The past few weeks have seen settler colonialism in action, as a Jerusalem District Court ruling demanded the expulsion of a number of Palestinian families from their homes in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem. These same Palestinians, displaced from Yafa and Haifa in 1956 under a Jordanian mandate, were set to be forcefully removed from their homes by settlers with the enforcement of the Israeli police force, although the higher ruling on the expulsions has now been delayed. Naturally, this sparked outrage and led to many families and locals mobilizing to protest yet another step toward the annexation of East Jerusalem.

A stone’s throw away, in Al-Aqsa Mosque, worshippers attending night prayers in the holy month of Ramadan were met with sound bombs and tear gas deployed by armed soldiers. The violence has now escalated to rocket fire from Hamas and Israel’s air strikes. As of Tuesday, these incidents had resulted in the death of twenty-four Palestinians, including nine children, and hundreds injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

Many mainstream news outlets have phrased these recent events as a “clash” or a “conflict” over “evictions,” headlining words that contribute to a linguistic environment known far too well. These words are successful in one thing: the whitewashing and downplaying of a neo-colonialist ethnostate, making the continued oppression of Palestinians and denial of their human rights an international normality.