Changes in how Palestinians/Arabs talk about Jews

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We lived under the rule of the self-proclaimed “Jewish State.” [...] The army declared itself a Jewish army and marched under what it has called a Jewish flag. Jerusalem city councilmen boasted “tak[ing] house after house” because “the bible says that this country belongs to the Jewish people,” and Knesset members sang similar tunes. These legislators weren’t fringe or far-right: the Israeli nation-state law explicitly enshrines “Jewish settlement” as a “national value … to encourage and promote.”

Still, though this was no secret, we were instructed to treat it as such, sometimes by our parents, sometimes by well-meaning solidarity activists. We were instructed to ignore the Star of David on the Israeli flag, and to distinguish Jews from Zionists with surgical precision. It didn’t matter that their boots were on our necks, and that their bullets and batons bruised us. Our statelessness and homelessness were trivial. What mattered was how we spoke about our keepers, not the conditions they kept us under—blockaded, surrounded by colonies and military outposts—or the fact that they kept us at all.

Language was more of a minefield than the border between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights, and we, children at the time, were expected to hop around them, hoping we don’t accidentally step on an explosive trope that would discredit us. Using the “wrong words” had the magical ability to make things disappear; the boots, bullets, batons, and bruises all become invisible if you say anything in jest or in fury. Even more dangerously, believing in “the wrong things” rendered you deserving of this brutality. Citizenship and the right to movement weren’t the sole privileges robbed from us, simple ignorance was a luxury as well.

As Palestinians, we understand from a young age that the semantic violence we practice with our words dwarfs the decades of systemic and material violence enacted against us by the self-proclaimed Jewish State. A drone is one thing, but a trope—a trope is unacceptable. We learn to internalize the muzzle.

So, I heeded these calls—what else is a 10-year-old supposed to do?—and I learned about Hitler and the Holocaust, I learned about the nose stereotype, the poisoned wells, the bankers, the vampires, the snakes and the lizards (I just found out about the octopus), and I learned that, when speaking to diplomats visiting our zoo of a neighborhood, the settlers squatting in our home must be the secondary point of my presentation, second to an effusive denunciation of global antisemitism. And when my 80-something grandmother addressed those foreign visitors, I corrected her mid-sentence whenever she described the Jewish settlers in our house as, well, Jewish.

A decade and some years later and not much has changed. The boot remains there; so are the bullets and batons (and I would be remiss not to mention the innovative genius of the AI-powered robot firearms recently added to the Jewish State’s arsenal).

The government titles its project in the Galilee as “the Judaization of the Galilee,” and its quasi-institutions do the same. As for the council members that promised to take “house after house,” alongside their success in stealing houses, in Sheikh Jarrah, the Old City, Silwan, and elsewhere, they routinely march in our towns with megaphones and flags, chanting “we want Nakba now.” The judges still bang their gavels to ensure the continuation of this Nakba; still rule in favor of Jewish supremacy. And, despite disagreeing with the Supreme Court on various things, parliamentarians legislate in accordance with that supremacist attitude. Some openly state the fact that Jewish life is simply “more important than [our] freedom” (and sometimes they’re even nice enough to apologize to Arab TV presenters as they deliver them these hard truths).

A decade and some years later, the status quo remains as is. And we—how my heart breaks for us—we continue dancing among the land mines. We continue betting on morality and humanity, as they bet on their guns.

A few weeks ago, 16 Israeli police officers turned off their body cameras and branded, as in physically etched, the Star of David into the cheek of 22-year-old Orwa Sheikh Ali, a young man they arrested from the Shufat refugee camp.

Also a few weeks ago, MEMRI, a media watch group co-founded by a former Israeli military intelligence officer, released footage of PA President Mahmoud Abbas stating that Europeans “fought [the Jews] because of their social role” and “usury,” and “not because of their religion.”

In response, a group of renowned Palestinian intellectuals, many of whom I admire and respect, published an open letter “unequivocally condemn[ing]”—guess what?—Abbas’ “morally and politically reprehensible comments.”

One could call their joint statement a ‘strategic’ move to negate the belief that Palestinians are born bigoted. Others may say it represents what having a “consistent moral code” looks like. I’m certain some signatories believe our so-called moral authority makes it incumbent upon us to deplore historical revisionism “vis-a-vis the Holocaust,” and to lead by example in rejecting all forms of racism, no matter how rhetorical.

Whatever it is, when I read it, I felt a sense of deja vu. Here we are, caught in a discursive crisis once more, hastily responding to crimes we haven’t committed. The strategy of defending ourselves against the baseless charge of antisemitism has historically brought us closer to it. And, more than that, such an impulse inadvertently elevates the history of Jewish suffering, which is certainly studied, if not honored, above our present-day suffering, a suffering that is denied and disputed.

Apparently that charter change was designed to fake people out.

As far as the “Arab Street” is concerned I have known about the anti Jewish indoctrination in schools for decades. A recent poll said 62 percent of Gazans support Hamas which would seem to conform to the belief of most Israelis that Palestinians want them gone or dead or both. That poll has become an Israeli talking point. While I suspect they are right I do not trust a poll where the respondents are living under a brutal theocratic dictatorship.

What about the "Arab street" outside of Gaza? Are you sure that the anti-Jewish indoctrination in schools, in various Arab countries generally, is still a thing?

The article I linked to at the beginning of this thread would seem to indicate that it isn't. Ditto this video that Face of Boo posted, on which see both his and my comments here.

Apparently that charter change was designed to fake people out.

I imagine in countries that signed the Abraham accords that is being changed. In Saudi Arabia which before the war was getting ready to sign a peace agreement is changing. The Palestinian Authority textbooks are pretty bad