Irena Klepfisz
Women's Studies, Barnard College
Finding the Words

            My experience as an activist has been and remains primarily in the American-Jewish community around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.  I have found that the word occupation has had little reality or resonance for American Jews (and for most Americans).  Whereas physical violence on both sides is visible, though often unreported, the daily meaning for a civilian population to be occupied for 35 years is not something that most Americans and American Jews think very much about.  The inherent violent nature of an occupation--with the military overseeing civilian life--has simply not been absorbed by American Jewish consciousness.  For Jews, who have been victims throughout much of our history--especially in the recent history of the Holocaust--viewing ourselves as powerful occupiers who were able to victimize others has been an impossible concept.

            There was, however, some headway during the first intifada in this area.  But whatever progress was made has been entirely erased during the present crisis.  In the minds of American Jews, Palestinian suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians within the Green Line have obliterated the occupation.  American Jews see Israelis (and themselves) once again as victims and their own actions as defensive against a Palestinian enemy.  Since September 11th, Bush's almost unqualified support of the Sharon government's actions have given this view credibility.  All Palestinian actions which they view as resistance and self-defense--including those against settlements and the Israeli military--are now seen by Israelis and American Jews acontextually rather than in response to an occupation and are subsumed under the term terrorism.  All Israeli military action--including assassinations, home demolitions--no matter how extreme--is justified as self-defense with Palestinian civilian casualties an unfortunate by-product.  As David Grossman, an Israeli journalist and novelist, recently pointed out in  NY Times  Op-Ed piece, since the start of the suicide bombings the Israelis have created a narrative in which there was no occupation before the start of the latest intifada. Grossman was trying to bring the word occupation back into use as the correct term which describes the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.         

            Since our primary way of communicating is through language, the question is how do we Jews deal with the linguistic knots that words like victim, defense, resistance, and terrorism create in any dialogue around this issue and how do we make real the context

--the Israeli occupation--in which we use these words.  We must either reclaim these terms in their root meanings or find another vocabulary that evokes the special history and characteristics of this particular conflict.