140 characters, that’s the number of characters one has today in the world to get their message across. That's the attention span of most people under the age of 40. And all too often that's the depth the average person is willing to go to understand something that they are being told.
But this post isn't about 140 characters or sound bytes, its about the legitimacy of the written word, its about how we assimilate everything we read without really knowing (or caring) if its accurate, and its how as a result our world is turning into something dark and sinister. It's where we turn terrorists into human rights activists and human rights activists into terrorists.
And it all started a few short years ago, even before Twitter and before we had the Internet on our cell phones. I remember during the second Intifada, when Israel went into Jenin to arrest terrorists, sending soldiers into the line of fire instead of just dropping bombs in an effort to avoid the death of Palestinian civilians. It was the first time heard something that just didn't make sense to me. Some Palestinian representative or another was saying to the media that Israel was committing Genocide in the West Bank.
I thought to myself wait, Genocide? Sure Israel is taking action in Jenin, and both Israelis and Palestinians are dying just like in any war, but Genocide is the intentional murder of an entire ethnic people. What Israel is doing in Jenin isn't genocide. In fact, I was in Germany at the time and my friends asked me if it was true, and I was shocked that they even had to ask. I mean, don't they know what genocide is? Are they not capable of understanding this for themselves?
It was on that day that I woke up to the fact that the Muslim and Arab world didn't use the English language properly, and that educated and intelligent people didn't make much of an effort to understand if what was said was really true. And from that day onward I paid more attention to what the Arab and Muslim leadership said, and realized that they would accuse Israel of the worst crimes, genocide, war crimes, call Israel Nazis, and accuse us of Apartheid, not because there was any real similarity between what Israel was doing and the meaning of these words, but because they had no interest in portraying the situation as it was. In fact, their goal was to convince the world that Israel was the embodiment of every evil concept ever conceived.
And guess what, they succeeded.
And it's not because it's true. Its because Yasser Arafat, the person who I credit with founding the movement of what I'll call the twisting of the English language, and the inability of Western society to distinguish between right and wrong, made it a policy to always, at every opportunity, accuse Israel of the worst and every conceivable crime, believing that if they said it enough, and it was repeated enough, in association with Israel, that people would believe it.
Let's look at it theoretically for a moment, as a point of linguistics. We know what a cherry is, and we know what a watermelon is. But if the majority of the world starts to call a cherry a watermelon, then after a period of time, that cherry actually BECOMES a watermelon. Maybe not physically, but conceptually. And this would no doubt result in confusion between the characteristics of a cherry and a watermelon. For while a watermelon would still be a fruit, it would be very small, and now it would have a pit. While a cherry would be large. They'd both be red inside, but outside a watermelon would also be green outside.
Yasser Arafat and the Arab and Islamic world have large numbers of people that strapped bombs to themselves and walked into busses and pizza parlors to kill innocent civilians. They call them freedom fighters. And in Israel, we have policemen and soldiers whose job it is to stop these "freedom fighters" from killing our children. Often these "freedom fighters" hide behind their own children, and as a result of them putting their children into the line of fire, their children get killed (this also happens on a large scale like we saw in Gaza). Subsequently, Yasser Arafat, and the Arab and Muslim world would call Israeli police officers and soldiers "terrorist child killers." The media outlets would quote him and make the quote a headline which might read "Israel murders Palestinian Children." And viola, in the International psyche, uncritical of the title, looking to keep up-to-date, but not read the article, or if they did, not using their judgment to understand the circumstances, Israelis would be transformed into child murders and terrorists.
Another favorite term projected onto Israel is Nazis. And one of the most common arguments for calling Israel "Nazis" is that Israeli action during wartime or when fighting terrorists result in death or destruction, like any military action. To the Muslim or Arab leader making the claim this makes no difference. It also makes no difference to them that the Nazis are known for rounding up millions of people of a specific ethnic group (primarily Jews), either using them for slave labor while starving them to death (calculated to be efficient to save food) or sending them straight to death by gassing, then after dying pulling out their teeth and cutting their hair to use in industry, then burning their bodies to hide the evidence.
