Friday, May 7, 2010

The language of Zionism


The reason for the ongoing "violence" in Israel and Palestine is not on account of Israeli colonialism at all but rather a direct result of mistranslation.

Joseph Massad provides an abridged lexicon of Zionist terminology
Al-Ahram Weekly

""Colonialism is peace; anti-colonialism is war." This is the unalterable equation that successive Israeli governments insist must determine the basis of all current and future relations between Israeli Jews and the Palestinians. Indeed, the deployment of the rhetoric of peace between Palestinians and Israeli Jews since the 1970s has been contingent on whether the Palestinians would acquiesce in this formula or insist on resisting it. The Oslo Accords were in large measure a ratification of this formula by the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Nonetheless, Palestinian resistance, violent and non- violent, to understanding "colonialism as peace" never fully subsided, even as the Palestinian Authority insisted that it become the law of the land.......

After 62 years of persistent Israeli colonialism of Palestine, unless President Obama and Israeli leaders understand that colonialism is war and anti-colonialism is peace and that the only viable state project in the area would be one that encompasses all Palestinians and Israeli Jews as equal citizens in it, whatever "peace plan" they offer to the Palestinians will be nothing short of a war plan."

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