S.T. Salah, 1/04/26
This audit examines how Israeli occupation authorities used official language as a tool of governance over Palestinians from 1948 to 2026. It evaluates how terminology in military orders, administrative regulations, media briefings, and diplomatic communications shaped the description and justification of violence, dispossession, detention, and territorial control, and how language was used to normalise and sustain these policies.
The designation “Israel Defense Forces” functioned as a legitimizing label rather than a descriptive one. The term implied civilian protection, while documented practice showed routine coordination with violent settlers, enforcement of dispossession, demolition of homes, and the application of lethal force and mass detention against a civilian population in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and within Israel itself across different periods. Operations that killed large numbers of civilians or destroyed entire neighborhoods were described as “defensive”, “precision”, or “surgical” strikes, even where independent investigations documented wide area bombardment and foreseeable civilian carnage.
Geographic renaming functioned as a mechanism of erasure. The territory internationally recognized as the West Bank was officially redesignated in Israeli state discourse as “Judea and Samaria”, anchoring it in a Biblical narrative and presenting it as inherently and exclusively Jewish space. This terminology appeared in government ministries, legal texts, and public maps, while the phrase “occupied Palestinian territory” was pushed to the margins or recast as “disputed territories”. The effect was to detach the land from its original Palestinian inhabitants and to present permanent control and settlement as restoration rather than colonization.
The same logic applied to the separation apartheid wall. Israeli authorities and much of the international press were encouraged to adopt the term “security fence” or “security barrier”, even in urban areas where the structure is an eight metre concrete wall that cuts through Palestinian neighborhoods, farmland, and refugee camps. By contrast, the International Court of Justice in its 2004 advisory opinion described it as a wall built in occupied Palestinian territory that violated international law. The choice of “fence” instead of “wall” softened perceptions of permanence, scale, and illegality, turning a massive annexation project into a neutral sounding security installation.
Palestinian identity was routinely diluted through generic labeling. Palestinians were described as “Arabs” or “Israeli Arabs”, collapsing a specific indigenous people into a broad regional category and obscuring their particular legal claims to land, return, and self determination. Within Israel, this terminology was used alongside laws and practices that defined the state as the nation state of the Jewish people alone. In the occupied territory, the phrase “Arab rioters”, “Arab youth”, or “Arab mobs” was applied to Palestinians facing settlement expansion, home demolitions, or military raids, presenting resistance to dispossession as ethnic disorder rather than political protest.
Religious language was operationalized to reframe land seizure as fulfillment rather than violation. References to a “promised land” and to God given rights were invoked in political speeches and settler discourse to justify permanent control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This theological framing was used to override or marginalize existing international legal standards on occupation, annexation, and the prohibition of acquiring territory by force. Where law required withdrawal or equality, religious claims were presented as higher authority.
Custodial language was also inverted. Israeli soldiers captured by Palestinian armed groups were almost universally described in Western media and official statements as “hostages”, a term that rightly connotes grave criminal abuse. Palestinians captured by Israeli forces, including children and civilians held without charge in administrative detention, were labeled “security prisoners” or “detainees”, even when they had never been tried, charged, or convicted. The asymmetry presented Israeli captives as victims of crime and Palestinian captives as objects of justified control, normalizing the mass incarceration of Palestinians under military orders.
Technical legal terms were used to conceal the severity of violations. Practices that amount to extrajudicial execution were described as “targeted killings”. Collective punishments such as genocide in Gaza were framed as “operations” with names like “Protective Edge” or “Cast Lead”, masking the mass killings and destruction of entire residential districts under neutral operational branding. Repeated large scale attacks on Gaza were defended in Israeli and allied discourse using the metaphor of “mowing the lawn”, a phrase used by Israeli officials and commentators to describe periodic pogroms intended to “cut back” resistance rather than resolve underlying injustice.
Dehumanising language accompanied these policies. Senior officials and media figures repeatedly described Palestinians as “beasts”, “animals”, or “human animals”, most visibly in October 2023 when the Israeli Defence Minister used the phrase “human animals” in reference to people in Gaza while announcing a “complete siege” that cut off food, water, fuel, and electricity. Such language was echoed in calls to “erase” Gaza or to treat the population as an enemy collective. This was not fringe rhetoric. It was issued from positions of executive authority and broadcast widely, providing ideological cover for policies that inflicted mass civilian death.
Administrative terminology neutralised control. Areas where protests or home demolitions occurred were designated “closed military zones”, immediately criminalising Palestinian presence and allowing dispersed gatherings to be treated as security offences. Aerial bombardment zones inside Gaza were described as “kill boxes” in military planning but translated into public language as “evacuation zones” or “areas of operation”. Large swathes of Gaza’s farmland were declared “buffer zones”, meaning that any Palestinian entering could be treated as a legitimate target even when unarmed and on their own land.
At the level of individual designation, the label “terrorist” was applied expansively and often without transparent evidentiary standards. Palestinians killed at checkpoints, during night raids, or under rubble were routinely described as “terrorists” or “militants” in initial Israeli statements and media reports, with civilian status acknowledged, if at all, only after external investigation. The same vocabulary was used against Palestinian civil society organisations: in 2021, six prominent NGOs including Al Haq, Addameer, and Defence for Children International – Palestine were declared “terror organisations” by the Israeli Defence Ministry, a move condemned by UN experts and European states as an attack on human rights work rather than a genuine security measure.
Complexity language functioned as postponement. Calls for “context” and “balance” were used to delay moral judgment on clear power asymmetries and well documented crimes. The occupation was presented as a “conflict” between two equal sides. Israeli state crime was framed as “self defence” while Palestinian resistance, including non violent protest and legal advocacy, was described as incitement or extremism. Each demand for more context pushed the moment of conclusion further away, even as documented harm accumulated.
Finally, omission operated as a form of speech. Terms such as apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide were largely absent from official Israeli discourse and much of Western media coverage, even as major human rights organisations concluded that Israeli rule from the river to the sea met the legal definition of apartheid and as UN bodies warned of a serious risk of genocide in Gaza. Where such terms were used by Palestinian voices, UN rapporteurs, or human rights groups, they were attacked as inflammatory or antisemitic rather than engaged on their legal merits.
The review finds that language did not fail through inaccuracy. It succeeded through function. It reassigned victimhood and perpetration, presented racial supremacy and apartheid as security, erased Palestinian presence from land and law, and absorbed urgency into endless discussion. The system remained permanently discussable without becoming politically unacceptable.