Silvana Rabinovich on the language of genocide in Palestine

The photos that accompany this interview are of a wall located on the corner of Eje 1 Norte and Enrique Gonzalez Martinez #118, in Mexico City, which was collectively painted and stencilled. Collectives such as BDS Mexico, El mono y los Olivos, Proyecto Migala, Editorial Uroboros, Comuna Lencha Trans, Transcontingenta, Proyecto Nakba, Paste up morras and people who support Palestine participated in this wall. It is the second time this wall was painted, as the first time it was destroyed by Zionists. Photo © Paste up morras.

Interview • Pablo Pérez García • October 25, 2024 • Leer en castellano

Silvana Rabinovich was born in Rosario, Argentina, where her grandfather passed on a love for the Hebrew bible and an unusual combination of respect and irreverence for the scriptures and the prophetic language in which they are written. She claims to have been reborn here in Mexico 31 years ago, when she arrived to the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) to do her doctorate under the supervision of philosopher and historian Enrique Dussel.

In her academic work as part of the UNAM’s Hermeneutics Seminar at the Institute of Philological Research, she analyzes how Hebrew vernacular is used in the political theology of the state of Israel. Outside the classroom, she’s been an activist for peace in Palestine for years.

Rabinovich is part of the Jews for Palestine Collective “Not in our name” in Mexico, which has spoken out against Mexican policy that maintains relations with Israel, even as it occasionally criticizes its war in Palestinian territory.

We agreed to this interview shortly after the one year anniversary of the asymmetric and genocidal war Israel is waging against the people in Gaza. Conservative estimates are that more than 42,000 people have been killed by the bombing and attacks by the Israeli army (two thirds of them women, children and teenagers). One out of every three children in Gaza is malnourished because of the blockade imposed by Israel on the entry of food and humanitarian aid. 

My conversation with Rabinovich, who is author of several books including The Bible and the Drone, never strayed far from history or biblical Hebrew, elements that she sees as fundamental to understanding the origin and scope of the processes that have allowed Israel to justify its decade long siege on the people of Palestine. 

Our “brief talk” turned out to be anything but brief. We planned to speak for twenty minutes and our conversation went on for over an hour and a half. Here we share some of the main themes of our interview, which has been translated and lightly edited for clarity and length.

A graffiti wall in support of Palestine at the corner of Eje 1 Norte and Enrique Gonzalez Martinez #118, in Mexico City. Photo © Paste up morras.

Pablo Pérez: How did the process of colonialist dispossession begin in Palestine, especially after 1948? Is there any similarity with America and Mexico?

Silvana Rabinovich: When Jews coming from Europe and other Arab countries arrived in the Palestinian territory, they presented themselves as refugees, which was what they were at that time. They relied on biblical language, and deployed the perverted idea of the people of God, transforming them into a superior people that came to rule over those who already lived there. 

This becomes settler colonialism, which denies the presence of those already living there, to make them invisible, and considers them as people of the past... Does this sound familiar? Who are forced to be considered people of the past? Indigenous peoples are. 

PP: In addition to founding a colonial state, what other objectives does Israel seek to achieve?

SR: The Zionist movement started at the end of the 19th century with Theodor Herzl's book called The Jewish State, which itself is an oxymoron. There he makes it clear that he intends the Jewish state to be “a wall to contain the advance of Eastern barbarism over Europe,” and that Europe should be grateful and pledge to protect the Jewish state. That is what we continue to see to this day.

One of the things that is considered offensive [by zionists] is the expression “from the river to the sea,” which at no point says “we are going to throw the Jews into the sea.” If anybody was thrown into the sea, in '48, it was the Palestinians. 

They cover that up because in reality the map that they use as insignia on some military uniforms is of “greater Israel,” which comes from the promise of Abraham and means “from the Euphrates to the Nile.” That’s much more than from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea!

PP: You have described the use of secular Hebrew as a language with political purposes. Can you talk about the transition of Hebrew from ritual to secular, and describe how the official language of Israel is shaped?

SR: Zionism was obsessed with erasing centuries, millennia of [Jewish] life in the diaspora, of life among other languages and other peoples. The Yiddish language is part of this. 

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda wanted to take Hebrew out of ritual enclosure and render it of common use. He said “all the centuries that Hebrew lived within ritual enclosure separated it from the everyday, and it needs to borrow many words.” 

Where do these words have to come from? He suggested it was from Arabic, which is the closest language. A linguist thinks in terms of a linguist, not a colonialist. 

But this was impossible for Eurocentric Zionists. The Eurocentrism of Central Europeans despised Yiddish and revered Germanness. They refused to listen to Ben-Yehuda and decided to secularize the Hebrew language.

In the infinity of interpretation, language has power. We are now seeing this in its most perverse, most destructive version.

A graffiti wall in support of Palestine at the corner of Eje 1 Norte and Enrique Gonzalez Martinez #118, in Mexico City. Photo © Paste up morras.

PP: How does this instrumentalization of the Hebrew language work?

SR: The Hebrew language as it was secularized through Zionism was instrumentalized for the purpose of war, [as with] the names of Israel's various incursions into the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, or of Palestine as a concept.

We are seeing now is the use of biblical connotations that respond to a national-colonial political theology. And this alarms the entire world, because of the apocalyptic drift it has openly taken. 

This was present there but it was minimized, latent, as if they had been sitting on a powder keg. This is what Gershom Scholem says in his letter to Franz Rosenzweig about the secularization of language and its dangers. Rosenzweig was against it, Scholem said it was as if they were on the edge of a volcano. The volcano has exploded. But it was always there.

PP: Is Israel truly the representation of the Jewish people?

SR: I come from a home that has this debate at the origin, [in which] Jews believe in Yiddish culture, for example, in solidarity, in working on identity through language and being proletarians. This has nothing to do with nationalist aspirations. 

Zionism claimed sole representation [of Jews]. It has a very dangerous instrument, which is a definition of anti-Semitism that considers any criticism of the state of Israel and its policies as anti-Semitic.

PP: And finally, do you think there’s a relationship between Zionism and American evangelical Christianity?

SR: Dussel's definition is very important here: “Perverted Christianity.” 

It has a tremendous role! 

This is the Christian Zionism of Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. [Javier] Milei wants to become a Jew, and he takes it one step further! In a text I wrote in Palestine: Anatomy of a genocide, I say that it’s Milei who is perpetrating the destruction of Judaism. 

His stance is particularly awful, because what he wants is to be a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin Netanyahu, who knows nothing of being a Jew!  If anyone wants to bury God, it is Netanyahu.