Int J Polit Cult Soc (2009) 22:105–116

DOI 10.1007/s10767-009-9043-2

Speechlessness: In Search of Language to Resist

the Israeli “Thing Without a Name”

Lev Luis Grinberg

Published online: 21 March 2009

# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract This paper criticizes the words used to critique Israeli repression of Palestinians as
ineffective for political struggle and not critical enough. It argues that there is no single word
able to comprehend the phenomenon of constant dispossession, violent repression, and
righteous blaming of Palestinian resistance as terror. Unable to suggest one comprehensive
concept that can at once describe, analyze, and criticize the phenomenon, scholars use
inappropriate existing terms—like occupation, Apartheid, colonialism, and Zionism—or
invent new words like ethnocracy, politiciside, Bantustine, spaciocide, sociocide, or symbolic
genocide. All the concepts are discussed in the paper; it is argued that they are partially
correct, but not totally comprehensive. The paper aims to uncover the sophisticated regime
that can co-opt every critical word, and present always Israel as a democratic and enlightened
regime, a victim of Palestinian violence. It claims that the incapacity to create a critical
language is one of the obstacles to develop effective resistance to the regime.

Keywords Zionism . Israeli occupation . Palestinian resistance . Israeli-Palestinian conflict

In August 1967, 2 months after Israel expanded its borders during the 1967 Arab–Israeli war,
leaders of the ruling Labor party had an interesting discussion about future control of the newly
conquered territories then referred to as “the administered territories.” Prime Minister Levi
Eshkol told Foreign Minister Golda Meir that he understood that “she is pleased with the dowry,
but not with the bride.” The lusted after dowry was the land, the “territories.” The undesired
bride was the human component of the recent conquest: the Palestinians. “That’s truly the case,”
Meir responded, “but have you ever seen anyone receive a dowry without a bride?…

These ideas were first presented at a conference on “Colonialism and Post-Colonialism in Israel” held at the
Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem on 20–21 March 2005. A previous version was first published in Hebrew
under the title “The Rejected Bride: the Word Poverty of the Resistance to the Occupation” in Theory and
Criticism 27 (2005) 187–196. The Hebrew original version was written in the context of Israel’s
disengagement from Gaza, but in light of the recent Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip I decided to make the
necessary updates and to publish it here in English.
L. L. Grinberg (*)
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University in the Negev, PoB. 653,
Beer Sheva 84105, Israel
e-mail: lev@bgu.ac.il
106 Grinberg

Nonetheless, that’s what we all want. I would like nothing more than to receive the dowry and to
have someone else receive the bride… But the two things go hand in hand” (Beilin 1985, 46).
This is how Israel deals with the Palestinians; it tries to separate the bride from her dowry, to
force a relationship on the bride, and to illegally appropriate her dowry out of wedlock. The
illegality of Israel’s actions is structured by the state’s relationship with the Palestinians. There
has been no wedding, and there are no plans to get married. This is the thing without a name: the
continuous process of stealing the dowry out of wedlock and hiding the illegal action by
portraying it as temporary. During this process, the bride is stripped of her dowry, her
movements are restricted, she is imprisoned to prevent her from interfering, and her resistance
against the actions of her abusive husband is publicly portrayed as aggression.1 What can we
call this process? In the absence of more suitable terminology, I will refer to it as the Thing
Without a Name. The fact that we have no words to define the relationship between Israel and
Palestine is the main political problem facing opponents of Israel’s oppression of the
Palestinians. The absence of words indicates that there is no consensus regarding neither the
meaning of the process nor the struggle against it. How is it possible to oppose something
that does not even have a name? How is it possible to understand it and change it?
Critical language needs to be able to assign meaning, determine responsibility, and
rectify injustice. However, every subversive word that exposes and condemns the intention
and meaning of Israel’s actions in the Palestinian context is sterilized, taken out of political
context, and stripped of its true meaning the moment it emerges. The words we use disguise
the ongoing process of dowry theft, the silencing and humiliation of the bride, and the
destruction of her future. The bride’s desire to keep her property is not considered as a
given, and her protests are portrayed as aggressive and unjust. We have no words to
describe this complex, unconscious, and sophisticated process. All our words become
complicit to the concealment, and this, in turn, makes us complicit to the concealment. The
Thing Without a Name co-opts the Israeli opposition. Every act of political resistance
becomes an expression of the “enlightened Israeli democracy,” and these very efforts of
resistance ultimately help legitimize the Thing Without a Name.
We have no words to critique this process of humiliation and theft, in which Israel
portrays itself as the victim and the bride as the violent, uncivilized, and irrational
aggressor. Israel describes itself as an enlightened democracy—“the only democracy in the
Middle East”—and regards “them” as having a tyrannical, corrupt, and violent regime
aimed at harming the Jews and casting them into the sea for no reason. According to this
geographical dichotomy, “here” there is democracy and “there” there is military rule.
However in reality, the imagined line between the two is crossed again and again.2 On both
sides of the border, Jews have privileges and Palestinians are denied equal rights. The state,
however, distinguishes between the status of Palestinian citizens of Israel and the
Palestinians in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip (since 2005), and those living as refugees
in areas outside of Israeli control (since 1948). These divisions and classifications enable
Israel to deconstruct the Palestinian people, and to present itself as having no partner for
dialogue in order to stem the violence and negotiate a political solution. Jews on the
“democratic” side of the border gain from the Palestinian dispossession and are called upon
by the same democracy to serve in the armed forces outside of Israel’s borders in order to
“defend” the occupation. The illusion of the border maintains the illusion of Israel as a

