What The Ayatollah Means By ‘Eradicating’ Israel
Ayatollah Ali Khameni Image by Getty Images
Let me begin by thanking Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei of Iran and Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic Monthly for the opportunity to investigate the word “eradicate.” I never thought I’d have the chance to express gratitude to Khamenei and Goldberg in the same sentence, but these are strange times. When the President of the United States claims he can pardon himself, certainly anything in the realm of language is possible. Here is the Ayatollah’s word choice, helpfully highlighted by Goldberg in a pithy tweet. (Apparently the Ayatollah tweets only in Arabic and English, not in Farsi.)
As soon as Goldberg pointed out “eradicated,” former Ambassador Dennis Ross responded with some diplomatic and linguistic context: “But, of course we are supposed to dismiss as if it is just rhetoric. Too bad they actually try to act on the words.”
So for the perplexed, let’s parse what “eradicate” means. This is one of those cases where the dictionary definitions are nice, but the examples of the word in use are even more relevant. Here is the Oxford English Dictionary definition: “destroy completely; put an end to.” But watch the example of the word in a sentence:
“This disease has been eradicated from the world.”
And if you need another example, just to clarify things, Oxford offers this:
“It is difficult to erase it from the memory of the brain even after eradicating the disease.’
Of course, both of these examples of “eradicate” in a sentence have strong echoes in the sordid history of anti-Semitism. Jews were blamed for the Black Plague, which is believed to have killed twenty-five million people. Fordham University has put up source documents with chilling detail online, including this account by the Strasbourg historian, Jacob von Königshofen (1346-1420) detailing the false belief that Jews caused this plague, and how this accusation led to the cremation of the Jews of Strasbourg in 1349:
In the matter of this plague the Jews throughout the world were reviled and accused in all lands of having caused it through the poison which they are said to have put into the water and the wells-that is what they were accused of-and for this reason the Jews were burnt all the way from the Mediterranean into Germany, but not in Avignon, for the pope protected them there.
As for the other example the Oxford offers, the idea of being obsessed with a certain group of people even after expelling them — or aaah yes, eradicating them, to quote the Ayatollah — can be seen in the persistent anti-Semitism of countries with few or no Jews. An example is the vandalism of the home of a tour guide at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Poland, who found a Magen David spray-painted on his door earlier this month, along with the words “Poland for Poles” and “Auswitz [sic] for Poland guide.”
For those who are still not clear on “eradicate,” who may not understand how “it is difficult to erase it from the memory of the brain even after eradicating the disease” and who can’t identify the message on the door in spray paint, there are always more dictionaries.
Merriam-Webster, which with the help of Twitter has emerged as a hero of the Trump era, offers a two-part definition of the word:
- to do away with as completely as if by pulling up by the roots
- to pull up by the roots
Merriam-Webster offers a recent example of “eradicate” in a sentence, from Evan Osnos at The New Yorker. What is interesting is how “eradicate” is paired with “species” in this example, which seems especially useful for those trying to get the Ayatollah’s drift:
“But Trump got to Washington by promising to unmake the political ecosystem, eradicating the existing species and populating it anew.
All this talk of “species” and “roots” made me think of the roots of what seems to be a favorite word of the Ayatollah. The word “eradicate” first appeared in English in 1532, the same year “addiction,” “dominant” and “Anabaptist” entered the language. It comes from eradicatus, the past participle of the Latin verb eradicare, which is related to the Latin word radix, meaning “root” or “radish.” And in a nice nod to other Jewish stereotypes, “radix” is related to — yes of course — “radical.”
But let’s assume that English is a second language for Khameini. When it comes to “eradicate,” the simple definition the dictionary offers to English-language learners may be best, and most relevant:
To remove (something) completely : to eliminate or destroy (something harmful)
Pay attention to that second set of parentheses. This seems to be what the Ayatollah meant: the Jewish state is “something harmful.” In my work as a translator, I often encounter writers who press the “synonym” key in order to understand my choice of words in English, so I thought that maybe the Ayatollah — not a native English speaker — checked out synonyms, too, on his home laptop.
One synonym of “eradicate” offered by Merriam-Webster is “exterminate.” And lo and behold, “exterminate” has both an intriguing definition and a helpful example of use-in-a-sentence.
“Exterminate” means “complete and immediate extinction by killing off all individuals.”
And here too, a pest is the example in a sentence — exterminate cockroaches. If that sounds like the Nazi view of Jews as “vermin,” or the medieval view of Jews as the bearers of disease — well, it should.
Aviya Kushner is The Forward’s language columnist and the author of The Grammar of God (Spiegel & Grau). Follow her on Twitter @AviyaKushner
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