 Hi guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal bringing you this video today from Jerusalem where it feels as if the magic Switch that flips between the seasons in Israel was just depressed And we've now entered the hot season where you need lots and lots of air conditioning It's always interesting to me having grown up in Ireland where the weather is Very variable even within seasons But in israel the extent to which there don't seem to be far less of these intermediate seasons spring And autumn what the americans would call fall seem to be much much shorter here So you're kind of there's always a week or two You can pinpoint that. Oh, yeah, I remember there was one day like on a sunday, you know, I was in my raincoat I had my umbrella out and then on wednesday. I was in shorts and flip flops And likewise in autumn it kind of tends to happen in in the reverse phenomenon It just kind of very stark transitions between the seasons here in israel But uh, it's getting sunny now, which is which is nice. So I want to talk today about um I'd say this is in the concept of a video video blog is how I would describe this or maybe a hot take Might be a less kind way to put this. Um, I have mentioned recently I'm trying to keep the youtube channel this youtube channel Centered around the core themes of uh, jerusalem israel and the things I find interesting about living in this part of the world I'm just going to emphasize that mention that one more time that all the other videos That I've been doing up to now about topics like backup internet and m-discs And uh, I don't even know there's probably turkish coffee Um, although maybe that's a little bit uh of an edge case because it's kind of fits into the culture here But uh, all that kind of tech stuff that people followed me for Hated as a point that's not going to be on this youtube channel anymore Um, I did start a little side youtube channel called daniels tech world But uh, that's in the process of organization But if you do want to stick around for videos on this youtube channel That's what you're going to be getting is stuff about israel and the middle east and jerusalem For the foreseeable future including these hot takes. So that's the mix Um, what I want to talk about today the hot take it's going to Probably bug some people. Um, it won't be to everyone's palace And that is something that I think is actually if you are a creator or a writer or a podcaster or a youtuber or whatever I actually think the israel palestine conflict the israel palestinian conflict is kind of a great Uh place to break your teeth because it's impossible To say almost anything or certainly to express an opinion about this conflict without pissing someone off Uh, whether it's the israeli side or the palestinian side. It's extremely difficult I would say probably impossible to be in the neutral middle even Newswires and you know people like roiders, et cetera will be accused often on the same day By both israel and palestinian supporters of bias for and against their sites I'm just going to say that at the start. This is my opinion now. I'm aware that Being a jewish immigrant to israel what we call in hebron olim. I am part of the jewish Majority so from the outside perspective people would probably assume my 100 percent unequivocally pro israel, but within this block by 75 percent of israel's population There are naturally divergent political views and something that's been interesting for me particularly Has been to see the role To which language actually plays a role in this conflict here And i'm going to give a few specific examples to try to tease out What I mean by this point hopefully in a manner that's at least somewhat uh coherent So I think on the israeli right wing You have a few terms that are basically Forbidden and the first kind of encounter I had with this Was actually my first summer in israel. I actually worked as a Copy editor at a newspaper. I won't say which newspaper turned out to be essentially A temporary job. It was paid by the hour. It was a few hours per week So I didn't think of this as like a career job, but I did it Uh for a summer I think I was there for three or four months working a few shifts per week And then I transitioned into uh office jobs and what I do now working in communications But that was the start of my career in israel. It was a right leaning newspaper and for those not familiar with the world of the declining world of journalism and Uh editorial something that's very common for a publication to have in fact traditionally sort of essential And this is carried over into the online world as well You'll find now that online media outlets and even um even content sort of websites will have this It's called a style guide a style guide basically sets out what the conventions are going to be For that publication do we and it goes down into the most minute detail of you know, do we use numbers from one to five? Um, there are some generally accepted style guides like ap and then it's common that A publication will use a major style guide and have its own kind of remix on it its own idiosyncratic spins Now when I was working for this right wing Israeli publication as a copy editor Which means I was basically looking at copy coming in from correspondence or from newswire sources And editing it for conformity With the style guide and some very interesting things were in the style guide and that's what kind of sparked my interest I guess you could say in the role of language in this conflict And those words were basically forbidden and the words were as follows Actually, there's only one word. It's maybe not the best example But the word that was forbidden was east Jerusalem