Arab Muslims and their Twisted Words and Phrases....

The war of propaganda has been elevated to a fine art by the Arab world, and it is imperative that we understand the misuse of language that influences public opinion.

FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East - October 18, 2004) has contributed, by providing a definitive, untwisting of words and phrases to our understanding of Arab propaganda. Here we reprint their illuminating propaganda analysis of a technique that has been effective in permeating and molding world opinion about the Arab/Israeli conflict.

The following phrases are brilliantly analyzed:

• "Terrorists and Freedom Fighters"
• "Dishonor in the Muslim World"
• "Palestinian Land"
• "Arab Humiliation"

The bottom line is that Arab crimes against humanity have been sanitized by misuse of words.

Twisted Words and Phrases (1)

How Arab propaganda has managed to give new meaning to old words.

In the decades of the Arabs' unremitting struggle to fight the Jews to the death and to wipe Israel off the map, they have managed to introduce certain words and phrases into the consciousness of the world. These phrases are twisted and have in many cases come to convey the exact opposite of their actual meaning. Today, we examine two of those twisted concepts.

Terrorists and Freedom Fighters

The Palestinians who blow themselves up and in so doing, succeed in killing and maiming as many innocent Jews as possible are described as "martyrs" and "freedom fighters" in the Arab world and even in much of the European press. But, for whatever purpose, the deliberate murder and mutilation of defenseless and innocent civilians can never be warranted by the common law of humanity and by accepted international standards of behavior and international law, even where the use of insurgent force may be understandable and even justified.

And, surely, there must be great doubt whether the insurgence of the Palestinians is justified at all. They have rejected all offers to settle their conflict and alleged grievances against Israel. The goal of the Palestinians is not to live peacefully and successfully alongside Israel, but rather to build a Muslim-Arab state on the charred ruins of a dismembered Israel.

The official website of the PNA (Palestinian National Authority) does not show two states, only one - Israel is eliminated altogether. Palestinian "insurgents," who resort to terrorism and slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians will never acknowledge that a Jewish state, of any size and wherever located, has any right to exist. They will fight to the death and use any method and any weapon available to them to achieve their extremist...goals.

Those who murder and maim innocent civilians in pursuit of their genocidal ends are not "martyrs" nor "freedom fighters," nor even "militants" (as even the U.S. press often calls them). They are common mass murderers and terrorists, just as much as those who, for their own twisted reasons, committed the September 11 atrocities, and who deserve the condemnation of all decent mankind.

Dishonor in the Muslim World

The subjugation of women in all Islamic countries is placidly accepted by most of the world. The most widespread of these abominations is that of female genital mutilation, a practice that invades the rights of women and their enjoyment of life in the most horrible way.

Another act of disgraceful repression of women in the Muslim world is the "protection of family honor." Under this concept, a woman who, for any reason at all - including having been raped - is suspected of being or having been involved with a man who is not her husband, is condemned to death, usually by stoning. The primary purpose of that savagery is to salvage what is considered the "family honor." "Honor killings" claim tens of thousands of female lives every year throughout the Muslim countries of the Middle East and Africa. Nobody seems to care. There is no record that the U. N. or any other international body has done anything to interfere with those horrible practices.

Leave it to the talent for genocidal innovation of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization, to have added a new macabre twist to this barbaric custom. In January, a woman named Ream Selah el-Rayashi blew herself up at the Erez checkpoint, the main passage between Gaza and Israel. The woman, mother of two children, had committed the grave offense of falling in love with a man other than her husband. When the affair was discovered, el-Rayashi was given the choice between a dishonorable death by stoning at the hands of her family or an honorable state of martyrdom by becoming a suicide bomber. She chose self-inflicted death and the murder and maiming of many innocent Jews, before dishonor. It is not surprising that no similar demands were made on el-Rayashi's lover.

There can really be no peace with people whose beliefs are so different from Western concepts. There can be no peace with people who treat their women worse than cattle, kill them to save their "honor," and who mutilate them horribly in order to keep them sexually subjugated. And there can be no peace with people who, in the name of and for the purported glory of God, blow themselves up or encourage their children to blow themselves up in order to kill or to maim as many as possible of those whom they consider their mortal enemies and who oppose their twisted ideas of religion and patriotism.

