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Author's bio and bibliography follows story

        I overheard a water cooler-type conversation the other day that really made me laugh.  Person A was saying to person B that he couldn't
understand what all the fuss is about in the Middle East.  "After all," the former said, "both the Jews and Arabs are members of the
Semantic race."

        I stopped in mid-stride, did my best slapstick double take, and thought to myself, "That's the problem, they're not both Semantic.
The Arabs alone are members of the Semantic race."

        Nevertheless, I found it amusingly ironic how this verbal faux pas underscores many of the basic misunderstandings that the world has about the
Middle East conflict.  These misunderstanding then give rise to the wrong impression that "Palestinian Arabs" are the underdogs and that they
have a valid position.

        For example, there are the endless charges of Israeli brutality and massacres that supposedly took place over the past 60 years.  The most
recent, of course, was the "Jenin Massacre".  In the great mistory* of the conflict, Jenin is a relatively minor tale (so far).  Most episodes that
are used by Palestinian Arabs and anti-Israel supporters to incite their followers surround the events of the three major wars fought in 1948, 1967 and
1973.  Typical are the claims that Israeli soldiers attacked and killed helpless, unarmed civilians.  To heighten the horrors of the imaginary atrocities,
the reports of civilians "massacred" always include a large number of Arab women and children.

        To illustrate how insidious this semantic problem is the last two sentences in the preceding paragraph contain seven misused words.  They are:

     Attacked
     Helpless
     Unarmed
     Civilians
     Massacred
     Women
     Children

        "Attacked" would indicate that Israel was the aggressor in any of the wars or even in the bloodshed that began in the latter part of the
1800s when Jews began to restore their homeland in the region of historic Israel.  The Jews were defending their right to not only have a home (on
land that they purchased), but their very lives.  This sort of action is called "defense".  The reason why Muslims have a problem understanding
the difference between the two words is that when they "defend" Islam, they "attack" and kill other people.

        "Helpless" portrays an image of being alone, or surrounded, or without the ability to protect oneself.  A "helpless" situation might
exist in the case of a Christian or Jewish girl walking through Nazareth and being assaulted and raped by several Arab men.  That's
"helpless".  Muslims use the word differently.  To them, when they're confronted by one or more persons capable of fighting back, they
(the Arabs) are then "helpless".  Other people use the word "cowardice" to describe what the Arabs call "helpless".

        "Unarmed" is an interesting descriptive word.  Such as when I heard a caller to a national radio show describe the machine-gun toting
"Palestinians" as being "unarmed".  The talk radio host correctly reminded the caller, "One a machine gun can ruin your whole
day."  The same could be said of those "unarmed" Arabs that are firing mortars at buildings or carrying bombs into restaurants: one mortar
round can really spoil a family get-together.  Frequently "Palestinians" and their supporters will cite the "unfair" disparity between the
Israelis using tanks and the Arabs using only automatic weapons, bombs, and incendiary devices.  They shriek about the "unarmed"
disadvantage and shout that if the roles were reversed, and they had the tanks, that they would be victorious.  Needless to say, if they simply chose to
lead productive lives and teach their children things other than hatred of Jews and the West, there would be no need to be at an "unarmed"
disadvantage.  In any event, they've obviously been able to repress the memories of when the multi-nation Arab army attacked the nascent State
of Israel in 1948 and they, not the Jews, had the tanks and artillery.  It didn't help them then, I'm not certain as to how it would help them
now; they would still have to confront a group of trained Israeli soldiers (the heavily armed Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian militaries could attest to
the difficulty of that).

        "Civilians"!  Ah, "civilians".  Only in the Islamic world could a group of people armed with weapons and engaging in warfare be
called "civilians".  However, "civilians" is actually an appropriate term to use because in their world, war, killing, hatred, destruction,
and violence is the norm.  If you raise a child to believe that his or her primary goal in life is to kill the infidels and martyr themselves, then they are just
ordinary "civilians", as judged by their community standards: that's their civility, hence they are "civilians".  The rest of
Earth's population might use words like "combatants", "soldiers" or "fighters".

        "Massacred", the past tense of "massacre" (both used the in the same way).  This is an easy one to explain.  Any battle lost to
infidels is a "massacre", and should be reported as such so as to not humiliate Islam.  It doesn't matter if the sides are balanced or even if
the Muslims began the battle with superior forces and materiel, if they lost they were "massacred".

        "Women": clearly a relative term when discussing Arabs.  However, considering the numerous times that Arabs have dressed as women
during battles and in terrorist activities in order to disguise their efforts and create a propaganda hullabaloo after being "massacred", yes,
I'd say that these men are "women".  Although, semantically, anyone can see how the usage of the word differs between Islamic and
non-Islamic use.  And with this difference in mind, noting Yasser Arafat's predilection for wearing women's clothing when eluding capture,
one could understand why he's not man enough to make peace with Israel.

        "Children", are there "Palestinian" children?  Can you consider a 4-year old who is being taught to kill a "child"?  Would
parents wish and encourage their "children" to die, and then celebrate when they do get killed?  How are these people "children" or
"parents" or "mothers and fathers"?  What kind of distortion is there in Islam that so radically alters the definitions of every single
family-related word?  "Tools" is a much better word.  "Device could also work, as could "apparatus" or "gadget" or
"instrument": like "instrument" of destruction.

          "Ahmed, I'd like you to meet my little instrument-of-mass-destruction.  We call her Yasmine, and we're hoping that
          she'll blow herself to bits on a crowded school bus by the time she reaches ten."

        So is there any wonder why so many people think that the "Palestinians" are the ones being victimized?  Why people are
misunderstanding the intent of the Arab nations?  Why people all over the world think that a country with less than 5 million Jews occupying only
about 8,000 square miles of land could be the aggressor in a conflict with a couple hundred million Arabs who occupy nearly 1.3 million square miles
of land?  It's a problem of semantics, and we've got to get everyone reading off the same page.

        Fortunately, I have the solution!  In addition to putting bibles in hotel rooms we should be providing a dictionary and thesaurus.  And we should
start with the hotels used by the news media.
 

*Mistory is my word for revisionism (mis-history).
 

About the author:

Marc J. Rauch was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1952, and lived in the metropolitan area until "emigrating" to the West Coast in the early
?80s. He is a multi-award winning TV/film writer, producer, and director, and has been a broadcasting and marketing executive since the 1975.
Marc regularly lectures on various subjects concerning broadcasting and new media at conferences and seminars throughout the U.S. and Europe. In
1994, he authored a book on advertising and has had several business and industry articles published in a variety of related magazines.  After the
events of September 11, 2001, Marc began writing about U.S./Arab relations and the Middle East conflict.  He has since had several articles
published on these subjects.

 
Bibliography:

Israel and the Arabs, Ahron Bregman and Jihan El-Tahri, 1998
Testament at the Creation of Israel, Aaron Levin, 1998
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Middle East Conflict, Mitchell Bard, Ph.D., 1999
Myths and Facts, Mitchell Bard, Ph.D., 2001
From Time Immemorial, Joan Peters, 1984

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