When Peace is War, and Human - a restricted category

@Solomonia: Sophia, an occasional contributor to Solomonia wrote about Yglesias' momentary epiphany in which he confesses:

" My J Street button said “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace.” It’s not a subtle aspect of the messaging. But when we moved to the Q&A time it became clear that a number of people in the audience really were quite uncomfortable self-defining as “pro-Israel” in any sense and that others are uncomfortable with the basic Zionist concept of a Jewish national state. I was, of course, aware that those views existed but it had seemed to me that it was clear that that wasn’t what J Street is there to advocate for. Apparently, though, it wasn’t clear to everyone."

I left this comment:

The term "pro-peace" has undergone the same kind of bastardization that the term "human rights" has. Peace no longer means cessation of hostilities and violence between the two sides of the I/P conflict. Examples of what it has come to mean we can see when we cast back to all those "peace" demonstrations that took place during the 2006 Lebanon war and "Cast Lead". We all witnessed what sort of placards were being flaunted, openly and insouciently by the conscientious marchers: "We are all Hizzbala" and "Israel must be wiped" (or at least in one recorded instance, "Jews to the gas chambers"), etc. Those rallies were referred to in the media as "peace" rallies.

Just as "human rights", at the hands of the UNHR Council, have come to mean, exclusively, Palestinian rights, and by inference, if Palestinian is human, then Israelis are not, or less, human.

No wonder that people who are bitterly aligned against Israel have come to use these two terms in their highly deformed and exclusivist meaning. It's a genuine example of the Orwellian "doublespeak", language constructed to disguise and distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass.

And the naked hatred to Israel expressed by those people who crowded those rallies (and to a lesser degree glimpsed at that famous panel where Elie Wiesel became the target of mockery by the execrable Max Blumenthal) reminded me constantly of Orwell's "Two Minutes Hate".

Therefore, for these J-street supporters to be "pro-peace" as they understand it is simply incompatible with being "pro-Israel". Peace has to be "no peace" for Israelis or else the term is vitiated of its moral power.

They no doubt feel they were duped into believing the organization to be their kind of "pro-peace" and not what the dictionary tells us "peace" is.

In today's Normblog's Friday blog profile, featuring Point of no return, in answer to the question: What is your favourite proverb? Bataween responds:

'Mal nommer les choses, c'est ajouter au malheur du monde' (Not to call things by their correct names is to add to the troubles of the world) - Albert Camus.

Enfin, La Voila! Someone who gets it :)

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Update: Nov 3:

Here is a sight for sore eyes:

"In a recent column in the UAE daily Al-Ittihad, columnist Dr. As'ad 'Abd Al-Rahman wrote about the Jewish-American advocacy group J Street, arguing that its importance is in that it provides the U.S. administration with "political and media ammunition" against Israel, especially in the absence of an Arab lobby in the U.S."

Funny how it emerges that the "pro-Israel, Pro-peace" J-street, de-facto, acts in lieu of an Arab Lobby.

Sometimes clarity arises from the least expected quarters.