The mis-use of words in the war against the Jews

The main front in the War against the Jews is, of course, in Israel. Notwithstanding that the Jews have more claim, right and entitlement to their lands than any North American or South American regime and various European and Asian countries, words and symbols have been enlisted to override the complex historical and legal arguments. The Israelis supposedly are “occupiers”. One Canadian leftist politician even told an interviewer that the Occupation started in 1948! (The word “occupation” is based on the argument that Israel alone among the nations of the world cannot keep land won in a defensive war against genocidal enemies, which is being held pending peace talks which Israel has always agreed would determine “secure and recognized” borders.)

Whether typical Jewish discussions based on traditional dialetics and Talmud-like analysis are passé – or whether we are in a temporary “stupid” phase of world history, based on the cursed moral equivalency, no one can know. More likely is that the ascendancy of cultural and moral relativism has robbed the post-religious of their moral bearings. But how can one accept arguments that the Jews are somehow interlopers in their biblical lands, compared to more recent, arguably inauthentic Middle Eastern regimes, like the House of Saud in the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan? How can one criticize the failures of Israelis to reach out for peace, when historical fact documents their actions (not just words) in pursuance of the failed Oslo Process (such as arming and training Palestinian military and turning over areas of exclusive jurisdiction), their withdrawal from conquered territory, not just for peace treaties (now possibly to be torn up by Islamist successor governments) as with Egypt, but unilateral withdrawals as in Southern Lebanon and Gaza. Historical fact shows a liberal democracy with a very free (and critical) media and academia willing to trade security for simple pronouncements of recognition and peace from their enemies – such as at Camp David where Arafat walked away from an offer of everything he could possibly want except for the descendants of all refugees to physically take over the Jewish state, and the later similar, if not improved offers, by Barak and then Olmert. What child keeps offering his toys to the bully next door on the mere promise by the bully that he won’t bully him tomorrow? Only a child blinded by an ideology of compromise and pacifism that are plainly inappropriate to the neighbourhood in which he is dwelling.

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Accordingly many of our contemporaries are uninterested in analyzing the 1948 partition plan, the Arab invasion of Israel thereafter, and the 1967 and 1973 wars by countries disproportionate in size, manpower, and barbarian conduct, against the tiny enclave of Jews. Instead they conclude that Israel, forced to develop the best military in the world by the continual state of war by many of its neighbours against it, means that Israel is more powerful and by the immoral calculations of moral relativism, the powerful are automatically to cede moral authority to the less powerful. In their cheering on of Palestinian barbarism, they ignore the ethnic cleansing in the Arab countries (where almost an identical number of Jews were displaced from Arab countries, as fled Israel during the War of Independence). They counsel Israel to give back parts of Jerusalem, when the last time they were under Arab jurisdiction (pre-1967), the Jewish religious sites and synagogues were destroyed and even the cemetaries were desecrated. Instead, we in the West have had imposed on us, by media and academia alike a series of words and symbols, that, far from promoting understanding and morality, have the opposite effect of enlisting the support of the innocents and the hateful, alike, in yet another War Against the Jews.

Patrick Martin, in Canada’s Globe & Mail described the Palestinian Authority as “moderate and secular”

Even journalists at the supposedly better newspapers are unashamed to use the most inappropriate and conclusive words to reflect their unexamined conclusions rather than report on the facts, or in the case of opinion pieces, marshal the facts used to reach their conclusion. On Saturday, May 29, 2011, for example, Patrick Martin, in Canada’s Globe & Mail described the Palestinian Authority as “moderate and secular”; and a front page story in the Washington Post described Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu as “hawkish”. Neither article provided any proof that these terms were appropriate; apparently the writers feel that these terms, although objectionable to me, are self-evident to their more liberal readership. Martin’s article dealt with the “unity pact” between the PA, which he deems “secular and moderate” and Hamas, which his article shows has a Charter that advocates genocide and destruction of Israel. As the writer of two books and numerous articles on the situation in Israel, I am certain that the plain meanings of “moderate” and “secular” do not apply at all to the Palestinian Authority, unless, as in the case of Mr. Martin, one’s moral compass has long left its Canadian roots and has adopted the cultural relativism and moral equivalency which is eating away at the foundations of a Western civilization, especially in Europe.

The PA is NOT moderate:

• It has terrorist associates who operate under the names Fatah and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.
• Its leaders make one speech in English for western consumption and a very different speech in Arabic to reassure its own people that it will never give up the right to destroy Israel as a Jewish state by overwhelming it with millions of the descendants of so-called refugees (equal in number to the Jewish refugees from Arab lands that Israel long ago resettled in Israel).
• Abbas is a Holocaust denier
• Abbas has said that a future Palestinian state will not allow any Jewish citizens, whereas Israel has always allowed Arab citizens. The PA will not concede that Israel is a Jewish state the same way that all the surrounding countries are Muslim states
• It did not give up power and hold elections at the end of its term of office
• The PA names streets and public squares in honour of suicide bombers.
• Its school textbooks and state controlled media are anti-Semitic and make no mention of Israel, instead showing “Palestine” as extending right to the Mediterranean.

