Words matter
No one ever objects to the conciliatory adage that the truth always lies somewhere in the middle, but if ever there were a “dispute” that makes a mockery of this vapid and vacuous platitude, it is surely the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I say “so-called” because the standard locution subtly but unmistakably connotes the primacy of the Israeli side and belies the all-too-often obscured fact that this is not a “conflict” in the ordinary sense of the word, which seems to give the impression of symmetry between two given parties. This is not a pedantic point — the question of terminology is just as relevant today as when the shorthand “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” became widely used by scholars and historians in the 1970s and 1980s. You will catch the feeling of what I mean if you have ever winced at the use of the word “war” to describe what is happening in — or, rather, what Israel is doing to — Gaza. We might engage in rigorous and sincere debates about whether the word “genocide” is applicable in this case — I myself am a bit queasy on this question — but I hope we can all agree that, at this point, the word “war” is little more than a cruel and bitter euphemism for the collective punishment of a entire people. In other words, it matters what we call things.