Arabic-L:TRANS:intifada response

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Mon 29 Oct 2001
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: intifada response

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1)
Date:  29 Oct 2001
From: Ali Farghaly  <Smith9887 at aol.com>
Subject: intifada response

The word 'intifada', I think is a case of borrowing and has become a
part of the English lexicon. It was borrowed for the following
reasons.
The word “intifada’  and not any other English words such
as “uprising” was used because, I believe, there was
something unique about the Palestinian uprising. First, it was
primarily the young Palestinian boys ages  who took the initiative
and  the active role and not the adults. Second, what these boys did
was they threw stone at the Israeli troops. They did not have guns
nor machine guns as the Israeli soldiers had. Third, they kept on
doing this for several months in spite of the causalities they had.
It was clearly a unique cry  to human conscience   and to the whole
world that there was a problem there. Videos from there showed how
the Israeli troops responded to these innocent kids who had nothing
but small stones with bullets. I think it is this uniqueness that
prompted Western media to refer to this unique event with a unique
term i.e. ‘intifada’. Notice that any other English word
such as ‘uprising’ will never give the same associations
of meanings
hat surrounds the ‘intifada’. Whereas
‘uprising’ can refer to a  similar event any where in the
world by any group of people , ‘intifada’ can only refer
to the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank primarily at the hands
of very young innocent kids against the Israeli occupation of their
land.
Ali Farghaly
Senior Linguist
YY Technologies

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End of Arabic-L:  29 Oct 2001