I have written here in the past about the expression ‘weaponised words.’ There are many examples: ‘fascist’, ‘Nazi’ and ‘hard-right’ are all legitimate expressions which become illegitimate when misused and misapplied – when they are ‘weaponised’ to attack people with whom one disagrees. Now my attention has been drawn to another example of ‘weaponising’ a word – ‘apartheid’. This was coined in South Africa in 1947 from an Afrikaans word literally meaning ‘apartness’ or ‘separateness’. It was used as a slogan by the National party of South Africa in the 1948 election which brought it to power. It names an odious policy of constitutional racism. But now it is being weaponised. Fairly recently the Australian Greens declared that Israel is running an ‘apartheid’ state. In the Australian Gemma Tognini wrote: ‘Throwing around the word apartheid so freely and so recklessly? It’s an insult and it’s ignorance writ large.’ She had just returned from a study tour to Israel in which she discovered how incredibly complex the situation in that country is. Arabs comprise about 20 per cent of Israel’s population. Israel’s declaration of independence recognises the equality of all the country’s residents, Arabs included. There are Arab members of the Knesset. During apartheid in South Africa there were no black members of parliament. Gemma goes on to lament the irony of words that are thrown around by those who ‘constantly remind us words can equate to violence’. Which is why the Greens use of ‘apartheid’ is another example of a ‘weaponised’ word. And it raises the further question of when being ‘anti-Israel’ slides into becoming ‘anti-Semitic’.

I want to take you back to the best (and most moving) story in the news recently – the discovery of four children, lost in the Amazon jungle for six weeks following the crash of the light plane in which they were travelling. They are all siblings. The oldest is 13, the youngest just turned one (he had his birthday during their time lost in the jungle). General Pedro Sanchez, who led the huge search operation, said, ‘We found the children: miracle, miracle, miracle!’ And that’s what turned my attention to this word ‘miracle.’ It came into English from Anglo-Norman French about a thousand years ago – behind it is a classical Latin word mīrāculum meaning ‘object of wonder’. The official definition of ‘miracle’ in the Oxford English Dictionary is (I think) wrong: ‘A marvellous event not ascribable to human power or the operation of any natural force.’ A common mistake – to say the word ‘miracle’ means some sort of suspension of the laws of nature. When we look at the Bible we discover that sometimes it does – but sometimes it doesn’t. Clearly when Jesus instantly heals a crippled man, or raises the dead, he is exercising power over the laws of nature. But that’s not always the case in the Bible. When God parted the Red Sea (or possibly the Reed Sea – the Hebrew word is uncertain) he did not change the laws of nature but used them. The Bible says God ‘drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land.’ (Exodus 14:21). Similarly, when Paul and Silas were miraculously freed from prison the Bible says God sent an earth tremor ‘and the prison was shaken to its foundations. All the doors immediately flew open’. (Acts 16:26). In the Bible a ‘miracle’ means God acting to rescue people – sometimes using the laws of nature and sometimes overriding them. This gives us the modern meaning of ‘miracle’ as used by journalists so often: ‘something very good that happens which you did not expect to happen or think was possible’. (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English). I can boil that down to ‘surprising very good news’. That’s a miracle. It happened to the children lost in the jungle.