IEC Lexicon

Welcome to The Lexicon. This resource is designed to clarify the vocabulary around Israel on campus. Like all subjects, Israel is complex and understanding the language in the context of campus is a key step toward meaningful, authentic conversation.

Entries include definitions and commentary, which is in italics. Each entry includes cross-references listed as "See: X, Y, Z." Beneath the cross-reference you'll find citations. Within each section of The Lexicon, entries are listed alphabetically and the entire database is searchable.

The Lexicon will always be a work in progress as we add entries and fine-tune the ones already here. We want it to be useful to you, so please be an active participant! If an entry is unclear, if you have questions about the way a term was presented, or if something is missing and you think it should be here-- contact us iec@juf.org


These terms refer to the 1949 Armistice Lines, which served as Israel's borders between 1949 and the 1967 Six Day War. A call for Israel to return to the 1967 borders means relinquishing all of the territories conquered in the Six Day War. Most Israelis assert that the pre-67 borders are indefensible but support modifications and land swaps in the context of a peace deal. Numerous efforts to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace have been based on the pre-1967 borders with modifications.
After the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) carried out several terrorist attacks against Israel and militant members of Fatah attempted to assassinate Israel's ambassador to Great Britain, the Israel Defense Forces entered Lebanon on June 6, 1982 with the intent of weakening the PLO and stopping the terrorist attacks. This is considered first war Israel entered out of choice rather than necessity. Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon in 1985, after a new coalition government led by Shimon Peres took office.

Aliyah (Hebrew) literally means 'ascent' and is used to describe the act of a Jewish person moving to the State of Israel. For example, an American Jewish person who moves from the United States to Israel "makes aliyah."
Annexation occurs when a state expands its borders to incorporate a neighboring territory into the existing state. Many nations consider annexation illegal under international law, citing the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Some Israeli politicians have advocated for Israel to annex the West Bank as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while others are concerned about the legality of annexation and maintaining Israel’s Jewish majority.

Political criticism of Israel that challenges Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and as a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel.

Political criticism is healthy in any society; however, Israel is regularly criticized far beyond the scope of normal political discourse. For example, Israel receives significantly more criticism in politics, media, and campus conversations than nearly any other political entity; including noted human rights abusers such as North Korea, Russia, Syria, or China. Though not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, it often provides a pretext for critics who mask deeper anti-Jewish attitudes. Anti-Israel rhetoric crosses the line into antisemitism when it demonizes, delegitimizes, and holds Israel to a double standard.

Advocates of this strategy argue that any interaction with supporters of Israel validates the belief that Israel has a right to exist, and so interactions should be resisted. They maintain that Israelis are the aggressors and Palestinians are the victims, so any interaction constitutes an unacceptable concession and implicit validation of Israel.

Some significant anti-Israel campaigns and strategies are predicated on anti-normalization, including acts of interrupting and silencing pro-Israel speakers. Such tactics have been employed against numerous Israeli diplomats and Israel-related speakers during speeches at universities across the country. Anti-normalization policies exist at the root of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is based explicitly on rejection and isolation including the boycott of Israeli academics and visiting scholars. This practice is crippling to the campus climate. For students on the receiving end of anti-normalization, they find themselves isolated socially and academically. Classmates who adhere to this practice refuse to sit beside them, to speak to them, work with them in groups or engage in any way. When anti-normalization grips a campus community it drives a tremendous wedge between students forcing them to pick sides and cut off their pro-Israel friends or risk complete ostracization.

Antisemitism is hostility to, or prejudice against, Jewish people, the Jewish community or Judaism broadly.

The United States' State Department describes when criticism of Israel crosses over into antisemitism in the following ways:

Demonizing Israel
  • • Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism to characterize Israel or Israelis
  • • Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis
  • • Blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions


Double Standard For Israel
  • • Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation
  • • Multilateral organizations focusing on Israel only for peace or human rights investigations


Delegitimize Israel
  • • Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist

Antisemitism on campus often manifests itself in the destruction of Jewish-owned property, vandalism such as spray painting swastikas, and equating Jewish students with racists, war criminals, and apartheid apologists simply for supporting Israel.

Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism, broadly defined in the modern era as the opposition to the movement of Jews and Jewish culture that supports the establishment of a Jewish state as a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel or to the modern State of Israel as defined as "a Jewish and Democratic State." The term is used to describe various religious, moral, and political points of view, but their diversity of motivation and expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be seen as having a single ideology or source. According to many notable Jewish and non-Jewish sources, anti-Zionism has become a cover for modern-day antisemitism, a position that critics have challenged as a tactic to silence criticism of Israeli policies.

On campus, attempts are made to cleave Zionism and Judaism from one another. However, that is impossible as Zionism is defined as the movement Jewish self-determination in the Land of Israel. This push is made so that activists can attack Zionism while trying to avoid charges of antisemitism.

After the National Party gained power in South Africa in 1948, its all-white government began enforcing existing policies of racial segregation under a system that it called apartheid. Under apartheid, nonwhite South Africans (the majority of the population) were forced to live in separate areas from whites and to use separate public facilities, and contact between the two groups was limited.