Today I had a debate with a Turk on Twitter. One avukatoglu. He was throwing every slander at the book at me. He called me a terrorist (I've never held a weapon in my life and the only people I may have terrorized at some point are my sister or my wife), he accused me of "liking to kill children," and he said "there's no difference between Israel and Hitler" (hate to tell you Mr. avukatoglu, but Israel is a country, and Hitler was a person). Another Twit (literally) by the name of minnigul joined in the fray and said "Unlike nazis, Israel chooses to kill millions without any need for secracy." Apparently these are the facts our Arab and Muslims friends are taught. And I hate to tell you Mr. minnigul, Israel hasn't killed a million people, they sure haven't killed as many as the #Turks during the #ArmenianGenocide.
You get the point. Though if you don't, the point is the Arab and Muslim population have no value for the actual meaning of a word, they don't care if its used properly, or whether its accurate description, they just want to associate Israel with everything bad possible. And with the media joining in the chorus by quoting every nutty Arab and Muslim leader like Muammar al-Gaddafi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and yes, Turkey's own Recep Erdoğan, calling Israel a Nazi state of child killers or whatever the flavor of the day, and using these quotes as their headlines, well the general population who have an attention span of 140 characters see this as their news, and begins to believe it.
Another common accusation leveled at Israel is that it practices Apartheid; even senile old Jimmy Carter titled his latest book "Israel 'Peace, Not Apartheid." I'd say too bad old Jimmy doesn't have a clue what apartheid was, but the truth is he probably does, its more likely he was trying to make a politically motivated statement, like his Saudi financial backers, and not an accurate one.
Apartheid was a political system that discriminated against people of color, and determined the rights a person received by the color of their skin. In Israel, under the law all of its citizens have equal rights. Arabs and Jews share the same benches, can sit anywhere on the bus, can vote and can go to whatever school they choose. What Mr. Carter was apparently trying to do was to confuse the uninitiated, hiding the fact that Palestinian Arabs are not Israeli citizens, so don't have rights in the State of Israel, just like Mexicans living in Mexico don't have the same rights in the United States as Mexican citizens living in America with American citizenship. No matter, Mr. Carter, we know you've become morally confused too. Maybe in addition to check your moral compass, I'd recommend also getting yourself checked for Alzheimer's, or at least hypocrisy.
What's interesting is that I'm not the first to notice this phenomenon among Muslims or those that speak Arabic. It's been noted by others that Islam, being a monotheistic religion and being against idolatry, uses Arabic words as their almost sole mode of decoration. It's true; you can see it on the ceilings and the walls of their mosques, and in their societies. And there are those that claim that the actual meaning of a word is less important in Arabic as the reaction it creates, a very interesting theory indeed.
And if it was only the freewheeling use of the English language by the Muslim and Arab world with no regard for their actual meaning, it might not have been that important. But a few very specific developments over the past decade have resulted in the English language not only losing its original meaning, but due to the role that language plays in our consciousness and grasp of the world, it has resulted in it impacting our values for life, justice, desire or ability to distinguish right from wrong, and our very definition of morality.
For how could it have not, what with events such as the Turkish flotilla in which what the world calls a "humanitarian organization" (the IHH), also being a terrorist organization. In fact, many major organizations labeled by the West as terrorist organizations also have a charity wing, including Hamas and Hezbollah. And many Western leaders, including President Barack Obama, publicly declare that these charity wings are legitimate, how's that for confusing! Can you imagine if the Red Cross had a military wing that trained terrorists to attack and kill innocent civilians and launch missles at population centers? It’s the same thing, really it is.
So what are these other developments? Well, first there's multiculturalism, also known as tolerance. A primarily European practice in which people are taught of the need respect other's sensitivities, religious practices, and traditions. In Europe, multiculturalism has become a religion in itself, particularly in the wake of WWII and the holocaust. In fact, guilt for the holocaust has led the Europeans down the path of moral relativity in which their hyper-sensitive guilt prevents them from criticizing others of different cultures, even when their actions or practices would be considered a crime. It's led to an inability to take a stand based on moral principles and distinguish right from wrong for fear of being called subjective, or worse, racist. How do you shut a European up? Call them a racist (this only works as long as the subject isn't Israel or Judaism related, that's apparently an acceptable for of racism today in Europe, only they call it "Zionism").
