Over on Rafah Kid, Mark links to this article about the death of Rachel Corrie. In the comments, the usual debate is raging. (I say “debate” in the spirit of being extremely generous to some of the contributors.)
Reading it reminds me of one major problem in dealing with these issues. In this case, the spark is me noticing that some of the pro-occupation posters tend to make absolute statements about who the Palestinians are, namely that they are a people who overwhelmingly want to wipe out Israel and kill as many innocent Israelis as they need to in order to make that happen.
These people have defined the Palestinians as evil.
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A few blog entries back I had a comment from someone called Hannah. She’s in high school in the States, and says, quoting my Palestine premises post:
[me] * Shared humanity tells us that the majority of people on both sides are
prepared to compromise for peace, and seek to minimise suffering for those on
the opposing side.
[Hannah] I’ve tried to say this before … but they just pull out the “60% support
terrorism and dont want peace” statistic … how should I defend myself in this
situation?
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Again, the Palestinians are being defined as evil.
I replied to Hannah recently, but I don’t know how much sense I made and I didn’t keep a copy so I can’t check. Anyway, I thought it might be good to throw this one open to any and all who might be reading:
How can you talk about being pro-Palestinian when your opponents are defining the Palestinians as evil?
Or to flip it around,
How can those who define Palestinians as evil be made to question this definition?
Please respond. I’ll email Hannah to tell her we’re talking about this here.
5 thoughts on “Challenging Definitions”
Comments are closed.
Not an easy one. I don’t have an answer, per se, but hopefully an idea of an approach.
“There are no neutral concepts and no neutral language for expressing political positions within a moral context. Conservatives have developed their own partisan moral-political concepts and partisan moral-political language. Liberals have not. The best that can be done for the sake of a balanced discourse is to develop a meta-language – a language about the concepts and language used in morality and politics.”
p 385, Moral Politics – George Lakoff
Good and evil is a moral thing, right? And the media is dominated by conservative/right wing language and conceptions – the debate has largely been framed in their moral worldview. So we need to understand the underlying moral worldview, and how it differs from our own. This is what Lakoff’s – interestingly mostly non-partisan – analysis of language and the unconscious structures behind it is about. It’s a pretty fascinating take on how we think. He’s a cognitive linguist, so he’s interested in what’s there in practice rather than in theory.
His analysis of how and why different ends of the political spectrum misunderstand each other deserves to take a central place in debate. And his argument that we need to create a new meta language to discuss these issues should become a priority.
(An interview with Lakoff/introduction to this is at http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml )
Reframing the issue as one of the Palestinian’s right to live without interference would be a good start. This is a moral value respected by the conservative mindset. Resistance to illegal occupation. But it is hard when the Israelis are framed as the victim, and with the ongoing differential media coverage of deaths on each side and general reinforcing of a moral system.
My short answer is “refer to http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Disposable-Heroes-Of-Hiphoprisy/Language-Of-Violence.html ” =)
But to clarify further… to even engage with a “good vs evil” debate that involves real people in a real situation is to dehumanise the partcipants. This makes it incredibly hard to counter the arguments those who use such language, because to use their terms in such a debate means accepting their conceptions of good and evil.
I feel the best approach to counter such arguements by pointing out the dehumanising nature of any such “good” or “evil” ideals. By reminding the listener of the inherent humanity of the people involved in a conflict. This may require isolating those qualities that are viewed as “good” and reparsing them as qualities that are viewed as “human”. Because those qualities exist on both sides of any conflict, as much as the undesirable qualities that are viewed as “evil”.
Scott writes:
This may require isolating those qualities that are viewed as “good” and reparsing them as qualities that are viewed as “human”.
Me reply:
But how is this to be done? How can Hannah, in this case, say “hey, good really means human, and these people are human” and have it stick?
How can you make someone see an enemy as a human being? I foundered on concrete suggestions – what might Hannah, or others like her, actually do or say?
I have a list of kid’s books about this sort of Global Awareness…not sure how much help it’ll be but “A life like mine” published by UNICEF is very good.
Changing someone’s opinion is never easy. Getting them to see that a race or a nationality cannot be judged as a whole seems near impossible.
I fully believe that everyone is hard-wired to have ‘enemies’, conflict with those you are at odds with is one of the simplest ways of approaching self-definition. ‘I’m not like you’; ‘You’re evil, therefore I’m good’ etc. I reckon this happens in all walks of life, from the near miss traffic incident “you freaking idiot”, to sport “in your face!” comments, even through to private contempt for deranged world leaders. Every situation like this sets up an internal position where the self is better by comparison.
It’s no different with the Palestinians are evil definition. It is a simple way for Israelis to raise themselves above the conflict. It’s all too easy for them to cement this belief when the retaliatory actions of the Palestinians are bombings and terror, never mind that these modes of action may be the only ones available to them. When driven to desperation, people do desperate things.
I was talking along these lines last night, and came up with the theory that to question definitions you have to allow a person to suspend their belief. In much the same way that people can go to the theatre and suspend disbelief there needs to avenues for a person to suspend personal belief.
In lesser conflict situations this is easy, for example sport where you can play as hard and aggressively against the enemy for the duration of the game, but at the conclusion happily shake hands with those same people and call it a day.
In the conflict situation between Palestine and Israel suspension of belief is a far more difficult proposition. There are no rules, there is no defined period of ‘play’ and no foreseeable end-game to aim for. By this I mean that both sides have very different goals – they are not even playing the same ‘game’ [Peace as a shared goal is an invented aim imposed by those looking at the conflict, not involved within it]. So there are no modes of conduct available in any facet of this situation for the people to be able to come together and shake it off—to suspend their belief in the system.
If there is a way to create such suspension then my limited thinking on the matter hasn’t found the approach. It is also overly simplistic to use sporting analogies to discuss this situation, but that was how the beers made me think last night. I apologise if those more personally involved in the conflict find it offensive. It is far too complex a problem to resolve in words thousands of miles away, but I wish that there was a way, and I’m going to continue thinking about it.