The boycott campaign against Israel takes its inspiration from the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, which involved a sustained campaign of economic sanctions. However, the apartheid analogy is critically flawed. It bears no resemblance to the realities of contemporary Israel and plays down the uniqueness of the apartheid state in South Africa. That state was extraordinarily repressive, regulating every detail of the lives of its subjects – 90 percent of whom were non-white – on the basis of their skin color. By contrast, Israel is a democracy which has a flourishing free press and shares with other liberal democracies a core value: the equality of all its citizens before the law. Citizens regardless of skin color or ethnicity enjoy equal protection and opportunity under the law, including the right to vote. Completely unlike South Africa, Arab people are full participating citizens and hold some of the highest positions in society such as members of Knesset, doctors, lawyers, teachers and membership in the Supreme Court.

The anti-Israel movement uses this term in reference to the Security Barrier, inferring that the barrier was constructed as a tool of racism rather than a security necessity. During "Israel Apartheid Week" events on US campuses, anti-Israel activists often construct a "mock wall" meant to depict Israel's Security Barrier. The "wall" often has statements on it in an attempt to educate passersby about alleged Israeli human rights violations against the Palestinian civilian population.

This false equivalency trivializes the severity of apartheid South Africa and misrepresents the reality in Israel.

Arab is a term used to refer to Arab people most of whom are from 22 Arab-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa. There are approximately 380 million Arab people in the world. Arab people have a shared culture with the primary language being Arabic.

Arab-Israelis are Arab citizens of the State of Israel. Arab-Israelis may be Muslim, Christian, or Druze and often speak both Arabic and Hebrew.  Arab-Israelis represent about 20 percent of Israel's population and are guaranteed equal rights in the Declaration of Independence and under Israeli laws. They vote in Israeli elections, serve in parliament (in the 2015 election, the Joint (Arab) List became the third largest party in parliament), and work in every field of endeavor. They are not required to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, though some volunteer to do so. In recent years, many Arab-Israelis have opted to refer to themselves as Palestinian Israelis, Palestinians, 1948 Palestinians, and other variations. In public opinion polls, most Arab-Israelis say they recognize Israel's right to exist and that after a Palestinian state is established they would prefer to remain Israeli citizens and to continue living in Israel.
The Interim Agreements of the Oslo Accords divided the West Bank into three categories: Areas A, B, and C. Area A comprises about 18% of the land in the West Bank, including all the Palestinian cities and most of the territory's Palestinian population. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is endowed with most governmental powers in Area A. Area B comprises approximately 22% of the West Bank and encompasses large rural areas; Israel retained security control of the area and transferred control of civil matters to the PA. Area C covers 60% of the West Bank; Israel has retained almost complete control of this area, including security matters and all land-related civil matters, including land allocation, planning and construction, and infrastructure. There are about 350,000 Israeli citizens living in Area C of the West Bank. The PA is responsible for providing education and medical services to the Palestinian population in Area C. However, construction and maintenance of the infrastructure necessary for these services remains in Israel's hands. Civil matters remain under Israeli control in Area C and are the responsibility of the Civil Administration.

Beginning at the Camp David Summit in 2000, Israel and the PA have discussed land swaps which would grant Israel sovereignty over those small parts of the West Bank where most of the Israeli population resides, and Israel would cede an equal amount of territory from its sovereign territory, ensuring that the new State of Palestine would be the size of 100% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

There has been criticism of the division of the West Bank, and the limitations that this places on Palestinian self-determination. The division into Areas A, B, and C was envisioned as a temporary measure to facilitate an incremental transfer of authority to the Palestinian Authority. It was not designed to address the needs of long-term demographic growth. Yet this “temporary” arrangement has remained in force for more than 20 years because the two-sides have been unable to complete a final status agreement.

Generally, Armistice Lines are borders between two neighboring countries that are negotiated at the conclusion of a war or conflict.

In the Arab-Israeli conflict, Armistice Lines refer to the Armistice agreements Israel reached with each of its neighbors between January and July, 1949. The agreements delineated ceasefire lines, but not permanent, agreed borders. The border between Israel and Jordan, in which the West Bank was controlled by Jordan, came to be known as the Green Line.
  • Citation(s):
  • [1] BBC
An asylum seeker is a refugee or displaced person who flees their country and requests sanctuary in another country, but the application has yet to be processed.

According to the Interior Ministry, there are more than 38,000 refugees seeking asylum in Israel. 90 percent live in South Tel Aviv. The vast majority are from Africa: 72 percent are from Eritrea, while 20 percent are Sudanese.

Asylum seekers are a source of great controversy in contemporary Israel. Some Israelis advocate for their deportation, contending that they are not true refugees and are migrants seeking work. Other organizations and activist movements advocate for the asylum seekers’ resettlement.