1
Neve Gordon (2007) also employed Eshkol’s metaphor to refer to the Palestinians’ separation from their
lands as a mean of military control.
2
Grinberg (2008, 2009).
Speechlessness: In Search of Language to Resist the Israeli… 107

democratic state. This, however, is an “imagined democracy.”3 After all, if it were not for
the border, no one would ever dream of claiming that the regime governing the area under
Israeli control is democratic.

“Disengagement” from “Occupied” Gaza

The Thing Without a Name is not exactly “apartheid,” but it is also not “occupation.” These
two terms are broadly employed in efforts to condemn Israeli control and racial
discrimination, but neither successfully comprehends, describes, or analyzes the phenom-
enon in its full meaning. For this reason, the terms fail to delineate a path for struggling
against it. It is not apartheid, in which one particular group is marked, separated, and
stripped of its collective rights. In such cases, the political goal is clear and agreed upon:
one man–one vote, namely the dismantling of the racist regime and the provision of equal
rights and democracy. But the Thing Without a Name distinguishes between different
groups of Palestinians, some of which live in conditions that are more favorable than
apartheid. These are the Palestinian citizens of Israel, whose limited civil and political rights
enable them to advance democratic demands for full equality. Each of the other Palestinian
groups has different demands stemming from its unique conditions: those living outside the
borders of Israeli control demand the right of return; those living under military rule
demand independent statehood; and those imprisoned within the Gaza Strip demand control
over their borders. This division of the Palestinian people into subgroups keeps them from
waging a united national struggle for independence. It also deprives Jewish citizens of
Israel of the ability to support their struggle, as did many whites citizens of South Africa.
The Thing Without a Name is not exactly an occupation, that is, according to the acceptable
meaning of the term. An occupation regime is the result of war and under international law is
defined as temporary. If it were clear that this was a case of belligerent occupation, the
international community would be obligated to put the Israeli government leadership on trial, as
most of its actions are prohibited under international law. This is true of the establishment of
settlements; collective punishment; house demolitions; restrictions on movement; the
construction of the separation barrier; and the killing of civilians and political leaders.4 If
either international or Israeli public opinion viewed Israeli control in “the territories” as an
occupation, then acts of Palestinian resistance would need to be considered legitimate, and not
acts of “terrorism.” The Thing Without a Name, and that is neither apartheid nor occupation,
paralyzes and frustrates all strategies of resistance—Israeli strategies, Palestinian strategies,
and most of all joint bi-national strategies.5 The absence of a political strategy of resistance is
reflected in our inability to Name the Thing that is being resisted. The opposite is also true:
the absence of a name makes it more difficult to develop a political strategy of resistance.
Since 1967, the Thing Without a Name refers to itself as a “Jewish and Democratic
State.”6 Within the framework of this state, the bride is not only unwanted but is also
dangerous: after all, she is now pregnant and presents a “demographic threat.” It is striking,
however, that those Jewish Israelis who regard themselves as in the “the peace camp” speak
in terms of a demographic threat as well, thereby adopting the language of Levy Eshkol and

3
Grinberg (1999).
4
For a discussion of the illegality of Israel’s actions, see: Kretzmer (2002); Negbi (2004); Hajjar (2005).
5
On the lack of political strategy for the bi-national idea, see: Raz-Karkotzkin (2007).
6
See Smooha (1993).
108 Grinberg

