The name game: What should we call the situation in West Bank?

Ami Kaufman By Ami Kaufman July 10, 2012 | Edit

First they told us we can’t call it “apartheid”.

Now, they say we can’t call it “occupation”.

But we have to call it something!!!!!

I’m waiting to hear your suggestions in the comments section below. Single-word terms/nouns are preferred (with short explanations even better). I’ll post some of the good ones I get from Twitter and Facebook here, too.

Visitation – Vague promises of adding value and/or leaving. Wanting hospitable treatment in the meantime. (@schwartzbrown)

Barbarism – (@sollyi)

Chester – (Yaniv Edelstein: “because we have to call it something”)

Oz – (Ayla Peggy Adler)

Uncupation – (Marc Goldberg)

Insanity – (Miri Barak)

Shibush – means “disruption”. Sounds like kibush, occupation in Hebrew (Lee’ad Leevneh)

Kibus – means washing, or whitening. Also sounds, of course, like Kibush. (Dorit Abramovich)

Intrusion – (Noam Hoffstater)

Arccupation – (Maral Amin)

Kipuach (כיפוח) – A Hebrew combination of three words that include: occupation, annexation and discrimination. This is a very good one, in my opinion (Ami), but it includes “occupation”, which as we all know, does not exist. (Orna Ben Naftali)

Sababa – (Ruthie Pliskin)

Unemployed – someone who has no occupation (Martin Schubert)

Never-Everland – (Yariv Mohar)

Estehbal – In Arabic, occupation is Ehtelal, so how about “estehbal”, which means playing the fool? (Khaled Diab, @diabolicalldea)

Suppression – (Richard Witty)

Nationsbildung – has somewhat of an Afrikans flavor to it… (@NKamins)

FUBAR – (Ginny Adams)

Tatooine –  because they are trying to play all sorts of Jedi mind tricks! (Rachel Roberts)

Brooklyn – We all live in peace together here, maybe it will work there. (Michael Klein)

Ethnocentri-City – (Joshua Frost)

Lebensraum – (@bethlehemballet)

Ami Kaufman

Ami Kaufman was chief night editor for Haaretz, for the prominent Israeli financial daily Calcalist, and correspondent on Israeli affairs for 93.6 RAM FM, a joint Palestinian-Israel radio station. His interest in food and cooking led to culinary studies at the "Israeli CIA" (Tadmor, Herzliya) and a brief stint in the restaurant business. Born in Tel Aviv, Ami lives in Bat Yam with his wife and two daughters. In his spare time he blogs at Half & Half.

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