Since its first veto in 1970 (defending Israel), the US has exercised its power more liberally than any other permanent member of the Security Council. And more than half of all its vetoes have been used to bail out naughty little Israel.

History warns us against underestimating the cruelty that can be inflicted in the name of the American people when they don’t appreciate what their taxes are really paying for. But history also tells us that when enough of them begin to realise the truth, things begin to change.

Consider Vietnam. From plastering the execution of a Viet Cong fighter on its front page to leaking the Pentagon Papers, the archives of none other than the NYT attest to how important real reporting can be. But, today, even as the relationship of the American people with its government has gone from nascent naivete to hardened scepticism, when it comes to Palestine, campuses have yet to erupt in the Gen-Z equivalent of “Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?” This while the kinds of horrors that finally stirred the languid American conscience in the 60s are just a few taps of the thumb away, today.

America may watch as hundreds of flats fall to rubble, but it doesn't see homes with pictures on the walls or last night’s leftovers in the fridge: it sees a potential Hamas base. It may see seemingly endless Palestinian suffering, but believes a solution to be beyond the understanding of the ordinary person. It may see the limp body of a child in the arms of a father whose voice is hoarse with grief, but it sees, at best, a child that was deliberately put in harm’s way. At worst, it sees what Netanyahu has called ‘telegenic’ deaths – the loss of a child reduced to a camera trick. Without the right words, the images just don’t translate into grief.

But there is hope, yet. Biden may have once called US aid to Israel “the best 3 billion dollars that we spend'', but in a Congress that has its first Palestinian American Representative, AOC and Bernie speak of blocking further aid to Israel. Polls of American voters (particularly younger ones) continue to show declining support for supporting Israel, and growing sympathy for Palestine. These are things that, not too long ago, would have been unconscionable.

We must sustain this. In the way we remember what was done to the Palestinian people. In the way we speak of what is done to them today. In the ways in which we describe their tomorrow. How are we to resist oppression if we cannot even look it in the eye, and call it by its name?

Email: salaar.khan@columbia.edu

Twitter: @brainmasalaar

The writer is a lawyer.