we weren't allowed to write east Jerusalem those two words together you could refer to it as eastern Jerusalem, but not east Jerusalem now. You might be wondering. Well, what's the difference? So in the hard line Nationalistic right wing is ready rhetoric Jerusalem is united and there can be no if it's a united city There can be no west Jerusalem and capital letters or east Jerusalem and capital letters However, there can be an east Jerusalem and a small letter Because it's a geographical descriptor and if it's if it's not both capitals It's the description of a place and there can be an eastern Jerusalem because eastern is a geographical descriptor And again, it's so long as you don't put east Jerusalem next to each other with a big e and a big j That was fine. If the correspondent had that that was not fine. That would need to be edited for conformity with this the style guide now I'm obviously bringing in a kind of marginal Example here, and I don't know if this publication has changed its style guide, but I don't think it has a regularly read news from places like winet and irocheva and Jerusalem post probably also in this category as well And I noticed that things happen. You'll notice very small Things in the copy if you pay attention like again a report about writing might say Writing in eastern Jerusalem Arabs are writing in eastern Jerusalem tonight And I won't say Palestinians are writing in east Jerusalem, which is probably how most people would Refer to it. So there's a few other examples or words I think that are kind of forbidden on the in the Israeli right wing And I'm not sure to what extent all this is kind of known outside of Israel Which is again sort of why I'm doing this West bank is another word that people will object to the reason people will object to The west bank is the traditional the description in Hebrew for the area that most of the world refer to as The west bank is yohudavishomron. It's named after two historical regions where Judaism took hold And so for people to refer to the west bank might sound like a neutral term It's called the west bank because it's a territory Uh to the west of the Jordan river at least that's my understanding but It gives you quality to Competing claims to the same territory whereas the word yohudavishomron Yehuda is where jews get their names from right? It even sounds cognate in english jews yohud in arabic yohuda In in Hebrew, right? It's all Very very precise and deliberate the use of these words So the first term on the Israeli right wing that I would call quasi forbidden or depending on what circles And how far right you go outright forbidden is east Jerusalem number two is the west bank And the third one is unsurprisingly going to be Palestinians the rational the rationale here for those on the Israeli right is going to be to say well Palestinians and the fourth is Palestine, but let's just take them together because it's the same point The Israeli right wing will say well, you know what? There was never a state called Palestine So we can't refer to this aspirational state Sort of existing state in this in a sense as Palestine because that would be lending credence to Something we that we're gonna say didn't exist and we're going to deny it's Sort of right to exist linguistically and the same thing will go for a Palestinian. So again, if you pay attention to Not just I'm talked about firstly about media outlets But also when just kind of if you're debating people on the Israeli right Conspicuous subtle details that might take a while to spot And two of those details you'll frequently see will be the refusal to use the word Palestine and Palestinians and the typical substitute will be arabs Uh arabs and Palestinian Arab controlled areas right any way you can describe Area a and b of the west bank in Gaza, which is what we're What we're what we're talking about here might be Hamas or Arab occupied Israel That would be a very very far right fringe term, but I've seen that written as well So again very specific now that's on the Israeli side And I would say we were we were veering there towards the end more towards the extremist narrative And I'm just going to point out the exact same phenomenon Exists in the Palestinian and Arab Debate so my point my point my idea in recording this video is not to say this is terrible These are all the you know These are all the words that um a lot of people in Israel are the forbidden list words that people in Israel won't use Because I think there is a mirror image of this on the Palestinian side and it naturally doesn't do much for dialogue I'm just going to say my personal take on the matter I would actually regard myself as leaning towards increasingly the right wing Of the Israeli perspective nevertheless I use these words all the time now Maybe what I'm going to say disqualify disqualifies me as being On the Israeli right and that's that I partake now it again in a Dialogue group it brings together a friend of mine organizes it and he brings together regular Israelis and Palestinians to meet for A burger or beer just to get to know one another As human as human beings one to one. I see a lot of value in it for me the problem with this Policy to put my cards on the table here is I think it makes dialogue impossible when you refuse to use If I go to an interface diet, I mean my personal take I've written a blog on this matter before Is I'm sometimes hesitant myself to use the word Palestine Not for any of the reasons that are the typical reasons But because to me it describes as existing A state that right now does only exist on paper right now the situation on the ground is that you have area a cities area b villages Gaza No connection between