Julian Sayarer argues that language can often perpetuate dangerous misunderstandings and even enable us to tolerate continued wars and violence
There’s a humorous observation among grammar nerds that punctuation saves lives. ‘Let’s eat grandma’ and ‘Let’s eat, grandma’ are renowned examples of the difference a comma can make. Just as punctuation saves lives, so too can language. Recent years have seen increased acceptance of this point, particularly as the Black Lives Matter movement emphasised how language shapes thought in global political and geographic systems where control of resources, populations, or both, are often inherently violent.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the conflict between Palestine and Israel. With the last three months seeing more than 25,000 Palestinians (mostly civilians, as well as some soldiers) killed in Gaza, and more than 1,000 Israelis also killed, the moment obliges people of conscience not just to demand a ceasefire and resolution, but also to consider how we think and speak about a conflict that has been with us for most of our lives.
When talking about the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, one of the first and overarching concepts that comes to mind is the term ‘the Middle East’. The expression is repeated so casually that we seldom consider what it means.
For starters, east of what? If you’re in India, Palestine is – geographically speaking – west. Baku is further east than Jerusalem, but we don’t think of it as such. The middle of Eurasia is in Kazakhstan. The middle of the globe, the equator, is 4,000 kilometres south of Beirut. Atlantic coast Moroccans take umbrage at being referred to as living in the Middle East, and even if Egypt abuts the Levant and Palestine, Tunisians scratch their heads at to why they’ve been lumped into this geographically suspect idea. Perhaps, we surmise, they’re included on account of being Arab-majority, Arabic-speaking countries but, under this criterion, why do Afghans or Iranians qualify? If Islam is the criterion, then where does this leave Bosnia or Kyrgyzstan, or Christians in Palestine, or the large Jewish population in Iran?
That China or Thailand might be regarded as the Far East helps nudge us closer to understanding, but these relative terms – ‘middle’ or ‘far’ from whom? – reveal the intensely Eurocentric origins of the concepts, concepts that are increasingly unfit for a world that’s becoming multipolar.
If our understanding begins from misconception, it’s hardly surprising if further misconceptions then follow. The term ‘Middle East’ is imbued with old and colonial ideas of linen-shirted Brits on camelback or, more recently, grainy footage of embassy sieges or protests at US aggression in the region (relatedly, few other places are simply referred to as ‘the region’). This process, of taking us into a cinematic imagination, is a perilous one. The expression ‘Middle East’ abounds in the names of think tanks that always favour war, or in propaganda such as the oft-repeated claim that ‘Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East’. By nature of the very ambiguity of what we even mean when we say ‘Middle East’, an ambiguity of standards and reality in how we regard events taking place is introduced. Rather than a place on this same Earth and only 4,800 kilometres from European capitals, the term ‘Middle East’ seemingly invites us to step upon a magic carpet and ride through some distant portal into a world of oil fields, unavoidable wars and camels, where what we expect to hold true in regular politics doesn’t apply.
International norms and law are rightly used to condemn the annexation of territory in Ukraine, but not in Palestine. It’s deemed permissible to cut electricity and water to a territory of two million people, half of them children. We see assassinations of journalists and writers, sniper fire against healthcare facilities run by NGOs including Médecins Sans Frontières. And yet by some strange power, and even as British warships are sent in support, people are encouraged to see these events as if they take place in distant galaxies, or exclusively on television, where nothing can be done to stop them and standards that help condemn them elsewhere need not apply.
But the Middle East isn’t only ‘over there’. Second-and third-generation diasporas now live full lives in Western countries, while the labour needs of Western economies – paired with climate change, wars and poverty – ensure that migration will continue to enrich our societies with diversity and with populations that are connected (sometimes accurately, other times erroneously) to ‘the Middle East’.
Owing to friends, family and professional connections, ‘the Middle East’ has for many of us always been a real place that intuitively exposed the fakeness of the term itself. Among Western populations, there’s a growing awareness that things in countries the term purported to describe aren’t as they had been led to believe. If we’re to avoid a century of growing international irrelevance, and complicity in the ongoing violence, Western governments must urgently begin to catch up.