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The PA is NOT secular:

• Only in the liberal democracies of the West is there a division between Church (or Mosque) and state.
• The PA’s ideology that it will not give up its rights to eventually settle millions of Arabs in all of Israel is based on the religious ideology of Islamism. So too does the support for the Palestinians in other Muslim countries stem from Islamist notions of Dar Al Islam – once a country has been ruled by Muslims, it must never be ruled by anyone else.

Martin’s confusion about what is moderate and secular is obviously meant to stir up ill will to the one small Jewish liberal democratic state in the world, by portraying those who seek to kill and terrorize its people as secular moderates. I am glad that our Prime Minister has the morality to stand up for Israel. Martin’s position is immoral and his language is journalistically wrong and indefensible. If any other moderate group in the world made a pact with a totalitarian terrorist and murderous organization like Hamas, that step in itself would prove that the “moderate” group was no longer moderate, if it ever was. Only when it comes to groups that hate and kill Jews, do the most elementary standards of liberal analysis fall by the wayside. Such animus to the Jewish state is in fact an odious form of anti-Semitism. The Washington Post’s editors, apparently see nothing wrong with labelling (libelling?) the Israeli Prime Minister as a “hawk”. Now excuse me, but the American President, without any congressional authority, recently sent bombers into Libya, in support of a rebel force of which he has no knowledge as to its sympathies, whether they are Islamist, Marxist, nationalist or fascist. But the newspapers wouldn’t think of calling him a “hawk”. Netanyahu, on the other hand, has to be responsible for the safety of his civilians who are in fact under almost continual attack from Hamas missiles targeting school buses, suicide bombers, Palestinians who slaughter children in their beds, restaurants, discos and hotels, and a dysfunctional Iranian leadership that is shipping rockets and other military hardware to their terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas which are surrounding Israel, and to Syria, which promotes the new tactic of Arabs storming the Israeli borders. Netanyahu must watch moral luminaries like Jimmy Carter and George Galloway consort with Hamas terrorists who do not even comply with the Geneva Convention by allowing the Red Cross access to prisoners like Galid Shalit, in whom the United Nations or the international media have no interest. The fact that Netanyahu does not resort to military action as a reaction to the hundreds of acts of war perpetrated yearly against Israeli civilian areas, including areas that are within the 1967 borders by an enemy who pledges that there will be no “peace” until Israel opens its borders to millions of Palestinian descendants of the original refugees (who are taught in Palestinian schools and media to hate Jews), means that he must be the opposite of a “hawk”. But there is no debate on the issue. Neither the Globe & Mail nor the Washington Post would ever accept a letter from me challenging them on this. The use of these words, is meant to close off debate, to signal that the neo-McCarthyesque left liberals have decided to conclude the debate of who is moderate and who is hawkish. People like me who want to carry on a debate about whether my People in Israel are reasonable in the face of attempted genocide are just an annoyance. It has been eight years since I wrote a book called The Second Catastrophe: A Novel about a Book and its Author (Mantua Books – Mantuabooks.com). In that book, I explained how the media and the academy had begun to misuse certain words and terms. Among these were the following: Occupied territories, suicide bombers, cycle of violence, hard-line, moderate, peace process, peace, terrorists/martyrs/freedom fighters/ national liberation movements/ activists.

How did we lose the battle for words?

How did we lose the battle for words? Probably, because most of us didn’t even realize that the meanings of some very important words were gradually and subtly being taken from us, being changed from what we always thought they meant. We have been sitting idly and passively by, as our enemies have redefined key words, to make them what they want them to mean. Some very important words have been hijacked from us by people who think that if they “dress up” their immoral positions by adopting moral-type words, then all will be fooled as to what they are really intending. Israel “Apartheid” Week is just one example. The Nazis put up a large sign over the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp, stating “Arbeit macht frei” – “work shall make you free”. Of course, many of those who entered the camp were marked for extermination, not work; and those who were to be slave laborers would never gain their freedom through their work. Totalitarians are fond of repeating nonsensical slogans, in the belief that if repeated often enough they will be seen as true. Sometimes democrats do the same, of course (case in point – America’s term, Operation Enduring Freedom), but the nature of liberal democracy, with its system of opposition parties, free media, and free academics, is that there is, or should be, a constant debate over the use of any slogan. If newspapers are limiting that debate, what does that tell us about them? It seems that more latitude is given to propagandists on the “left” of the political spectrum than on the “right” of the political spectrum? For example, why can “peace activists” of the left make common cause with Hezbollah, and still be called peace activists? By the same logic, a proponent of U.S. military action for the purpose of eventually creating peace could also claim to be a “peace activist”. My point is that those of the “left” who whitewash violence against the West are given too much latitude by media and academics. Moreover, why should certain parties be able to claim that they are on the “left” or that they represent the progressive side? I think that I am a progressive, because, in my view, “progress” demands that backwards, theocratic, anti-liberal regimes should make progress towards modern freedoms, technology and separation of church (et al.) and state. That would be real progress. And yet certain labour unions, church groups, and academics insist that only they can be seen as progressive; it boggles the mind. In essence, what we are talking about is the sophisticated use of words as propaganda. By subtly changing the accepted use of a word or term, the propagandist effectively disinforms. And by the media allowing unexamined use of works like “moderate” and “hawkish” the media become organs of propaganda.