21 Jun Makdisi on the Language of Israel and Palestine
Saree Makdisi, a professor of comparative literature at UCLA and an old friend from the literature program at Duke, has a superb editorial in today’s Los Angeles Times about the media’s — and thus our — use of language concerning Israel and Palestine. Here’s a taste:
In the U.S., discussion of Palestinian politicians and political movements often relies on a spectrum running from “extreme” to “moderate.” The latter sounds appealing; the former clearly applies to those who must be — must they not? — beyond the pale. But hardly anyone relying on such terms pauses to ask what they mean. According to whose standard are these manifestly subjective labels assigned?
Meanwhile, Israeli politicians are labeled according to an altogether different standard: They are “doves” or “hawks.” Unlike the terms reserved for Palestinians, there’s nothing inherently negative about either of those avian terms.
So why is no Palestinian leader referred to here as a “hawk”? Why are Israeli politicians rarely labeled “extremists”? Or, for that matter, “militants”?
There are countless other examples of these linguistic double standards. American media outlets routinely use the deracinating and deliberately obfuscating term “Israeli Arabs” to refer to the Palestinian citizens of Israel, despite the fact that they call themselves — and are — Palestinian.
Similarly, Israeli housing units built in the occupied territories in contravention of international law are always called “settlements” or even “neighborhoods” rather than what they are: “colonies.” That word may be harsh on the ears, but it’s far more accurate (“a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state”).
These subtle distinctions make a huge difference.
Go read the whole thing.
Ah, you beat me to the punch: I was going to post something about this at Ratio Juris. There’s much that could be said here about the social psychological role of what Erich Fromm termed “social filters” in conjunction with the function of propaganda in the generation of, in this instance, what Engels originally termed and the Frankfurt School theorists and others on the Left would term “false consciousness.”
By the way, Makdisi’s book, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (2008) is a must read, and his argument for a “one-state” solution (or at least why a ‘two-state’ solution is not now possible) to the conflict is worthy of serious consideration.
[The article originally appeared in the June 19 edition of the paper.]
On a number of points Makdisi is simply wrong. Avigdor Lieberman is often described as “extremist” or “hardline” as is Netanyahu’s government. Hamas is referred to as a militant organization because one of its foundational principles is a violent struggle to liberate Palestine. Justifiably some of the pre-state Jewish groups were also described as being “militant.” With regard to state sovereignty, there are maybe situations where the situation is gray. See e.g. Stephen D. Krasner’s _Problematic Sovereignty_. The situation in Kosovo has raised many questions regarding sovereignty and what are its limits, etc. The Japanese constitution, written by American lawyers (how colonialist of them), has limits on the Japanese armed forces and the question is still being addressed sixty years after the end of WW II. Another example is the situation between Peru and Ecuador. In 1998 a peace treaty was signed with some interesting mechanisms for defusing border disputes which some would label as an infringement on absolute state sovereignty.
Michael, Makdisi is referring to the media in the U.S., so perhaps you might cite an example or two which might help us see how he is “simply wrong.” Individual Hamas politicians may in fact not be involved in any “militancy” whatsoever, one reason there is a separation in the organization between the military and political wings (as was the case, for instance, with the IRA).* Again, the mass media and political leaders in this country utterly failed to appreciate the fact that the Israeli government did not endorse any meaningful or workable conception of state sovereignty for the Palestinians. I take it you’ve not recently looked at maps of the Palestinian territories. It’s obfuscatory to invoke different conceptions of sovereignty as somehow rationalizing the Israeli position on this issue. Three of the states cited above possess meaningful state sovereignty and the Kosovo case hardly seems comparable to the situation in Palestine, as the latter is not about secession, etc. *In any case, Makdisi probably had in mind something like the double standard frequently applied by the media and politicians in this country when it comes to the military operations of Palestinians and Israelis thus, for example, nary a peep of outrage was heard in this… Read more »
Patrick:
Shehadeh was a military leader who, by his own estimation, was currently engaged in a war. He should not have resided among civilians during active hostilities, and int’l law does explicitly provide that a legitimate military target may not insulate himself by residing among civilians.
As to the distinction between hawks and extremists, extremists can be said to advocate the targeting of civilians with no independent military objective, while hawks advocate a military stance that, while aggressive, does maintain discrimination between civilian and military targets. Furthermore, although there have in the past been Jewish Israeli extremist groups under this definition, they are outlawed in Israel today, while a Palestinian extremist group controls the Gaza Strip.
