As chaos erupts in Israel-Gaza, there's a reason we're fighting about our language in Britain

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As chaos erupts in Israel-Gaza, there's a reason we're fighting about our language in Britain

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If the first casualty of war is truth on the battlefield, the second — for those watching anguish and destruction from further away — is the ability to listen to different perceptions of the same conflict. Since Hamas’s atrocities on October 7 and the ensuing Israeli counter-attack on Hamas targets, embedded among the hospitals, schools and residential areas of Gaza, that gap has widened remarkably fast.

I say this in the knowledge that recent events have provided many terrible moments when it is unreasonable to fudge responses. To respond to the slaughter, abduction, torture and humiliation of the kibbutz-dwellers and festival-goers on October 7 by bypassing the atrocities, heading to demos blaming Israel and its allies, shows how quickly self-righteousness vanquishes sensitivity.

You can also see, as the arguments and aversions seep into our debate, how quickly partisanship blunts our feelings. At worst it can mean, for those rightly appalled by lack of sympathy for Israel, downplaying the fate of civilian Palestinians caught in the cross-fire of the counter-offensive in fear of their lives and with little certainty of being able to return to their homes when instructed by Israeli forces to move.

In truth most of us will pick something of a side, weighing up the balance of harms as best we can. It should not mean the same thing as refusing empathy to anyone who is not on the same team.

There is a spiral, fed by the need to shout louder when shouted at yourself, which draws us into a vortex

Yet I have heard too many arguments that tell us what the speaker “doesn’t want to hear” in objection to their case. (Why not? If your argument is sound, you can take it).

Glib claims that portray Israelis as land-stealing settlers are as selective as they historically incomplete. But they find an awkward mirror image in the story that Palestinians do not have claims to land or a more secure future or that their identity has been somehow manufactured. And whatever the historiography underlying this, both “sides” will continue to co-exist in a small piece of land.

The whole reason after all that this has proved intractable is that there is no durable solution on offer, in which one side simply “wins” and the other “loses”.

It would be foolish to expect people who are deeply affected by dreadful events, losing families to bloodshed in Israel or Gaza, to shrug and not channel rage or despair. But there is also an external spiral — fed by social media and the requirement to shout louder when someone has shouted at you — which draws us into this vortex, even at a distance and vicariously.

I had one of those encounters this week with a guest at a reception who, on spotting a journalist, laid on me his contempt for some newspapers and owners he despised. One way or the other readers will have had their own such run-ins — invariably conversations which assume that you, the listener, share the complainant’s viewpoint and there is never nuance, curiosity or any scintilla of self-questioning attached.

The present Middle East crisis, on top of many others the world has to offer, risks driving us further into the assumption that “everyone” we respect or identify with will agree with us or prove their inferiority if they do not. I now have a bulging inbox telling me where the “moral high ground” is, and who has it or has lost it in Israel/Gaza, or that I should promote the one or the other march, mass letter write-in or a rival one. Far less often do I hear people asking each other what they think and why.

In this extremis, we are not obliged to cower to ancient hatreds or excuse the inexcusable. When “militants” are really terrorists we should say so. But when the BBC falters on balance or bravery, it may be because it has made a misjudgement or failed under pressure — not because it is deeply anti one side or another. Bad faith is not a great principle on which to share the public square.

So language matters, outside the screaming classes, because it frames and deepens emotions when nerves are already frayed. I have blanched on hearing Hamas killers described as “animals”: partly because however grim and unforgivable the attacks, they were carried out by humans who should be called to account as such, but also because I have never seen good come from dehumanising even those we fear and despise.

It also means thinking twice if you are on the “ceasefire” ticket for Gaza about the wisdom of standing alongside those whose inane chants are less about liberation than a creed of vituperation against Israel. Words count for a lot in days like these. And so does the company we keep.

Anne McElvoy is executive editor at POLITICO

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