At first, I made two mistakes. The first was that I trained myself to use “unbiased” words. What I’d refer to in Arabic as an “entity” would become a “state.” Striving for a vocabulary void of accusation, I replaced “arrogate” with “confiscate,” “dispossess” with “evict,” and “lie” with “allege.” This phenomenon is common among writers writing about Palestine, writers who worship the mythology of objectivity instead of satirizing it. There’s this naïve belief that Palestinians will acquire credibility only once they’ve amassed respectability. I did this to appear rational and unhostile. The
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