Hamas members are fighting for collective self-determination for Palestinians and do not have the luxury of determining the conditions of their existence, as do the Israelis. International law is barbaric inasmuch as it said to allow what happened in this case. The Israelis had choices to make in this instance and it is certainly beyond belief to claim that the option which they chose was the only humanitarian one available. It was Israeli extremists who justified and carried out the recent assault and ariel bombardment of Gaza. As Henry Siegman has explained: Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of… Read more »
“Avigdor Lieberman, head of the hard-line Yisrael Beiteinu Party”, NY Times 2/8/2007 “…but also heighten the risk that his government would appear extremist“, NY Times 10/31/2002 (about Ariel Sharon) Headline NY Times 9/26/2008-“Radical Settlers Take on Israel” “The decision is one of a series of measures announced by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in response to a rise in violence by extremist Jewish settlers”, NY Times 11/3/2008 Headline Fox News article, 3/24/2009-“Israel’s Labor Party Votes to Join Netanyahu Hard-line Government” “Israeli President Shimon Peres chose hard-line Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday to form a new Israeli government”, caption photo on-line from Washington Post 2/21/2009 Enough of those examples. Patrick, as for your description of Hamas: “Hamas members are fighting for collective self-determination for Palestinians.” According to their own charter, Hamas is fighting for the destruction of Israel, clear and simple. Here is one little snippet in their own words. “[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the… Read more »
As for my description of Hamas, it is far more accurate than quoting from its Charter: see my recent comments at Crooked Timber, nos. 52 and 57: http://crookedtimber.org/2009/06/18/utopophobia-and-other-freedom-beefs/comment-page-2/#comment-280070
The rest is too precious and I’ll let it speak for itself.
Michael,
I have a brief and final response with a link to a couple of comments I made at Crooked Timber so it may take some time to appear.
Patrick, you probably realize there are many contrary views. Quoting left-wing commentators (Siegman, Laor, Peppe) is not very convincing, since what they do is interpret facts, not merely display them. Right-wing commentators do the same thing, of course.
I’m just saying using either ones’ views does not help any argument.
This is a pretty subjective exercise. If one was to scan the internet for every adjective applied to Israel or Palestinian groups you would probably get the whole spectrum, plus a fair smattering of completely nonsensical ones.
If you have a problem with the terms used in a given newspaper article, I’d suggest writing the ombudsman.
Guy, It’s decidedly and decisively not about left- and right-wing commentators but about well-respected scholars and experts in the requisite fields. These are not the types of talking-head pundits one finds on FOX or even CNN, etc. In any case, the “facts” are not in such matters uanadorned, transparent, or ready-made. While we can and should distinguish between facts and values (and of course some of the latter are objective), these two domains frequently affect each other as both Hilary Putnam and Amartya Sen (a philosopher and economist respectively) have made clear. Even a simple statement, like “the cat on the mat” is not just a statement of fact or the utterance of a propositional truth, as Putnam explained in Reason, Truth and History (1981). As Putnam has also reminded us, it’s important to keep in mind the four methodological principles from the late A.E. Singer, Jr.: 1. Knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of theories. 2. Knowledge of theories presupposes knowledge of facts. 3. Knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of values. 4. Knowledge of values presupposes knowledge of facts. You may want to look at my bibliography for Islamic Studies at the Ratio Juris blog (you’ll easily find it with google search)… Read more »
Kevin, you promised in the comments to your previous post to inquire as to whether HRW does any anti-Hamas fundraising among “Progressive Jews.” What have been the results of this (rather credulous) inquiry?
OK, putting aside one’s personal views, biases, and sympathies – and without articulating precisely what would be appropriate language to use – but surely it should be no surprise that different language is used about Israel and the Palestinians.
The former is a legitimate thriving strong, wealthy nation-state that was one of the first members of the United Nations. The latter is the collective name given to a large group of Arab refugees from various conflicts.
So complaints that nomenclature reserved for legitimate nation-states – such as ‘hawks’ and ‘doves’ should be used when discussing a group of stateless refugees, such as the Palestinians.
The REAL issue here is why are not the Palestinians discussed in langauge appropriate to their status; refugees. That language would overwhelmingly be about resettlement and its cognates.
Jock, Please indulge us by letting us know that you’ve read at least a couple of the following works: Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim. The Transformation of Palestine: Essays on the Origin and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971. Farsoun, Samih K. (with Christian E. Zacharia). Palestine and the Palestinians. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. Fischbach, Michael R. Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Flapan, Simha. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: Pantheon, 1987. Gorenberg, Gershom. The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977. New York: Times Books, 2006. Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1989. Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Khalidi, Rashid. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006. Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992. Kimmerling, Baruch. Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics. Berkeley, CA; University of California Press, 1983. Kimmerling, Baruch and Joel S. Migdal. The… Read more »
I meant to say “All Palestinians residing…?”
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I know you can come up with exceptions, but I think hawk and dove speak to an entity in control of the state or competing for control of the state, while extremist or moderate refer to entities without control of the state. E.g., I see a lot of hawk and dove to describe democrats, I see a lot of moderate and extremist to describe religious figures.
BTW, I would like to know what the result of Professor Heller’s inquiry to HRW re: his last Israel post.