There are any number of slogans linked to the Palestine / Israel conflict that mean different things to different people. Accordingly we must be incredibly careful in how we speak. Our words can have a different meaning for those who hear them from the meaning we intended to convey.

 Some well known examples spring to mind. 

Those who shout “Free Palestine” at demonstrations, marches or concert stages may well mean a free Palestine alongside a secure Israel. However, to many Jewish Israelis and British Jews these words are heard as a call for an attack on all Jewish residents between the Mediterranean and the Jordan and their expulsion from there to any country that might take them in. 

Another phrase “Am Israel Chai” (עם ישראל חי – The People of Israel Live) can sound like a war cry against the Palestinian people.  But when it is shouted by a Palestinian Israeli playing for the Israeli national football team, it takes on a quite different implication.

I personally do not use the word “Genocide” to describe what is happening in Gaza, even though the slaughter of Palestinians civilians by the Israeli forces has been without doubt excessive and inexcusable and even though some people in Israel do use that word. The reason I avoid using the word “Genocide” is that the term has such an emotional weight that using it will give supporters of Israel’s conduct a way of deflecting from the truth of what is happening. It will allow them instead to gloss over the terrible acts that are happening as long as they can argue that the conduct does not meet the legal standard of genocide. There is also the slightly pedantic point that, while the ICJ has accused Israel of Genocide, whether an actual genocide has happened is still to be determined.

There are plenty of other examples where words or phrases used by supporters of one side raise the hackles of the other side, blocking dialogue and stopping progress towards a just solution. 

This isn’t to say such words or phrases should never be used. However when using them we all need to be aware of their effect.  We need to be aware that that the effect that actually results may be very different from the one we intended. 

This is why I am calling for all of us to think about the words we use, in slogans, in speeches, in articles, to make sure we are contributing to mutual understanding and reconciliation rather than feeding the flames of hatred. 

* Leon Duveen is President of Liberal Democrats for Peace in the Middle East (ldfpme.org.uk), a group of Lib Dems working to support those trying to a solutions to the Palestine/Israel conflict and other conflicts in the region and to providing information about those working for peace there.