Violence in words

Ahmed Bouzid

Where should you go to read calls for outright ethnic cleansing and population transfer, blood libels, blatantly racist slurs, open agitation for regicide, and incitement to use deadly force against civilians? Belgrade's "Glas Novosti", Baghdad's "Al-Jumhuriyyah", Rwanda's "World Wide Gazeteer"? Try North America's most respected publications.

Ethnic cleansing: in a piece titled "A coalition of terror", published by the Jewish World Review on June 6, 2001, Cal Thomas wrote: "The Jews have misplaced their faith. Gifted with thinking the best about human potential, Jews have made decisions that too often are not in their interests -- such as allowing mortal enemies to live among them and giving up land seized for their own protection after five wars and numerous terrorist attacks… Israel should declare its intention to transfer large numbers of its Palestinian residents to Arab nations." A perfectly rational argument very much on par with Milosevic's rationale for transferring his alleged "mortal enemies" from Bosnia, so that peace can at long last reign among an ethnically pure Serb population.

Blood libel: a May 23rd column by Jonathan Kellerman published in the Los Angels Times equated calls by the international community, human rights organizations, peace activists in Israel and beyond, to dismantle illegal settlements in Palestinian territory with Hitler's Judenrein policy: "Strip away the label 'settlers' and substitute 'Jews'" Mr. Kellerman wrote, "and the pronouncements of ostensibly right-thinking people degrade to: Peace will come to the region only if Jews are expelled from areas where their presence inflames Palestinians. In other words, ethnic cleansing." Imagine if Kellerman's argument had been used against those who called for Saddam Hussein's invading forces to be expelled from Kuwait. Even Baghdad's Al-Jumhuriyyah was not so imaginative!

Racism: Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims have been routinely demonized and stereotyped in the North American press in shockingly raw terms and images that bring what we thought was the distant, unpleasant past of violent racism to the living present. As Toronto-based writer and broadcaster Michael Coren wrote back in October of last year: "The fact is that in North America and most of the Western world the Arab peoples are not treated at all fairly and seem to be the final example of where racism is permissible, even respectable." An understatement, to say the least, if one were to take a look at a cartoon published on June 5th by the Canadian Edmonton Journal. In it, Arabs and Palestinians were labeled as "Murderous", "Evil", "Assassins", "Killers", and "Animals". Replace the words "Arab" from that cartoon by any other ethnic label and chances are that the editorial board would never have allowed the cartoon to run. Why did it in this case: because the targets are mere Palestinians and Arabs, not worthy of the same decency extended to other ethnic groups.

Regicide: in his Washington Times June 7 piece, "Rationale for regicide?", Amos Perlmutter, professor of Political Science at the American University in Washington, informed us that "Mr. Arafat himself is the most impoverished little peanut, a ruthless one." Equating Hitler and Stalin with Arafat, thus trivializing the evil of two demons and demonizing the official representative of a people without a land or an army, Mr. Perlmutter went on to argue: "Hitler fought the war to the last moment of his life, killing millions of Germans and allies. Stalin died trying to kill the Jews of Russia. Once they died, the bleeding stopped and the utopian dream disappeared. Mr. Arafat must go…. He must fall on his own sword." That international law clearly stands against the assassination of leaders is too fine a point for Prof. Perlmutter to bother with.

Violence against civilians: in his April 20, 2001, Washington Post column titled, "What Happened to The Powell Doctrine?", Charles Krauthammer argued that Colin Powell's strategy of using "overwhelming force" should be adopted wholesale by Israel in dealing with the Palestinian uprising. "First we're going to cut it off," Mr. Krauthammer fondly recalled Powell's words, "Then we're going to kill it." The "it" that Mr. Powell was referring to was of course the Iraqi Army. But for Mr. Krauthammer, the "it" in the case of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict should refer to the Palestinian Intifadha and all those who have participated in the uprising against continued Israeli occupation, the overwhelming majority of whom are civilians. The killing of nearly 500 Palestinians, as far as Mr. Krauthammer is concerned, is a sign of great "restraint" from the Israeli armed forces. Only with greater violence - and killing on a much larger scale - will the uprising be brought to a halt. A similar argument was articulated in The New York Times by a man Tim Russert loves to call "America's dean of journalism", William Safire. Mr. Safire wrote the following in his June 4, 2001 column: "With doves turned to realists and pressure from Bibi Netanyahu to defend the nation, and with Israelis unwilling to further expose their children to lives of terror, Sharon will let Sharon be Sharon." And who is the real Sharon? The man responsible for more than 10,000 Lebanese civilian deaths during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, a man found by an Israeli court to be "personally responsible" for the massacre of hundreds of defenseless Palestinian refugees. Imagine urging the world to clamor for Milosevic to let Milosevoc be Milosevic so that the Bosnian headache can be brought to a swift conclusion!

Calls of ethnic cleansing, blood libels, raw racism, open agitation for regicide, and incitement to inflict more death and destruction upon civilians: such violent speech is openly tolerated by respected North American publications. But violence only begets more violence. We have seen this truism cruelly illustrated day in and day out in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israelis kill Palestinians, destroy their homes and confiscate their land, and Palestinians retaliate with rocks, mortar shells, and suicide bombers. The cycle will not be broken unless and until violence -- both in deed and in word -- is deemed beyond the pale of civilized behavior.