COMMUNITIES AGAINST CAPITALISM
 

Israeli Repression and the Language of Liars
by Tim Wise, AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13087

Webster's New World Dictionary defines democracy as, among other things,
"the principle of equality of rights, opportunity and treatment, or the
practice of this principle." Keep this in mind, as we'll be coming back to
it shortly.

Now, imagine that the United States abolished our Constitution, or perhaps
had never had one to begin with. No Bill of Rights. No guarantees of things
like free speech, freedom of assembly and due process of law.

And imagine if Congress passed a law stating that the U.S. was from this
point forward to be legally defined as a Christian nation. As such,
Christians would be given special privileges for jobs, loans, and land
ownership, and Christians from anywhere in the world would be given
preference in immigration, extended automatic citizenship upon coming to
America.

Furthermore, political candidates espousing certain beliefs -- especially
those who might argue that we should be a nation with equal rights for all,
and not a "Christian nation" -- were no longer allowed to hold office, or
even run for election.

And imagine that next month, laws were passed that had the effect of
restricting certain ethnic and religious groups from acquiring land in
particular parts of the country, and made it virtually impossible for
members of ethnic minorities to live in particular communities.

And imagine that in response to perceived threats to our nation's internal
security, new laws sailed through the House and Senate, providing for
torture of those detained for suspected subversion. This, on top of still
other laws providing for the detention of such suspects for long periods of
time without trial or even a formal charge against them.

In such a scenario, would anyone with an appreciation of the English
language, and with the above definition in mind, dare suggest that we would
be justified in calling ourselves a democracy?

Of course not: and yet the term is repeatedly used to describe Israel -- as
in "the only democracy in the Middle East." This, despite the fact that
Israel has no constitution; despite the fact that Israel is defined as the
state of the Jewish people, providing special rights and privileges to
anyone in the world who is Jewish and seeks to live there, over and above
longtime Arab residents. This, despite the fact that Israel bars any
candidate from holding office who thinks the country should be a secular,
democratic state with equal rights for all. This, despite the fact that
non-Jews are restricted in terms of how much land they can own, and in which
places they can own land at all, thanks to laws granting preferential
treatment to Jewish residents. This, despite that fact that even the Israeli
Supreme Court has acknowledged the use of torture against suspected
"terrorists" and other "enemies" of the Jewish state.

For some, it is apparently sufficient that Israel has an electoral system,
and that Arabs have the right to vote in those elections (though just how
equally this right is protected is of course a different matter). The fact
that one can't vote for a candidate who questions the special Jewish nature
of the state, because such candidates can't run for or hold office, strikes
most as irrelevant: hardly enough to call into question their democratic
credentials.

The Soviet Union also had elections, of a sort. And in those elections, most
people could vote, though candidates who espoused an end to the communist
system were barred from participation. Voters got to choose between
communists. In Israel, voters get to choose between Zionists. In the former
case, we recognize such truncated freedom as authoritarianism. In the latter
case, we call it democracy.

If giving names like "Operation Enduring Freedom" or "Operation Just Cause"
to deadly military offensives is not sufficient to indicate that the English
language is dead, this should pretty well prove the point. If what we see in
Israel is indeed democracy, then what does fascism look like?

I'm sorry, but I am over it. As a Jew, I am over it. And if my language
seems too harsh here, that's tough. Because it's nothing compared to the
sickening things said by Israeli leaders throughout the years. Like Menachem
Begin, former Prime Minister who told the Knesset in 1982 that the
Palestinians were "beasts walking on two legs." Or former P.M. Ehud Barak,
who offered a more precise form of dehumanization when he referred to the
Palestinians as "crocodiles."

Speaking of Barak, for more confirmation on the death of language, one
should examine his April 14 op-ed in the New York Times. Therein, Barak
insisted that democracy in Israel could be "maintained," so long as the
Jewish state was willing to set up security fences to separate itself from
the Palestinians, and keep the Palestinians in their place. Calling the
process "unilateral disengagement," Barak opined that limiting access by
Arabs to Israel is the key to maintaining a Jewish majority, and thus the
Jewish nature of the state. That the Jewish nature of the state is inimical
to democracy as defined by every dictionary in the world matters not, one
supposes.

Barak even went so far as to warn that in the absence of such security
fences, Israel might actually become an apartheid state. Imagine that:
unless they institute separation they might become an apartheid state. The
irony of such a statement is nearly perfect, and once again signals that
words no longer have meaning.

Interestingly, amidst the subterfuge, other elements of Barak's essay struck
me as surprisingly honest -- much more honest, in fact, than anything he had
said while Prime Minister, during which time he supposedly made that
"generous offer" to Arafat about which we keep hearing. You know, the one
that would have allowed the maintenance of most Jewish settlements in the
territories, and would have restricted the Palestinian state to the worst
land, devoid of its own water supply, and cutoff at numerous chokepoints by
Israeli security. Yeah that one. The one that has been described variously
(without any acknowledgement of the inconsistency) as having offered the
Palestinians either 93 percent, or is it 95 percent or maybe 96 percent or
perhaps 98 percent of the West Bank and Gaza.

