The Words We Use, the Worlds We Build
- Why Shared Humanity Requires Shared Language
For months after October 7th, I protected my nervous system with a strict Facebook limit. Recently, I broke my own rule to engage in a discussion about Israel. At first, the exchanges were thoughtful. Then, almost on cue, it collapsed into the familiar quicksand: people talking past each other, arguing inside completely different conceptual universes.
What struck me wasn’t the disagreement, but the linguistic disintegration underneath it. People weren’t fighting over ideas so much as the definitions of the words carrying those ideas. We are trying to build a shared future with a vocabulary built of slogans. Words are hurled like grenades—”Zionist,” “genocide,” “colonizer,” “apartheid,” “Nakba-denier”—each freighted with different meanings depending on who uses them.
If we don’t share a language, we can’t share a conversation. And if we can’t share a conversation, we certainly can’t share a future.
The Problem Beneath the Problem
Both peoples feel existentially threatened and fear erasure. One thing that fuels erasure is sloppy language. Take the word Zionism. To some, it means “Jewish self-determination in an ancestral homeland.” To others, it means “support for the current government,” “bad policies,” or “a colonial project.” Four definitions, one word, everyone arguing past each other.
Now look at Anti-Zionism. Historically, Jewish opposition to Zionism (Haredi, Bundist, early Reform) was an internal critique that never denied Jewish peoplehood or connection to the land. Today, however, opposition is often shaped by settler-colonial theory, which rejects Jewish collective rights entirely. When people say “anti-Zionism,” some mean the older critique, while others mean the negation of Jewish identity. That ambiguity is gasoline.
If you tell a people who have prayed “Next year in Jerusalem” for 2,000 years that they aren’t a people, you aren’t criticizing policy; you are negating their identity. Conversely, if Palestinians say “Zionism” means the bulldozing of homes and the humiliation of checkpoints, they aren’t discussing abstract self-determination; they are describing their lived trauma.
The Defensive Loop
Zionists hear “anti-Zionism” and assume it means opposition to Jewish existence. Palestinians hear “Zionism” and assume it means the denial of their rights. Consequently, many Jews deploy “Zionism” as a shield to avoid facing real Israeli wrongdoing, while many anti-Zionists deploy “colonialism” to avoid facing real Jewish history and trauma.
Everyone is dodging complexity. Everyone is dodging each other. And people are dying.
A Shared Premise
We must start with a basic moral baseline: Jews and Palestinians are two peoples with deep, rooted connections to the same land, and each has an equal right to collective self-determination there.
This isn’t a specific map; it’s a prerequisite. If both sides can say this, we can have honest reckonings with Palestinian suffering, Israeli fear, the occupation, Hamas’s brutality, and the need for safety. But if either side denies the other’s right to exist as a people, the whole thing collapses.
Language is a Blueprint
Words are philosophical commitments. A person who uses “Zionist” to mean “colonizer” and a person who uses it to mean “my grandmother expelled from Iraq” live in different moral universes. No peace process can run when participants speak mutually unintelligible dialects.
We don’t need everyone to agree; we need everyone to mean what they say.
This isn’t a fantasy. It is already happening in organizations like Standing Together (grassroots equality), Givat Haviva (shared society), Roots/Shorashim/Judur (settlers and Palestinians), Hand in Hand (bilingual schools), and The Arava Institute (environmental cooperation). These groups don’t begin with maps. They begin by saying the quiet part out loud: Your story is real. My story is real. We cannot erase each other.
Movements “For” vs. Movements “Against”
Movements defined “against” something—like “against anti-Zionism”—rarely produce clarity. We need a movement for the mutual recognition of self-determination, dignity, and safety. Everything else—two states, confederation, borders—is downstream of this shift.
I am a Rabbi and a realist. I know extremists will reject this. I am not writing to satisfy a tribe, but because the current framework—shouting “colonizer” or “terrorist”—destroys our ability to imagine a future. After 140 years of arguing about the wrong thing, we must answer the dangerous, grown-up question: Can both peoples accept the other’s right to belong here?
If we can say yes, previously “impossible” conversations become possible: confederation models, a shared Jerusalem, demilitarization, and truth and reconciliation.
The future is not predetermined; it is crafted. And the crafting begins the moment both sides agree that neither must disappear for the other to live. If real peace ever comes, it will begin with a sentence simple enough to teach in preschool:
Two peoples. One land. Both deserve to live.
