The Complete Pogrom Dictionary
How to talk about Jewish terrorism, pogroms and demonise Palestinians using fancy words
By Yoana Gonen • Haaretz *
Taking the law into your own hands:
- A euphemism for Jewish terrorism and the sickening acts of a pogrom, when the person doesn’t wish to sound like a Leftist Traitor (a Leftist Traitor: a euphemism for a person who’s sickened by mobs of hateful rioters that burn homes with people inside).
- 2. A reminder that the law in Israel serves to abuse and dislocate Palestinians. The speaker doesn’t object to the atrocities per se (cf Leftist Traitor), but merely urges others not to dismantle the state and military monopoly by mowing down Palestinians. For example: “End the privatisation of violence” (rather than “end the violence”).
Revenge:
A beautiful, pure emotion (“There’s something very heartening here… Everyday Jews simply carrying out the natural act of revenge”, as penned by a reporter for Hilltop News). And what’s especially beautiful about this pure emotion is that only Jews can feel it. When a Palestinian carries out an attack four days after the IDF killed 11 Palestinians in Nablus, our duty is to activate our collective amnesia regarding the circumstances. Thus, we shall perpetuate the bloody cycle of death, while shattering the rules of Euclidean geometry such that straight lines become a blurry sequence of dots.
Deterrence:
An emotion that contrasts with and completes the feeling of vengefulness. In response to violence, Jews take revenge, and Palestinians are deterred. Modern science has yet to find an answer to this bizarre anomaly, but fortunately we’ve got MK Zvika Fogel from the Jewish Power party, who can measure deterrence using exacting tools. The Hawara pogrom’s deterrence level using the Fogel scale: “The best we’ve seen since Operation Defensive Shield”. We can sleep soundly! Unless we’re Palestinians in Hawara. Or anywhere. Or just not complete idiots.
Their blood was boiling / you can see why:
A rhetorical ruse aimed at blurring the fact that violence perpetrated by settler militias is the daily norm. Settlers have been rioting in Hawara and other Palestinian towns and villages for months. Shooting, assaulting, setting fire, and uprooting trees. It happens after terror attacks, before terror attacks, when the blood boils or when one’s cheerful, when illegal settlements are evacuated and when they’re set up, under Lapid’s government or Netanyahu’s, when there’s a conference in Aqaba or when it’s Tuesday..
Anarchists, hooligans:
People holding a sign that says, “There’s no democracy with occupation”.
”The gang”, young men:
People that injure dozens of Palestinians and open fire on journalists.
Why this differs from blocking the Ayalon Highway / they were inspired by the demonstrations against the government reforms:
A devilish whataboutism that creates a false equivalence between the bodies of Palestinian people and tarmac. Or as described by those that don’t suffer from verbal diarrhoea: dehumanisation.
Loss of control:
A façade meant to hide the fact that settler violence isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. It’s aimed at making Palestinians suffer, push them off their lands, expand Israeli control of the West Bank. The State enjoys the fruits of this violence and so it enables and facilitates it: the soldiers stand on one side, the victims are forbidden from defending themselves or complaining, and the rioters walk away free. A day after those Jewish terrorists set Hawara on fire, they’re already back there terrorising locals, undisturbed. My wild guess: nobody will stand trial for the murder of Sameh Hamdalla Aqtash, for injuring dozens, for setting fire to houses and cars, or for inciting people to ‘annihilate Hawara”.
