When Language Splits What Should Be One
Language shapes thought. And in the case of Jews and Israel, it often shapes it against us. For centuries, the words imposed on our people, our homeland, our culture, and even the hatred directed toward us have been fragmented – and that fragmentation has consequences.
Think about it. Our people are “Jews.” Our land is “Israel.” Our language is “Hebrew.” Hatred of us is “antisemitism.” Belief that we have the right to a state in our ancestral homeland is “Zionism.” Five separate words, linguistically unrelated. Each one is a linguistic island, disconnected in sound and root from the others.
Now compare that to France. The country is France. The people are French. The language is French. The hatred of French people is straightforwardly “anti-French.” There is no linguistic distance that allows someone to claim they love French people but oppose the existence of France, or that they adore the French language but think the French have no right to self-determination.
In our case, that distance has given cover to sophistry. It enables the intellectually dishonest – and the openly hostile – to claim that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, that opposition to the existence of Israel is somehow divorced from hatred of Jews. The words themselves have been used as wedges, splitting our identity into separate compartments so our enemies can pick them off one by one.
And it is no secret that even the term “antisemitism” itself is a linguistic trick. It was coined in 19th-century Germany as a more “respectable” alternative to Judenhass – Jew-hate – to make an ancient prejudice sound like a legitimate political position. In other words, the very word we now use to name the hatred of Jews was engineered to make that hatred more palatable.
Of course, this linguistic splintering did not arise by accident. Much of it was imposed over centuries by outside powers – Greek, Latin, Arabic, English – each layering on new terms that separated “Jew” from “Israel” from “Hebrew.” Over time, even we began to think in those terms, internalizing the distance between parts of our own identity.
We now live with the consequences. In campus debates, in media narratives, and in political discourse, the separation of terms makes it easier for hostile actors to pit our identities against each other. They can declare their opposition to “Zionism” while insisting they harbor no ill will toward “Jews.” They can claim to love “Hebrew” culture while denying “Israel” the right to exist. And the average listener, hearing such arguments, finds them plausible because the language has already separated what in reality is indivisible.
The Jewish people, the Hebrew language, the Land of Israel, and the movement for our self-determination are not disconnected concepts. They are strands of the same rope. When you cut one, you weaken all.
We cannot undo thousands of years of linguistic history. But we can be aware of how the language we use can either connect or divide us. We can insist that conversations about Jews, Israel, Hebrew, and Zionism acknowledge their shared root in the same people and the same story – one stretching from ancient Jerusalem to today’s headlines.
If our words continue to keep us in separate boxes, those who wish us harm will go on exploiting that division. But if we speak with clarity, connecting the dots that have been pulled apart for centuries, the arguments meant to divide us will collapse under their own absurdity.
Those who hate us understand the power of language.
It’s time we did too.
