A pro-Palestinian protester at Columbia University in early May. Chants calling for “Intifada” have become central to many protests against the war in Gaza and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
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NEW YORK – The chants at a recent pro-Palestinian demonstration at Columbia University were loud and defiant.
“Intifada!” Intifada! Long live the Intifada!
The term is one of many that have become points of contention between people with opposing views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have turned the language into a battleground.
Many of those protesting the Israeli offensive in Gaza claim that the “Intifada” is a peaceful call to resist the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. But many Jews hear slogans like “globalize the intifada” as calls for violence against them and against Israel.
“Intifada” is an Arabic word that generally translates to “uprising.” But the word’s role in the tortured history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has given it meaning far beyond that, making it a term that evokes strong emotions on both sides.
A prolonged period of protests and civil unrest against the Israeli occupation in the late 1980s was known as the First Intifada. A second, much more violent uprising broke out in the early 2000s. During the Second Intifada, Palestinian militant groups adopted bloodier tactics, killing around 1,000 Israeli civilians and soldiers, often through attacks suicides in restaurants and on buses. Israel responded with ground troops and tanks, killing more than 3,000 Palestinians.
For Eliana Goldin, a Jewish student and leader of a pro-Israel group at Columbia, the term “Intifada” is inextricable from this violence.
Growing up in a Zionist family, she said, “the word Intifada was only associated with death, terrorism and destruction. So “Intifada” still seems as charged as if someone were talking about the Holocaust. Or if someone mentioned any disaster that happened against a people that you consider yourself to be a part of.
For her, these songs sound like an incitement to repeat violence against Jews.
For many, it is a call for liberation
For Basil Rodriguez, the word is not about violence at all. She is a Palestinian-American graduate student at Columbia and has said that when she chants “Intifada” at protests, she expresses her commitment to her people’s fight against Israel and calls for an end to the status quo in the conflict.
“To me it just speaks of liberation,” she said. “Liberate Palestine from the apartheid regime and military occupation. For me, this calls for freedom and change.
A pro-Palestinian march near Columbia University in early May.
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Taoufik Ben-Amor, a linguist and professor of Arabic studies at Columbia, said there are several reasons why people interpret the word differently.
Intifada comes from the Arabic root meaning “to shake off,” like dust from a rag. It is a term that Arabic speakers use to describe any form of social uprising aimed at getting rid of an oppressive system – such as that against the Iraqi monarchy in the 1950s. But for non-Arabic speakers, Ben-Amor says, it’s easier to dissociate the word from that meaning.
“It’s different when someone who knows Arabic uses that word,” he said, “as opposed to someone who doesn’t know it and only knows the word in a context in which it was politicized.”
But he also said the decision by pro-Palestinian protesters in the United States to use the Arabic word rather than translate it is a deliberate choice — one that has implications for both sides.
“If you changed the word ‘Intifada’ to ‘uprising,’” he said, “then it would be part of the English vocabulary that people are very familiar with.” By not translating into English, you can define the meaning however you want, and the word thus becomes a kind of two-handed weapon – to be used in this political jostling that is happening.”
The word and its reception have evolved over time
Arabic words are often stigmatized, he explained, associated with violence and terrorism when they do not inherently carry those meanings. In the case of the term “Intifada”, its meaning has evolved over time, alongside the evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, taking on different associations for different people.
The pain and trauma Israelis suffered during the Second Intifada influence their perception of the word, explaining why chants calling for an intifada revolution might alarm them. But Ben-Amor notes that the Second Intifada was also very painful for Palestinians, who were killed three times more than Israelis. Yet they tend not to shy away from the word because of its broader association with their aspirations for freedom from occupation, he said, and not necessarily with violence.
Eliana Goldin, a Jewish student from Columbia, said she would like to think that classmates who chant “Intifada” at protests are not actually encouraging violence against Jews. But she said it was hard to believe because on her campus she also heard chants that she said suggested the erasure of Israel.
“They are chanting ‘we don’t want two states, we want all of this,'” she said. NPR heard this chant at Columbia University. “They chant ‘Death to the Zionist State.’ When there is so much other rhetoric in the same songs that obviously points to the destruction of the Jewish people, why am I to believe that the Intifada does not mean what I think it means?
She said she wishes protesters would choose a different word, because of the visceral fear it provokes among many Jews, including people like her who, although Zionists, call Israel’s occupation of the territories Palestinian tragedy.
Basil Rodriguez rejects the idea that she should clean up her language during protests.
“Arabic is our indigenous language as Palestinians,” she said. “The idea that we shouldn’t say a word because it’s in Arabic, I think, feeds into the racist assumption that Arabs are terrorists. This is why I will never stop saying the word Intifada.
Taoufik Ben-Amor said that when it comes to words like intifada – and other contested terms like genocide, martyrdom, resistance – the stakes are high. The words used to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have always had the power to shape public opinion, and probably always will.
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