Making Sense of Rhetoric, or Is ‘Zionism’ a Slur?

The events of October 7th 2023 have catapulted the discourse around the ‘legitimacy’ of the existence of the state of Israel to the forefront of public consciousness. There is far more talking than listening and discussions are conducted for victory, not truth. In such instances rhetoric tends to overpower logic and can make it difficult to discern perspectives from facts. Such an environment becomes especially toxic in the modern milieu of legal and social democracy (the former through votes, the latter through likes).

It can be very difficult then, in this maelstrom of propaganda and fury, for the honest and intellectually curious individual to find solid footing. I’d like to assist the well intentioned layman in this essay by drawing attention to, and explicating, one of the most common tools used to spread disinformation: language itself. As George Orwell put it in his essay Politics and the English Language ‘The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism.’

To understand the effects of language on thought it’s important to examine how language itself is not value neutral. The simplest example of this is to consider the word ‘quality’. A ‘quality’ of something is its standard, or feature, and yet to describe something as being ‘quality’ is to attribute it value. The Palestinian movement has a long history of abusing language by making outrageous claims and then withdrawing to ‘technical definitions’ when challenged. This technique plays off the difference between the value laden nature of language and it’s facade of neutrality as merely a ‘tool’ for communication (think 1984 newspeak). For those interested see Foucault’s concept of knowledge/power and Derrida’s deconstructionism. The subtle power afforded by the abuse of language comes from weaponising the seemingly neutral realm of communication itself.

In the case of this specific conflict there are several phrases that have been forcibly inserted into the discourse. When people say the word genocide it comes with all the connotations of the Nazi death camps in WWII. This is why the pro-Palestine movement is so adamant about labelling this war a genocide. It’s as offensive as it possibly could be to Jews — to compare them to Nazis. At the core this is the goal: To offend and reject Jews, and to paint them in the worst possible light. When challenged, they retreat to the ‘technical’ definition’ referring to intent, claiming to know the inner workings of Israeli minds better than the Israelis who deny the accusations (this highlights a separate problematic issue: the ‘official’ definition of genocide itself is based on intent, which is subjective, and therefore places the burden of proof on the internal mental features of the perpetrator).

The language we use to describe the situation determines our reality to a greater degree than the facts on the ground.

This general trend persists, and can be noted in a series of other terms that have been strong-armed into the Israel-Palestine debate lexicon. Apartheid is a term used to refer to the racist regime of discrimination in South Africa. When people call Israel an apartheid regime they’re attempting to draw a comparison with South Africa, specifically to condemn Israel for being racist. When the facts are considered honestly, that Israel treats its Arab citizens better than any other country in the Middle East, or that Arabs can vote, and have representation, and are equal in the eyes of the law, critics retreat to talking about the West Bank. When shown that the West Bank is not a part of Israel, and therefore not subject to Israeli laws, they retreat to complaining about settlers. This is a legitimate complaint, but its far away from the original implication that Israel is comparable to South Africa. This is the radical claim — retreat to technicalities technique at work.

The problem with this kind of loaded rhetoric is that it is manipulative and hard to argue with. Note how many words I needed to use just to refute the one? And if we’re being honest, how many people are more likely to recall simple ideas over lengthy explanatory rebuttals? Levying loaded, accusatory, catchy accusations that take time and mental effort to dismantle is a tactic in and of itself. Such manipulation is powerfully insidious because it robs you of your agency to make up your mind about the conflict by assuming the conclusion in the premise. In such an environment, your thoughts aren’t your own. If we’re arguing whether or not it’s an apartheid state, we’ve already accepted that a legal system that prioritises one people over another is a bad thing (yes, it is antithetical to Western democratic values, but protecting minorities is not antithetical to liberal values, and this tension exists in all democratic systems). Analogies hide as much as they reveal, and so every time Israel is compared to something else, ask yourself, what do they want to show me, and what do they want to hide?

I will address a few more examples to drive the point home, before I reach for solutions.

I worked at a summer camp as a councillor for teenagers, and one day an Australian girl approached me and asked me something in a deeply bashful manner:

‘Adam can I ask you a question?’ ‘Is Jew an insult? I was told that I can’t call people that?’

I laughed. Here was another prime example of how the war over the the value of words was being fought, and this front has been open for a thousand years. I answered her simply:

‘Some people are Jews, some people are not. It’s not an insult to call somebody a Jew. The people who believe it is an insult have already decided that to be Jewish is a bad thing and then, after the fact, use the word that way. It’s like being called a woman. You’re a woman, and you’re not insulted when somebody calls you a woman. And yet if somebody complains that you “throw like a girl” it doesn’t mean inherently that you throw badly, but it means they’ve already decided that girls throw badly. Do you see the problem?’

So, is Zionist a slur?

The simple answer is: absolutely not. Zionism, by definition, is the support for a Jewish state in the homeland of the Jews. Any intellectually consistent liberal should support this. It is the right afforded to minority groups to self determine. It’s a right that Muslims, Christians, the Japanese, the Irish, and many other ethnic and religious groups have and are not questioned for having.

The more complicated answer, goes back to ‘throw like a girl’. If you’ve decided, as a premise, that the Jews shouldn’t have a state, then support for a Jewish state is a bad thing. The people who use Zionist as a slur, then, are engaged in the same bad faith argument that I highlighted above. They wish to conceal the premise in the conclusion. To be a Zionist is touted as being inherently anti-Palestinian. It is to be an imperialist, to be a murderer, or a white supremacist, or any other number of generically negative descriptors. None of which fall categorically under the definition of the term. Such a move leaves outside observers feeling confused, and rightfully so. But for those without the courage or the intellectual curiosity to question it such assumptions often slip by unchallenged.