In America, this multiculturalism is known as political correctness, a much more developed and well implemented strategy, or at least until lately. For while in America one respects others right to be different, they are all still held to the same standard, and practices such as honor killings or female circumcision are not stripped of their religious origins. At least, they weren't until the current administration in which it has become taboo to g-d forbid mention when religion is the motive of a crime.
Like we saw with Nidal Hassan the notorious "criminal" in the Fort Hood shootings that yelled Allah Akbar (allah is great) while shooting American servicemen and to whom American born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a designated terrorist by the US government was his spiritual guide. Or the latest bombing attempt in Times Square. Sadly it seems the President Barack Obama has caught Europe's multiculturalism bug and is also himself incapable of taking a moral stand based on his nation's values, dare to stand up and state it when something is wrong, particularly when it has to do with anything Arab or Muslim (but he seems to have no problem criticizing the Jewish state), and even if it resulted in the murder of members in his own constituency. That's really sad.
Then there's the digital age which not only created our "global community," but also created a world in which we want answers NOW, and in bite size form. And the media, which provides us with an overwhelming majority of our news and information, accomplishes this by creating bombastic headlines that do little more than regurgitate the words of others, including dictators. And the contents of their articles have also been tinged by the multiculturalism bug, refusing to make an open judgment, and g-d forbid, assign blame (except, once again, to Israel).
We also have the Twitter phenomenon, in which our maximum patience for reading is 140 characters, and the ability of anyone to make their case is limited to the life of what is known as a trending topic.
The real tragedy in all of this is that over the past ten years those fascist and totalitarian dictators in the Arab and Muslim world whose objective is to rob their own people of their freedoms, obtain military and political power and intimidate others in an effort to gain this power are succeeding. They have learned that in the West, the printed word is sacred, and true. And by simply making statements and using simple logic like Israel kills Muslim children and subsequently Israelis are terrorists magically become true. Because apparently those in the West either aren't willing or capable of understanding that those Muslim children died because their own government launched missles at Israeli civilians from behind these same children, and when Israel tried to destroy the rocket launcher that child died.
Much like we saw with the Turkish flotilla. The images are very clear. Turkish "peace activists" preparing for IDF troops by swinging chains and metal bars, or throwing things at Israeli soldiers riding along next to the Mavi Marmara. Yet the world somehow still has difficulty deciding whether or not these people were simply really peace activists that were defending themselves.
It all comes down to language. Language defines our reality, and our perception of things. Language is a very powerful tool. Traditionally it has helped up define our surroundings and understand the world around us. But the events over the past few years, the situation in which some in the Muslim world use English words for their impact, and not for their accuracy, the willing or unwilling participation of the media, and the resulting confusion of everyday people is not only leading us to a place where we're not willing to take a stand for fear of being called intolerant or not politically correct, its leading the west to the point in which it actually can't really distinguish between right and wrong.
It seems we can only understand that which we are spoon fed. We're not capable of deciding for ourselves whether people that cut metal rods off of boats to beat and stab soldiers are peace activists and humanitarian workers or violent mercenaries or terrorists. We're not sure if hiding behind our neighbor whether they agree to it or not while firing missles at someone else's children is a crime that should be prosecuted or a legal strategy in a "struggle for liberation."
The values for life, liberty, right and wrong that is the result of centuries of bloody war in the West are now being clouded with babble of dictators and fascists that have discovered that they only need to same something for it to become a universal truth. And much like our example with the cherry and the watermelon, not only are terrorists becoming human rights workers and human rights workers becoming terrorists, we can't even identify what attributes belong to whom. But even worse, what happens when a terrorist becomes a human rights activist and a human rights activist becomes a terrorist? What happens then?
It's literally a war of words, and together with multiculturalism, the media and technology, we're losing our ability to make critical judgments. And our leadership that has taken politically correct and tolerance to such an extreme that doesn't allow us to call a crime if its weaved together as part of a religious ideology is robbing us of our ability to not to not only good from bad, but right from wrong.
What's the solution? What can we do? Demand from the media ethical reporting and accountability. Question what you're told, when accusations or leveled by cultures that don't share our values, question their accuracy and the use of those words. Take a stand, if you think something is wrong even its not politically correct to say it, say it. And challenge others to prove they're right, or you're wrong.
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