Media Bow to Hate Movements on 'Zionism'
Excuses, dictionaries, and actual history
First, a note on the latest “news.” The media, once again, is treating Hamas as a legitimate source of information. It’s a journalistic fiasco. Alleged “Gaza death tolls” leave out the two key ingredients of truth: facts plus context. See my previous newsletters about that.
Of course, antisemites — and, sadly, big news agencies — don’t care about this, nor about astronomically larger death tolls and civilian ratios in other ongoing wars. They’re busy spreading lies, including about Zionism. That brings us to the latest episode of They Stand Corrected.
I answer a listener’s question about how the media defines Zionism. I explain that they ignore their own standards and practices, and instead reward a hate movement — often without realizing it. It helps to look first at two other words…
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I start with “transgenderism.” Although it’s in Webster’s dictionary as just the noun for being transgender, the media generally avoids it because it has been co-opted by anti-trans activists. GLAAD points to the ADL on this.
Next, “feminism.” It’s defined as a movement for gender equality. (See my previous newsletter.) By this definition, it has always existed in the human experience. But if you Google to learn when feminism began, the answer you get is 1848. In that context, people are talking about the word itself, not the broader concept.
That brings us to “Zionism.” To millions of people like me, it’s the current English word for something that has existed for thousands of years: the effort among the People of Israel/Judea/Zion to get home to the one place in which we can live freely with self-determination. Again, the ADL has a great explanation.
But antisemites, calling themselves “anti-Zionists,” invented an imaginary reality in which the idea of returning to Israel was suddenly invented by “Europeans” in the 1800s. Everything about this is wrong.
Dictionaries like Webster’s are helping them by failing to define Zionism the way they do feminism: as a concept that existed long before the English language term. Listen to the phenomenal Ashager Araro:
In this episode, I offer a sentence in hopes of reaching people steeped in progressive vocabulary:
Your Eurocentrism erases the lived experiences of people of color in subjugated minority communities across the globe who have had to live for centuries under oppression and colonialist paradigms.
Dictionaries must update their definitions to make clear that if “feminism” has existed for thousands of years, so has “Zionism.” And news agencies must be consistent. If they ignore Webster’s on “transgenderism” because they know to listen to people most affected by that term, they should do the same thing with “Zionism” and listen to us, the People of Zion.
I also mention the sign I held at the incredible rally against antisemitism in Washington DC in November 2023. See the two sides here, top right and top left:
Here’s a close-up.
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JL