The Impact of Words in the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

Understanding Middle East Events and History II:
What's in a Word?

The Israel-Palestinian Conflict and the World of Words

The area of Israel and Palestine is not rich in resources. We have
our famous conflict. It is our conflict, and we are happy to export
it. It is our second greatest export.

What is our greatest export? It is not oil, as there is no petroleum
here to export. But we have words, and have had words since words
first created civilization in the middle east. The middle east is
famous for exporting words. The Old Testament, the New Testament, the
propaganda of two sides in the conflict, and fittingly enough,
software, are our greatest exports in all history. For the Bible and
the propaganda are programs for humans, and people and history
are "programmed" by them, as well as by that other great program for
the human computer, the Qur'an.

The Word told Abraham to go to Canaan, and the Word told the Hebrews
that Canaan is theirs. The words were written down in a book, and the
book was the Old Testament and it became holy to the Jews, who built
a kingdom in Jerusalem.

Then there were more Words, and the Words said that Muhamed is the
prophet of Allah, and that Mohamed had made Jerusalem holy to Islam.
The Christians received words too. Bishop Eusebius of Caesaria wrote
that the Jews were cursed and could not rebuild Jerusalem. It was
against the will of God.

History was written like a television series from the old
days. "Unfortunate minorities" got bad parts - cleaning people,
servants, Christ killers and money lenders. The Jews were written out
of the coming episodes entirely. "A world without Jews," wrote Marx.
Every culture and people would have its own home - self
determination, but the Jews were to be written out of modern history.
They didn't play well. "A moribund civilization," wrote Arnold
Toynbee.

The Jews for their part, kept repeating the words "Next Year in
Jerusalem" each year, and asking God to return them to their home
each day. The words became a program for action. Theodore Herzl wrote
a book, a nineteenth century utopia in the style of nineteenth
century utopias, impossible places. The book was called The Jewish
State. A very little book, a pamphlet, by a powerless man. Herzl
organized a congress in Basle. More words, and a tiny resolution. He
wrote in his diary in 1897, "...at Basle I founded the Jewish
State... if not in 5 years then in 50..." The Zionists tended to
write the Arabs out of the action. They didn't fit, didn't play well,
and spoiled the plot.

The words of the powerless man became flesh. Here is one way of
telling about it:

Europeans came to colonize Palestine in the 19th century.

Here is another way:

Jews returned to the Land of Israel after 2,000 years.

Which one is true? It is the same fact, but it leads to different
conclusions about "why," and it leads to a different way of
programming people.

Arthur Balfour wrote a small letter, the Balfour Declaration, in
1917. Palestine became a homeland for the Jews. Thirty years later,
in 1947, the UN wrote another document, General Assembly Resolution
181, partitioning Palestine, and Herzl's words came true.

Words and symbols are taken seriously here. A right-wing Zionist
tract explains the reason that justifies the bloodshed: "Jews pray
facing Jerusalem, Muslims pray with their backs to Jerusalem." It is
not written in jest. Gulliver, in all his travels in Swiftian satire,
never found a more exotic reason for killing people.

Never mind what the fact is, it depends what it is called. Is
it "legitimate?" If the Palestinian house is "illegal," then you can
demolish it. If the settlement is "illegal" then you can blow up the
children who live in it.

A man loses his brother to the enemy. He detonates an explosive
charge in a crowded bus stop in Jerusalem, killing himself and a
dozen others. Is he a "terrorist?" a "militant?," a "freedom
fighter?" or a "martyr?" Is the suicide attack "terror"
or "resistance?" If the suicide attack is in Manhattan, is it
also "resistance?" A tank destroys a house with children in it,
because the house also includes people set to explode themselves in a
suicide attack. Is it "conducting a defensive operation" or a "war
crime?" Is a leader a "partner for peace" or a "terrorist?" If we
add "war criminal" to his name and repeat it consistently, does it
change the facts? Are the Zionists or the Palestinians just regular
folks, or are they the same as the Nazis? Does it change the facts of
what people did in history? Perhaps not, but it changes the actions
we will take; it changes what people will do in the history they are
making now.

The words are also used to redraw history. Nowhere else is it more
true that the pen is mightier than the sword. Nowhere is "creative
writing" more "creative." Partisans, intent on stirring up hate,
crank out fraudulent interviews with Ariel Sharon, in which he states
that he wants his soldiers to rape Palestinian girls and kill more
Palestinians. A bit of satire by an Israeli writer is turned into a
fact. The excuse given for the lie is, "There is no doubt, that what
has been expressed in the interview is the kind of dangerous
thinking shared by Sharon and showing through in his policies."
Reality is shaped by art. First the reality is reinvented, then it is
acted upon. We are acting out a trashy historical novel, a comic book
version of reality.

What is not told, is as important as what is told. The pen of the
Jewish extremist makes the massacre of Deir Yassin disappear - over a
hundred dead people are banished to nowhere. The pen of the
Palestinian partisan erases the siege of Jerusalem and the Arab
invasion of 1948. A writer in the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, waves
his magic pen and the Holocaust disappears. None of it happened. The
Jewish extremist erases the Palestinian refugees. Reality is
rearranged for the convenience and needs of our ever-present defense
mechanisms.

Time and again, words create reality and program actions. The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic forgery of the
Czarist secret police, is enshrined in the charter of the Hamas, and
propels Muslim extremists to their death. Osama Bin Laden wrote his
Fatwas against America, and the words toppled mighty buildings. The
Mufti of Jerusalem said "The Jews are destroying the holy Mosque of
Al Aqsa" and the riots of 1929 began. The same rumor started bloodier
riots in 1997, and again in September 2000 it created the "Martyrs of
Al-Aqsa."

At this moment, as is usual in our area, a battle is raging. The
words are fighting alongside the tanks and the bombs. Partisans are
busy rewriting history. Suicide bombers are being written out by one
side, civilian casualties are being written out by the other. They do
not play well. They will not sell. Words are changing history, and
people are being programmed to act on the words, never mind what
happened. So the words help to create reality.

The words are not meant to be aesthetic. They are tired, grating,
writing. The same adjectives and pejorative words appear a dozen
times in thousands of places. For some reason, the hacks cannot
write "Arafat" without writing "terrorist" and they cannot
write "Ariel Sharon" in less than four words: "War Criminal Ariel
Sharon." The words are meant to program violence in human computers.
Computer programs do not make good reading. They are bad literature.
It is worse reality. The words programmed all these impossible things
we see before us, good and bad. Can we use the words to "program"
Israel and Palestine for peace?
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