In collaboration with the publishing house Multimage, and together with writers Lorenzo Poli and Silvia Nocera, we have launched an initiative aimed at proposing the inclusion of the term “Pelecidio” in the dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca.
Below is the manifesto of the initiative.
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We must challenge semantics, lexicology and grammar.
If words truly carry meaning, then there are events that require new words to be described, because the existing ones are no longer enough.
Words hold not only meanings, but also symbols and collective imagery. We must use them to inhabit our dictionaries and our shared unconscious.
Onomaturgy, the creation of new words, often emerges from a collective need to define something that is becoming part of everyday life. This is the natural destiny of every language that is alive.
It has now become an imperative to give a name to what may be considered the first “media genocide” in human history, unfolding in Gaza. Historian Ilan Pappé coined the expression “incremental genocide” to describe the rise of Israeli colonialism, but today – in light of Amnesty International’s reports documenting decades of systematic colonial actions, and in light of the ideological matrix behind the massacre of the Gazan population (including, over time: the legal invention of the 1967 Green Line, the xenophobic and religious ultranationalism of Likud, the total disregard of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Weitman Plan and the forced displacement of Gazans toward Rafah, current colonist expansion projects in the already devastated occupied West Bank, the intention to re-establish the Israeli settlement of Gush Katif in Gaza, and recent Israeli and US statements envisioning Gaza as a new “Mediterranean tourist riviera”) – it becomes necessary to find words capable of defining this immense tragedy, so that future generations, while reading any history book, may see THE WORD and immediately associate it with the suffering of a people who have had to struggle for more than a hundred years against the entire world.
These words are
PELECIDA and PELECIDIO.
With this innovative and disruptive idea, writers Luca Sciacchitano and Lorenzo Poli and writer Silvia Nocera (authors at Multimage, the human rights publishing house) call on human rights activists, civil rights supporters and advocates of Palestinian liberation to become ambassadors of peace to the Accademia della Crusca, so that it may acknowledge these neologisms and incorporate them into the Italian lexicon, and eventually into other languages (“pelecide” in English, “pelecidio” in Spanish, “pèlecide” in French, etc.).
To shine a light on the Palestinian tragedy through this original and powerful linguistic initiative, you can visit the Accademia della Crusca’s website and fill out the “new words” form at the following link:
https://accademiadellacrusca.it/it/lingua-italiana/parole-nuove/segnala-nuove-paroleBy entering:
– In the “Parola” field: “pelecida; pelecìdio”
– In the “Fonte” field: “Luca Sciacchitano, Pelecidio. Perché è moralmente giusto criticare Israele, Multimage, Firenze 2025 – https://www.first-web.it/pelecidio1-50.pdf”
– In the “Ulteriori informazioni” field: the descriptions of the two proposed neologisms
Pelecida:
From Hebrew “Peleshet” (Philistine, Palestinian), combined with the suffix “-cida”.
Noun and adjective.
A person who kills Palestinians out of ethnocentric, racist or anti-Arab motives.
By extension, one who opposes Palestinians and their rights through ethnocentric, religious, racist or anti-Arab hostility.
Pelecidio:
From Hebrew “Peleshet”, combined with the suffix “-cidio”.
Masculine noun.
The killing of Palestinians for ethnocentric, religious or racist reasons.
By extension, a massacre, ethnic cleansing or systematic genocide of Palestinians driven by ethnocentric, racist, religious or anti-Arab motives.
The Accademia della Crusca has stated that it will evaluate the words that receive the highest number of submissions, potentially opening a public debate on whether they should be included in the dictionary. Even sparking such a debate would already be a significant achievement.
Words create reality.
We, consciously and intentionally, create words.
We, consciously and intentionally, create reality.
And if we are many, if we stand together, we can do it.
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