Golda Meir with regard to the unwanted bride. As long as this is the language employed by
Israeli supporters of the peace process, there is no chance of forging a political partnership
between Jews and Palestinians in the struggle for fair and equal relations, whether in the
form of a fair divorce (a “two state solution”) or a legal marriage (a “one state solution”).
No words are adequate. This is because they are always disconnected from their political
and historical context and serve to conceal the oppression of the bride and the theft of her
dowry. Consider, for example, the term “Palestinian state.” The moment that Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon accepted the Road Map and announced his support for the establishment of a
Palestinian state, it became clear that this state had become yet another means of
camouflaging the continued theft of the dowry. The political meaning of statehood is
sovereignty over territory and an army capable of defending it (Tilly 1992; Weber 1964).
No one, however, is offering the Palestinians a state according to this definition of the term.
Words have power. They mobilize people and create reality, emotions, and identification.
However, when they are emasculated and taken out of context, they weaken, create
illusions, and de-politicize. Consider for example the power of the word “disengagement,”
which was used by the Israeli authorities to refer to Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
“Silence—we’re disengaging,” they said in 2005. We cannot talk about anything—not
political issues, and especially not the disengagement itself, its unilateral nature, or the
disaster likely to follow if it is not carried out within the framework of an agreement with
the regime on the other side of the border.7 When Ariel Sharon started speaking in the
language of those known as “opponents of the occupation,” he co-opted them, turned them
into part of the pro-disengagement camp, and transformed himself into “a man of the peace
camp.” Sharon began using many “words of peace,” and his successors Olmert and Livni
have followed the same tradition: “Palestinian state,” “withdrawal,” “evacuation of
settlements,” “illegal outposts,” and “peace.” Sharon announced that “the occupation is
bad for Israel,” and his words were automatically adopted as evidence that the peace camp
was right, without examining the meaning of his reference to “occupation.” Later, it became
clear that his aim was to control them from without, by creating giant ghettos and closely
monitoring all entrances and exits. And the “peace camp” that supported the disengagement
later supported the bombardment of Gaza and the killing of Palestinian citizens.
The disengagement plan caught supporters of peace and opponents of the occupation in
the sticky web of word de-contextualization and the constant de-politicization and
concealment of Israel’s acts of theft and humiliation. The enthusiasm produced by Sharon’s
statements and by the disengagement plan illustrated the structural difficulties involved with
resisting this evasive regime, as long as it has no name—that is, as long as we are unable to
accurately define the controlling regime and the political enemy. Without a name, we cannot
define who “we” are and who “they” are. It is impossible to mobilize participants in a struggle
against or to successfully delegitimize something that we are not even able to call by name.
This regime leaves the Palestinians with no effective legitimate strategies of resistance.
Their use of violence is regarded as evidence that they want to kill us. It is referred to as
“terrorism,” and the war against it is thus portrayed as legitimate. When they try to work
diplomatically and to prevent violence, the theft continues uninterrupted and negotiations
become a “process” without end. This is what happened during the 7 years of “imagined
peace” (1993–2000) during which the Israeli government doubled the Israeli settler
population in the territories, built “bypass roads” to ensure the free movement of settlers,

7
For an analysis of the unilateral feature of the withdrawal and the silencing of political debate, see Grinberg
(2009, chapter 10).
Speechlessness: In Search of Language to Resist the Israeli… 109

and split the Palestinian population of the West Bank into hundreds of isolated settlements.8
The imagined border also frustrates all Palestinian strategies: when they operate violently
within the green-line, it proves that they want to “throw us into the sea” and that “we have
no one to talk to.” The killing of settlers in the occupied territories, however, does not
overly disturb most Israelis living within Israel’s sovereign borders. This is because such
acts are regarded as happening “there” and harming “them”—“the settlers”—who are seen as
tempting fate and taking a risk simply by living “there.” In other words, because Israelis imagine
the state of Israel as democratic and sovereign within its pre-1967 borders, attacks within these
borders are seen as Palestinian aggression requiring a response. Part of the problem lies in the
illusion that a border actually exists, and that Jewish Israelis living within Israel’s sovereign
borders are somehow not party to the crime being committed “there,” in “the territories.”

Academic Imagination and Political Irrelevance

In an effort to free ourselves from the bear-hug of the regime that transforms us into
partners in crime, many academics have suggested new words and concepts. Two salient
examples are Yiftachel (2006) term “Ethnocracy” and Kimmerling (2003) term “politicide.”
Ophir (2004) and Azoulay (2004) have referred to “the Camp” as a machine for “postponed
purification.” In addition, Hanafi (2009) speaks of “spacio-cide,”9 Salah Abdel-Jawad uses
the term “socio-cide” (Abdel-Jawad, unpublished paper, “Sociocide: A New Concept to
Explain the Zionist and Israeli Policy toward the Palestinian People”), and Ghanim (2008)
has suggested the term thanato-politics. Shenhav (2007) has questioned the existence of the
green line altogether, arguing that “the occupation does not stop at roadblocks.” Raz-
Karkotzkin (2007) has proposed a “bi-national” perspective, but acknowledges that this
refers not to a political program but rather an alternative consciousness. Journalists have
also joined in the “naming” effort: Eldar (2003), for example, has coined the term
“Bantustine” to highlight the establishment of Bantustans in Palestine. Finally, my own
academic work has led me to propose concepts such as “imagined democracy,” “imagined
peace,” and “occupying democracy.”10
All of these efforts have been influenced by the post-modern and post-colonial theories that
have flourished in Israel since the 1990s. However, although these theories focus primarily on
the critique of words, language, and discourse, they have so far failed to liberate us from our
crisis of words. We are the ones who are actually undergoing a process of “disengagement,”
because we are closing ourselves up in the ivory tower of complex words, within a small,
intimate, and condescending community of academics. All attempts to develop vocabulary
capable of simultaneous analysis and condemnation begin and end as academic projects of
individuals publishing articles for their own professional advancement. They do not penetrate
public discourse, but rather remain disengaged, trapped inside the academic community.
Our attempts to create vocabulary stem from the crisis of words facing the opposition to
the occupation. Here is an example: I just used the word “occupation,” and in so doing I
recreated the illusion of a border. I removed myself from “there” and unintentionally

