Readers may find it curious (or maybe some even a tad hypocritical) that I am following up a post in which I essentially said that society needs to grow a thicker collective skin as it relates to offensive language, with an entry that seems to say the opposite. However, I am going to make the case that some words are used to emotionally wreck a person or – in the case of what I am going to explore – an entire group of people.
Anyone who knows me is keenly aware that I love a good debate. That being said, I tend to stay on the sidelines and observe/listen when I believe I may be in over my head on a particular issue. Tell me that Toronto is the centre of the hockey universe and I will give you an exhaustive list of why it is Montreal. Ask me my opinion of the plight of the indigenous people of Australia and I will likely sit silent and listen so that I can at least have a rudimentary understanding of the situation.
When a group of Hamas terrorists (yes, I can use that term as most western governments have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization) entered Israel on October 7 of last year with the expressed purpose of murdering, raping and kidnapping Israelis, I took notice. I knew a little about the decades-long conflict but not enough to be more than a casual and concerned citizen.
I decided in this world where information is available at our fingertips that I wanted to delve into the history of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. I sought information from both sides of the political fence. I think this is always important to form a fulsome view of any topic. Reading/watching material from academics/authors/pundits who only validate your position will simply just create information silos.
I still do believe that facts, and not feelings, should be the sole factor in determining one’s position on any subject. The problem in today’s world is that feelings/emotions seem to drive the narrative on many issues – including the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The narratives surrounding the most recent conflict are where facts and emotions diverge and when we can truly see the power of words.
For the sake of this discussion I am only going to make reference to terms and words that are being widely used by the pro-Palestinian supporters in the public and media. I am not going to get into an historical analysis (although, those trying to deny that Jews are indigenous to the area in dispute is worth a simple word in response to the claim… ridiculous.) of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What I would like to demonstrate is not only how inaccurate the use of these words/terms is but also how offensive and inflammatory they are to anyone of Jewish descent. I am going to go through these words in a clinical way and compare how they are being widely used to the literal meaning of each.
Concentration camp
This term has been become largely synonymous with the Nazis during World War II. According to jewishvirtuallibrary.org the Third Reich opened its first concentration camp in 1933 when it began operation 110 camps. Research shows that between 1933 and 1945 the Nazi regime established approximately 42,500 camps. These camps operated under various mandates. According to the above referenced site “These camps were used for a range of purposes including: forced-labor camps, transit camps which served as temporary way stations, and extermination camps, built primarily or exclusively for mass murder.“
The term “concentration camp” has been co-opted and the meaning twisted (and I would argue sanitized) by pro-Palestinians to elicit an emotional response and create sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. The problem is that anyone who is probably over the age of 50 is only one generation removed from descendants who have real knowledge of what constitutes a concentration camp. The images of emaciated bodies of Jewish prisoners, the piles of shoes and belongings of individuals at camps who were rounded up like cattle before being shipped to camps, where many would not survive, were indelible images some of us will never forget. With all due respect to the situation in Gaza – that does not come close to what we historically recognize as a concentration camp.
Genocide
According to my research, the first known use of the word genocide can be traced back to the Holocaust. The origin of the word was created by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959). He coined the word to describe the systematic eradication of the European Jews by the Nazis. The term has become internationally recognized and has a specific list of requirements that need to be met in order for the term to be accurately applied. The following link What is genocide? gives the full list and provides some context for the word and its proper use. Without getting in to too much depth, the Israeli offensive in Gaza does not come close to meeting the internationally recognized requirements to be defined as a “genocide”.
Ethnic cleansing
We constantly are hearing pundits, academics, politicians and members of the media use this word to describe the events in Gaza following the October 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas militants in Israel. The irony of the use of this phrase by the pro-Palestinian side should not be lost on the rest of us. The fact that in the wake of the October attack that leaders of Hamas said their goal was to carry out these type of murderous acts “again and again and again…” could be taken as a clear desire to carry out an “ethnic cleansing” of the Jewish population in Israel.
So what does “ethnic cleansing” mean? First, we must point out that according to the United Nations the term is not recognized as a crime under international law. Also from the UN, I discovered the origin of the use of the term – “The term surfaced in the context of the 1990’s conflict in the former Yugoslavia and is considered to come from a literal translation of the Serbo-Croatian expression “etničko čišćenje”. ” (For more context please click this link ethnic cleansing meaning and origin).
In the wake of the war in Yugoslavia in the early 90s, the UN made an attempt to define ethnic cleansing. The UN created a Commission of Experts who concluded “that the coercive practices used to remove the civilian population can include: murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, extrajudicial executions, rape and sexual assaults, severe physical injury to civilians, confinement of civilian population in ghetto areas, forcible removal, displacement and deportation of civilian population, deliberate military attacks or threats of attacks on civilians and civilian areas, use of civilians as human shields, destruction of property, robbery of personal property, attacks on hospitals, medical personnel, and locations with the Red Cross/Red Crescent emblem, among others.“
What is not entirely clear is how many of these items from the exhaustive list created by the UN Commission of Experts must be present to define an act of ethnic cleansing? Clearly, it is somewhere north of one or most nations on the planet would be guilty of ethnic cleansing at some point in their history. Yes, Israel has engaged in some of the acts listed but then again so to has Hamas. The term ethnic cleansing, with no clear definitive measures, is a relatively useless and ambiguous term. Anyone who uses it will likely be unable to define it in any substantive way and therefore using it is part of a performative literary dance designed to illicit sympathy, in this specific case, for the Palestinians in Gaza.
Conclusion
Words without proper context and meaning are often used specifically in a rhetorical sense. Just because someone who seems intelligent (Dr. Norman Finkelstein comes to mind) uses words like “genocide” or “concentration camp” or “ethnic cleansing” does not mean they are utilizing the words correctly or dare I say “intelligently”.
Further, it is my opinion that using these words is done with a specific purpose in the context of the Israel-Palestinian dynamic. Think about the three terms I referenced in this post. What do they all have in common? They all can be understood intimately by Jews around the world who are well aware what the meaning of a “genocide” or “concentration camp” is because their people lived through (and so many died during) the Holocaust.
I would ask anyone who uses these terms (or accepts them as truths) in the latest chapter of the Israel-Gaza conflict to look up the definition of another term that has become popular lately – “gaslighting”. That is precisely what you are doing to Jewish people.
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