Two more phrases that are forcibly inserted, and that tie into each other, are settlement and colonialism. Israel is described as a ‘settler colonial project’. Here the language is being abused to a degree that makes it almost unrecognisable. Unpacking such phraseology is difficult, but important. It works on multiple levels, leaning on the value laden ‘colonialism’ to play the classic bait and retreat. When Israel is described as a ‘settler’ state the immediate implication is that all of the country was ‘settled’ by foreigners. When referred to in Arab media there is no question that this is the claim. All of Israel, from the river to the sea, is foreign occupation of Arab land. It does not matter that there were Jews in the land for millennia who did not ‘settle’, it does not matter that many were exiled from their countries in and fled as refugees to the land, it does not matter that the early Jews coming from abroad to live in the region purchased land and immigrated like anyone else. It does not even matter that the very presence of Arabs in the Levant is itself a result of settlement. What matters is that the term ‘settler’ has implications that a westerner knows implicitly. It conjures images of European settlement in the Americas, in Africa, and Australia. Of a foreign people who came, took, and would not leave. When the claim, that all of Israel is a settlement, is questioned the accusers can retreat to talking about Israel’s settlements in the West Bank. The West Bank settlements are problematic for a whole host of reasons, but they do not justify the broader claims made that all of Israel is a settler state. Opposition to the settlements does not make one an anti-Zionist. See again how the technique allows for extremist claims to be made about the illegitimacy of the whole state, and then withdrawn from if actually pressed on. Something similar happens with claims of colonialism.

In an age abounding with academic critical theory, post modern analyses of complex problems have given way to flat abominations that represent exactly what post modernism intended to criticise. The valuable critical lens of post-colonial thought has devolved into a popular and reductive meta-narrative. As the story has become: Greedy white people enslaved poor non-white populations, and the modern world is a product of such a dynamic. Of course any serious post modern thinker would reject such a simplistic world view, but nuance is not for the masses. Instead we have a situation in which colonialism has become a condemnatory buzzword implying a one-way direction of extortion and exploitation. While I won’t comment on colonialism as a whole, it’s easy to see the problem with a simplistic view of history, and the power such a story invests in the world ‘colonialism’. This narrative has become the default, and is the premise slipped into the conclusion when Israel is accused of being a colonial entity.

There are several problems with this kind of argument. First and foremost, it represents a blatant abuse of the English language in refusing to acknowledge the very simple fact that the meaning of words change over time. While early Zionist settlers openly admitted to wanting to create a ‘colony’ in Israel, their phraseology represented the common parlance of the period, specifically the age of empires (in contrast to the modern age of the nation-state). The equation, then, between their attempt to create a colony, and the colonialism of the age, seems straightforward. Jews made a colony, therefore it is colonialism. But this kind of reasoning is lazy and anachronistic. The colonialism discussed and condemned in modern historical analysis refers to the imperial policy of setting up foreign colonies of grand empires for the purpose of resource extraction. This is what the analogy, that draws comparisons between the colony of Israel and the colonies of America or India, attempts to conceal. There was no Jewish empire that the jews all came from and could return to, and the goal was never resource extraction but homecoming and nation-building. Furthermore the comparison takes, as its premise, the one-directional reduction that Europe oppressed the world, and that nobody who isn’t white has ever done anything bad. It erases the pressures that forced the Jews out of Europe and out of West Asia. It erases the imperial history of the Arab-Muslims in the region, the Jewish connection to the land, and the violence directed from the former to the later. All this with a word. As you can see, language is not value neutral.

How should Israelis, and any honest intellectual or free thinker, combat this?

Honestly, I don’t have a clear-cut solution, because it’s complicated. But we can identify two potential courses of action. It may require a reverse weaponisation of language in kind. I object to this because I think it’s dishonest, and because it will create a situation in which both sides exist in distinct camps unable to communicate at all, and therefore unable to resolve issues (this is what the weaponisation of language is already doing, it is not a force for peace, merely a weapon to crush the Jewish state).

A more optimistic option is one that treats all individuals as agents that engage intelligently and honestly with the relevant questions and reaches for a deeper understanding of the problems at hand. As pointed out before, to debunk the use of a single word ‘colonialism’ or ‘genocide’ requires an extended explanation of the comparison between the literal meaning of a word and its implication/value. In a world where a seeming majority are not willing to engage in a nuanced and honest manner, the task becomes to distinguish between those who argue to win and those who argue for truth. The former can be disregarded, or perhaps made aware of their own intellectual dishonesty (‘Why do you believe this?’ Is often a good starting point to transition the conversation away from point scoring towards understanding, similarly ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’), and this leaves energy to devote to the latter group who will listen and consider before responding. The goal is to investigate the conclusions hidden in the premise so that they can be unpacked and scrutinised. The answer to ‘Do you condemn the genocide in Israel?’ Should not be a yes, or a no, but a rejection of the premise.

Orwell provides some help on this front: ‘This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.’ Terms like ‘settler colonialist state’ attempt to cement a reality that does not exist, and can only do so if left unchallenged. Orwell points out that this happens insidiously, ‘if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.’

For those who feel like they are losing rhetorical footing to the weaponised word salad of buzzwords and BS, hopefully this will help explain your sense of confusion. It is a challenging but important battle to fight.

An extended version of this essay is available on my blog:
https://sites.google.com/view/adampenkin