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Bedouin are an Arab minority population residing primarily in villages in the Negev (the desert of Israel), Central Israel, and Northern Israel. Bedouin are largely unintegrated into the rest of Israeli society, though the northern Bedouin are much more established within Israeli society. Many Bedouin (especially northern Bedouin) serve in scouting or tracking units in the Israel Defense Forces. There are also Bedouin communities outside of Israel.
Israel's borders, which have changed in recent decades as a result of wars and land-for-peace negotiations, separate Israel from the sovereign states of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the "border" delineates the line between autonomous Palestinian area and the State of Israel.  According to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement from the Oslo Accords, the two sides will negotiate permanent borders between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza.
  • Citation(s):
  • [1] BBC
BDS or the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement was started in 2005. The Boycott part of the movement calls for the complete financial, academic, and cultural boycott of Israel. This entails calling on consumers to cease purchasing Israeli goods and for universities and other entities to cease any and all engagement with Israeli academics, institutions, and other organizations. Divestment refers to the call for all entities to withdraw  investments in companies doing business with Israel, particularly companies involved with Israel's security and military sectors. This is a tool commonly seen at universities where BDS activists call for their universities to withdraw investments from companies doing business with Israel. The Sanctions part of the movement calls for governments to impose sanctions against Israel.

BDS has become a major tactic to delegitmize Israel on college campuses across the world. The tactic has failed to harm Israel's economy but has opened the door to increasingly virulent anti-Jewish rhetoric, isolated Jewish communities on campus, and serves as a platform to spread lies and false accusations under the guise of concern for human rights. The BDS movement focuses solely on Israel, ignoring severe human rights abuses elsewhere. Some students who participate in BDS activities may be unaware that the movement’s leaders do not support a two state solution and seek the destruction of the Jewish state.

The Israeli government instituted checkpoints in response to Palestinian violence during the Second Intifada. Similar to airport security, checkpoints ensure that all individuals entering Israeli population centers are unarmed. On multiple occasions, they have prevented would-be suicide bombers from entering Israel and committing terror attacks in Israeli cities. Critics of the checkpoints note that they place an unreasonable burden on the overwhelming majority of law-abiding Palestinian residents. While acknowledging the challenges posed by checkpoints, Israel maintains that its primary priority is to ensure the security of its citizens.

Anti-Israel activists have created "mock checkpoints" on many quads across the country. The street theater display is a scare tactic meant to present Israel as evil while disregarding the need for the checkpoints to protect citizens from terrorism.

To delegitimize something is to withdraw authority or status. 

On campus, the delegitimization of Israel comes as individuals deny Israel's right to exist as the Jewish homeland. Often questioning Jewish indigeneity in the land of Israel, opponents of Israel look to undermine the very rationale for Israel's establishment. Some activists also try to decouple Zionism from Judaism, which serves to undercut the legitimacy of the Jewish claim to the land of Israel.

Diaspora is literally "the body of Jews living outside of the land of Israel," however it has come to refer to any group of people living outside of their indigenous homeland. In the case of the Jewish people, that land is the State of Israel. The word Diaspora is also applied to the Palestinian people living outside of the land that they identify as their homeland, which is also the Land of Israel.

The Jewish people are indigenous to the physical Land of Israel, and so their homeland is that particular piece of earth.

The Druze people are ethnic minority that lives both inside Israel and outside of Israel. Within Israel, they consist of approximately 80,000 individuals in 22 villages in northern Israel and they speak Arabic. Druze is a religious, social, and cultural identity that firmly believes in loyalty to the government of their country.  For this reason, the Druze serve in the Israel Defense Forces though it is not a legal requirement.

Ethnic cleansing is the attempt to eliminate (through deportation, displacement, or mass killing) members of an ethnic group in order to establish an ethnically homogenous area.

On campus, Israel detractors often falsely accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing, trying to rid Israel of Palestinians. This horrifying accusation is neither supported by the record nor the population registry figures.

Extremism is the holding and expression of religious, political, or other thought that is fanatic in nature and frequently leads the adherent to behave in ways that are outside of the behavioral norm. For example, environmental extremists might burn down a logging company's headquarters to make a statement about their political views on logging.

This term refers to an official peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians as envisioned in the Oslo Accords. The Declaration of Principles (DOP) signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat on September 13, 1993, called for a five-year "interim" or "transitional" period  which would be used to create an environment of confidence between the two sides and would culminate in a Final Status agreement. The final status negotiations were to begin in the third year of the five-year interim period, and were to  address challenging issues such as Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, and relations and cooperation with other neighbors. On multiple occasions, Prime Minister Rabin famously said that deadlines were not holy, implying that it might take longer than five years to reach a final status agreement. Today, it is clear that the framework envisioned in the Oslo Accords has failed to achieve the goals set forth in that historic agreement.

The Green Line is the armistice line between Israel and Jordan following the War of Independence. Named for the green marker that was used to delineate the boundary, the Green Line refers to the border as it was until 1967 with the West Bank and East Jerusalem outside of Israel. In 1950, Jordan annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in a move recognized only by the UK and Pakistan. Though Israel asserts that the Green Line borders are indefensible (at its narrowest point, pre-1967 Israel was nine miles wide), they have been used as the basis for land-for-peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.  The Green Line is also referred to as the Armistice Line.

Intersectionality is the theory that all of the different facets of a person's identity (race, gender, religion, disability, and other protected identities and statuses) converge and inform one another. This convergence can lead to overlapping discrimination and/or disadvantage, as well as privilege. The theory of intersectionality also links various oppressions through the idea that all oppressions are intertwined; therefore, one oppression cannot be addressed without addressing all oppression.

