10 Language Do’s & Don’ts for De-Colonizers

Marcy Winograd

If we want to decolonize Palestine and all lands the US, Israel and client states occupy and genocide (yes, it’s a verb), we need to decolonize our conversations, our vocabulary, our language and our framing. Words can not only evolve our own thinking but the thinking of those around us who may linger on our words long after a conversation ends to question their previous assumptions. Here are 10 do’s and don'ts, along with examples and quotes from advocates for decolonization and demilitarization:

1. Do say “military budget” or “war budget” or “military contractors” or “war contractors” or “merchants of death” when referencing the “defense” budget and war profiteers. 

The term “Merchants of Death” dates back to the days following World War I, when the Senate Munitions Committee held 93 hearings, grilling 200 witnesses, including railroad investment banker J. P. Morgan, Jr., about the undue influence of war profiteers on the decision to enter the first world war.

Sam Pizzigati in American Merchants of Death-Then and Now, writes: 

“By the mid-1930s the world was swimming in a weapons-of-war sea, and people still reeling from World War I — the “Great War” — wanted to know why. In the United States, peace-seekers would “follow the money” to find out. Many of America’s moguls, they soon realized, were becoming ever richer off of prepping for war. These “merchants of death” — the era’s strikingly vivid label for war profiteers — had a vested interest in perpetuating the sorts of arms races that make wars more likely. America needed, millions of Americans believed, to take the profit out of war. 

Don’t say “defense budget” or “defense contractors” or “Secretary of Defense.” 

The US government’s near-trillion dollar budget for weapons–bunker buster bombs, attack jets, missiles, nuclear warheads–is not defensive but offensive. The Pentagon’s 750 overseas military bases in 80 countries, its war drills in the Pacific and its billions in weapons transfers for Israel engenders global outrage that undermines US security. Weapons dealers who profit from this barbarism are not contracting to defend us but to profit from death and destruction.

2. Do say “US residents” or “US public” when talking about people in the United States because that reference is specific and does not promote the US as the sole representative of the Americas.

Don’t say America and Americans when talking solely about the United States. 

The US is only one country in the Americas and does not represent nor speak for all of North, Central and South America, which is made up of 42 countries!

3. Do say “settler-colonialists” or “settler terrorists” or “settler arsonists” or “terrorist settlements”–when referring to what is often described as simply “settlers” and “settlements.” Instead of the verb “settle”, consider using the verb “stole” or the phrase “stole to settle.”

“Over the centuries our sacred lands have been repeatedly and routinely stolen from us by the governments and peoples of the United States and Canada.” Leonard Peltier Prison Writings:  My Life is My Sundance

Do not simply say “settle” or “settlers” or “settlements” – all of which sound harmless, are devoid of context, and suggest adventurous people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to build homes on vacant land rather than stole land at gunpoint or set fire to people’s homes in order to steal their property.

4. Do say “Israel’s genocide in Gaza” or “genocidal war on (not in) Gaza” rather than “Israel-Palestinian conflict” because Israel relentlessly bombs Palestinian civilians, destroying hospitals, schools and refugee centers, while blockading water, food and medicine to impose mass starvation on 2.3 million people.  Israel’s assault on Gaza meets UN Convention on Genocide criteria, defining genocide as “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;”

Example: Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza — who, along with those in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and inside Israel itself, have been conscripted to serve as involuntary embodiments of the foundational enemy of Israel — has produced unimaginable grief and sorrow. (Angela Davis: Standing with Palestinians. Hammer & Hope. Spring, 2024.)

Do use “genocide” as a verb, even if the dictionary tells you it’s only a noun. Verbs are power words, so when you turn a noun into a verb or verbify it you add a sense of immediacy and urgency.

Do not say Israel-Hamas war because a war implies equal sides with equal  weapons and political power. 

“It is not an “onslaught”. It is not an “invasion”. It is not even a “war”. It is a genocide.” (Andrew Mitrovica. Al Jazeera columnist. October 14, 2023.)

By the same token, don't say Israeli-Palestinian conflict to refer to Israel's occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The word “conflict” again falsely suggests equal sides, often leading to “it’s too complicated”--another conversational dead-end..

