My latest op-ed for The Jerusalem Post ("Israel's Self-Made Tsunami)" examines some cavalier and disturbing use of language by Israel's leadership, and explores what that usage says about its capacity to effectively govern.
What language, you ask? One word: tsunami.
Join me over the break for the devastating verbal waves.
This is how the op-ed begins:
On Friday, March 11, the world recoiled as a devastating tsunami obliterated entire villages and towns along the eastern Japanese coast, sweeping over 10,000 people to their deaths and displacing hundreds of thousands.
Two days later, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, speaking on the prospects of a unilaterally-declared Palestinian state in September, told an audience at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, “We stand to face a diplomatic tsunami…[There is] an international movement that may recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.” He continued, “It's a mistake not to notice this tsunami. Israel's delegitimization is in sight, even if citizens don't see it.”
Stunningly, in the weeks after the tsunami struck Japan, Israeli leadership, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, repeatedly used the phrase "diplomatic tsunami," immediately co-opting it as the catch phrase capable of describing the enormity of Israel's looming international problem.
Most word leaders, at the time, had a fairly solid understanding that the word tsunami, charged as it is, was not exactly "ripe for use in political metaphors." So why did Israeli leadership set itself apart by lifting language belonging to one of the most devastating contemporary natural disasters and placing it upon the Israeli political experience?
I believe it has much to do with this: Israel's leaders are desperate to cast themselves to the world as the I/P conflict's sole, legitimate victims. Why this motivation to do so? Because, unfortunately, too many Israeli leaders view the conflict as a zero-sum game in which only one side can win: the true victims. And so Barak, Netanyahu and a host of Israeli leaders have suddenly incorporated Japan's image of intense suffering into their own discourse, for doing so in essence transposes the power of Japanese suffering, Japanese victimhood, onto Israel's condition.
It's not a game of equivalency, mind you. Israel's leaders are not being intentionally callous or insensitive. Rather, they instinctively grab onto language that might contain the force of the level of victimhood they either view themselves as bearing or would like the world to view them as bearing.
This game of competitive victimhood is a paralyzing game that continues to be played. (And, by the way, it is often played on both sides.) But the reality of the conflict is that both sides have been victimized. Both sides have suffered.
The I/P conflict is not a zero-sum game. Compromise and dialogue can bring about a more stable and just existence for both peoples. (Yes, even with the emergence of Hamas in the PA's unity government. And yes, even with hawkish Israeli politicians beating the drums of settlement construction and annexation.)
As long as Isreali leaders focus their energies on casting themselves diplomatically as solely a victim, rather than on ending the cyclical victimhood that exists on both sides, no two-state solution will be reached before September and the United Nation's anticipated declaration of statehood for the Palestinians.
And if that happens, the tsunami Barak and Netanyahu predicted will indeed occur.