In the Times piece, Barak finally came clean, admitting that Israel would
need to erect the fences in such a manner as to incorporate at least
one-quarter of the territories into Israel, so as to subsume the
settlements. So not 93 percent, or 96 or 98, but at best 75 percent, and
still on the worst land. Furthermore, the fences would slice up Jerusalem
and restrict Arab access to the Holy Basin and the Old City: a direct swipe
at Muslims who seek access on a par with their fellow descendants of
Abraham.

That this was Barak's idea all along should surprise no one. And that such a
"solution" would mean the final loss for the Palestinians of all but 17
percent of their pre-Israel territory will likely not strike many in the
U.S. media or political elite as being terribly unfair. If anything, we will
continue to hear about the intransigence of the Arabs, and their
unwillingness to accept these "generous offers," which can only be seen as
generous to a people who have become so inured to human suffering that their
very souls are in jeopardy.

Or to those who have never consulted a dictionary -- which defines generous
as: "willing to give or share; unselfish; large; ample; rich in yield;
fertile." In a world such as this, where words have lost all meaning, we
might as well just burn all the dictionaries.

Sometimes, the linguistic obfuscation goes beyond single words and begins to
encompass entire phrases. One such example is the oft-repeated statement to
the effect that "Jews should be able to live anywhere in the world, and to
say otherwise is to endorse anti-Semitism." Thus, it is asked, why shouldn't
Jews be able to settle in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem?

Whoever says such a thing must know of its absurdity beforehand. The right
to live wherever one chooses has never included the right to live in someone
else's house, after taking it by force or fraud. Nor does it include the
right to set up house in territories that are conquered and occupied as the
result of military conflict: indeed, international law expressly forbids
such a thing. And furthermore, those who insist on the right of Jews to live
wherever they choose, by definition deny the same right to Palestinians, who
cannot live in the place of their choosing, or even in the homes that were
once theirs.

Needless to say, many Palestinians would like to live inside Israel's
pre-1948 borders, and exercise a right of return in order to do so. But don'
t expect those who demand the right for Jews to plant stakes anywhere we
choose to offer the same right to Arabs. Many of these are among the voices
that insist Jordan is "the Palestinian state," and thus, Palestinians should
be perfectly happy living there. Since Palestinians are Semites, one could
properly call such an attitude "anti-Semitic" -- seeing as how it limits the
rights of Semitic peoples to live wherever they wish -- but given the
transmogrification of the term "anti-Semitism" into something that can only
apply to Jew-hatred, such a usage would seem bizarre to many.

The rhetorical shenanigans even extend to the world of statistics. Witness
the full-page advertisement in the New York Times placed by the Conference
of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which ran the same day
as the Barak op-ed. Therein, these supposed spokespersons for American
Judaism stated their unyielding support for Israel, and claimed that the 450
Israeli deaths caused by terrorism since the beginning of the second
intifada, were equal to 21,000 deaths in the U.S. from terrorism, as a
comparable percentage of each nation's overall population. Playing upon
fears and outrage over the attacks of 9/11, the intent was quite
transparent: get U.S. readers to envision 9/11 all over again, only with
seven times more casualties!

Of course, if one were at all concerned with honesty, one might point out
that the numbers of Palestinian non-combatant (that is to say civilian)
deaths, at the hands of Israel in that same time period, is much higher, and
indeed would be "equal to" far more than 21,000 in the U.S., as a comparable
share of respective populations. To be honest to a fault would be to note
that the 900 or so Palestinians slaughtered with Israeli support in the
Sabra and Shatilla camps during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, would be equal
to over 40,000 Americans. Even more, the 17,500 Arabs killed overall by
Israel during that invasion would be roughly equivalent to over 800,000
Americans today: the size of many large cities.

In a world where words still had meaning, such things might even be
considered "terrorism."

Ariel Sharon once said, "A lie should be tried in a place where it will
attract the attention of the world." And so it has been: throughout the
media and the U.S. political scene, on CNN in the personage of Benjamin
Netanyahu, and in the pages of the New York Times.

And in my Hebrew School, where we were taught that Jews were to be "a light
unto the nations," instead of this dim bulb, this flickering nightlight,
this barely visible spark whose radiance is only sufficient to make visible
the death-rattle of the more noble aspects of the Jewish tradition. Unless
we who are Jews insist on a return to honest language, and an end to the
hijacking of our culture and faith by madmen, racists and liars, I fear that
the light may be extinguished forever.
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Tim Wise is an antiracist activist, educator and writer. He can be reached
at tjwise@mindspring.com