Framing the contours of a debate goes a long way toward
winning it. Part of such framing involves efforts to make derogatory labels
stick to the opposing side. Through a number of decades in the twentieth
century, communist was the weapon of
choice. Actors who refused to name names found themselves blacklisted as
pro-communist, or having communist sympathies. A decade after the fall of the
U.S.S.R., labeling an organization or person as a terrorist came into its own
as the all-too-easy means of depriving an opposing side of credibility. By
2015, some people believed that anytime a person of a particular Middle-Eastern
religion kills someone, that person is a terrorist. The word’s very definition
was somehow pliable enough to accommodate prejudice and simple dislike. This is
not to say that real terrorists are squalid creatures; rather, my point is that
people had realized that they could score political points by applying the
label to their opponents and making it stick. Israel, for instance, had
successfully gotten the E.U. to label the Palestinian political party Hamas as
a terrorist organization. Yet as 2014 was coming to an end, the label was
becoming unstuck, with broader implications for the wider debate on Israel and
Palestine.
On December 18, 2014, the General Court of the European
Union ruled that Hamas’s status as a terrorist organization had been determined
by news and Internet reports rather than by “acts examined and confirmed in
decisions of competent authorities.”[1]
Although the decision is procedural rather than substantive in nature, the
finding points to how very pliable labels can be. The frivolous nature of going
by news and internet reports is borne out by how different outlets can be in characterizing
the two sides of a given dispute. For example, are Hamas members
freedom-fighters or terrorists? The choice here goes a long way in determining
how the debate is framed, and therefore how it plays out, so the decision is
political rather than even technical.
Highlighting the political nature of labels in the
Palestinian question, the court’s decision coincided with a resolution passed
by the E.U.’s parliament supporting “in principle the recognition of
Palestinian statehood” along with new negotiations.[2]
Recognizing a state even as it is occupied by another functions mainly in a
debate-framing capacity, as no actual statehood can exist as long as the West
Bank and Gaza Strip are occupied by another state. “Recognizing” statehood,
along with the Hamas political party no longer labeled as a terrorist
organization, can shift debate in the direction of the Palestinians. Hence, it
is not for nothing that Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel reacted publicly
to the vote, saying, “These declarations merely point to a spirit of
appeasement in Europe of the very forces that threaten Europe itself.”[3]
Simply in using the word, declarations,
however, he was inadvertently helping the “statehood” label to stick in the
debate. To get the other side of a dispute to adopt a label even as that side
is arguing against your side goes a long way toward getting the label to stick
for neutral observers. In effect, they tacitly take sides in the language they
apply.
In short, framing a debate is a political venture unto
itself, with huge implications as to which side has to run up hill and which
has the advantage of gravity. Restoring Hamas to political party and Palestine to a state may prefigure an eventual shift in the debate in the
Palestinians’ favor.
1. Alan Cowell, “European Court Reverses Designation of Hamas as a Terrorist
Organization,” The New York Times, December
18, 2014.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
