In the Middle East, a War of Words

People speak different languages here--literally and philosophically.

Their words are symbols, and symbols are important--especially in the continuing conflict (some Israelis call it “war”) between Israel and demonstrators (some call them “rioters”) in the occupied (Israeli TV and radio call them “administered”) West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Words are not the only meaningful symbols in this volatile environment.

Israelis view the Palestinian flag as such a dangerous political symbol, for example, that they ban its display in the occupied territories. But it’s so significant to Palestinians that they risk punishment and accidental electrocution to hang it on electrical lines.

On another level, Washington Post Bureau Chief Glenn Frankel recalls the time an Israeli official asked him where another Post reporter was staying while in town.

“The American Colony Hotel,” Frankel responded.

“Oh, he’s one of those,” the Israeli said.

“One of those” translated to “Arabist,” a label somehow attached to patrons of the American Colony, where a preponderance of the news media stay while in Jerusalem.

“When people perceive themselves to be at war, everything has meaning,” Frankel said. “Nothing is neutral.”

Words, especially.

Some of them carry subtle shadings. Israeli government press releases, for example, describe young Arabs as youths and young Israelis more sympathetically, as children.

And it’s easy for journalists to lapse into loaded words.

“I went to my typewriter and I began to write murder ,” ABC correspondent Dean Reynolds said about the fatal shooting of an Israeli soldier in Bethlehem. “It just seemed so much more serious. Then I realized that Israelis are always ‘murdered’ here and Palestinians are always ‘killed.’ ” A fine, but revealing distinction.

“Words have so much weight here,” Reynolds said.

“I know of no other place in the world where they argue about words like they do here,” said Times Bureau Chief Dan Fisher, who has also covered Poland and the Soviet Union.

One of the words argued about is terrorist.

When is an aggressor a terrorist instead of a gunman? And when is a gunman not merely a commando or guerrilla?

“When I first came here, I used terrorist with articles from the north, when they (Arabs) infiltrated,” Fisher said. “Then I got a letter from a man in the States saying that I should call them guerrillas because they were infiltrators targeting military targets.”

Here’s how three reporters applied their own “terrorist/gunman” standards to last month’s commandeering of an Israeli bus that resulted in the deaths of three passengers and three Palestinian hijackers.

“I think terrorist is a judgmental word,” Frankel said. “I played with using it on that bus story, but it just didn’t feel right.” So he used gunman instead. “But when I wrote an analysis of it (the hijacking), I used terrorist because it felt more comfortable than it did in a news story.”

Reynolds said that he could have used terrorist, but instead described the perpetrators as “gunmen” in his ABC account, drawing criticism from some of his own bosses who felt the word wasn’t strong enough.

Fisher thought terrorist applied, and used it frequently through most of his story. But his use of gunmen in his lead--for structural reasons, he said--earned him a jolting rebuke. Gunmen is not your basic puff description. Yet the strong criticism relayed to Fisher by an Israeli foreign ministry official was that the word was too soft.

“I can’t think of a neutral connotation for the word,” Fisher said, “and I certainly can’t think of a positive connotation.”

Journalists have their own definition of terrorism. Here is Fisher’s:

“People attacking unarmed civilians--that’s terrorism. But I don’t call someone who attacks an Israeli soldier inside the occupied territories a terrorist. I used gunman or attacker. “

And Arabs who attack civilians inside Israel? “The Palestinians call them commandos,” Fisher said. “But they’re terrorists.”

If only everyone could agree on a definition for civilian.

When is an attacker a commando, meanwhile?

“The hang-glider raiders get to be called commandos,” said Frankel, referring to Arabs who flew into Israel from Southern Lebanon last year, landing near an army base and killing six soldiers.

“I called them guerrillas,” CNN correspondent Mike Greenspan said. “They were guerrillas because they were attacking the army. I don’t know what I would have called them if they would have landed by a settlement.”

A settlement inhabited by settlers, that is.

“Now settlers-- that’s a wonderful word, but it’s totally inadequate,” Fisher claimed.

Many Israeli settlers in the occupied territories do carry arms--from pistols to machine guns--conveying a sort of Old West gunslinging image.

However, most of them don’t live in the kind of rudimentary housing that settler implies. “These started out as rustic settlements,” Fisher said. “But most of them are now suburbs that you could envision in Orange County.”

The red-tile-roofed settlements are also a political statement--signifying the Israeli government’s apparent aim to retain the territories won from Egypt and Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war--and they are also regarded as part of Israel’s defense.

Hence, Palestinian activists describe settlers as “combatants,” not “civilians,” and they label settler children “Israel’s bullets.”

And settlers and some government members describe the uprisings in the occupied territories as “war.”

Speaking of the territories, state-run Israel television and radio describe them as “administered territories” because they are technically administered by a civilian authority. But the Western media designate them “occupied,” because, the media say, the army exerts actual control.

Meanwhile, Palestinians call the unrest in the territories “revolution” or “upheaval.” According to Frankel, the army applied uprisings (a term adopted by Western media) to the territories, after earlier applying disturbances to the often-violent demonstrations.

Demonstrations? The far more common Israeli media and government term for the turmoil is rioting.

Fisher favors demonstration . “I have used rioter, but it’s not my favorite term,” he said. “I was in Detroit in 1967. That was a riot--total wanton destruction with no political motive. In this case, nobody is burning shops except for specific reasons.”

With rare exceptions, he said, the demonstrators (not rioters) are attacking the army: “The army is the symbol of the occupation.”

Meanwhile, Frankel cites an area where he believes words do carry the weight they have here--South Africa, which he covered for the Washington Post prior to his Jerusalem assignment.

“Words are part of the war there, too,” Frankel said, making no other comparisons between South Africa and Israel.

“ Apartheid was a bad word to South Africans,” Frankel said. “They called it self-determination. Townships were ‘locations,’ and now they’re ‘communities.’ The Bureau of Information used to call you if you said white minority regime. They said that questioned the legitimacy of the government. And they said that white minority implied that there was a black majority, but that there were only many black minorities.”

And, as in the Arab-Israel battle of words, many ambiguities.