There is a common sentiment on American university campuses that Jewish people are not a minority group, which leads Jewish people to be excluded from concepts of intersectionality. This perspective stems in part from the fair complexion common to Jews of European descent but ignores the reality that Jewish people have been no more than 1% of the global population at any point. It also erases the history of bias, harassment and discrimination that Jewish people have faced at the hands of many governments over time. Intersectionality often plays into the Israel on campus narrative through an argument that the experience of Palestinians is linked to the experience of Black Americans. The idea is that all oppressions (this presumes a belief that Palestinians are oppressed) are linked and so the oppression of Palestinians is inextricably linked to the oppression of Black Americans. While Black Americans have survived centuries of bias resulting from institutional, chattel slavery, the Palestinians have experienced nothing like it. To suggest otherwise does a disservice to the memory and legacy of Black Americans. On many college campuses there is also a lack of understanding about the minority status of Jewish people. Their is a prevailing belief that Jewish people are just another group of generic White people who came to the United States, rather than a specific ethnoreligious group. It is due to this misunderstanding that often Jewish habitation in Israel is talked about as ‘white colonization’ and is lumped in with Europeans conquering Native American land here. However, Jewish people are indigenous to the Land of Israel and thus are returning to their homeland. Intersectionality could serve to help inform others about the experience of Jewish people, and the underlying narrative about the State of Israel. The suffering and oppression experienced by Jewish people at the hands of myriad foreign rulers has created a singular experience. Though this framing, others could begin to understand the overlapping oppressions of being part of immigrant, Jewish and sometimes gender minority groups who have experienced legacy oppression unseen elsewhere.

Developed by the Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., with American monetary support, the Iron Dome is the most effective missile-interception system in military history. It was invented as an inexpensive defensive tactic against thousands of rocket attacks by Hamas and other organizations from Gaza. Israeli cities close to the Gaza border, such as Sderot and Ashkelon, which were constantly under rocket fire in the early 2000s, have resumed a more normal way of life due to the Iron Dome. As a result of Israel's investment in defense technologies such as the Iron Dome, Israeli casualties in times of conflict are significantly less than those of Palestinians; a topic that is often misconstrued in the media and on college campuses.

  • Citation(s):
  • [1] Time
Islam is the youngest of the three major monotheistic religions, often together referred to as Abrahamic faiths. The name comes from the Arabic word for "surrender;" a fundamental element of Islam being that one must surrender to the will of Allah (Arabic: God.)  Muslims, followers of Islam, believe that Allah revealed the word of the Quran (the Islamic scripture) to the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century CE as the last of a series of prophets, including those from the Jewish and Christian bibles. As such, Islam is the last of the three monotheistic religions (those believing in one God), following Judaism and Christianity

The two primary sects of Islam, Sunni and Shia, vary in doctrine, tradition, and law, and are often at odds with one another. The majority of the world's Muslims are Sunnis, but some countries, including Iran, Bahrain, and Azerbaijan, are majority Shia.  
An Israeli is an individual who is a citizen of the State of Israel. Israeli citizens span across a multitude of ethnicities, religions, races, and cultures including but not limited to: Arabs, Druze, Christians, Armenians, and Jews who trace their origins to many regions of the world.

This term is used as shorthand to refer to the decades of tension between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Some anti-Israel activists want to stop using the word “conflict” as they say it implies a level of equality between the sides that they do not believe exists. This perspective is advocated by opponents of normalization who believe that any suggestion that there is a balanced conflict gives tacit support to the idea that Israel deserves to exist, so they reject the title outright.

  • Citation(s):
  • [1] BBC
Jew is a term used to refer to a Jewish person. The Jewish people are a monotheistic, ethnoreligious group, originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are closely related, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation, while its observance varies from strict observance to complete non-observance.

Jihad (Arabic: struggle or effort) means much more than holy war. Muslims use the word jihad to describe three kinds of struggle: A believer's internal struggle to live out the Muslim faith as well as possible; the struggle to build a good Muslim society; and holy war, or the struggle to defend Islam, with force if necessary. Many modern writers claim that the main meaning of Jihad is the internal spiritual struggle, and this is accepted by many Muslims. However there are so many references to jihad as a military struggle in Islamic writings that it is incorrect to claim that the interpretation of jihad as holy war is wrong.

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  • Citation(s):
  • [1] BBC
Judaism is the most ancient of the three Abrahamic religions (the other two being Christianity and Islam), with a foundational text called the Torah (English: The Five Books of Moses) and other texts including the Book of Prophets and the Talmud.  Judaism is characterized by its belief in one God who promised the prophet Abraham to make of his offspring a great nation in the Land of Israel. Followers of the religion are referenced in the Bible as Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews (though today followers are exclusively referred to as Jews or Jewish people). Adherents of Judaism do not believe in Jesus or Muhammed, nor do Jewish people believe in individual salvation.  
Justice is the act of upholding fairness, morality and equitableness. 

On campus activists will often clarify that they are calling for justice not peace, as peace is seen as passive or ineffective conceptually. Often exemplified by the rally cry, “No justice, no peace!”

