When activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla were being held in Ktziot prison, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir staged a photo op taunting them and saying, “I was proud that we are treating the ‘flotilla activists’ as terror supporters, whoever supports terrorism is a terrorist and deserves the conditions of terrorists”…the conditions in Ktziot prison.
This requires a little unpacking. First, Ben Gvir’s claim that the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), and the Conscience and Thousand Madleens flotilla that followed a week later, support terrorism requires a bit of jiujitsu. When Israel drops 2,000-pound dumb bombs on hospitals and defenseless people, they always insist they are actually targeting the hidden Hamas fighters in tunnels beneath the visible injury and death of people on the surface.
They make a distinction between the terrorist below ground and the “collateral damage” above. But when anyone tries to bring aid to the victims, Israel erases their own distinction between hidden fighters and visible victims and claim that the aid is for terrorists. They claim that the activists are supporting terrorists, and that the flotillas are “Hamas Flotillas.”
Next, Ben Gvir does a bit of leapfrog, claiming that the activists he just defined as terror supporters are themselves terrorists. And, as terrorists, they deserve to be held in a terrorist prison like Ktziot, because, apparently, all prisoners of Israel are terrorists.
Similar language was used by Defense Minister Israel Katz, saying that anyone still in Gaza City, for any reason at all, after the Israelis ordered them to move out were “terrorists or terror supporters.”
International activists kidnapped and brought to Israel by force, people simply being alive in a place Katz doesn’t want them to be, anyone near a place Israel has decided might be a Hamas tunnel – how are all these people terrorists? What actions have they taken to earn the accusation? Ben Gvir and Katz don’t say. This is, at best, broad and imprecise language.
In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell warned against this. He said that our language is, “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
Orwell also said that our words are often “meaningless, in the sense that they do not point to any discoverable object.” For a word to have meaning it has to refer to some thing: an object, an idea – something. Even the “yada, yada, yada” in the Seinfeld episode referred to the act of glossing over possibly important information.
How can the word terrorist used in this wildly imprecise way have any useful meaning? How can it lead to anything but imprecise and foolish thoughts? Can we actually think and talk about the important question of political violence with such a vague word? I don’t think so.
Excerpted: ‘What Does Terrorism Actually Mean? Maybe Orwell Can Help’.
Courtesy: Commondreams.org