On Language
Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. – George Orwell
Since October 7th, language has been turned against the Jews. The world lectures us by taking our words and condemning us with them. It’s an old story, going back to the New Testament. The process is insidious and constant.
In this past month, a CBS News executive instructed his staff NOT to refer to Jerusalem as being in Israel (to which one can only say, what?). Moreover, he declared that the question of ‘the existence of the State of Israel’ should be considered ‘a fair part of the conversation.’
In the same week, his Holiness Ta-Nehisi Coates, the white person’s black person, turned our nightmare, October 7th, into his fantasy. With Trevor Noah nodding earnestly, Coates publicly confessed to his dream of killing, raping, and abducting Jews. Again, a ‘fair part of the conversation.’
Said about any other ethnicity, Coates would have been immediately canceled; instead he is praised for his courageous authenticity.
Double Speak Highlight
Highest, however, on the Orwellian DoubleSpeak Top 10 list is the New York Times report on how the Israeli army, the IDF, used Palestinians as human shields. I don’t dismiss the significance of the allegations (which appeared in the Israeli press several weeks ago), but I do want to ask: why is this the first time in the year-long conflict that the Times has used that term – ‘human shields’?
Somehow, it was not applicable to Hamas – whose strategy since October 7th has been to kill as many civilians as possible, both Israeli and Palestinians. Israelis, just because. Palestinians as part of the daily martyrdom toll (embellished by the Hamas Healthy Ministry) for the gods of the Western media.
As has been endlessly documented, Hamas sequestered headquarters and munitions in hospitals, in schools, in UNRWA offices, and in apartment buildings. Since last October, Hamas leadership in Qatar has called continually for the blood and martyrdom of Gazans, especially women, children and the elderly. Sinwar (before becoming, as the viral meme goes, Sinwas) was asked if 10,000 martyrs was too high a price to pay for ‘Palestine’? His answer – ‘100,000 martyrs would not be enough!
Meanwhile, the mastermind behind October 7th, hailed on American college campuses as a ‘resistance fighter,’ spent months, hiding from the IDF, squirreled away in Gaza’s underground tunnels with his Mentos, a UNRWA ‘teacher’s passport,’ and his wife and her $32K Birkin Bag.
And, as far as human shields go, Sinwar kept himself surrounded by the six hostages – his personal human shields, who, when no longer useful, he shot. And don’t forget: all of Gaza is a giant Human Shield for the Hamas billionaire leaders in Qatar.
But the Times’ breaking story, imprinted on the ever-more credulous minds of its readership: Israelis perpetrate the most horrendous crimes – even this.
Words conspire against us.
Taking Our Language Back!
Yes, it is important to protest, and set the record straight. But, we will not change anyone’s minds. Dialogue with our enemies empowers them and exhausts us.
And, yes, enemies, we have to get used to that term (again). There are enemies of the Jewish People, and not just the seven nations currently at war with Israel. Some have always been so, others are now sliding comfortably into well-worn grooves created by millennia of antisemitism. Jew hatred, it turns out, comes in many sizes and colors.
It’s easy to be in denial. But from the the long-view of history, the power, wealth, and mobility that Jews, including me, enjoyed in the American (Jewish) half-century is just a blip in our history. Yet, we fixate on the predictions of America as an enduring liberal democracy always safe for Jews.
People prefer happy thoughts.
Jeremiah’s was the lone voice prophesying the destruction of the Temple among dozens of false prophets, predicting more of the status quo. To them, he was paranoid, delusional, and most of all, unnecessarily depressing.
But the author of Lamentations – after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple – had hope for a Jewish future. In the face of catastrophe, he created. He wrote for a Jewish future.

Like Jeremiah, we are at a traumatic impasse, but trauma, for us, means not grievance and entitlement, but creativity. We reclaim our title, not just as People of the Book, but a People of Reading, Writing, and Creating.
We know that words do not caption reality, but create it. We go back to our books, our languages, our words. We reclaim our words; we make new worlds.
Fighting with those who seek to destroy us—whether through ignorance or malice—is an exhausting distraction. But the lies of others do not matter (as much) when we know the truth for ourselves.
We take back our language; we write a future, together.