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A keffiyeh is a scarf - often black and white, or red and white - that is typically worn as a head covering by Arab and Kurdish men. The keffiyeh has come to represent the Palestinian political movements in the United States and elsewhere. It is often worn as a sign of solidarity with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian activists. The Palestinian movements have adopted the fishnet-pattern keffiyeh as it was typically worn by Yasser Arafat.

Israel's Law of Return, enacted in 1950, guarantees Jewish people of any ethnicity or nationality, and their immediate families, the right to citizenship and residence in the State of Israel. This policy is based on the understanding of Israel as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. The state ensures the Right of Return because Jewish people moving to Israel are understood to be returning home after their forebears were forcibly exiled.

The Law of Return is often used as an example of Israeli governmental policy to increase the Jewish occupation of land that rightfully belongs solely to the Palestinians. Many advocates for that perspective believe that any Jewish immigration is illegitimate and has nefarious motives. This perspective also often denies Jewish indigeneity in the Land of Israel and asserts that the indigenous claim is a trumped-up lie crafted only to steal land from Palestinians.

Additionally, the Law of Return has enabled Israel to extract entire Jewish communities from countries in which those Jewish communities were not safe, and to then bring those people to Israel to be resettled. Most well-known are the evacuations of the Ethiopian Jewish people called Operation Moses (1984) and the Yemeni Jewish people called Operation Wings of Eagles or Magic Carpet (1949-50).
A Muslim is an adherent of the religion of Islam.
  • Citation(s):
  • [1] BBC
Nationalism is a shared group feeling in the significance of a geographical and sometimes demographic region. It can also describe desire for land-based independence and self-determination for a population currently without a state, but united in ethnicity, region, or other shared affinity.

Occupation can be defined as the action, state, or period of occupying or being occupied by military force.

Israel gained control of the West Bank and Gaza in the defensive 1967 Six-Day War. Since that victory, Israel has maintained civil and military presence in the West Bank. While critics maintain that Israel is an illegitimate "occupier" of these territories, Israel maintains that neither the West Bank nor the Gaza Strip were part of sovereign countries prior to 1967, and that their final status must be determined through negotiations. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and relinquished any claim to it. Israel, like Egypt, continues to control imports and exports at international crossing points for security reasons.

Typically occupation refers to Israeli presence in the West Bank. However, there are many who see the entire State of Israel as an occupying force on Palestinian land. For critics of the former, Israel’s withdrawal from the entire West Bank is seen as the goal. For critics of the latter, the dissolution of the State of Israel is seen as the only solution for ending the occupation.

A one-state solution, also referred to as a binational state, suggests a single state in all of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, in which Israelis and Palestinians would live together. The one-state "solution" is often touted by harsh critics of Israel in an indirect attempt to bring about the demise of the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. (The population of the entire territory, which includes the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, is almost equally split between Jews and Arabs; the high Arab birth rate and the possibility of an influx of Palestinian refugees and their descendants now living around the world seem likely to render Jews a minority in a binational state. The overwhelming majority of Israelis reject a one-state solution, and it is unrealistic to expect Israel to voluntarily give up its sovereign existence and nationalist identity in exchange for becoming a vulnerable minority.  

Anti-Israel groups rarely use the terms “one-state solution” or “binational state,” but they are referring to the same idea when they call for a “Palestinian right of return.” The founder of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement explicitly rejected the idea of a two-state solution and created the BDS movement with the ultimate goal of destroying the Jewish State of Israel, leading to one Palestinian state.

A person who was an inhabitant of the former British Mandate Palestine, and their descendants, particularly the Arabs now living in the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, or in the Palestinian diaspora.

Though the term Palestinian is now widely understood to refer to the Arab population of the British Mandate, during the years of the British Mandate the word Palestinian also referred to Jewish people living in the land that would become Israel. On campus, students will sometimes claim Palestinian identity, regardless of ethnicity or origin, as a display of solidarity with Palestinian activists.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Association, a Palestinian refugee is, "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine (See: Palestine) during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict." Palestinian identity is frequently defined by regional identity rather than by ethnic identity

Considering the shift in borders of the State of Israel compared to the previous British Mandate of Palestine, this definition can include displaced Jordanian and Jewish people, as well as any populations living within the borders of the British Mandate at the time of the War of Independence. However, the term "Palestinian refugee" is used colloquially to refer to all people of Arab descent who have ancestry in the British Mandate of Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 (See: 1948 War)

UNRWA claims there are 4.5 million Palestinian refugees, however this number is inflated as a political tool to denigrate Israel. Many of the people that UNRWA claims as refugees are multi-generational residents of other Arab countries, primarily Jordan, who never lived in pre -'48 Palestine. Arab countries which are home to many of these refugees have declined to grant citizenship to Palestinians, thereby prolonging their inherited refugee status

In contrast, the United Nations has a entirely different criteria for what makes someone a refugee for all other populations. Generally, to be considered a refugee one must fit the following:

"...as a result of events occurring ... and owing to well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. "
The "Palestinian Right of Return" is the theory that Palestinian refugees and their descendants have a right to reclaim and return to their former homes in what is now the State of Israel. The Palestinian right of return is often cited as international law according to UN Resolutions 242 and 338; however, the resolutions are not binding and merely suggest that Israel has a responsibility to resolve the Palestinian refugee issue through resettlement and compensation.