any of these places Roadblocks between all these cities no freely controlled airport No freely controlled seaport and for me to talk about that as Palestine is if it's already an existing Country is problematic now. That's it's slightly Different that's a very different conception then the way a lot of Palestinians will have and they will talk about it because they In the in the sense of wanting to erase Jewish connection to Israel and Israeli identity They'll talk about Palestine in the sense that all of this is Palestine all of it always was Palestine and therefore The fact that it's Israeli controlled is kind of an irrelevancy talk about the Palestinian side for A moment. It's very interesting to me always has been how the difference between The common parlance relating to Israel and the official stance And I think you'll see a mirror image reflection here that you'll have on the Israeli right wing the more as you go to more as the extremist camps There's language that people will use every day because it's what's normal and convenient It's it's more easy to talk about the you know, the Palestinians than to come up with awkward Workarounds like this group of Arabs or the Arabs living in Israel or again This is I don't endorse this language at all, but the Arabs occupying Israel It's easier to just go for the normal words than it is to find these ways to deny using that word And you'll see it in the in the Palestinian side where you will there isn't there is a word in Arabic for Israel Israel that's the way it's written out in Arabic means that it's uh, it's pronounced. It's not in in Hebrew. It's Israel in Israel It's Israel with the emphasis on the first syllable and in Arabic It's Israel which places the emphasis on the last it's just got to do is how it's written But if you listen to hard rice nationalistic propaganda channels goods tv Hamas backed sponsored Channel in Jerusalem al-Od's network in labanon al-manar tv You will not generally hear people referring to Israel you'll hear people referring to al-Adu al-Sahyouni, which means the zionist Enemy al-Adu is the enemy. You'll also hear Israel referred to as the zionist entity. That seems to be more common for Iranian Spokespeople for whatever reason, but does it really matter if you're calling it the zionist entity or the zionist enemy either way You're basically trying to deny Israel by not using the word Israel and there's other equivalencies of that But then you'll often hear people interviewed the same people interviewed On the street a good channel I recommend on youtube is the ask project by core eagle chooster and those very same people or the people with those viewpoints In their day-to-day speech. We'll talk about Israel instead of uh, or another one might be The zionist uh occupier or the zionist occupation again I'm just trying to fill out examples again just to point out that it's on both sides I'm not sure I've reached any Conclusion here rather than just to talk about this because I think it's one aspect of the conflict that is linguistic purely linguistic And you know when all this stuff gets translated out to English for the most part this kind of gets lost because international Media organizations don't have style guides that adhere to these conventions So people assume that the news is being reported on in a kind of standard manner By both sides of the conflict when in reality, there are stark differences in what is linguistically Acceptable or appropriate within both speaker groups on the margins of the Israel-Palestinian conflict Israeli Arab conflict You'll see that reflected in the media more than you will in people's day-to-day life But I think it's a it's an example of the level of disconnect that exists here And personally again, but my cards on the table I think even if I'm against the Palestinian state even if I don't if I don't think there was ever a Palestine I don't therefore think for me to deny firstly to attempt to engage someone in dialogue without And then try to do that while denying their identity Is something completely unreasonable and I don't think it's israel's right I think whatever however they choose to self I do I think for israel to deny and other people its Ability to self identify however they want is massively massively Problematic, so it's not if not something I endorse I speak all the time Um about east jerusalem. I don't talk about eastern jerusalem. I talk about the west bank and yehuda and shomron 50 50 Uh west bank because it's what's familiar to me yehuda and shomron Because I hear it in the israeli media and it's a almost a better geographical descriptor And I refer to palestinians as palestinians because if that's what they want to be called That's the language I'm going to use when talking about them And in the very in my very limited experience and dialogue groups when talking to them That was a hot take uh here in jerusalem. I hope it's been uh, it's been interesting If you do have thoughts that adhere adhere to youtube's comments Comments policy and are not just generally tirades against me. I'd appreciate less of those If if you're thinking of them, but just uh dialogue Um if you disagree with me, you think that it is good Not to use certain words you support the restriction of language to support your cause whether you're on the israeli side Or the palestinian side and you think that's legitimate and valid And there are reasons that I haven't covered or left out feel free to chip in with that Comments along those lines and of course, thanks for watching and if you do want to get more videos From me about stuff related to israel Jerusalem and stuff going on here. Do subscribe to the this youtube channel and have a good day