8
See Gordon (2008).
9
Adi Ophir, Ariella Azoulay, and Sari Hanafi presented their ideas at a conference on “The Politics of
Humanitarian Aid to the Occupied Territories,” held at the Van-Leer Institute in Jerusalem on 20–21 April
2004.
10
See: Grinberg (1999; 2000a; 2000b; 2008). In more polemical forums, I have proposed additional
concepts such as State Terrorism (2002a), BuSharon (2002b), and Symbolic Genocide (2004).
110 Grinberg

transformed myself into a partner in the deception of “the disengagement plan” and the
Thing Without a Name. All the words we propose are emasculated and silenced and fail to
emerge as part of a common language with collective, public, and political significance.
Terms like “colonialism,” “colonization,” and “Zionism” are also incapable of explaining,
describing, or challenging the complex reality of the situation.
This is not exactly a case of colonialism, because there is no civilizing project. Israel
does not intend to “modernize” the Palestinians, and is not converting them or transforming
them into good citizens. In contrast to colonial regimes which attempt to profit from their
control of distant regions, Israel neither invests “there” in roads or infrastructure for the
“local population” nor establishes “there” enterprises that complement the Israeli economy.
In fact, the opposite is true. It destroys infrastructure, buildings, and factories. However, the
first and foremost difference between the Thing Without a Name and colonialism is the fact
that Israel is separated from the “the territories” by neither sea nor border. Furthermore,
there are no separate state apparatuses serving as a device of colonial control. As a result,
there is nothing to facilitate an anti-colonial struggle aimed at expulsion of the foreign
rulers, decolonization, and the creation of a post-colonial situation.
It is also not a case of “colonization,” as there is no complete displacement of the
Palestinian population as in Australia; no mass killing, as was the case in the USA; and no
incorporation of the local population through the subordination of its existing framework,
as in North and South Africa and South and Central America. If things had taken such a
course, it would have been possible to struggle for democracy and equal rights with the
European settlers, as in South Africa, or for independence and the expulsion of the settlers,
as in Algeria. The blurring of the border and the division of the Palestinians into subgroups
are salient features of the Thing Without a Name which prevent the struggle for liberation,
as the result is that there is not only one regime to oppose.11
Neither is it a case of Zionism. Use of the term “Zionist” is a clear reflection of the crisis of
words we face. The concept Zionism has become a fetish, a sort of codeword uttered by many in
order to express the desire to shake off our co-option by words and by the Thing Without a
Name. The critical use of the word Zionism expresses a legitimate desire to not belong to the
thieving collective that is abusing the bride. However, the word Zionism also does not
effectively describe the situation. In addition, in the eyes of the majority of the Israeli population
which regards itself as Zionist and understands Zionism as patriotism and the negation of
Zionism as negation of the existence of the state and of their right to collective existence,
the term “Zionism” does not express sufficiently effective condemnation.
Whenever we lack a term, we can use the word Zionism and it gives us the feeling that we
have said something meaningful. In fact, however, we have said nothing at all. After all, the
Jewish settlers’ desire to establish a national community in Eretz Israel (Palestine) did not have
to lead teleologically to the monstrous form it presently takes, the Thing Without a Name. The
early Zionist leaders would never have dreamed that their enterprise could lead to four decades
of military rule, the assassination of political leaders from the air, and the bombardment of a
civilian population on the basis of “self defense.” The Thing Without a Name is a concrete
historical phenomenon, the result of the extremely unique sequence of events that has brought
us to the present. Therefore, when we call the Thing Without a Name “Zionism”, we again
take things out of political and historical context, de-politicize, and disengage from public
discourse. Use of the word Zionism is therefore another attempt to escape the crisis of words
and to withdraw into the closed community of “those who understand the language.”

11
In addition to my work on the duality of the regime (Grinberg 2008; 2009), see Azouly and Ophir (2008).
Speechlessness: In Search of Language to Resist the Israeli… 111

“The Left” and “Peace”