Twisted Words and Phrases (2)

Arab propaganda systematically twists words and phrases so that eventually they come to mean almost the exact opposite of their original intent. We discussed "Terrorists and Freedom Fighters" and "Dishonor in the Muslim World." Here are two more examples of such twisting of language, and there are many more like it.

What are the facts?

Palestinian land: A great hue and cry has arisen about the Israeli barrier (called the "apartheid wall" by its noisy detractors). At a cost of billions of dollars, Israel has been forced to erect such a barrier in order to safeguard itself against constant murderous attacks that have so far cost over 1,000 Israeli lives and have hurt and mutilated thousands more.

Fourteen out of fifteen judges of the International Court of Justice have condemned this barrier as "illegal." The only laudable exception to this lopsided and totally unwarranted decision was that of the U.S. judge on this (otherwise kangaroo) court. What particularly agitated the judges was that this barrier allegedly intrudes on "Palestinian land." But, of course, there is no such thing as "Palestinian land." The Palestinians do not own any land in Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank"). That land, originally part of the Ottoman Empire, became part of the British Palestine mandate after the First World War and was allocated as part of the Jewish homeland by the Balfour Declaration. In the War of Liberation of 1948, right at the birth of Israel, the invading Jordanian army occupied that territory and assumed possession. In the Six-Day War, Israel repulsed the attack and stayed in possession of the territory.

Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank") is therefore part of Israel. If at some future date Israel should decide to relinquish any part of that territory to a Palestinian entity, then it would indeed become Palestinian land. But right now, there is no such thing. "Palestinian lands" do not exist. It is a twisted phrase, created by Arab propaganda to score public relations points and to create confusion in an uninformed public.

"Arab humiliation:" A great deal of ink is being spent on "Arab humiliation" at the hands of the Israelis. There are almost daily stories in the papers deploring the "endless delays" that Arabs suffer at being stopped and interrogated and in some cases searched at one of the many check points. Those delays, which undoubtedly are major inconveniences and annoyances to the Arabs, have one purpose only, namely to reduce and to the degree possible to prevent altogether the passage of suicide bombers that have so far caused so many Jewish victims.

The Arabs have brought those miseries upon themselves with their "intifada," now over four years old. There were no check points and no delays before that started. And what could one say about women who, feigning pregnancy, carry explosives under their garments and blow up the female guards who examine them and all others around them? Or what about little children in ambulances who are supposedly in urgent need of quick passage (to a Jewish hospital), but who have bombs hidden in their gurneys, ready to explode and to kill?

But how about the "humiliation" and annoyance that the Jews have to endure? For Jews, normal life in Israel has practically ended. Motorists in Israel expose themselves to a gauntlet of sniper fire on the highways. Most school trips have been canceled for fear of attack on the children, similar to what the Moslem barbarians have just perpetrated in Russia. Social occasions, such as weddings or bar mitzvahs, can't take place unless armed guards are provided. Restaurants, movies, stores and parking lots have to be heavily guarded. Arabs, on the other hand, can freely move through any part of Israel, the cities and the countryside, without any fear of attack. They need not protect their schools or their places of worship, their restaurants, grocery shops or other places where people gather. And they need not fear for their children and that Jews are going to blow them up.

The prevention of Islamic terror is an enormous burden on Israel. Fully three percent of the country's $40 billion GNP goes to protection against terror. The Palestinians brought their misery upon themselves, but the Jews suffer much more from the necessary security precautions than they do. "Arab humiliation" is a twisted phrase, invented and endlessly promoted by Arab propaganda in order to engage the sympathy of the world.

The Arab Moslems have launched three major wars against Israel and have engaged in a constant war of attrition, in order to destroy what they call the "Zionist entity" (another twisted phrase). Unable to defeat Israel militarily, they have resorted to an endless war of propaganda, in which twisted words and phrases play a major role. They have been quite successful at that. Peace cannot come about until the Arab world is willing to wholeheartedly accept Israel and to forget about military action and the war of propaganda. But that day, if it is to come at all, is not yet in sight.

(The above was borrowed from "Unity Coalition for Israel".)