Hannah Schwarzschild responds to the debate she helped start over the use of the word "hafradah," which is Hebrew for separation, instead of "apartheid" to characterize Israel's occupation.
So let me respond quickly, since I seem to be getting attacked from left, right and center for having brought up this old idea in a conversation about the difficulties of using the A-word (such as scheduled speakers dropping out of teach-ins at the last minute). First, this was not my idea (I don't know who first suggested it, but it sure wasn't me: I don't speak Hebrew and wouldn't know a geder hafradah if I pole vaulted over one.) I re-raised the "hafradah" idea last weekend only to illustrate that we have an option to use the Israelis' own language against them in strategic moments when the "Apartheid" terminology is diverting the conversation unhelpfully (have you ever gotten stuck in a conversation with a Marxist pedagogue who wants to differentiate, quite correctly, the Afrikaaner use of labor from the Zionist one?). That's not an "own goal," that's how minds get opened and hypocrites get exposed.
For what it's worth, I use the A-word all the time, and have battled for the right to use it in organizations where some feared it would alienate liberal Zionists who write big checks. But keeping "hafradah" in our collective back pocket as a way to explain to unbelievers that racial/ethnic segregation is official Israeli policy can be a useful thing -- I'm not sure why anyone thinks it's an either/or.
Can't we all just get along?
Yes, but how many hafradah angels dance on the head of an apartheid pin?
There is no such thing as Apartheid, when the people in question are not citizens on the country in question. Meaning, the people is question are not covered by the involved country’s constitution…Apartheid is only applicable as defined to South Africa because they are all S. African citizens. In Israel, the people is question do not even recognize Israel as a state (or as a government)! How can they be covered by its constitutional protection as citizens of the state?
Then explain why Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and a not insignificant number of South Africans describe Israel as an apartheid society, fruitcake.
This simply means the responses of Israeli government is basically to exercise its sovereignty, and matters of national security….This is a sic situation but what is his other option for permanent resolution? If you were in right senses in their shoes, what would you do…give away the interest of the Jewish nation?
You’re not actually reading anyone else’s posts, are you?
[give away the interest of the Jewish nation?]
Not only that, would you give away the FUTURE of the Jewish nation?
I hope you don’t perceive an attack from the left as far as the Mondoweiss community represents such overall. There was a serious conversation and some dissent to a change of language (myself included, to a lesser extent) but I don’t think it was any intent that your reputation or credibility be challenged for forwarding your position. Certainly if there was, those people are being wrong-headed and shouldn’t be treating you that way.
That said, I do still have my original concerns that I don’t feel confident that introducing new vocabulary will do anything useful, ultimately. I don’t believe it is harmful though, myself. The problem is that we have enough issues with hard-core Zionists corrupting English words and Arabic words. I don’t think, frankly, Hebrew will ever be a tool in our hands, merely a weapon in theirs.
New vocabulary doesn’t work well, does it? Look what happened to INTIFADA and JIHAD. Each has rich (that is, complex and contextual) meaning in Arabic which is not easily conveyed (and, in practice is not conveyed) to English audiences.
How about “Apartheid or, to use the Hebrew euphemism, HAFRADA” a phrase which allows the general audience to know what you are saying and also allows the general audience to know what the RED HERRING “HAFRADA” means and why you are using it. This long phrase also suggests, truly I beieve, that Israel DESIRES apartheid.
Hannah,
As a Hebrew-speaker, familiar with moods and minds in Israel, I think I can safely say that it would mean nothing to Israelis, because it is not perceived by them as a system of segregation, but a necessary security measure, even along the lines of the old cliché that fences make good neighbours. No South African, as gung-ho about racial segregation as he or she may have been, ever had any illusions about the nature of the apartheid system or the practical meaning of the term. If, on the other hand, we are talking about non-Hebrew-speakers, I see little point in teaching them a new word and attaching negative significance to it that it lacks in its original context.
BTW, it was not my intention to attack you personally. I just think it’s a counterproductive idea. I’m all for getting along.
i feel that ‘hafrada’ should be introduced as a term into the debate. even if most jewish israelis view ‘hafrada’ as innocuous or even positive, that fact may be irrelevant. i strongly suspect that ‘apartheid’ had similarly positive connotations for many white south africans – the separation of races in that time and place was considered the natural order of things by many, much as the idea of jewish privilege in israel, and ‘separateness’ from ‘the arabs’ is considered the natural order of things by zionists today. these things can change.
Yes, why don’t we use ‘hafradah’ instead of apartheid..
While we are at it, why not call the separation/land grab wall, the “security barrier”?
Let’s call the West Bank “Judea and Samaria” as well, because that’s what Israelis call it, and I’m sure that will resonate with them well.
