After the Trump administration announced it would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, almost every news report I read contained some version of the phrase “upending decades of U.S. policy.” The night before the announcement, on December 5, the AFP News Agency tweeted: “#BREAKING President Donald Trump is to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, upending decades of careful US policy and ignoring dire warnings from allies across the Middle East and the world.”
The word “careful” seemed a stretch, but leave that aside. By the next day everybody was talking about upending decades of policy. “President Trump on Wednesday plans to upend decades of U.S. policy,” noted the Washington Post, “by formally recognizing Jerusalem as capital of Israel.” The Associated Press noted “Muslim and European opposition to a move that would upend decades of U.S. policy and risk potentially violent protests.” The Boston Globe called it “a symbolically fraught move that would upend decades of U.S. policy and upset efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
That night on NBC Nightly News Lester Holt began his broadcast by saying the Middle East is “bracing for a potential wave of violence after President Trump recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a controversial move upending decades of U.S. policy condemned by leaders around the world.” The next morning, Hoda Kotb told Savannah Guthrie on the Today Show that the move would—that’s right—“upend decades of U.S. policy and is already being met with warnings that could prompt new violence and disrupt the peace process.”
The verb “upend” is an unusual one. I believe I’ve heard John Kerry use it, and I confess to liking it myself, but it’s not a word you want to use often. Since that flurry of upending decades of policy in early December, though, the word “upend” shows up any time the subject is Israel’s capital, and usually with the accompanying “decades of U.S. policy.”
Consider some more recent reports. Here’s a Reuters report on December 21 about South Africa downgrading its Tel Aviv embassy to a liaison office: “Trump upended decades of U.S. policy on Dec. 6 when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world.” Or the New York Times last Friday on the UN vote to rebuke the U.S. over its Jerusalem policy: “Carrying out a promise to his base of supporters, Mr. Trump’s decision on Jerusalem upended decades of American policy.” Or the Los Angeles Times on the same story: “Trump’s Dec. 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem and order the State Department to ultimately Embassy there from Tel Aviv upended decades of U.S. policy and international consensus that the divided city’s status should be negotiated.”
The problem isn’t just the idiotic repetition. The phrase isn’t quite true. That decades-long “policy,” or at least the policy of the last two decades, wasn’t a policy but a combination of two policies—a necessary evasion or, as I believe, a disingenuous non-policy. A U.S. law passed in 1995, the Jerusalem Embassy Act, declared that Jerusalem “should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.” But every president since then has waived the law semiannually for reasons of “national security,” even as every president since then has promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital and place the U.S. embassy there.
The decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital and relocate the U.S. embassy didn’t “upend” a policy, then—it didn’t turn a policy on its head or reverse it—so much as choose one of the two conflicting policies then in effect.
None of this is a big deal. It’s only a silly phrase. But the mindless and pervasive repetition of that phrase suggests our reporters and commentators are intoning words they don’t understand or haven’t thought about. If you speak and write in boilerplate, you probably think in boilerplate too.
