What a congressional hearing got wrong: Calls for intifada are not calls for genocide

What does intifada mean?

Last week, the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT put on a masterclass in bungling congressional testimony. Asked by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” constitutes bullying or harassment, PENN President Liz Magill answered, in part, that this would be “context-dependent.” Harvard’s Claudine Gay said the same. MIT’s Sally Kornbluth was clearer, only slightly, when she said such calls would be “investigated as harassment if pervasive and severe.” Magill lost her job on Saturday. Gay and Kornbluth are weathering the storm.

Most commentary surrounding the drama has been about how easy the right answer should have been. In his own resignation announcement, PENN Board of Trustees Chair Scott Bok said of Magill what was surely true for all three presidents. “Over prepared and over lawyered given the hostile forum and high stakes, she provided a legalistic answer to a moral question…” This doesn’t mean the presidents’ answers were defensible. But if the question were, “Do you and your institutions condemn antisemitism and calls for the genocide of Jews?” all three would have answered, “Yes.” They effectively already had in earlier testimony.

So the question was clear, and the answers were terrible. But there’s something else about the question that’s eluded commentary. What motivated it? Have there been calls for genocide on university campuses in the United States?

The short answer is no. At the center of discussions about Jewish genocide in recent weeks is the word intifada. As Stefanik put it at the hearing, “This call for intifada is to commit genocide against the Jewish people in Israel and globally.” If that were true, the word’s use in any context would be alarming, and the congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses would have taken on even greater importance. But intifada does not mean genocide. Arabic has its own term for that, ibadah jama’iyah, which hasn’t appeared in protests. Instead, it’s used to describe historical events like the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the Armenian genocide.

Intifada means “shaking off.” Though the term occasionally referred to situations in places like Iraq and Western Sahara during the 20th century, it is most associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What Palestinians have sought to “shake off” for generations, both nonviolently and violently, is Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories. In this context, “uprising” is also an appropriate translation. “Genocide” is not.

The first intifada, which began in 1987, was initially marked by civil disobedience, strikes, boycotts and graffiti. Protests grew violent and came to include the throwing of stones, Molotov cocktails and stabbings. By the end of the first intifada in 1993, nearly 200 Israelis and more than a thousand Palestinians had been killed.

The second intifada, which lasted from 2000 until 2005, was far more violent than the first. Airstrikes and shelling by Israeli forces met rocket attacks and suicide bombings by Palestinians. More than 1,000 Israelis and between 3,000 and 5,000 Palestinians were killed.

There is no denying that intifada carries a violent connotation, and we should assume those using the word on university campuses understand this. But these are not calls for genocide. They are calls for resistance, including armed resistance, to decades-old Israeli military occupation widely considered illegal under international law. Whether those calls are legitimate is a valid question. Whether they amount to calls for genocide is not.

In a sense, Liz Magill’s resignation is a tragedy. In her testimony, she said she was appalled by antisemitism and that PENN was taking action against it on campus.  Asked whether she supported Israel’s right to exist, she answered “yes” unequivocally. In trying to also honor free speech, she and her colleagues made the mistake of being too careful in response to an easy question. And for that they’ve been tarred. One wonders if knowing the meaning of intifada, and thus having a better understanding of what calls on university campuses actually meant, would have made a difference.

Seth Cantey is an associate professor of politics and serves as head of the Middle East and South Asia studies program at Washington and Lee University.