Once upon a time, this Thing had a name. It was called the “labor settlement movement”
(tnuat ha-hityashvut ha-`ovedet)—a strange mixture of colonization and nation state
building carried out in the name of socialism. Until 1948, labor settlement was the
dominant force in the Zionist movement. As such, it shaped the segregated settlement
strategy through which Jewish settlers aspired to control “the maximum area with the
minimum number of Arabs.”12 Labor settlement is what attempted to dispossess the bride
of its dowry even before 1948, and it is also what stole the dowry that remained after the
Nakba. The industrialists, the citrus orchard owners, and the urban bourgeois did not aspire
to achieve Jewish–Arab segregation, because they sought cheap labor (Shapira 1977). The
same was true of the nationalist Revisionist movement, not for this reason but because they
wanted to rule over both banks of the Jordan River (including modern day Jordan) and to
this end were willing to grant the bride minimal rights of “cultural autonomy.”13 There were
also proponents of “spiritual Zionism”—such as Ehad Ha’am, Martin Buber, and Yehuda
Leib Magnes—who believed that it was not the state itself that was important, but rather the
cultural community it housed (Heller 2003). All these groups opposed the metaphor of
Eshkol and Golda, which guided the strategy of labor settlement based on the desire that
“someone else” would take the bride and that “we” would retain the dowry.
After 1967, Moshe Dayan suggested resolving Eshkol and Golda’s dilemma by means of
a “functional division” of the West Bank: the Israeli army would control the area, while the
Jordanian monarchy would control the people (only the Palestinians, of course; the Israeli
army would “defend” the Israeli settlers). Historically and strategically, labor settlement
suffered a crushing defeat. However, the period following 1967 witnessed the emergence of
a complex situation that separated the labor movement and its supporters, the European middle
classes within “the borders of sovereign Israel,” from the nationalist-religious settlers in the
territories, who were still engaged in propagating the labor movement’s settlement strategy. In
this way, the “labor settlement movement” underwent a metamorphosis: its biological heirs
came to be referred to as “the left,” while those continuing its settlement practices came to be
referred to as “the right.” This conceptual confusion has resulted in de-politicization, and has
made it easier for those now referred to as “the left” to shake off responsibility for what the
settlers of “the right” are doing to the Palestinians “there”, across the “border” of the
“democratic” “state.” After all, “we” are not the “occupying settlers”—“they” are.14
After the Likud came to power in 1977, another word was dramatically transformed:
“peace.” Menachem Begin signed a peace treaty with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In
addition to the agreement regarding the return of the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace,
the two countries also agreed on a process that was supposed to lead to peace with the
Palestinians. The agreement called for the establishment in the “territories” of a “Palestinian
autonomy” to be administered by an elected council. The council would negotiate with the
Israeli government regarding a permanent status agreement that was to be reached within
5 years. Since the peace treaty with Egypt, the term “peace process” has come to refer to the

12
Gershon Shafir (1993) explained the successful strategy of labor settlement as pure ethnic colonialism.
13
Zev Jabotinsky’s idea of granting cultural autonomy to the Arabs of Palestine was the source of
Menachem Begin’s proposal during the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks of the late 1970s to grant cultural
autonomy to the Palestinians in the occupied territories. The evolution of this idea resulted in the
14
On the early period of the separation of the labor movement and the nationalist-religious settlers, see:
Goremberg (2006). On the relationship between Gush Emunim and Peace Now, two movements delineating
Israeli political discourse, see Feige (2002).
112 Grinberg

continued military control over the Palestinians, the theft of their land, and the de-
legitimization of their resistance.
The standard association between the words “left” and “peace” is false and misleading.
In the Israeli context, “left” is not a political concept but rather a cultural representation of
the Sabra community, namely the secular offspring of European immigrants who were born
in the country.15 The “imagined peace” of the “government of the left” (1992–1996)
actually resulted in the doubling of construction in the settlements, the construction of
“illegal outposts,” and the splintering of land through bypass roads, roadblocks, and the
separation barrier. The imagined peace is what brought the “left” to call for the construction
of the “separation barrier” and for the unilateral “disengagement” from Gaza. At the same
time, they completely disregarded the route of the barrier and the fate of the Palestinians in
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the ghettos established beyond the “fences.”

Symbolic Genocide

Our crisis of words became critical in the context of the repression of the Second Intifada
and the almost complete absence of criticism and protest from the Israeli “left.” The
absence of a broad political movement opposing Israel’s disproportionate use of violence,
and the absence of a common goal among those opposing the repression, removed us from
the public sphere and prevented us from speaking in public. Our lack of words silenced and
paralyzed us. This silencing prevents not only our existence in the public sphere but the
existence of a political community that opposes Israeli policies. As individuals and as
groups of activists engaged in highly focused activities, we have words, but we do not exist
as a movement with a unique critical voice. We do not exist as a political entity challenging
the status quo and proposing an alternative way of thinking.
After Israel’s occupation of the West Bank cities and the killing of hundreds of
Palestinians in April 2002, a group of activists, intellectuals, and artists gathered in a Tel
Aviv theater to protest the horrifying Israeli actions. However, despite the many speeches
delivered, the most impressive participant was actor and director Muhammad Bakri. Bakri
stood on the stage in silence for five minutes, as if trying to say something but actually not
saying anything, until finally pronouncing the following words in Hebrew: “Blessed art
Thou, who did not make me a Jew.”16 Indeed, in the name of protecting Jews, the Israeli
government carries out terrible actions which have absolutely nothing to do with Judaism.
What is it called? How can we explain and understand it? How can we condemn it? The
Jews’ crisis of words is clear. Bakri also lacks words, but at least he was able to divest
himself of responsibility for the actions of his country—Israel—against his people, the
Palestinians.
For a period of 3 years, I published articles abroad criticizing and condemning Israeli
repression, but they were ignored in Israel.17 That is, until the publication of an article in
Belgium condemning Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Yassin. My article sparked a
particularly furious response due to its introduction of a pair of words that could not be
co-opted—“symbolic genocide” (Grinberg 2004). The aggressive responses I received