And where do the Palestinians factor into this consideration?
When the Jews coined the term Holocaust after the genocide, did they not do so with the intent of inventing a term which captured the tragically violent chapter of Jewish history?
Now if you are to call it even a genocide, some Jewish groups make it tantamount to denying the Holocaust.
Then why do you ask the Palestinians to give up this right to describe this atrocity being committed against them, merely to appease those who are responsible for it?
Apartheid is a legal term and it’s legal meaning applies to what is happening in Occupied Territories. Use of this term calls spade a spade and also usefully reminds all involved in the conversation that perpetrating apartheid is a crime.
Crime of apartheid has been almost universally condemned in the USA and this internalized sense of injustice can be relatively easily harvested to help rescue Palestinians from their plight.
Further, accusation of apartheid will elicit immediate protests and counterarguments thus forcing people to seek arguments to counter such a strong accusation. Unwittingly, people will encounter facts while seeking support for their positions.
Confrontation with, and acknowledgement of facts will do more to support Palestinian right to self-determination and right to restoration of their property than any other tactic.
Use of the term hafradah will rob Palestinians squarely of all the advantages of the use of the term apartheid and will downgrade in unsuspecting audience crime against humanity to mere boundary dispute.
However innocently introduced into the discourse, I believe it will be picked up by Zionists and their supporters with a glee and will me promoted with all their might.
Israel is not perpetrating apartheid against natives, they are merely exercising understandable hafradah policy against irrationally aggressive Arabs.
Eva, you are absolutely right. If we use the Israeli prescribed terminology, the only part of the conflict that has any influence from outside, dialogue, will also rest squarely within their control. And there is lots of evidence that using a Hebrew term isn’t going to evoke some long neglected sympathy dormant within the Israeli conscience for the Palestinian people. It’s simply going to become the most important tool in their arsenal for a Hasbara assault.
The precedent for that is evident on this site, in eee’s ramblings. According to him there is no apartheid. There is only hafradah, or separation, and that exists in virtually all countries. Therefore to focus on Israeli hafradah is to be a Jew hater, anti-semitic, etc. etc.
On the bigger scope, there has been a conscientious effort on part of Zionist defense to derail the entire debate and de-exceptionalize Israel’s position and policies. Or as the Hasbara manual numbers it, point #4), that the Israelis are just as bad as others, and thus your focus on Israel makes you anti-semitic.
When it clearly isn’t so.
In Israel there isn’t only hafradah. There is a military occupation hafradah, there is a collective punishment hafradah, there is a civil rights hafradah, and many many more institutional hafradah, all of which are covered under the description of apartheid.
More so than its obvious legal implications which absolve Israel from its blatant and repeated violations of law, hafrada simply doesn’t encompass the extent and accuracy of Israeli policy as described by apartheid. It forgoes the military occupation aspect altogether, a crucial oversight, and sheer negligence of decades of Palestinian oppression.
If the term is confused with the prescription for separation on the part of the religious, better that the term not be used, for its then persecutorial impact.
hafradah
Yet again we are offered sage advice from our resident sage RW with his inimitable syntax and logic. He says, my question in []‘
And what does that “then” convey in the last prepositional phrase. This writing is totally incomprehensible. I only bring this up because the author of this word salad once informed us that he is a ‘good writer’.
If obfuscation is the goal then score one for RW only if one defines fractured syntax as obfuscation. But he must flunk the dissembling test; that requires one to divert an argument into a tangent, this is so confusing that it is impossible to define any logical trajectory tangentially or not. So we are left with that universal puzzle: WTF is he trying to accomplish here?
He’s trying to distract more people so that Israel can demolish more homes, bomb more Palestinians and erect more Jewish country clubs and seaside resorts for the neues reinrassig.
Syvannen,
If you can’t understand my point, then ask.
Stop the distracting ridicule.
He did ask. There are three questions in the blockquote.
Richard: Syvanen raises a valid point. Some of your comments are, frankly, incomprehensible. You leave the impression that you dash them off in a hurry, without thinking.
I believe that you have something to say, and that you are not deliberately obfuscating. But I find I have to read you several times, and even then I’m still not always sure what you mean.
People comment here for whom English is their second, third, maybe fourth language. I’m not trying to be nasty, but I would encourage you to take a little more time and write more clearly.
Hannah is right here that it’s not an either/or proposition. The word may not be helpful all the time, or even often, but it cannot hurt to have it available in case a need arises.