Moreover, the idea of a Palestinian right of return dates back to a time when the PLO and Arab states sought to dismantle the Jewish state and replace it with a Palestinian state to which the "right of return" would then be applied. Israel rejects any Palestinian right of return to the State of Israel, saying that when a Palestinian state is established, the Palestinian government will be free to enact laws permitting a return -- to that new Palestinian state. If Israel was to accept Palestinian demands for a right of return to Israel, the influx of millions of Palestinians would cause Israel to lose its Jewish majority and it would cease to exist. Additionally, while it calls for a Palestinian right of return to Israel, the Palestinian Authority has stated repeatedly that Jews will not be permitted to live in the future State of Palestine.
Freedom from, civil unrest or disorder; absence of, or cessation of war or hostilities; the condition or state of a nation or community in which it is not at war with another; peacetime.

Some campus organizations and student leaders advocate for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, while others advocate solely for justice for Palestinians claiming that justice and peace are not equivalent and that they are willing to sacrifice peace in pursuit of justice. Peace is sometimes considered the 'feel good' option, while justice is seen as more tangible. In terms of state relationships and peace, peaceful resolutions to both the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflicts have been sought since the 1970’s. Some negotiations have been successful - Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 - while others have failed to produce a successful outcome. The most recent round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority occurred from 2013-2014, facilitated by then-Secretary of State John Kerry.

Peoplehood is the unity of a people who share a common culture, history, and language and feel a sense of belonging within that people. The fact or state of being a community of people of shared race or nationality, often with the implication of associated status or rights. Jewish peoplehood is a concept that originates in the Torah and has united the Jewish nation for thousands of years.

Pinkwashing is a compound word combining pink and whitewashing that is used by anti-Israel activists who claim that Israel's queer-friendliness is a deliberate marketing and political strategy designed to deflect attention from perceived wrongdoing by the Israeli government.    

In other words, critics say that Israel uses its status as a safe-haven for the queer community as a way to divert international attention from its alleged human rights abuses. In reality, Israel is the only place in the Mideast that provides safety and support for the LGBT community. In Gaza, homosexuality is illegal and in the West Bank being an ‘out’ member of the LGBT community can lead to harassment and even murder. On campus, Israel is often decried for pinkwashing and that argument is used as a rationale for the BDS movement. Regionally, Israel is an island of tolerance and acceptance with neighbors going so far as to criminalize homosexuality with penalties ranging from jail time and torture (Egypt, Iran, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen) to execution (Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq). Some neighbor countries even criminalize dissemination of material that could be interpreted as LGBTQ propaganda (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait). Israel is also the only country in the region to offer protection from hate crimes, discrimination, harassment and protection for members of the trans community. These protections are not offered by the PA or Hamas.

Pluralism is a condition in which minority groups (ethnic, religious, and otherwise) participate fully in the dominant society, yet maintain their cultural differences

It also refers to a social organization in which diversity of racial, religious, ethnic, or cultural groups is tolerated. In Israel, people of diverse identities and backgrounds are full members of Israeli society, both legally and practically. In Israel this pluralism plays out on the national level. To ensure access and communication, Israel maintains Hebrew and Arabic as its national languages

The world pluralism can also be used to describe a space in which multiple perspectives and practices of Judaism can exist together. Jewish student spaces often are described as being pluralistic because they are open to Jewish students of all denominations and beliefs.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel is the supreme rabbinic and spiritual authority for Judaism in IsraelIt has legal and administrative authority to organize religious arrangements for Israel's Jews and religious questions submitted by Jewish public bodies in the Diaspora. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel consists of two Chief Rabbis: an Ashkenazi rabbi and a Sephardi rabbi. Its jurisdiction includes personal status issues, such as marriages, divorces, and burials for Jews, conversion to Judaism, kosher laws and kosher certification, Jewish immigrants to Israel, supervision of Jewish holy sites, working with various ritual baths (mikvaot) and yeshivas, and overseeing Rabbinical courts in Israel. Modeled on the Ottoman tradition of regulating issues of personal status through central religious offices, the Rabbinate is paralleled by the Waqf for Muslims, and the various churches for Christians.
The Israeli government voted in 2002 to construct a security barrier separating Israeli and Palestinian populations in order to prevent Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli targets.  The decision to build the barrier was reached following more than two years of relentless terrorism by Palestinian suicide bombers who targeted Israeli buses, cafes, shopping centers, and other civilian gathering points during the Second Intifada, which killed over 1,000 Israelis and injured thousands more.

Ninety percent of the 450-mile security barrier is chain-link fence and 10% is concrete wall, and it has been extremely successful in reducing terror attacks.

On college campuses there is a lot of misinformation about the reason Israel built the security barrier. Israel is often accused of having built it to enforce race-based separation between Israelis and Palestinians. Due to this misinterpretation, the barrier is occasionally represented as an “apartheid wall” to spotlight its supposedly racist intent.

Defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "the process by which a country [or in some cases, a people] determines its own statehood and forms its own allegiances and government."  