15
On the cultural meaning of the terms “right” and “left,” see Grinberg (2009, chapter 7).
16
These words should be understood as analogous to the traditional Jewish prayer: “Blessed art Thou, who
did not make me a woman.”
17
Grinberg (2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b).
Speechlessness: In Search of Language to Resist the Israeli… 113

afforded me a first hand taste of the paralyzing violence of silencing.18 My attackers twisted
my words, while my defenders argued that I had the right to express myself. At the same
time, those close to me stated that they agreed with my political beliefs. However, the result
of the silencing response to my article was that nobody paid any attention to its content.
Why did my words cause such a storm? Why I had to be silenced? It seems to me that
many people were outraged by my exposure of the link between the humiliation and
dispossession of the Palestinians, and the ability to commit murder as if it were a legitimate
act of self-defense in which Israel was the victim. Israel’s thieving and humiliating actions
harm the Palestinian collective, its sense of pride, and its national sentiment. It also sparks
demands for restoration of the rights of the imprisoned bride. Israel’s sense of victimization
and its self portrayal as acting in its own defense has roots in a different time and place:
1940s Europe. In this way, it severs the oppression from its immediate political context.
Since October 2000, symbolic genocide has become the most prominent feature of the
Thing Without a Name. As I see it, the term symbolic genocide refers to all types of attacks
against the things that symbolize a people and provide it with meaning and hope for the
future: things such as land, community, children, youth, demonstrations, protest, activists,
and leaders. It is an attempt to deprive the bride of all hope of getting married respectfully
and of forging a relationship based on equality, or, alternatively, of getting a fair divorce
and recovering her dowry. Such hope was created by the Oslo Accords, which for the first
time enabled us to realistically imagine a Palestinian state within 1967 borders. However,
Binyamin Netanyahu’s response to this hope was to lower Palestinian expectations.
Symbolic genocide refers to the ongoing effort since October 2000 to create despair among
the Palestinian people, and to convince them that they will never be able to release
themselves from the control of the undesired, illegal husband who beats them and steals
their property. Moshe Yaalon was Israel’s Chief of General Staff between 2002 and 2005,
during the suppression of the Second Intifada, and in this capacity he headed the apparatus
which generates the laundered vocabulary employed by the Israeli regime. According to him,
the goal of the suppression was “to burn Palestinian consciousness.”19 I call this attempt to
“burn Palestinian consciousness” a symbolic Genocide. After Israel failed to “burn Palestinian
consciousness” and pulled its forces and settlers out of Gaza in 2005, it tried to “burn
Hezbollah’s consciousness” in the summer of 2006. And after the failure in Lebanon, it tried
again to “burn Hamas’ consciousness” in Gaza, in what I refer to as “Black January” 2009.20
The words “symbolic genocide” sparked such extreme responses because they
stimulated one of the most sensitive nerves of Israeli society: the nerve that is the source
of legitimacy of the Thing Without a Name. The source of legitimacy to rob the bride and
accuse her of aggression is not simply colonial or imperial, and it stems neither from the
white man’s arrogance over all others or the west’s sense of superiority over the east.
Rather, what legitimizes the Thing Without a Name in Israel’s view is the fact that we, the
victims of the Holocaust, are the ultimate a-historical victim of human history through the
generations. To be clear, the Jews were one of the most serious victims of enlightened
modern Europe and Christian nationalism (second only to the native peoples of the

18
Responses in the media continued for 2 months, between April and May 2004, and included an editorial in
Haaretz (April 25, 2004) opposing the demand of Education Minister Limor Livnat that Ben-Gurion
University fire me as a condition for her participation in a meeting of the Board of Trustees (Haaretz, April
22–23, 2004). This was the height of the silencing efforts, but the University administration decided to
forego Livnat’s presence, and not to fire me (Haaretz April 25, 2004).
19
See Ya'alon interview with Ari Shavit “The Chief of Staff: Cause of Concern”, (Haaretz August 30, 2002).
20
Grinberg (2009a).
114 Grinberg

