Words, Words, Words

 Words are never just words. They are suffused with meaning, with value; words are loaded and defining. Precision matters when employing words, because a lack of it can muddy the waters, or say something other than what is intended or more than what is intended – which can be intentional. Words can be used combatively and misleadingly. Political or moral agendas can and do become superheated by the misapplication of words or the lazy application of words. Words can be Trojan horses, importing agendas and changing the way things are for the way they are preferred. Frighteningly Orwellian.

Insurrection.  Jan 6th will be etched in the American political imagination for a long time as a day of infamy, or a day of courage, depending on your persuasion. The word bandied around to describe it is insurrection. Insurrection has been provocatively used to describe a reasonably small crowd of disparate individuals and groups hoping somehow and rather foolishly to overturn an election result. I say foolishly as there are better ways to challenge results. Whatever happened – he says, she says – it hardly deserves to be baptised as insurrection. Insurrection is something entirely different. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as, “a violent uprising against an authority or government.” It is normally accompanied by brutal repression (Tiananmen Square) or a violent overthrow (Nazi Germany) – neither of which fit our bill. Whatever we witnessed it wasn’t an insurrection.  To lazily call it such gives it a power, a legitimacy, that has little correlation to facts.  Whilst we continue to label it an insurrection, we perpetuate a narrative that presents the day as a great or terrible day instead of what it was to the rest of the world – a tragicomedy, an embarrassment.

Antisemitic.  Antisemitism is a scrouge that has deep and persistent roots that sadly keep flowering. What the West determined would never happen again (after the Holocaust) keeps raising its ugly head; the systematic and incidental persecution of Jewish people has not gone away. Antisemitism is a cancer that lurks in the soul of many cultures. The hatred they endure is a great wickedness, a virulence that is perfectly exemplified by the decree of Hamas to obliterate Israel. I suspect Israel’s patience ran out on Oct 7. Their right to retaliatory action was hardly questioned, until the body count of Palestinians civilians stated mounting up. To question this is to be accused of being antisemitic, when in fact any war that deliberately or collaterally sees so many civilians dying in the line or otherwise of fire can and should be questioned. It is not antisemitic to question the IDF. It is human. Questioning them is not denying them, or persecuting them, but we are so used to anything that smells of Israel hate that we label everything, any criticism, hatred. We lose the value of a true appreciation of what is antisemitic by making any criticism of Israel antisemitic, doing no service to Israel.

Genocide. Genocide is the systematic, (normally) government sponsored, annihilation of a population or segments of it. It was introduced as a legal term at Nuremburg trials after the Second World War; it was witnessed in Rwanda in 1994 in the awful massacres that country endured. Genocide is clearly defined because it needs to be.  Not all wars are genocidal or include genocide, although wars are the most likely place it is practiced. Germany ruthlessly and programmatically wiped out over half the Jewish population of Europe/Russia. It wasn’t something done by a few diehard Nazis.  On the contrary, to the shame of Germany.

Now Israel is being accused of genocide, when in fact the only genocidal doctrine and action is from Hamas. The IDF has no protocol to wipe out every and all Palestinians; Israel has no desire to push the Palestinians from the river into the sea. This is a cynical misuse of the word genocide to tar Israel with moral corruption, a final solution of their own.

While Hamas hides behind the population they have little care for some will continue to accuse Israel of the blatant and thoughtless destruction of Gaza, of committing genocide.

I am not capable of providing the answers to this Middle Eastern dilemma – nobody has to date. I am challenging the way we use words. Words matter, often and especially when they are misused for political gain. A lot of angst is engendered when words are used for purposes other than for which they should be properly employed. Words frame perceptions and when words aren’t used properly our perceptions might not be true. At very least we should be held accountable to the words we use and their actual meaning. The importation of emotional agendas does not serve truth.