Decoding Pro-Israel Buzzwords in a Time of Genocide

Nearly two years ago, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International released in-depth reports documenting that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Months later, Israeli human rights groups did likewise. Support for Israel has declined steeply among Americans, but its defenders continue to maintain a siege of buzzwords against Palestinian rights.

 As historian Rashid Khalidi emphasized in his book Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, “language matters.” Standard terms and tropes “are the essential building blocks of a lofty and solid edifice of denial of an entire narrative, of the existence of an entire people, which is basic to the affirmation of a formidable counterreality.”

 Prominent groups, notably the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, AIPAC and Christians United for Israel – along with allies in Congress, the Executive Branch and the punditocracy – rely on the same buzzwords to defame critics of Israel and deny its systematic crimes against Palestinian people. For instance:

**  “antisemitic”

At the top in the rhetorical toolbox, a blunt instrument for smearing Israel’s critics no matter how true their accusations – and no matter the absence of evidence of bigotry against Jewish people.

 **  “blood libel”

A high-dudgeon epithet for equating valid condemnations of Israel with 900-year-old antisemitic craziness.

 **  “held to a higher standard”

A catchphrase to evade realities of Israel’s ongoing large-scale crimes against humanity and the fact that Israel uses enormous U.S. military aid to impose apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide as matters of policy.

 **  “homeland for the Jewish people”

In other words: Palestinians will not replace us.

 **  “indigenous”

So, even Jewish Americans who recently moved to Israel are indigenous, unlike Palestinians whose ancestors have been living in Palestine for the last hundreds of years.

 **  “Jewish and democratic state”

It can’t be oxymoronic just because it’s an oxymoron.

**  “peace process”

The process of Israeli expansion that has brought war and more war, with the U.S. government functioning as “Israel’s lawyer” while arming Israel with massive quantities of weapons and continuing to make Israel (in the words of a recent Congressional Research Service report) “the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II.”

 **  “self-defense”

A term reserved for Israelis but certainly not Palestinians.

 **  “terrorism”

When Palestinians kill Israeli civilians but not when Israelis kill Palestinian civilians in vastly greater numbers.

 **  “renounce violence”

A demand routinely made of Palestinian organizations but not of the Israeli government.

**  “Israel’s right to exist”

The standard gotcha question “Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?” can be answered with clear questions: “Do you think apartheid South Africa had a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think ethnic cleansing has a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think genocide has a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think the tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military had a right to exist?”

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 Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible includes an afterword about the Gaza war. His new book, The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy, is free in e-book formats.