Twenty thoughts on language and violence.

For Normal People.

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I have held many beliefs in simultaneity since 2023 with full appreciation of the extent to which some may be incompatible with others.

I’ve written some of them down over the space of 20 months, and have chosen 20 that best reflect how I feel this afternoon.

1. This war is not winnable, and therefore it should not happen.

2. That for those who believe this war to be ‘winnable’, the human cost of pursuing it would be (has been) too great.

3. Hamas cannot be allowed to get away with what they did.

4. Hamas have not been allowed to get away with what they did.

5. There are very few who understand the Middle East, and despite the allure of feeling ‘well-read’, most of us — myself very much included — do not have what it takes to speak with authority on the lives or deaths of others.

6. Not being an authority should not silence us, but it should at the very least temper feelings of righteousness.

7. Too many of us read our own stories into situations that don’t involve us as much as we feel they do. I am sometimes guilty of this.

8. The lack of compassion for diaspora Jews post-October 7 created an us vs them dynamic.

9. Misunderstandings and misrepresentations of ‘Zionism’ have played a significant role in global hostilities.

10. My repeated calls for Hamas to ‘just surrender’ are unrealistic and simplistic. Israel is not at war with a state. They’re at war with a terrorist organisation.

11. Inverting the Holocaust for rhetorical flare is disgusting.

I won’t fight in anyone’s war, but I will (begrudgingly) take all the time necessary to explain the correlation between language, culture, ideology, misrepresentation, racism, and humanity’s propensity to repeat history.

A line for humanitarian aid is not a ‘concentration camp’.

Genocide is not a verb.

Holocaust is a proper noun.

People might use these words to help generate sympathy or urgency, leaning on the Holocaust for rhetorical flare.

These words have not been used to describe the even more disturbing death tolls in Syria, Yemen, and Ethiopia.

Is this because it feels more appropriate to invert the Holocaust against its victims than it would be to invoke these words elsewhere?

One does not have to be a trained psychoanalyst to draw conclusions about why some words are used and others aren’t.

12. Discussing the validity of the word ‘genocide’ has become impossible to do without it sounding like you’re downplaying the decimation of Gaza.

13. I don’t believe that this is a genocide, and yet I feel increasingly disturbed by the extent to which the use of this word bothers me.

The word has been wielded as a weapon for decades (Zureiq, Shaw), some arguing that ‘ongoing Nakba’ and genocide are inescapable by-products of Israel’s existence. This kind of rhetoric is why October 7 was justified as ‘resistance’ by so many, and in turn is why ‘anti-zionism’ has come to represent ‘anti-genocide’ (and why ‘zionism’ as support for genocide).

In his commentary on Aesop’sThe Boy Who Cried Wolf — a fable designed to instruct children as to a correlation between lying and being ignored — Samuel Croxall (c. 1688/9 – 1752) asks:

"when we are alarmed with imaginary dangers in respect of the public, till the cry grows quite stale and threadbare, how can it be expected we should know when to guard ourselves against real ones?"

An appreciation of the English language and the historical record cannot recuse me accepting how people work. I understand that so many out there feel the need to use the strongest language possible to condemn what they are seeing on their screens, and that the word ‘genocide’ feels not just appropriate, but necessary to use.

I truly believe that many who use the word genocide are, ironically, demonstrating an egregious moral deficit.

I also believe that most who use this word are not.

14. I have never had less faith in the peace process.

15. I have never had less trust in ‘the media’.

16. I have no solutions.

17. I believe that the state of Israel deserves to exist as much as Pakistan or Jordan or Australia.

18. I believe that the state of Palestine should be recognised, and I don’t believe that this amounts to a ‘reward’ for October 7 — but rather, a recognition of the extent to which nation-states have the capacity to become the best versions of themselves within a greater international community context. Hamas can’t be held to any kind of standard. A state of Palestine can.

19. I publish or share moments of conviction, but rarely publicly share the 90% of my internal experience: ambiguity; confusion; interrogation; grief.

I apologise for this.

20. I have nothing helpful to contribute to a situation on the other side of the world that is misrepresented for personal gain by nine out of ten people speaking on it.

I believe it to be self-evident that it is not Pro-Palestinian or Anti-Israel sentiments that denote antisemitism, but the language used to express these sentiments.

Commentary on the commentary is where I belong.

For further reading, see: here.