OPINION | PALESTINE | LANGUAGE
‘Free Palestine!’ What It Means To Me
Slogans and the power of language in shaping the psychology of liberation. How language elevates, or degrades, the struggle for freedom and justice.
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To draw attention to the genocide in Gaza, a group of well-intentioned Palestine activists dropped a banner at the NBA all-star game on Feb. 17, 2024. Their choice of message left me exasperated. Out of all possible slogans, couldn’t they find anything better than ‘Let Gaza Live’? As a Palestinian activist who has been resisting oppression for decades, I have come to respect Edward Said’s lessons on “the power of words, and their capacity to liberate, or to oppress,” as I express in my book Fugitive Dreams.
“Learning how word choice was used to dominate, I grew to reject Israeli terminology, like calling a stolenment a “settlement”.”
— Ramsey Hanhan, Fugitive Dreams
People learn by repetition. Here, I ask what are we programming ourselves to believe when we reiterate each of three commonly-used slogans in the Palestine movement.