I like the term used in conjunction with ‘apartheid’. In that context it can be a way of using Israelis’ own words against them. On its own, I don’t think it works – not for the time being, anyway.
robin and tr,
It cannot possibly be using the Israelis’ own words against them, because it is a matter of definition, not connotation. The Apartheid system of laws and acts clearly defined what it was (distinction by race – physical appearance, pencil test, etc.). It was defined by the South Africans themselves as a system of racial segregation. It may have had positive connotations for some and negative for others (inside or outside SA), but all agreed on what it was.
“Hafradah” is very different. There are no Israeli laws, dictionaries or news reports that define the word as you would like to use it. One might as well choose a Hebrew word at random and associate it with Apartheid. When you protest against the Israeli “system” of “hafradah”, Israelis will simply laugh at your ignorance. “Apartheid” makes Israelis angry, makes them play the anti-Semitism card, but they know exactly what you mean. “Hafradah” would make them shrug their shoulders and maybe even smile at the ineptness and self-defeating strategies of their “enemies”.
I’ve advocated the use of hafrada in comments posted here some while back (under a different handle), and I think I may have picked it up from something I heard Jeff Halper say in a talk in the early part of the 2000s (I forget what year this was, it was at a Columbia University conference on comparing South Africa and Palestine/Israel organized by Mahmoud Mamdani). But things have moved on somewhat since then, and I’m all for it now.
When the apartheid analogy for Israel was still new, I felt that it was a weak tactical move to adopt it wholesale, as it both had a musty feel of of 80s leftist activism, and seemed possibly alienating where fence-sitters were concerned. Also, as many have said, the situation in Israel is both worse and different from South Africa in myriad ways. Hafrada was the term of art in Hebrew, and the irony that it means basically the same thing as apartheid always struck me as a useful entry into drawing out the analogy.
But it’s clear that things have developed with apartheid as the general term of reference. Just the other day I was speaking to an family friend, an undergrad who is not very political in general, and was surprised when she very plainly used the word apartheid as an adjective in a discussion we were having about the Middle East. It brought home to me how much things have changed in just the last few years, and further convinced me that the term is valid and effective.
Yes, you are right about apartheid, but the trouble is, it gave a lot of space the for ‘zionists’ to argue legally – because Apartheid is a very debatable word to apply in Israel case.
People her are also right on their apprehension over the word hafrada (isolation), because this Hebrew word has a one-sided (defensive, self-preserving) impact – and it is wholly justifyable and acceptable for a people to look at things their own way… nobody in this free world can question that right!
So either of these two words are effective to question Israel’s ‘isolationist’ policy..
And if this people do something in their own country as a matter of policy – that is a question of sovereignty… so still, nobody can challenge that…
I think both words are helpful. A good goal would be to bring out this message:
Hebrew word for apartheid is hafradah, hafrada is Israeli policy, and hafradah is apartheid. Or having the message short as short as possible: Hafrada = Apartheid
So, I think it’s both fine to bring out information in the like making a “Hafrada Information Workshop” and make the people learn, that hafrada is the Israeli word for their apartheid system, and in many points like house demolitions etc hafrada is worse than the Afrikaans apartheid system was. And on the other hand it’s fine to make an “Israeli Apartheid Week” and teach people there that hebrew word for Israeli apartheid is hafrada.
Managing to make people learn, that hafrada is apartheid – and hafrada is Israeli policy – would already almost mean to win the struggle. think, it doesn’t matter from which side to come to get this message passed, so there is room to decide which fits from case to case.
In Germany for example, I could imagine, the term hafrada could be better used to place on signs, to get the message through, that hafrada is apartheid then vice versa.
Hannah,
Not to sound condescending, but we sometimes have the best of intentions, yet somehow end up missing the mark. It happened to me once with a neighbor, but that’s another story for another time.
While Apartheid had a significant poignant impact in S. Africa on the realities of the time, adopting a word that is familiar to Israelis or as you stated “to use their language against them” is going to have very little effect. It’s unfortunate.
Shmuel’s characterization is certainly reflective of the mood. That is to say that as far as the effect the term might have on Israelis, it will be very little, close to nothing, perhaps. In addition, my view is that it’s not necessarily ineffective due to its failure to convey the full negative meaning of the reality, but because in the mainstream Hebrew lexicon, the word Hafrada is extremely mild. It doesn’t have the same cultural bite/sting – as it were – as Apartheid in SA or Segregation in the US. To illustrate that point, for example, if one mentioned the term to an Israeli (across the political spectrum), the response might range from: “Yeah, so?” to “Well, we have to”. There simply is no sense of shame associated with that term.
See, we are getting along.
PS: I like your pole vaulting metaphor. It’s cute.
Sure we can get along…especially since we are in total agreement. Thanks for the clarification. You were not attacked personally, the idea was dissected and criticized.
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