Also avoid the words “military campaign” as in “Israel launched its military campaign on Oct. 7, declaring that its aim was to destroy Hamas.” (Washington Post) This is not a campaign of door knocking, petitioning and hand-shaking, but a genocidal assault on 2.3 Palestinians, most of whom had nothing to do with Hamas’ attack on Israel, but nonetheless are trapped in a concentration camp.

5. Do say “torture” when the crime meets the criteria under the UN Convention Against Torture that states "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed.”

On Democracy Now (8/27/24) Amy Goodman headlines a Human Rights Watch investigation into Israel’s torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. 

“A new report by Human Rights Watch details the harrowing experiences of eight doctors, nurses and paramedics who were recently held in Israeli prisons, where they described being blindfolded, beaten, held in forced stress positions and handcuffed for extended periods of time. They also reported torture, including rape and sexual abuse, by Israeli forces.

Don’t say “coercive measures” when talking about colonizers inflicting waterboarding, amputations, starvation, rape and other horrors on prisoners.

6. Do use the active voice so that the subject of the sentence performs the action against the object.

Since October 7th, Israel has killed over 40 thousand Gazans and ordered two million to abandon their homes.”

Do not use the passive voice. 

Passive voice puts the object of the sentence before the verb and may leave out the person/persons/country committing the atrocity.

Passive voice: “Since October 7th, over 40,000 Gazans have been killed and an estimated two million made homeless.” Who did the killing? Who uprooted millions of people? We don’t know. People use the passive voice to avoid holding those responsible accountable.

7. Do use the term “weapons” and be specific when referring to what some characterize as “defensive weapons.”

Example: President Biden recently approved another $20 billion in weapons–attack jets, missiles– for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”

Do not use the term “defensive weapons” because so-called defensive weapons, such as ”missile defense shields,” enable the aggressor to escalate without fear of retribution. A “defensive” weapon can be used for offensive purposes.

8. Do say Israeli Occupation Forces when referring to the Israeli military because the Israeli military is occupying land, air and sea in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israel inside the pre-1976 Green Line, where Israel expelled 800,000 Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba or catastrophe of ethnic cleansing.

Do not say “Israel Defense Forces” because Israel is the aggressor, occupying, terrorizing and genociding Palestinians.

9. Do say nuclear rearmament when referring to the US developing new nuclear weapons. 

The US, in violation of the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, pursues nuclear rearmament, developing  warheads at least 20 times more deadly than the atomic bomb that incinerated 200,000 Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Do not say “nuclear modernization” because the US is not “modernizing”--a benign term that conjures up images of redecorating a kitchen. The US is not modernizing its nuclear weapons but pursuing nuclear rearmament to eventually budget over a trillion dollars to produce new nuclear warheads.

WRONG USAGE: “US nuclear policy is aimed at deterring Russia through the modernization of the US arsenal.” (CNN, 3/1/18)

10. Do say “military exercises” or  “war drills” when referring to massive US-driven military maneuvers in preparation for war.

Hawaiian activists Kawena’ulaokalã Kapahua and Joy Lehuanani Enomoto write in US-Led Military Exercises in Pacific Wreak Havoc, “Every two years, the Indo-Pacific Command Center of the United States convenes the largest maritime war exercises on the planet” … “RIMPAC as a symptom of the U.S.  empire has immense environmental and cultural ramifications. Geopolitically, the exercises are used to control trade routes, train genocidal regimes and posture against China.” 

Do not say “war games” when referencing RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific), a 29 nation military exercise involving 40 ships, three submarines, 150 military aircraft and 25,000 troops on the island of Oahu and the waters off Hawaii–all to prepare for war with China. The word “games” makes us think of charades or backgammon or soccer–not drills for a third world war that could end the human race.

Those are a few of the do’s and don’ts to consider as we decolonize our conversations to avoid unintentionally reinforcing the status quo of empire, plunder and subjugation. This is not to suggest that anti-imperialists become language cops policing words and phrases or–even worse–canceling each other after a slip of the tongue.

At a time when we yearn for the power to stop US-Israel genocide–when in disbelief we witness utter sociopathy and global complicity in ongoing atrocities, we must continue to protest, disrupt and organize–to raise our voices of resistance to the sky– while also quietly choosing our words with intention.

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Marcy Winograd volunteers as the coordinator of CODEPINK Congress and is a local leader of CODEPINK Santa Barbara and the Central Coast Antiwar Coalition.