Arafatuous

Arafatuous
Media doubletalk obscures the horror of the Mideast war.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Thursday, April 11, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

News of the war between the Palestinians and Israel feels ever more sickening, and I don't think it's due solely to the tumultuous politics of the region, or even the hideous violence. From the vantage point of New York, for someone trying to glean a genuine sense of what's going on--from the speeches, the newscasts, the talk shows, the newspapers--the vertigo begins with the vacuous lingo so widely used to describe the situation and the players.

Thus are we now hearing about Secretary of State Colin Powell's mission to visit the "isolated" Yasser Arafat in hopes of reviving "the peace process" while Palestinians described as "suicide bombers" murder Israelis in what we are told are acts of "desperation."

Between the words and any precise reality is a disconnect so dizzying that this week it sent me ransacking the shelves for a 1946 essay by a man who understood well the danger of blurring the truth with jargon: George Orwell. Titled "Politics and the English Language," this is a piece in which Orwell explained the huge importance--not least in politics--of using language "as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought." A virtue of talking straight, he noted, is that "when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself." And "political language," he warned us, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

One might almost imagine he'd been tracking not the wars and totalitarian creeds of his era, but the Middle East "peace process" of our time. What does that flabby abstraction, "peace process," mean? Israel has come under terrorist attack as surely as did America on Sept. 11, the main difference being that in Israel's case the terror recurs almost daily. And whether you believe that Arafat does or does not control these terrorists, either way there is no point in negotiating with him. If he's not in charge, then all the Arafat-centric "process" in the world won't stop the terror. If he is in charge, then sending Mr. Powell to see him makes no more sense than if last September we had dispatched Mr. Powell to have a chat with Mullah Omar or Osama bin Laden. Instead, we chose the true route to peace: winning the war.

Negotiating with terrorists, or, in President Bush's excellent formulation, "those who harbor them," amounts to capitulation. Maybe we should call the current route we've mapped out for Israel "the capitulation process," or, since "process" is a windy word, just get rid of it and talk in terms of straight "capitulation." At least then it would be harder to fool ourselves about the nature of this mission.

Which brings us to the "isolated" Arafat, whom Mr. Powell has been dispatched to "process" with. It was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who chose the term "isolate," seeking some way out of the impossible situation imposed by U.S. pressure to respond to continuing terrorism with yet more peace process and more Arafat. But this label of isolation has been blindly, faithfully repeated day after day, in the face of all evidence, until it has become the accepted phrase for Arafat's situation.

Arafat is surrounded, yes. But he's one of the least isolated figures on the planet. Not only is he the center of world attention, but we are treated to daily (at times, hourly) reports on his immediate condition and utterances. Since his "isolation" began late last month, we have heard endlessly about Arafat giving interviews by the light of a guttering candle. He's keeping the world apprised by cell phone of just how low his cell phone batteries are getting. Yesterday the Jerusalem Post brought us the news, courtesy of an Arafat spokesman, that "there is no water supply to the facility and that Arafat's staff have not showered in 14 days." (If Mr. Powell gets wind of this, perhaps he'll reconsider his plans to visit.)

And Arafat has certainly managed to inform us that he is ready to die a martyr--though so far he seems content to let other Palestinians tackle that role. He has received bevies of "peace activists," including violent French agitator Jose Bove. He has been visited by Gen. Anthony Zinni; he has met with his own advisers; and Mr. Powell is due later this week. It would be more accurate, then, to say that Arafat, while surrounded, is enjoying a bonanza of attention and communication that some folks in truly desperate spots could never dream of.

Which gets us to the "suicide bombers" in all their "desperation." Correct, their bombings involve suicide, just like Mohamed Atta's. But this is a highly selective way of describing what they are. It diverts attention from the main point, which is the killing of innocent people offered no choice on whether they want to participate in the "suicide." Mr. Bush, in a moment of elegant clarity, got it just right when he said last week: "They're not martyrs. They're murderers."

One might hope, after a truth of that kind, that further discussion would proceed on those terms, that we would start referring to them as "murderers," or maybe, if more detail is wanted, as "suicide murderers." At least that gets us beyond the killer and the bomb to allude to the actual victims. As for the desperation of these murderers, there are parts of the world packed with people who are poorer and more desperate, and yet who do not translate that into terrorist acts of murder. It would be more accurate to speak not of the desperation of these suicide murderers, but of their nihilism. It might help clarify the problem.

Unfortunately, once a term becomes standard coin, it's hard to get people to change it. Not only is there the lure of hazy language that lets us avoid things rough to face. There is also an ease to using accepted shorthand; it requires less thought, less effort. In making the observations above, I fear I won't go long without using some of these cloudy phrases myself. But they need thinking about.

Orwell closes his essay with the advice: "One cannot change all this in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase--some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse--into the dustbin where it belongs." How about we start with Middle East peace process?

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays on OpinionJournal.com and in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America."