This idea comes into play throughout the Israeli-Palestinian debate and is used by both sides to describe their national movements and their rights to establish statehood and national identity. Jewish hopes of self-determination arguably never ceased after the Romans expelled the Jews from their land in 70 CE, and full-scale efforts to bring it to fruition began with the early Zionists in the 19th century, later gaining momentum during and following the Holocaust. There has always been a Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. Any evacuation of Jews has been involuntary and at the hand of a conquering army. The concept of self-determination also serves as rationale for the Palestinian movement for statehood. Palestinian goals of self-determination vary in terms of borders, with some calling for the West Bank and Gaza to be the Palestinian state, and others calling for the entire territory of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza to become the Palestinian state.

The term "settlements" refers to the towns and villages that Jews have established in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza since the Six Day War. The issue of settlements has become a focal point for Arab-Israeli peace negotiations as some argue that the Israeli settlements are in violation of international law according to the Fourth Geneva Convention's Rules of War. Under the convention, established in response to Nazi atrocities in World War II, occupying powers are forbidden from resettling on territories under their military control. Israel rejects that its settlements in the West Bank violate the convention as the land was captured as a result of a defensive war in 1967, and the territories captured in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were not under the recognized sovereignty of any other country at the time

The issue of settlement building was discussed during the Oslo years but the PA never demanded a total Israeli freeze on settlement activity as a precondition for negotiations. Israel removed its settlements from Gaza during the 2005 Gaza disengagement, but settlements  in the West Bank continue to grow. Israel said the disengagement offered the Palestinians an opportunity to prove that if Israel made territorial concessions, they would be prepared to coexist with their neighbor and to build a state of their own. However, terrorism from Gaza has continued unabated. Some cite the continuation of settlement building in the West Bank to justify the recent wave of violence perpetrated by Palestinians against Israelis

In 2009, US President Barack Obama pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlement construction as a condition for restarting peace talks with the PA, something no Palestinian leader had ever demanded. Israel acceded to the American request, freezing construction for 10 months. For most of that time, no peace talks took place, and at the end of the 10-month period, when Israel resumed construction activity in the West Bank settlements, the PA broke off talks.

Terror predates the building of Israeli homes in the West Bank or Gaza. The idea that settlements are the singular impediment to peace betrays the fact that total withdrawal of settlements, military and even cemeteries from Gaza in 2005 did not lead to peace. The withdrawal from Gaza has resulted in the election of Hamas, continued rocket bombardment of Israel and to Hamas crippling the Palestinian economy and infrastructure in Gaza.

Settler is the widely used term for Jewish individuals who are citizens of Israel and who live in the West Bank. Many, but not all, settlers believe it is a religious obligation to settle and maintain control of the land due to its importance in Jewish history and tradition. Settlers include secular Israelis, new immigrants, those who believe it is a matter of national security to maintain a stronghold in the West Bank, as well as many who moved there for non-ideological reasons.

A shared society is one where citizens of all religions and backgrounds have equal rights and opportunities. In Israel, there are movements and organizations that advocate for a shared society between Israelis and Palestinians, achieved through education, economic cooperation, and dialogue. 

This is the not the same as a call for a one-state solution, in which there would be a Palestinian majority and Jewish minority. A shared society can exist within a two-state solution. It merely refers to the status of citizens within existing populations and existing state structures.

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According to international law, a nation can declare statehood if it has a defined territory, a population of citizens, a sovereign government, and the ability to establish relations with other countries.

Israel’s right to statehood is frequently challenged by anti-Israel organizations on campus who claim that Israel is a settler-colonial state, rather than a legitimate sovereign state.

A political term referring to an area of land under the jurisdiction of a ruler or state.  In the Israeli-Palestinian context, the word originally referred to the land conquered by Israel during the Six Day War, which included the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In the ensuing years, Israel has returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in the framework of the 1979 Camp David Accords and withdrawn unilaterally from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

On campus, “the territories” usually refers to Gaza and the West Bank, although Gaza is no longer controlled by Israel as all Israeli presence (military, civilian, and even grave sites) was removed.

This definition is offered in Bruce Hoffman's book Inside Terrorism : "Terrorism is the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change. All terrorist acts involve violence or the threat of violence. Terrorism is specifically designed to have far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate victim(s) or object of the terrorist attack. It is meant to instill fear within, and thereby intimidate, a wider `target audience' that might include a rival ethnic or religious group, an entire country, a national government or political party, or public opinion in general. Terrorism is designed to create power where there is none or to consolidate power where there is very little. Through the publicity generated by their violence, terrorists seek to obtain the leverage, influence and power they otherwise lack to effect political change on either a local or an international scale."

On campus, terrorism against Israelis is often ignored and efforts to discuss it can be viewed as an unwelcome conversation. Given Israel’s strength and, more recently, the development of the Iron Dome it can be hard to believe that Israelis suffer from the effects of terrorism -- but they do. The characterization of a black-and-white situation in which the victims (Palestinians) rebel against the oppressors (Israelis) ignores the current reality in which the threat of rocket fire and terror tunnels meant to kill Jewish Israelis looms heavily. Hamas fires rockets into Israel toward population centers. Israel relies upon Iron Dome to prevent those rockets from achieving their goal of harming Israelis. During 2014 war with Gaza (Operation Protective Edge) Israel went to extreme lengths to prevent civilian casualties through leafleting, roof knocking and phone calls to residents prior to military incursion. However, Hamas continually used human shields to protect their armories resulting in loss of life.

