Global Journal of Human Social Science, G: Linguistics and Education, Volume 21 Issue 14

various news outlets was designed, as is often the case with social media, not for accuracy – the posts and petitions are filled with misstatements – but rather for maximum humiliation. The tone on social media even exhibited an eagerness to serve up bogus accusations of racism, accompanied by the kind of fervour for enemies likely found on the streets of Paris in 1789. The essays in Word Crimes are no summons for a restoration of the heroic myths of founding the Jewish state; they are, rather, a plea for a return to the library, to the archives, and to the painstaking research that has liberated scholars from subscribing to a simple narrative of the country’s state-building experiences as fulfiling only a progressive national mission. Many newly minted Israeli academicians – some calling themselves new historians, others critical sociologists – probed the Zionist nation-building project by examining its impact on Palestine’s Arab population, Middle Eastern immigrants, and on the lives and experiences of women without guidance from a politicised vocabulary that is more a reflection of our own times than of the reality of times past. While Word Crimes addresses the scholarly community, it also attempts to reach beyond the gates of the University and its Israel Studies scholars by providing short accessible thought pieces: some essays present fully researched arguments; some gesture towards the larger critical narrative presented. Writers as well as policymakers were invited to join the project. The editing was ‘light’ because the contributors held a variety of views, and it was thought preferable to let their very brief essays speak for themselves. The intention was to widen not narrow the discussion. The notion that people should not write on topics normally outside of their own disciplinary training – as the petitions assert–is simply a way to avoid tackling the serious issues the essays raise. It is also a strange view coming from a field that combines varying disciplines and training and is a purported exemplar of what interdisciplinarity can achieve. By no means intended to provide the final word on the topic but rather to broaden the conversation by including new kinds of participants holding diverse perspectives, the collection brought together something rarely done in these times–people who are located on all points of the political spectrum. The charge that the essays comprise a dictionary of acceptable terms is as false as it is ridiculous. There is a distinction between arguing certain words channel thoughts in one direction, on the one hand, and calling for a ban on their use, on the other. Rather than stipulate a set of acceptable terms, the essays weave a cautionary tale of how certain words now deployed routinely in discussing the Israeli- Palestinian Conflict are more polemical than accurately reflective of developments. In the Introduction, I offered some examples. I did not take a position on whether what happened at Deir Yassin should or should not be called a massacre. I thought it significant that a publisher had rejected a manuscript on the killings not because it failed on empirical or logical grounds but rather because it wa s deemed unfit for an English- speaking audience. 7 Similarly, the prize awarded to a tendentious book charging Israel with harvesting organs of Palestinians is, I argued, an illustration of how degraded academic standards have become because the research is filled wi th errors easily dispelled by a simple Google search. 8 Finally, I tried to show that this language also prevents a deep understanding of Palestinian history and politics by presuming that Israel exercises total control over the lives of Palestinians according them no ‘agency’ or capacity to change ‘Ha-Matzav’. [The Situation] The notion embraced by Palestinians of an all-powerful Zionism can be found in Arabic texts even in the early days of the Zionist project when Zionism ha d v ery little power and an insignificant global presence. 9 This is not to celebrate the Occupation but rather to argue that to end it requires considering more than simply Israel’s policies and actions. Today much of the academic discourse on the Middle East Conflict has distorted the truth by transforming even the very idea of what constitutes a ‘fact’. ‘Facts’ are stitched into a narrative often to effect loyalty rather than to verify assertions. This presumed intractable conflict over land has been substantially reconceived as a war over words. And although the hegemonic discourse claims to be opening up new and better ways of understanding the Conflict, it has had a profound impact on closing down the possibility of following the best available evidence. An academic perspective, now expected to guide action and render moral judgements, cannot serve as a robust agenda for research. The ironies produced by this new set of terms for the Conflict abound. Take, for example, the current language of human rights whose gravitational pull now denies Israel the blessings it once conferred on the establishment of a Jewish state as advancing the cause for justice. Thus is Zionism, more judged than understood, condemned as racist. The esteem bestowed on words and deeds associated with the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is a function of their capacity not to promote peace, coexistence, or reconciliation but rather to signal affinity with a global progressive politics. To read newspapers and magazine articles on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, to watch the violence broadcast on cable news or to toggle through social media for information is to be bombarded by negative images of Israel and on more than one occasion of Jews. How an attack is initially framed, of course, gives it disproportionate influence on how it will be remembered. Reporters, fumbling their way through © 2021 Global Journals Volume XXI Issue XIV Version I 40 ( G ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2021 The Gatekeepers