Language: A Political and Cultural Tool in Jerusalem

In our class, we talked in depth about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. We discussed different factors of the conflict and one thing became clear: That religious, political, and cultural differences are at the epicenter of the conflict. Feelings of ownership over Jerusalem and the land around it resonate from both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. In general, many Israeli Jews feel that they have a sacred and ancient bond to Jerusalem as a city where Israelites worshiped God over 2000 years ago. Palestinian Arabs have a more immediate tie to the land as a place where they and their ancestors have grown up. Zionism in the 19^th and 20^th century espoused the idea of the Jewish return to their homeland, while Palestinian nationalism typically bolsters the idea that the region has always been Palestinian land. One factor that we did not cover too much in class was language and the role of the language divide between Hebrew and Arabic in the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

In Israel today, some of the main languages spoken are Hebrew, Arabic, English, and Russian. Hebrew and Arabic are historical languages of Jews and Arabs respectively, although Hebrew underwent a revival in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. English is spoken by many American immigrants to Israel and is an important political language given Israel’s strong relations with the United States and the United Kingdom. Russian is spoken as a native or second language by around a fifth of Israeli citizens since many Russian Jews immigrated to Israel either during one of the five Aliyah periods from approximately 1880 to World War II. Additionally, many Russian Jews immigrated into Israel when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989.

The revival of Hebrew is a fascinating story since it represents the only large-scale success of a language revival in history. Other languages have been “revitalized”, but this merely entails saving a language from near “dead language” status. According to Moshe Nahir in his article “Micro language planning and the revival of Hebrew”, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was almost exclusively regarded as the pioneer of the Hebrew revival, perhaps wrongfully. Ben-Yehuda shared the vision of other Zionists that Jews from around the world could someday return to Palestine and call it their national homeland. However, this posed the question, how would Jews from different regions communicate? Some might speak Yiddish, others Russian or Arabic. The common denominator for Ben-Yehuda was their usage of Hebrew as a liturgical language. While there were no native Hebrew speakers, many Jews had some knowledge of it. Therefore, Ben-Yehuda proposed that Hebrew become the lingua franca of Palestine for Jews. By 1909 when Tel-Aviv was founded, many Jews looked to use Hebrew as their main language of communication. Eventually Jews would settle in Jerusalem and by 1948 when Israel was created as a state, the language of west Jerusalem was Hebrew. However, Nahir points out that in practice, Ben-Yehuda likely had little to no contact with groups who taught Hebrew in Israel. Rather, Ben-Yehuda was a symbolic leader of the Hebrew revival.

This leads to the question, “what role does Arabic play in Jerusalem?” Jerusalem is split mainly into East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem which are heavily ethnically divided. The west side of the city is majority Israeli Jewish while the east side is mostly Palestinian Arab with many being Muslims. Arabic was regarded as the language of the land even by Zionists. In fact, one of Ben-Yehuda’s direct contributions to the Hebrew revival was the introduction of loan words to Hebrew. Biblical Hebrew had plenty of vocabulary for revival, but words existed in the modern lexicon that did not exist in biblical Hebrew. Ben-Yehuda proposed that loan words be taken from Arabic since it is a related language to Hebrew as part of the Semitic language tree. Today, Arabic is easily accessible in Jerusalem, with most signs having Hebrew and Arabic translations for them. Arabic language studies is part of Israel’s compulsory education system and children take Arabic classes regularly through their secondary schooling.  On December 18, 2016, The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that “[Arabic] education is the best tool to bridge cultural differences and ultimately, promote peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Israel.”

While the Israeli government has appeared to be mindful of the influence and importance of Arabic in Palestine, recent clashes between the Israeli government and Palestine over Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem have led to the marginalization of the Arabic language. On July 19, 2018, Israel passed the Nation-State Law, which expressed that Jerusalem was the unified capital of Israel, and that Israel’s state language would only be Hebrew. This law demoted Arabic from the status of a national language to “special status”, or semi-official. Many critics found that calling Jerusalem a united capital while neglecting the presence of Arabic in East Jerusalem specifically was unethical and hindering to the peace process. Many Arabs, both Palestinian and Israeli, found the law to be an assault to the culture and language of Arabs. Yonatan Mandel, a writer for Haaretz called the degradation of Arabic a degradation to Arabs in general. Protests ensued shortly after the passage of the law calling the law an apartheid bill.

The Israeli government since then has only doubled down on its efforts to bolster Israel as a Jewish, Hebrew speaking state while undermining the influence of Arabic culture and language likely for political reasons. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated, “do not be apologetic; fight for the truth.” These events take us up to the present day. The future of Arabic as a language is unclear in Jerusalem in context of the Israeli government’s recognition of it. Protests continue to rage on in leu of a continuation of Israeli settlements and a continued neglecting of Palestinian Arabs. Language is one piece of the puzzle in this conflict but is undoubtedly an important piece to discuss given that it controls every day events for all inhabitants of Jerusalem. We will see what comes next in this story as the conflict unfolds.

Works Cited

Saiger, David. “Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and the Making of Modern Hebrew”. My Jewish Learning.

Bensadoun, Daniel. “This Week in History: Revival of the Hebrew Language”. (2010). The Jerusalem Post.

“Immigration to Israel: The First Aliyah (1882-1903)”, Jewish Virtual Library.

“Immigration to Israel: The Second Aliyah (1904-1914)”, Jewish Virtual Library.

“Arabic in Israel: An official language and a cultural bridge”. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Mandel, Yonatan. “By Degrading Arabic, Israel has Degraded Arabs”. (2018). Haaretz.com.

Evri, Yuval. “Why Israeli’s Jews Do Not Know Arabic”. (2016). Haaretz.com.

TOI Staff. “Netanyahu dismisses criticism of nation-state law as ‘nonsense’”. (2018). timesofisrael.com.  

Nahir, Moshe. "Micro Language Planning and the Revival of Hebrew: A Schematic Framework." Language in Society 27, no. 3 (1998): 335-57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4168849.