You can't say Palestinian in Israel or in the U.S. Congress.
In Israel you can’t use the word, “Palestinian”.
Palestinians in Israel are called Arabs, not Palestinian.
To call the people of Palestine Palestinian would be an admission that the nation, the people and their right to exist is a thing.
But in the wake of the Hamas assault on Israel, the same rule seems to apply in the U.S. Congress.
To make even the slightest recognition of Palestinian existence is to court vitriol.
John Nichols in The Nation reports:
Rarely in American history has a White House spokesperson so unceremoniously called out members of the president’s own party in the language that press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre employed Tuesday. Jean-Pierre was asked to comment on the statements by a handful of progressive Democratic US House members calling for a cease-fire and other urgent steps to end escalating violence that, since Saturday’s horrific assault by Hamas on Israeli communities, and the ensuing horrific Israeli bombing of population centers in Gaza, has left more than 2,200 Israelis and Palestinians dead. She did not hold back.
“We believe they’re wrong. We believe they’re repugnant and we believe they’re disgraceful,” Jean-Pierre said. “Our condemnation belongs squarely with terrorists who have brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped, hundreds, hundreds of Israelis. There can be no equivocation about that. There are not two sides here. There are not two sides.”
Though she did not specifically mention the names of Democratic US Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Cori Bush of Missouri, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and several other House members, there was no confusion about the targets of Jean-Pierre’s remarks.
For the main press spokesperson for the White House there are not human beings on both sides and those who say so are “repugnant” and “disgraceful.”
This is a requirement for the killing that has taken place and is about to get much, much worse.
War requires a belief that those on the other side of the battlefield do not exist as people.
On Israeli maps, Palestine does not exist. Palestinians cannot be called by their nationality.
And, so too in the U.S. Congress.