Arab
Semantic Victories
By Daniel Pipes
 We
read that "Prime Minister" Mahmoud Abbas won the election
to succeed Yasir Arafat as "president" of "Palestine."
Excuse
me, but prime minister, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica,
means the "head of the executive branch of government in states
with a parliamentary system." Despite tens of thousands of
references to Abbas as prime minister, he in not a single way fits
this description.
Oh,
and there is also the small matter of there being no country called
Palestine. Arab maps routinely show it in place of Israel. The United
Nations recognizes its existence. So too do such telephone companies
as France's Bouygues Telecom and Bell Canada. Nonetheless,
no such place exists.
One
can dismiss use of these terms as symptoms of the same unrealism
that has undermined Palestinian war efforts since 1948. But they
also promote the Palestinian cause (a polite way of saying, "the
destruction of Israel") in a vital way.
In
an era when the battle for public opinion has an importance that
rivals the clash of soldiers, the Palestinians' success in
framing the issues has won them critical support among politicians,
editorial writers, academics, street demonstrators, and NGO activists.
In the aggregate, these many auxiliaries keep the Palestinian effort
alive.
Especially
in a long-standing dispute with a static situation on the ground,
public opinion has great significance. That's because words
reflect ideas – and ideas motivate people. Weapons in themselves
are inert; today, ideas inspire people to pick up arms or sacrifice
their lives. Software drives hardware.
Israel
is winning on the basic geographic nomenclature. The state is known
in English as Israel, not the Zionist entity. Its capital is called
Jerusalem, not Al-Quds. Likewise, Temple Mount and Western Wall
enjoy far more currency than Al-Haram ash-Sharif or Al-Buraq. The
separation barrier is more often called a security fence (that keeps
out Palestinian suicide bombers) than a separation wall (that brings
divided Berlin to mind).
In
other ways, however, the Palestinians' wording dominates English-language
usage, helping them win the war for public opinion.
- Collaborator
means someone who "cooperates treasonably" and brings
to mind the French and Norwegian collaborators who betrayed their
countries to the Nazis. Yet this term (rather than informant,
mole, or agent) universally describes those Palestinians providing
Israel with information.
- The
refugee status normally applies to someone who "owing to
a well-founded fear of being persecuted . . . is outside the country
of his nationality," but not to their descendants. In the
Palestinian case, however, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren
of refugees also merit refugee status. One demographer estimates
that over 95 percent of so-called Palestinian refugees never fled
from anywhere. Nonetheless, the term continues to be used, implying
that millions of Palestinians have a right to move to Israel.
-
A settlement is defined as a small community or an establishment
in a new region. Although some Jewish towns on the West Bank and
in Gaza have tens of thousands of residents and have existed for
nearly four decades, settlement, with its overtones of colonialism,
is their nearly universal name.
-
Occupied territories implies a Palestinian state existed in 1967,
when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza, which was not the
case, making these areas legally disputed territories, not occupied
ones.
-
Cycle of violence, a term President George W. Bush has adopted
("the cycle of violence has got to end in order for the
peace process ... to begin"), implies a moral equivalence
between the killing of Israeli civilians and Palestinian terrorists.
It confuses the arsonist with the fire department.
- The
peace camp in Israel – a term that derives from Lenin's
usage – refers to those on the Left who believe that appeasing
mortal enemies is the only way to end Palestinian aggression.
Those in favor of other approaches (such a deterrence) by implication
constitute the "war camp." In fact, all Israelis are
in the "peace camp" in the sense that all want to
be rid of the conflict; none of them aspires to kill Palestinians,
occupy Cairo, or destroy Syria.
Arabs
may have fallen behind Israel in per capita income and advanced
weaponry, but they lead by far on the semantic battlefield. Who,
a century back, would have imagined Jews making the better soldiers
and Arabs the better publicists?
Daniel
Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org)
is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction
Publishers).
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