American continent), and its intolerance to otherness. The Thing Without a Name portrays the
Palestinians as part of this a-historical phenomenon of persecution of Jews simply because
they are Jews, and in this way it negates their collective rights and casts them as a threat.
It is not Zionism, and it is not something that existed in the 1930s or the 1950s. It is
something harsh and crude invented and manipulated by Prime Minister Menachem Begin
in order to legitimize the unpopular first Lebanon war, when he compared Arafat hiding in
his bunker in Beirut to Hitler in Berlin. This became a myth around which Israeli identity,
which was unraveling after the outbreak of the second Intifada in late 2000, has been able
to crystallize.21 According to the religious myth, “in every generation they rise up to
annihilate us.” Although the current modern meaning of this annihilation is anti-Semitism and
the Holocaust, Palestinian demands are also understood as attempts to wipe out the Jewish
collective. This is how the Palestinian refugees’ demand for the right of return is portrayed. The
same is true of the demand of Israel’s Palestinian citizens for a democratic state (“a state of all its
citizens”) as well as the demand of those Palestinians living under military rule for an
independent Palestinian state on 22% of the dowry, with its own army to defend itself.
By employing the discourse of the Holocaust and portraying itself as a victim, Israel
denies the international criticism of its policies and dismisses such criticism as an
expression of anti-Semitism. This is not the result of a sense of colonial supremacy, but
rather a combination of cynical propagandizing manipulation and real national trauma
which serves to erase the bride, to portray her as murderous, and to justify abusing her. It
enables us to utter the wish that she would just simply disappear (in the words of Yitzhak
Rabin, “May Gaza be swallowed up by the sea.”) or that someone else would take her
(Egyptian administration of the Gaza Strip). It is a built-in discomfort with the future: fear
of the collective annihilation of the Jewish people translated into the national consensus, of both
“left” and “right,” that the Palestinians constitute a “demographic threat.” Most Israeli Jews do
not intend to live side by side with the bride in a relationship based on equality, and they are
therefore unable to live in Israel–Palestine without living in conflict. The inability to come to
terms with the Jewish past and with the terrible loss in Europe prevents us from looking at the
situation with political pragmatism and from concentrating on the present and the future. We are
neither “here” (Eretz Israel–Palestine) nor “there” (Europe). Either that, or we are in both places
at once. This is the a-political nature of language—its disconnectedness from place and time.
Immigration to Eretz Israel and belief in the right to steal the bride’s dowry are
intrinsically linked to a collective sense of loss somewhere else, and to the fear of
annihilation. Such feelings did not emerge in 1967. Rather, it emerged with the birth of anti-
Semitic nationalism in Europe and became a national trauma during World War II. Author
and Palmah fighter Ben-Yehuda (1981, 181) provided a clear expression of the confusion
between “here” and “there” in her article on the 1948 war: “We aimed our rifles at the
Arabs, we pulled the triggers, and we killed Nazis.” The sense of self-justification and the
link between the Jewish tragedy and the injustice suffered by the Palestinians was reflected
in a Mapai leadership’s proposal to the German government during the 1950s. The proposal
suggested that the Germans pay compensation not only to Holocaust survivors but to
Palestinian refugees as well (Lustick 2005). Most Israelis view the Holocaust as the source
of legitimacy for the establishment of the state of Israel, as well as for the ongoing, never-
ending, a-historic theft of the bride’s dowry. It is the responsibility of Germany’s Nazis and
anti-Semitic Europe, the argument goes, not “ours.” We are the victims. For this reason, Europe
cannot criticize Israel’s actions because it is the source of anti-Semitism. When Europe
criticizes Israel, the meaning as fare as Israel is concerned is that Europe is still anti-Semitic.

21
See Grinberg 2009 (part IV).
Speechlessness: In Search of Language to Resist the Israeli… 115

How can we tell this story? How do we break it down? How can we talk about it without
being immediately and aggressively silenced? How can we bring the Jews of Eretz Israel–
Palestine back to reality, to the here and now, to concrete politics? How can we extract then
from their a-historic war against those who wish to harm them? There are no certain
answers to these questions, but it is clear that it must be a collective project that is
intellectual, academic, and political all at the same time. Separating academics from politics
severs critical thought from public debate, and makes it unrealistic, introspective, and
devoid of influence. The task of creating critical language is to connect, not to disengage.

Connecting Words

The difficulty in naming the Thing Without a Name is our inability to find a term that
includes both the act of robbing the bride and the portrayal of the abusive husband as the
victim of her resistance. All the critical terms that we academics invent (ethnocracy,
politicide, Camp, Sociocide, Spaciocide, Bantustin, occupying democracy) or borrow from
the political realm (occupation, colonialism, Zionism, peace, Palestinian state, green-line,
militarism, colonization, apartheid) are only partially accurate, and do not effectively link
description of the Thing Without a Name with analysis and condemnation. They cannot be
connected to a political statement defining the struggle and creating collective identity.
They are easily neutralized by proving them “incorrect” or by using them out of context.
Actually, the terms that most successfully enable us to talk about the situation are Arabic
terms generated during the Palestinian struggle: Intifada, Nakba, Tahadiya, Hudna. These
are words which no military force has succeeded in suppressing, no politician has
succeeded in co-opting, and no communications media has succeeded in ignoring. These
terms are made more powerful when Hebrew speaking Jews use them, and this is why
academics and political activists have started using Arabic terms: Ta`ayush (partnership),
Tarabut (connections).22 Using the terminology of the Palestinian struggle connects Jews
and Arabs and transforms bi-nationalism into a political strategy.
My modest contribution to the struggle, interpreted as such in retrospect of my
spontaneous speech, is the proposal of an additional link—a link between the horror and
frustration experienced by the Jews of Europe, and their actions in Eretz Israel–Palestine.
Thus, the term genocide, which refers to an event in a different place and time, becomes
symbolic when it is carried out within the reality of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The
Jewish ghetto which served to separate and mark Jews in Europe presently serves to
separate, mark, humiliate, and control Palestinians here and now: the Gaza ghetto, the
Ramallah ghetto, the Hebron ghetto, and the walls of the Palestine ghetto. It seems that, in
order to liberate the Palestine ghetto, it is also necessary to release the Jews from the
European ghetto, from which they have still yet to be fully liberated.

References

Azoulay, A. (2004). “On the Verge of the Catastrophe,” Unpublished Paper Presented in the Van Leer
Conference: “The Politics of Humanitarianism in the Occupied Territories,” April 20–21, 2004.
Azoulay, A., & Adi, O. (2008). This regime which is not one: occupation and democracy between the sea
and the river (1967–). Tel Aviv: Resling.

