Ban "Ethnic Cleansing"

I propose that we defenders of individual rights stop using the term ethnic cleansing. Why? Because it is the sort of euphemism bad people would use to disguise what they are doing when they expel or annihilate large numbers of people viewed as members of the wrong group. The Nazis used the word hygiene when writing about "purifying" the Aryan "race." That word was meant to soften the truth and dress it in scientific garb. But we all know what it meant. Ethnic cleansing would fit well into that lexicon.

Remember, it was the Nazis who talked like that -- not the victims or outraged onlookers. They wouldn't have called what the Nazis were doing ethnic cleansing. Why sanitize it? Cleansing is usually a good thing, isn't it? They would have called it mass murder or mass deportation.

Why are we talking in Nazi euphemism? 

Palestine Lost

To appreciate the enormity of the crimes against the Palestinian people, one must understand that while persons are certainly individuals, they are something more as well. That's what we mean when we use words like society,  culture, and people. What has happened to the Palestinians is not simply that some individuals were killed and others were driven from land their families had lived on and worked for 1,500 years. Those horrible things amount to only part of the atrocity that befell them.

The other part is the cultural genocide that has been perpetrated. Palestine was a vibrant cultural and economic center, with thriving cities and lush farms. It wasn't a "land without a people" or a savage-filled desert waiting for European Jews to make it bloom. We cannot understand current events in the Middle East without understanding that the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which began before 1948, meant so much more than just driving people from their homes. It meant eradicating the record and memory of a beautiful place (where, incidentally, Jews also could and did live in peace).

This documentary shows what has been lost.