Fighting words in the Mideast

｢自爆テロ｣ か「殺人目的の爆破」か

But lest it be thought no headway was made at all, the Bush administration did make a bold move on the semantic front. Apparently deciding that there are no weapons as powerful as words, the White House last week adopted a new phrase to describe those Palestinians who blow up themselves and others as a means of waging war against Israel. "Suicide bomber" is out. "Homicide bomber," a phrase already picked up by at least one major U.S. television network, is in. Not that the administration cast the language change in partisan terms. According to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, homicide bomber is simply "a more accurate description. These are not suicide bombings. These are not people who just kill themselves. These are people who deliberately go to murder others with no regard to the values of their own life."

The switch does not, of course, spring from anything so simple as a sudden desire for verbal accuracy. It is not even true that the preferred new phrase is more accurate. It is less accurate because it is less specific. Anyone who plants a bomb and then leaves the scene before the weapon detonates — IRA terrorists, say, or Oklahoma City killer Timothy McVeigh — is a homicide bomber. The Unabomber, who mailed his lethal weapons to distant victims, was a homicide bomber. How, if not by the use of a phrase such as suicide bomber, do we distinguish between this larger group and the subset of homicide bombers who kill themselves as well? Strictly speaking, the latter are "suicidal homicide bombers," but that is too much of a mouthful for everyday use — and besides, the homicidal intent conveyed by the word "bomber" makes the phrase redundant. Everyone knows what a suicide bomber is, just as everyone knew during World War II what a kamikaze pilot was — and that was a euphemism if ever there was one.

The truth is, the White House's semantic switch is pure politics, another way of making the point that President George W. Bush made more transparently a couple of weeks ago when he asked Arab countries to stop calling the suicide bombers "martyrs." "They're not martyrs," he said. "They're murderers." Clearly, Mr. Bush wants to avoid the use of any language suggesting the slightest hint of sympathy for, or even comprehension of, the suicide bombers' grisly tactic. Last week, he went a step further. Not only is it unacceptable to glorify them as martyrs, he now implies, it is unacceptable even to refer to them neutrally. But no one at the White House actually says that. Instead, there is this effort to recast the certifiably neutral phrase "suicide bomber" as a euphemism and replace it with the certifiably partisan phrase "homicide bomber."

"Homicide bomber" is partisan because it is the term used by Israelis, the victims. Their use of it is as understandable, even defensible, as the Arabs' use of the word "martyr." It reflects their role and their stake in the present conflict. What is less defensible is its adoption by the United States or any other party attempting to serve as an evenhanded mediator. Rhetoric is the first tool of diplomacy, and in this week of continued Israeli advances, a week when Mr. Bush otherwise stayed silent, the U.S. used this seemingly innocuous rhetorical device to send a signal: We are on Israel's side.

In fact, silence has a rhetorical function, too. Consider its impact in combination with the "homicide bomber" switch. There was no mention by Mr. Bush last week of Israel's defiance of his demands for withdrawal; no mention of that ongoing outrage and irritant, Israeli settlements in the West Bank; no condemnation of Israel's tactics in Jenin or Nablus or Bethlehem, which led one elderly American Jew to say he was reminded of what the Nazis did in the Warsaw Ghetto. There was only this new, more heated version of the routine condemnation of Palestinian suicide bombers. And then America wonders why Palestinians distrust the idea of a U.S.-brokered peace process.

Words may seem unimportant in the context of the horrific realities of the Middle East. They are not. As this one small instance shows, what is said, along with what is specifically not said, can do much more than reflect events on the ground. It can direct them. Washington's semantic gambit last week may certainly do that; its import was clear enough. The question is: to what helpful end?

The Japan Times: April 20, 2002
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      ブッシュ政権は、パレスチナ人の｢自爆テロ犯｣という表現を使ってきたが、最近その代わりに ｢殺人目的の爆破犯｣ という言葉を使っている。後者の方がより正確だからというが、この変化はそんな単純な理由によるものではない。｢殺人目的の爆破犯｣ は言葉として正確でない。この言葉は、爆弾を仕掛けて爆発前に現場を立ち去る IRAのテロリスト、オクラホマ連邦ビル爆破犯、ユナボマーなどに当てはまる。自爆テロ犯は、厳密には ｢自殺を伴う殺人目的の爆破犯｣ となるが、表現として長すぎるし意味が重複する。

      ホワイトハウスの表現の変化は政治的なもので、アラブ諸国が自爆テロ犯を ｢殉教者｣ と呼ぶのをやめてほしいというブッシュ大統領の要求を別の形で主張したものだが ｢殺人目的の爆破犯｣ は偏った表現だ。犠牲者のイスラエル側が使っているからだ。言葉自体はアラブ人の言う ｢殉教者｣ と同じく、紛争当事者の役割と利害関係の反映として理解できる。

      しかし米国など、公平な調停役を果たすべき第三国が使うとなると話は別だ。言葉は信頼を築く手段であるのに、イスラエルの侵攻が続く中、 ブッシュ大統領は表現を変えることによって、米国がイスラエル側に立っていることを示唆した。大統領からは先週、イスラエルの侵攻と撤兵拒否に対する非難の言葉が一言もなかった。米国の調停による中東和平プロセスに、パレスチナ人が不信を抱くのも当然だ。

The Japan Times Weekly
April 27, 2002
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