Israel Warns UN and Palestinians to Cleanse Their 'Lexicons' of a Word. Guess Which One

Haaretz reports that the UN Sec'y-General used the word "Nakba" yesterday, angering Israel.

The [UN's official] report said the UN chief telephoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to express his solidarity with the Palestinians on the day they mark the "nakba," the Arabic word meaning "catastrophe" that is used in reference to the founding of the state of Israel.
 
Danny Carmon, Israel's deputy ambassador to the UN, told Israel Radio that the term "'nakba' is a tool of Arab propaganda used to undermine the legitimacy of the establishment of the State of Israel, and it must not be part of the lexicon of the UN."

Apparently it's the first time the UN has used the word, Nakba. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made the same point re Nakba in a speech yesterday, per Ynet:

"with the establishment of a Palestinian state, we wish to see the end of the conflict. The Palestinians will be able to celebrate their independence if on that same day they also strike the word 'Nakba' from their lexicon."

Now close your eyes and for just one second imagine how I'd feel if you told me not to use the word "pogrom" to describe what happened to my ancestors in Russia.

 

 

Comments

[hlmeankin]

Just one more example of the Israeli fascist attempt to define everything that exposes the truth about their oppression of the Palestinians as propaganda.
Its like the American government telling Native Americans they won't neogoiate returning what was stolen from them till they take their "Custer Died For Your Sins"
bumber sticker off their cars...

[hlmeankin]

Kind of like the US Government telling the Native Ameicans they won't negotiate the return of the resources they stole, until
they take the "Custer Died For Your Sins"
off their cars...

[Joachim Martillo]

Here is a piece from Joseph Massad on the Nakba: http://thearabadvocate.blogspot.com/2008/05/resisting-nakba-by-joseph-massad-nakba.html .

He actually explains why I prefer the term holoexaleipsis.

Nakba suggests a specific calamity that occurred in a specific time-frame. In point of fact Palestinians and to a lesser extent non- or anti-Zionist Jews were subjected to a process of erasure (exaleipsis) that started in the nineteenth century and that continues to this day.

From http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/04/holoexaleipsis-holocaust-holosphage-and.html.

We in America really do have to rethink and revise our understanding of the Holocaust, and if we need to identify an archetypal genocide to use as the measure of all other modern genocides, the Holoexaleipsis, which is the Great Erasure that includes the Palestinian Nakba or Catastrophe, provides the best model. It was planned in cold-blood by racist Eastern Europeans during the late 19th century, the first major mass murders and ethnic cleansing took place during 1947-8, and it continues to this day right before our eyes. The Holoexaleipsis includes wholesale demonization of Arabs and Muslims along with the erasure of whole fields of scholarship (including Jewish as well as Arabic and Islamic studies) so that they can be rewritten to justify Zionist and American depredations on the peoples of the Middle East.

In http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/04/followup-ii-origins-of-modern-jewry.html .

Despite the claims about the severity of Czarist pogroms, the conscription crisis of 1850-4 probably represented the worst period for Russian Jewry.

Not only did the Russian government incorrectly conclude that the Jewish communities could supply more recruits, but it levied fines well beyond the resources of communities to pay.

In 1854 when Czar Nicholas I finally realized that the situation was intolerable, he abated both the fines and the levies of conscripts.

While conditions for Russian Jewry came nowhere near the persecution and oppression that Palestinians have suffered since the creation of the State of Israel, by the death of Nicholas in 1855, traditional Russian Jewish communal structures had shattered.

-----------

I am uncomfortable with the way Russian pogroms are discussed in the USA now that no one really has any memory of 19th century Czarist Russia.

Jews were not the only targets. In a few notable cases Jews incited pogroms against economic competitors. Not every pogrom was really a pogrom. Some of the violence resulted criminal gang wars, and in a few cases, pogroms were a reaction to Jewish white-slaving.

But I suspect that a lot of the Jewish discourse on pogroms was meant to distract from the reality of Jewish terrorist groups that engaged in assassination, sabotage, and attempts of violent overthrow of the government.

In http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/09/jews-and-power-versus-israel-lobby-and.html , I ask whether Harvard should fire Ruth Wisse for moral turpitude.

The Modern Jewish Canon by Ruth Wisse (Harvard University) provides a particularly good example of using Jewish Studies as a soapbox to serve Zionist racism and to demonize Palestinians or Arabs in general. She writes on p. 98.

"The logic of language imposed itself on the kindred writers, Kafka and Brenner, to spectacularly different ends. Brenner's hero Hefetz went mad within the security of Hebrew while his author was murdered by Arab assailants who imported the pogrom politics of Europe into the Middle East."

We all know that there were problems between the native Palestinian population and the Ashkenazi colonists, but to claim that the Palestinians were importing pogrom politics from Europe is over the top, corresponds to the most extreme Revisionist defamation of the native population and was not the opinion of most of the Zionist leadership. She could simply have stated that Arab assailants killed Hefetz during the violence of 1929. Anything more crosses the boundary into propaganda, and one has to question the decision to inject Zionist anti-Palestinian politics into a book that is supposed to be a semi-scholarly survey of modern Jewish literature.

Her comment also shows the typical Zionist lack of imagination. The racist anti-Arab nonsense in The Modern Jewish Canon almost looks plagiarized from Hitler's Professors, for Max Weinreich unfortunately and irrelevantly incorporated almost identical bigotry into his rather useful book. He probably unconsciously absorbed these ideas from the standard 1930s Zionist anti-Palestinian propaganda.

[5 dancing shlomos]

thank you,Joachim Martillo.

[neocognitism]

More evidence this struggle is one over words and their definitions.

Perceptions of legitimacy and justice lie in the subconscious connotations of the words we have lodged in our vernacular.

For instance, I say that the words said to the UN by the Israeli representative may not be Holocaust denial, but there sure as hell are holocaust denial.

[5 dancing shlomos]

off topic and it is ok. israel and israelis-in-amurderkin-camouflage demand we stay away from nakba. holo??????? is ok. no one can say it or remember it except joachim martillo.

a snip from gideon levy:

"The contribution of American Jewry to Israel may on balance be positive. They financed and built for us quite heavily; we in turn **offered them a safe haven** and a source of pride."

can someone remind me when israel offered american jews a 'safe haven' and from what. unless he is referring to laundering money or to escape arrest for crimes, i dont have a clue.

those iowa rabbis serving up kosher meth might want to avail themselves of this haven which the kosher tax has helped to build.

[5 dancing shlomos]

forgot. kosher meth courtesy of xymphora