The Misapplication of Language Should Be A Crime

6 Tammuz 5785 

Adding this Moshe Feiglin video from one year ago.  The subtitles are very good.  Pay special attention around 27 mins in and at 32:17 - 32:35 is the most damning information yet.

"SETTLER VIOLENCE"

As an avid reader and conscientious writer, I love language.  I love having a wide vocabulary from which to choose the perfect word for my needs.  I'm very careful to double-check the dictionary before using a word that I like the sound of but maybe do not have a really firm grasp on its most precise meaning.  Words are the arsenal of the keyboard warrior.  I have the greatest respect for the power of words and the dire need to wield them with the greatest of care.  Words are akin to knives or even to arrows - to the point!!!  Unfortunately, few people share my views on the subject.  For example, the media - the very ones for whom words are their "bread and butter" - seem to have abandoned all respect for the language and tend to use it like bombs.  Just throw them out into a crowd and watch them tear everything asunder.  Their success is measured not by their pin-point accuracy, but by the amount of indiscriminate damage and unmitigated disaster it leaves in its wake.  Hashem yerachem!

The Torah sages teach us that every word we use is measured and recorded and a future accounting will be made for every one of them.  Today, I am particularly perturbed by the term "terrorist" as it is is being inappropriately, and even criminally, applied to my fellow Jews - some of the sincerest and most vulnerable Jews in Israel.  I'm speaking of so-called "Hilltop Youth" and pioneer "Settlers".  Their labeling as "terrorists" is for political expediency only and bears no relation to reality.  Their "misdeeds" are of a responsive nature only.  They are not the initiators of conflict as a rule.  And they respond where there is a vacuum of response by those charged by law with maintaining the peace and administering justice.  

Over and over and over again, just as was recently demonstrated at the onset of the "ceasefire" with Iran, the Jews are expected to "take the hit" and hold their return fire.  It's always the Jews who are forced to absorb the injustices.  "Injustices" like a woman in labor on her way to hospital to give birth being shot like a dog.  Over and over and over again, one atrocity after another, endlessly.  

It's not enough that the Arabs attack us at will, but we have to deal with the enemy among us as well.  Decade after decade the so-called security forces have willingly, and sometimes gleefully, come in the dead of night to cast Jewish parents and Jewish children from their beds and bulldoze their homes to the ground with all their possessions inside.  Hundreds?  Thousands, by now?  How much can human beings be expected to take?  Even Jews!?

The normative Israelis are shocked, appalled and outraged when the term "Nazi" is used in reference to their "holy" soldiers who carry out these abominable and inhuman orders, but they have no idea that some (many?) of them are exactly that - goyishe Russians and Ukrainians in service to the State!!

Not only that, but the ISS is famous for infiltrating agents provocateurs to instigate illegal actions which then are used to discredit and delegitimize the entire population. 

But, then that's the old way.  The new way is to just throw a word bomb into the crowd - "terrorists"!!  If the label can be made to stick, if it is accepted by the masses, nothing more need be said - now they are marked for destruction, not just their homes.

Here is a small sampling of headlines over the past 48 hours (not even including what's in the Hebrew press!)...

• (JPost) Defense agencies have lost control over Jewish extremists in West Bank - analysis
• (JPost) Jewish violence in the West Bank is a moral and strategic liability for Israel - analysis
• (Israel HaYom) Israel must crack down on far-right extremists – before it's too late
• (TOI) PM condemns ‘fanatic few’ settlers for attacking IDF; Lapid: ‘Terrorists are terrorists’
• (JFeed) Jewish extremists torch IDF base, damage key security system
• (Haaretz) Why 'Emboldened' Jewish Settlers Are Now Attacking Israeli Soldiers in the West Bank
• (PBS) Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and IDF military vehicles in West Bank
• (NYT) Violence Erupts Between Israeli Settlers and Military in West Bank
• (TOI) Katz announces plans to curb settler violence against Israeli troops

And what's the new plan?  

"Defense minister says joint task force of police, IDF and Shin Bet to be formed, social programs started to integrate extremist youth into normative educational frameworks." 

This, at the same time the chareidi Jewish youth are to be inducted ("integrated") en masse into the army framework.  This technique of re-education has been proven popular and effective in communist states.  Well, the apple does not fall far from the tree does it?  Hamevin yavin.

"Extremist" is another word bomb.  The Zionist State of Israel:  No "Terrorists" or "Extremists" Wanted!

Neither word is used correctly, but who cares if it accomplishes the evil purposes of the Powers Which Should Not Be.

Terrorist - a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. 

By this definition, it is the "security forces" who come in the middle of the night who are the real "terrorists"!  And yes, some of them are actual Nazis.

Extremist - a person who holds extreme or fanatical political or religious views, especially one who resorts to or advocates extreme action.

This definition requires the further explanation of what constitutes "extreme".

Extreme -  1) reaching a high or the highest degree; very great.  2)  furthest from the center or a given point; outermost.

This definition is extremely fluid.  Whomever has the authority can set the "center" wherever they choose and automatically, one can be found at the furthermost "extreme" without ever having moved a muscle.  

In point of fact, every great Jewish leader throughout our 4,000-year history could be termed an extremist, at least by the first definition given and even by the second, too.  What else would you call it when the entire world stands on one side and one man - Avraham Avinu - stands on the other???

If you are a Torah Jew, you are already an extremist.  You refuse to assimilate among the nations.  The day you stop being an extremist is the day you can no longer call yourself a Torah Jew, but something else, maybe an Israeli, like the Nazis among us who are safe in the State of Israel from the scourge of malicious labeling.