22
See http://www.taayush.org and http://www.tarabut.info
116 Grinberg

Beilin, Y. (1985). The Price of Unity: The Labor Party until the Yom Kippur War. Revivim, Ramat Gan [Hebrew].
Ben-Yehuda, Netiva. 1981. 1948: Between the Calendars. Keter, Jerusalem [Hebrew].
Eldar, A. (2003). “On the Road to Bantustin,” Haaretz, 17 November 2008 [Hebrew].
Feige, Michael. 2002. Two Maps to the West Bank: Gush Emunim, Peace Now, and the Shaping of Space in
Israel. Magnes, Jerusalem [Hebrew].
Ghanim, H. (2008). Thanatopolitics: the case of the colonial occupation in Palestine. In R. Lentin (Ed.), In
thinking Palestine. Ft. Lauderdale: Zed.
Gordon, N. (2007). Of dowries and brides: a structural analysis of Israel’soccupation. New Political Science,
29(4), 453–478.
Gordon, N. (2008). Israel’s occupation: sovereignty, discipline and control. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Goremberg, G. (2006). The accidental empire—Israel and the birth of the settlements pp. 1967–1977. New
York: Times Books.
Grinberg, L. L. (1999). Imagined democracy in Israel: theoretical background and historic perspective.
Israeli Sociology, 1(2), 209–240. [Hebrew].
Grinberg, L. L. (2000a). “Imagined democracy, imagined peace,” Unpublished paper presented in the
Humphrey International Conference, May 19–21, 2000.
Grinberg, L. L. (2000b). Why did we not continue in his path? On peace, democracy, political murder, and a
post-conflict agenda. In L. Grinberg (Ed.), Contested memory: myth, nationalism, and democracy. Beer-
Sheva: Humphrey Institute, Ben-Gurion University in the Negev. [Hebrew].
Grinberg, L. L. (2001) “The arrogance of occupation,” Middle East Policy, 9-1, pp. 46–52.
Grinberg, L. L. (2002a). “Israel’s state terrorism,” Tikkun (May–June): 12.
Grinberg, L. L. (2002b). “The Busharon global war,” Counterpunch, July 8, 2002.
Grinberg, L. L. (2003a). “Israel: democracy at a dead-end,” Global Research, January 22, 2003.
Grinberg, L. L. (2003b). “Still the time of the Yankees?” Global Research, March 18, 2003.
Grinberg, L. L. (2004). “Genocide symbolique,” La Libre Belgique, March 29, 2004.
Grinberg, L. L. (2008). Israel’s dual regime since 1967. MIT-EJMES, 3, 59–80.
Grinberg, L. L. (2009). Politics and violence in Israel/Palestine—democracy vs. military rule. London:
Routledge.
Grinberg, L. L. (2009a). “Black January” Hagada Hasmalit, January 22, 2009.
Hajjar, L. (2005). Courting conflict: the Israeli military court system in the West Bank and Gaza. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Hanafi, S. (2009). Spacio-cide: colonial politics, invisibility and rezoning in Palestinian territory.
Contemporary Arab Affairs, 2(1), 106–121.
Heller, J. (2003). From Brit Shalom to the Ihud: Judah Leib Magnes and the struggle for a bi-national state.
Jerusalem: Magnes [Hebrew].
Kimmerling, B. (2003). Politicide. London: Verso.
Kretzmer, D. (2002). The occupation of justice: the supreme court of Israel and the occupied territories.
Albany: SUNY Press.
Lustick, I. (2005). Negotiating truth: the Holocaust, Lehavdil, and al-Nakba. In A. M. Lesch, & I. Lustick
(Eds.), Exile and return: predicaments of Palestinians and Jews (pp. 106–130). Philadelphia:
Pennsylvania University Press.
Negbi, M. (2004). We were like Sodom: on the slope from a law-abiding country to a banana republic.
Jerusalem: Keter. [Hebrew].
Ophir, A. (2004). “The Economy of Violence,” Unpublished Paper Presented in the Van Leer Conference:
“The Politics of Humanitarianism in the Occupied Territories,” April 20–21, 2004.
Raz-Krakottzkin, A. (2007). Exile et souverainteé: judaism, sionisme et penseé binationale. Paris: La
Fabrique.
Shafir, G. (1993). Land, labor and population in Zionist colonization: unique economic aspects. In U. Ram
(Ed.), Israeli society: critical aspects. Tel-Aviv: Brirot. [Hebrew].
Shapira, A. (1977). The elusive struggle: Hebrew labor, 1929–1939. Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad. [Hebrew].
Shenhav, Y. (2007). “The occupation does not stop at roadblocks,” M’tzad Shani: 14–15 [Hebrew].
Smooha, S. (1993). Class, ethnic and national cleavages and democracy in Israel. In E. Sprinzak & L.
Diamond (Eds.), Israeli democracy under stress. Boulder: Lynne Reiner.
Tilly, C. (1992). Coercion, capital and European States, AD 990–1992. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
Weber, M. (1964). The theory of social and economic organization. New York: Free Press.
Yiftachel, O. (2006). Ethnocracy, land and identity politics in Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania
University Press.