Keynote Speaker
The Words Laundrette: Unmasking Bias and Propaganda in the Discourses on the Ongoing Nakba
Understanding bias and propaganda in the discourse of Nakba narratives is of utmost importance, and this significance is further amplified by the advent of AI and technological advancements. In this talk, I will examine the Zionist language employed both for domestic and external consumption during the 1948 Nakba and the present genocide of Gaza. This language and its basic vocabulary shielded Israel for many years from internal criticism and international condemnation and granted it Western impunity.
This vocabulary represented a twin process of dehumanization and militarization of the Palestinian civil space. The reference to villages and towns as military bases at best, or as terrorist hotbeds at worst, was an important part of the indoctrination of the Israeli troops as well as a crucial aspect of the Israeli Hasbara, propaganda, outside.
This vocabulary should be seen as an eliminatory praxis by Israel and before that by the Zionist state. A verbal elimination indeed preceded the actual attempted one in 1948. The early attempt was to expunge the Palestinians as people of the land from history and memory before perpetrating a massive expulsion in 1948. The eliminatory vocabulary continued to be employed during the Nakba and ever since 1948. One the most worrying aspects of the current phase of the ongoing Nakba is the sense that manipulation of language is not needed anymore and the eliminatory policies are presented as such in the most vile and direct manner. But it is noteworthy that the direct approach is done only in Hebrew, which Israeli policymakers, still treat as a secret language only they understand.
Resisting this eliminatory praxis, common among settler colonial movements in the past, highlights the importance, quite often belittled, of scholarship, professional acumen, wordsmanship and articulation in any language that can reach a wider audience, who can be part of a solidarity movement or in position to make a difference on the ground. Also the slow process of introducing the counter vocabulary to the Israeli Jewish society, as done by Zochrot, should be acknowledged. None of these efforts is just about words or language, or even discourse. They have to be contextualized historically, legally and morally to appreciate how close they bring us to the adage: the word is [can be at least] mightier than the sword.
I hope through this talk to provide insights for AI practitioners on how to approach texts on this topic, as well as guidance on developing benchmarks and metrics to assess and track patterns of bias and propaganda over time and across diverse sources and languages.
