I grew up in a family where language precision was valued highly. Probably too highly if I’m being honest. For much of my life I was a downright snob about whether people used the correct words and grammar to express themselves. It’s a funny thing to be from a poor, uneducated family and simultaneously as pompous as the poshest Brit.
I’m much less judgmental these days, and it’s a good thing because my brain (and thus my ability to remember how to spell words and form sentences) has deteriorated over the decades. Better not to throw stones in glass houses, as they say. That being said, I still work very hard to use language precisely. I write, think, and re-write even the simplest social media comment in an effort to say exactly what I mean.
Of course I’m not always successful. Sometimes I think I’m being as clear as possible and still fail to express myself effectively. Such miscommunications are fascinating to me. Sometimes when I hear how others interpreted what I wrote it is so wildly different from what I was thinking that it takes me by surprise, and I’m tempted to conclude they are willfully misrepresenting me for some nefarious purpose.
Words matter because they affect how people reason and feel about issues. Beyond just wanting to communicate effectively and be understood, I want to provoke critical thought and emotional connection to the topic. I don’t want to use the language of the ostensibly ‘neutral’ mainstream press, owned by billionaires and staffed by ideologues, but pretending to be objective and unbiased. But I also don’t deliberately obfuscate.
However I also know that some words cause people to tune out, reject, or dismiss the content of a statement or question simply because it makes them uncomfortable or indicates to them, rightly or wrongly, that it’s so biased as to be untrustworthy. So in general I try to avoid using such words when I’m trying to reach people who might not already agree with me or share my ideological bent.
‘Zionism’ and ‘genocide’ are trigger words like that. For many people (and I know this because I used to be one of them) ‘Zionist’ is just white supremacist code for ‘Jew’, ‘Zionism’ is code for ‘Judaism’, and ‘genocide’ is always hyperbole unless it’s being used to describe the Nazi holocaust or a legal judgement. I did a quick search of my writing and chat logs, and I don’t think I used the term ‘genocide’ to describe the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians until a few months after October 7, 2023.1
I don’t think I ever used the word ‘Zionist’ or ‘Zionism’ before then either2, and as I mentioned earlier until I started learning about the history of Palestine I assumed anyone who did use those words was just being antisemitic. Even now that I know very well what the words mean, I use them sparingly because I understand that many people are still confused by them.
I unreservedly oppose Zionism because I know it to be a settler-colonial ideology that demands a Jewish ethnostate in historic Palestine. However I also understand that the average American who might identify as ‘Zionist’ might just think it means Israel “has a right to exist”, which they probably understand loosely as “it would be wrong to ethnically cleanse or kill all the Jews in Israel”. So I don’t disparage people who express support for Israel as ‘Zios’ unless I know which “Zionism” they endorse. The colonial ideology or the misguided belief that they’re just being anti-antisemitic.
And all of this, I just remembered, leads up to the real reason I sat down to write today: to express how incredibly hard it is to constantly police my tone so as not to turn people off or give people fuel to smear or dismiss me, when all day every single day for nearly two years now I have seen a steady stream of abject horror on my social media feeds while the world is not only silent, but giving standing ovations to the criminal sociopaths orchestrating it and showering them with money and arms.
The temptation to use terms like ‘monster’, ‘demon’, ‘inhuman’, etc. to describe the Israelis is sometimes nearly overwhelming when I look at the carnage they are wreaking in Gaza, the West Bank, and all around the region. But they aren’t monsters, or demons, or inhuman (unfortunately they are very human) and I know that one of the only powers I have to make a difference, besides the work I do supporting BDS and other projects, is to try to reach people who don’t yet understand.
The first written reference I could find was in a post I wrote on a discussion forum when I first learned about Tech for Palestine from an interview with Paul Biggar by Ryan Grim.
One benefit of the embarrassing truth that I made over 36k posts on an online forum and chatted nearly every day with an online friend over the past 20 years is that I can effectively do a keyword search of my memory. I didn’t have many thoughts in that time that I didn’t write down as a post or a chat.
Thank you, Tom, and I can completely relate to everything you said, including having been a bit of a snob about language and the importance of being accurate. Back in my youth in Israel we were definitely indoctrinated to think of anyone who used the word ‘Zionism’ or ‘Zionist’ as an antisemite. So your sense of this is most definitely accurate. You know my writings well enough to know that I repeat ad-nauseam that Zionism is a settler-colonial project and what it means. I don’t hold back usually when I tell people that if they support Zionism/the state of Israel, they support a settler-colonial project.
Like you I try to educate those who don’t know, or those who were educated to have the blinkers I used to have. Thanks for writing. Your voice is important.
Thanks for this, Tom. I'm picky about words and their use too but, not being Jewish, I'm a little more sensitized to the impact of the word Zionist, even though I see it as a settler-colonialist project and as supporting the genocide in Gaza.