I'll give the paper a read to see if it illuminates my misunderstanding, but perhaps you could help me understand where you think my reasoning is faulty because I seem to have lost the point you're makong.
As a native English speaker, I would use the word holocaust to describe the genocide in Gaza, but certainly wouldn't expect any non English speaker to do the same (even more so to just transcribe the word), and I can't understand the leap that the former would imply the latter. In fact that sounds as absurd as expecting me to use Arabic words that I cannot pronounce or indeed really understand the meaning of. It's like trying to translate "hygge" into English, it's meaning is lost outside of cultural context. My reason for having called it a holocaust and a genocide is semantic, the two words have different meanings - I have read of genocides committed by colonial powers over the last few hundred years being referred to as holocausts - from India, to Congo, to Greece, to Armenia, to the USA. And this fits with the pattern of colonial ethnosupremacist mass killing. So it's a word that has meaning within the context of the culture and history schooling that I have had, that seems to accurately describe the situation.
I certainly believe that genocide is a better descriptive and more powerful word because of, as you rightly say, its legal accuracy, historical clarity, and moral precision.
I guess the part I don't understand is, why if I am accurately using my language, that has any relevance or bearing on what words are being used in another language? What am I missing?
Forgive me if that sounds confrontational, not meant at all, just trying to understand better.
Thank you for engaging thoughtfully. I appreciate the openness and the desire to understand.
The core issue isn’t whether you, as an English speaker, use “Holocaust.” It’s the structural expectation that Palestinians must use it—or terms like it—in order to be understood, validated, or grieved by the global community. That expectation is not neutral. It’s part of a colonial grammar that sets Western atrocity as the moral benchmark and demands all other traumas perform in its image to be legible.
Your analogy to translating “hygge” is actually a useful one—but in reverse. Imagine if a Danish person grieving a national trauma was required to describe it using the word “comfort” or “coziness” because English didn’t have a better term—and only then would anyone listen. That’s what happens when Palestinians are told their genocide must be called a “Holocaust” or rendered into Western terms.
Maḥraqa didn’t organically emerge in Palestinian discourse—it was imported through political and institutional pressure. By contrast, ibāda (genocide), nakba (catastrophe), tanfiyya (expulsion), and istʾiṣāl (eradication) are rooted in lived experience, oral tradition, and juridical frameworks. When Palestinians insist on these terms, they are asserting epistemic sovereignty: the right to name their own reality without translation.
So the question is not whether your language is “correct”—but why the dominant global discourse insists that Palestinians must use your language, not theirs, to be heard.
This isn’t just about semantics. It’s about power, narrative control, and refusing to be a footnote to someone else’s grief.
I'll give the paper a read to see if it illuminates my misunderstanding, but perhaps you could help me understand where you think my reasoning is faulty because I seem to have lost the point you're makong.
As a native English speaker, I would use the word holocaust to describe the genocide in Gaza, but certainly wouldn't expect any non English speaker to do the same (even more so to just transcribe the word), and I can't understand the leap that the former would imply the latter. In fact that sounds as absurd as expecting me to use Arabic words that I cannot pronounce or indeed really understand the meaning of. It's like trying to translate "hygge" into English, it's meaning is lost outside of cultural context. My reason for having called it a holocaust and a genocide is semantic, the two words have different meanings - I have read of genocides committed by colonial powers over the last few hundred years being referred to as holocausts - from India, to Congo, to Greece, to Armenia, to the USA. And this fits with the pattern of colonial ethnosupremacist mass killing. So it's a word that has meaning within the context of the culture and history schooling that I have had, that seems to accurately describe the situation.
I certainly believe that genocide is a better descriptive and more powerful word because of, as you rightly say, its legal accuracy, historical clarity, and moral precision.
I guess the part I don't understand is, why if I am accurately using my language, that has any relevance or bearing on what words are being used in another language? What am I missing?
Forgive me if that sounds confrontational, not meant at all, just trying to understand better.
Thank you for engaging thoughtfully. I appreciate the openness and the desire to understand.
The core issue isn’t whether you, as an English speaker, use “Holocaust.” It’s the structural expectation that Palestinians must use it—or terms like it—in order to be understood, validated, or grieved by the global community. That expectation is not neutral. It’s part of a colonial grammar that sets Western atrocity as the moral benchmark and demands all other traumas perform in its image to be legible.
Your analogy to translating “hygge” is actually a useful one—but in reverse. Imagine if a Danish person grieving a national trauma was required to describe it using the word “comfort” or “coziness” because English didn’t have a better term—and only then would anyone listen. That’s what happens when Palestinians are told their genocide must be called a “Holocaust” or rendered into Western terms.
Maḥraqa didn’t organically emerge in Palestinian discourse—it was imported through political and institutional pressure. By contrast, ibāda (genocide), nakba (catastrophe), tanfiyya (expulsion), and istʾiṣāl (eradication) are rooted in lived experience, oral tradition, and juridical frameworks. When Palestinians insist on these terms, they are asserting epistemic sovereignty: the right to name their own reality without translation.
So the question is not whether your language is “correct”—but why the dominant global discourse insists that Palestinians must use your language, not theirs, to be heard.
This isn’t just about semantics. It’s about power, narrative control, and refusing to be a footnote to someone else’s grief.