Amid a genocide war unparalleled in modern times, moral battles rage and political alignments shift. Words prove to have a leading role in describing, categorizing, and ultimately evaluating current events and the place they will occupy in history books. While using language, concepts, and terms as a false mask for what’s happening instead of revealing it, Jonathan Glazer steals the spotlight with his succinct words upon winning the Oscar for the Best International Feature Film “The Zone of Interest.” “Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst,” writer-director Jonathan Glazer said. “Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel, or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims, this dehumanization, how do we resist?”
Glazer’s language is attenuated to a large extent because the Zionist occupation of Palestinian land didn’t merely lead to a “conflict” but rather it led to a war of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and unprecedented massacre against Palestinians continuing for 75 years filled with exterminations, displacement, oppression, and deprivation of freedom and human rights. Yet, Glazer’s mere hint at an implicit stance and his question of who is responsible today for stripping Palestinians of their humanity compared to the Nazis who were responsible for stripping Jews of their humanity in the past stirred the anger of Zionists. Commentaries and articles began suggesting that Hollywood in the past used to know how to distinguish between good and bad.
Nevertheless, Glazer’s mere suggestion, even implicitly, of comparing what his kinsfolk endured in 1938 to what Palestinians are facing at the hands of Zionists is significant. His stance gains importance as it places his humanity above all considerations, despite his own history and work in a different context; a history that has given rise to a stark contradiction within himself. Glazer’s stance also comes as supportive and significant endorsement for all movements that have emerged in the United States and the West to shed light on the massacre perpetrated by “Israel” against Palestinians, especially the strong stances of Jewish communities who have vehemently expressed their rejection of the crimes against Palestinians.
Comparing the free voices worldwide, belonging to all sects and religions, and their repeated calls for an immediate halt to the genocide with the stances of Western governments that use language as a mask for their complicity in this dirty aggression against women and children and the destruction of homes over their owners’ heads, we conclude that the political pyramid in the West is upside down as there are no political leaders, no major political figures who dare hold defending humanity as supreme. Examining the language used by the American administration today, you wish it would remain silent because everything it says is meaningless and worthless except to justify “Israel’s” crimes of genocide against the children and women of Gaza and to cover up its financial, military, and unethical partnership in these crimes.
What does the phrase “Washington supports a limited operation” mean? First, it’s not an operation but rather aggression, war, and genocide. And what are the limits of this aggression? How many innocent children and women must be killed before this aggression is considered unlimited? Do the genocide of Gaza, the destruction of its infrastructure, and the killing and displacement of two million Palestinians fall within the limits boasted by the agenda of Biden’s Zionist administration? Do the “humanitarian islands” sought to place Palestinians in remind us of the camps that still exist in the United States for remnants of indigenous populations, as living witnesses to the greatest violation of mankind’s humanity and dignity in history?
What does it mean for the Biden administration to support “Israel” operations against high-value Hamas targets in Rafah, as long as “Israel” avoids a wide-scale operation? What level of genocide crimes can be considered wide-scale if all this aggression over a period of one hundred and sixty days, witnessing the worst crimes against humanity, is not yet considered wide-scale? They want to pretend that the target is Hamas, but the real target is Palestine, the Arab identity of Palestine, the Arab identity as a whole, and the future of Arabs who are being killed while still in their mothers’ wombs. So, what genocide surpasses this genocide?
Since the start of this criminal aggression, the enemy and its allies have been manipulating their language to corner the readers’ and viewers’ opinions. Instead of demanding a global halt to the genocide crimes in Gaza and moving to serious negotiations, the enemy replaced halting ethnic cleansing crimes with the word “truce”, implying that the genocide is ongoing and any cessation would mean a return to it at the time chosen by the Zionist thugs who believe in genocide ideologically.
Now, weeks after the talk about a ceasefire without any seriousness from the perpetrators of genocide, the word “ceasefire” has been replaced with the word “respite”, as if the killer has become fatigued from destruction, displacement, and the killing and shedding of the blood of hundreds of thousands, 72% of whom are children and women, and now the killer needs a “respite” to regather his strength and resume killing once again after arranging his procedures to sentence the innocent souls of Palestinian children and women to suffocation and death.
In addition to using the media outlets they own worldwide, the perpetrators of the Zionist genocide throw publications from the air in southern Lebanon to create confusion among civilians or prompt them to consider what serves the enemy’s interests and enhances its ability to commit further genocide crimes supported by the Western media politically and militarily. The perpetrators of ethnic cleansing lead battles in international magazines and newspapers to accuse anyone who opposes them of anti-Semitism, deceiving people with misleading headlines, texts, and contexts along with deceptive intended lamentation on today’s extremism against the Zionist entity. After significant resignations in protest against an article by the Jewish writer Joanna Shain, which supports Zionism and all its crimes, the headline cannot be more misleading by claiming that the article calls for coexistence.
The level of distortion in terminology and language rises to the level of a real genocide waged by Zionist and Zionist-aligned media everywhere to cover up genocide crimes and weave a historical narrative that attributes all the sins of ethnic cleansing to October 7, ignoring 75 years of Zionist racist occupation of Palestinian land and people. The deliberate and persistent distortion of the narrative of what is truly going on aims at allowing the continuation of exterminating Palestinians and terrorizing anyone around the world who dares raise his/her voice in their support against this horrendous crime.
We are the nation of “Iqra” (Read), with which God has honored us in His Holy Quran, then where is the correct and precise Arab reading of all what afflicts this nation? Where are the authentic Arab narratives aspiring to reach the hearts and minds of the world in defense of the oppression of humanity, and in defense of the children who were not allowed to live and dream but were killed along with their dreams in their mothers’ wombs? Where is the thoughtful and systematic work of the intellectuals today? The battle rages not only in the land of Palestine but also worldwide and at all levels. Every contribution to uphold justice and repel aggression is significant and necessary, regardless of its size and scope. Just as raindrops create a torrent, so should anyone capable of creating a sentence, a painting, a scene, or a stance use their creativity to support and champion these marginalized and truly traumatized people.