The two-state solution refers to variations on the notion that  two states, Israel and Palestine, can exist side by side with secure, recognized borders in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The boundary between the two states is still subject to negotiation, with many proposals envisioning modifications to the 1967 borders.

There have been many diplomatic efforts to realize a two-state solution, beginning in 1937 with the Peel Commission and again in 1947 when the United Nations approved the Partition Plan. Though the PA and Israeli leadership claim to support a two-state solution, critics note that each side can be faulted for holding back crucial support in negotiations.

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  • [1] BBC
Waqf (Arabic: a religious endowment to Islam, usually a piece of land or a building, or the religious authority that oversees such endowments.)The Land of Israel is sometimes considered to be a Waqf for people who believe that Israel belongs in the hands of Muslim leadership, rather than the present government. According to University of Washington professor Walid Salem, "The roots of the Islamic anti-normalization position comes [sic] from their belief that Palestine is an Islamic waqf (endowment), and that Jews have no rights at all in it. Consequently, Israel's existence is not legitimate, and therefore it is not possible to recognize it." In the West Bank, reference to "the Waqf" is generally a reference to the Jordanian authority on Islamic endowments. After the 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel conquered the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel decreed that the Supreme Religious Council, the Waqf authority in Jordan, would retain authority for the Temple Mount and surrounding religious sites, with Israeli oversight.

White Colonialism is an academic term describing the colonial behavior of White people (defined as a political term for dominant culture, usually fair-skinned in appearance, though sometimes in reference to the dominant population with less regard for skin color) in countries other than their place of origin, typically in countries with a darker-skinned native population. For example, European settlement in the United States is seen as a primary example of White Colonialism in that White Europeans came to the Americas and conquered the indigenous, darker-skinned Native Americans, colonizing their land.

Israel is sometimes accused of White Colonialism on campus because of the false notion that Israel represents the legacy of Western countries conquering smaller, often ethnically distinct, populations. Israel is seen as occupying land that rightfully belongs to the Palestinians, but to which Jews feel entitled supposedly because of their sense of privilege. However, this narrative ignores the fact that the Jewish people are indigenous to the Land of Israel and that ever since they were exiled by the Romans in 70 CE they hoped and dreamed of the day they would be able to return. Their migration to the Land of Israel and establishment of the State of Israel are the result of a generations-long liberation movement, calling for a return to the Jewish indigenous homeland. These cries for return grew louder after each successive increase in persecution in foreign lands.

White Privilege is a term for societal privileges and expectations that benefit people identified as White in Western countries. Examples include safety in interactions with authorities, access to credit, and personal integrity.

Jewish people have a complicated relationship with “White” status, as the term has only been applied to Jewish people since the 1950’s and 60’s in the United States. While there were some Jewish people in the United States beginning in 1654, the vast majority of Jewish people do not share in the classic White historical experience. When the mass Jewish migration out of Eastern Europe began in the late 19th century, many Jewish people arriving in the US were met with hostility and bigotry which continued unabated until post-WWII apologism gave way to societal acceptance. Due to their status as “other” and therefore not White, Jewish students were not allowed to use certain campus facilities or to join sororities or fraternities at most universities. This bigotry led the Jewish community to start Jewish sororities, fraternities and Hillels to offer campus life opportunities to Jewish people in spaces free from bias. Beginning in 2015, anti-Jewish extremism has been on a sharp increase, including groups and actions specifically saying that Jewish people are not White.

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Zio is a short version of "Zionist" which is commonly used amongst white supremacists and other groups with antipathy toward the Jewish people in the United States as a slur to refer to Jewish people.

Zionism is belief in the Jewish right to self-determination. This call came on the heels of millennia of oppression, restriction, and attempts at extermination of the Jewish people in multiple places around the world

The term "Zionism" was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum and popularized by Theodor Herzl, who is singled out in Israel's Declaration of Independence as "the spiritual father of the Jewish State." Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has come to include the movement for the development of Israel and the protection of the Jewish nation in Israel. The term Zionism describes that millennia long yearning to return to the Jewish homeland.

On campus, anti-Israel activists sometimes try to uncouple Zionism from its connection to Judaism as a way to delegitimize Israel while insisting they are not antisemitic. However, as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people; it is impossible to delegitimize Zionism without delegitimizing Jews. Additionally, others claim that Zionism is akin to a supremacy movement. This accusation is not only false, but antisemitic in that is allows for other national identities (such as Palestinian national identity, or others) while uniquely calling Jewish national identity racist.

A Zionist is a person who supports Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Zionism calls for the explicit self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, Israel. This call came on the heels of millennia of oppression, restriction, and attempts at extermination of the Jewish people at the hands of non-Jewish governments . While Jewish people have prayed for a return to their homeland since they were exiled by the Romans in 70 CE, individuals only took concrete steps to achieve renewed sovereignty beginning in the late 19th century.

The word Zionist is also frequently used as a euphemism for Jewish people. The Ku Klux Klan is notorious for their use of the word Zionists to make thinly veiled references to Jews. On campus and on social media, references to "Zionists" can describe behavior of the Jewish ethnic group or community, rather than a political group or entity.