Legacy of dehumanisation can be traced back to all colonial powers, with Israel now surpassing its predecessors in settler-colonial practices. Throughout history, military forces have repeatedly resorted to punishing and subjecting civilian populations to cruel and inhumane treatment when failing to achieve their desired political or military goals. This colonial legacy has always built on physical, epistemic, and structural annihilation of indigenous peoples by creating an entire structure of violence that renders indigenous people rightless, expendable, and an inconvenience.
On June 22, a viral video sparked outrage across internet, showing an Israeli army truck allegedly carrying Palestinians as human shields. This incident is just one of countless examples of Israel’s reported dehumanisation of Palestinians. dehumanisation of colonised peoples has long facilitated brutal invasions and enabled rhetoric of terrorism that shaped America’s actions. This colonial legacy is now being followed by Zionist entity in occupied Palestine.
The privileged colonial entity has carried out massive destruction, with 40 billion dollars spent and 80,000 homes demolished. consistent dehumanisation of Palestinians has resulted in a humanitarian crisis, with 40,000 Palestinians killed, including 15,000 children in a year. Despite widespread international condemnation and calls to cease deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure, certain governments continue to justify such actions by citing alleged military presence within civilian facilities like hospitals.
UN reports that 90% of people living in Gaza have been forced to flee their homes due to a severe shortage of food, clean water, and medical supplies. Alarmingly, reports indicate that a Palestinian child is killed by Israel every ten minutes, often justified as a potential Hamas member. Israeli War Minister Yoav Gallant famously called Palestinians “human animals” in his declaration of war. Palestinians have also been referred to as “bloodthirsty animals” by Israeli ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor and as “horrible, inhuman animals” by former Israeli ambassador to UN Dan Gillerman.
These pernicious acts are deeply entrenched in the fundamental framework of the Zionist entity and vilify the native civilian population while projecting the settlers as civilised. On June 26, Al Jazeera released footage from a dog-mounted camera exposing the cruel act of a settler army unleashing a dog on a sleeping elderly woman, Dawlat Abdulla, from Jabalia refugee camp.
Social media has been normalised with inundate visuals like horror movies hospitals being targeted, with patients and displaced individuals inside becoming victims; medical personnel being prevented from retrieving bodies from hospital grounds, leaving the deceased exposed for extended periods; scattered body parts of children and adults; starved people desperately rushing to collect aid; amputated children; mothers moaning with malnourished kids; children searching for their parents in bombed tents; doctors performing surgeries with lack of equipment in mobile lights; and the traumatised eyes of Palestinians.
The asetheticisation of genocide, without any concrete statements and the widespread use of AI images in the campaign of ” All eyes on Rafah” has been widely criticised due to its ethical laxity. Revolutionary struggles, especially anti-colonial ones usually go through the risk of superfluous rhetorics without accounting to the substance of the matter. Such theatrics and performative solidarity pronouncements runs the risk of BLM type solidarity where systemic white supremacy is negated, only to be substituted by hashtags on social media
Theories and philosophies have struggled to fully describe the situation in Gaza. Dehumanisation is not merely a consequence of occupation but a deliberate and calculated mechanism to entrench it further, suppressing the moral and legal imperatives that would otherwise demand its dissolution. This framing posits that the occupying power perceives the humanisation of the occupied group as fundamentally incompatible with the continuation of the occupation and the maintenance of the status quo. As such, dehumanisation becomes a tool to justify and perpetuate the occupation, while any efforts to highlight the humanity of the occupied population are seen as undermining the rationale for occupation itself. Jasbir K. Puar extends this analysis by stating that “rehabilitation of settlers” is essentially predicated on “debilitation of indigenous” population.
In Patrick Wolfe’s words: “Settler colonialism is an inclusive, land-centred project that coordinates a comprehensive range of agencies, from metropolitan center to frontier encampment, with a view to eliminating Indigenous societies. Its operations are not dependent on presence or absence of formal state institutions or functionaries.”
Colonial legacy from liberal states creates similar rhetorical tones, such as when Israeli officials used language reminiscent of George W. Bush after 9/11: “You either stand with Israel or you stand with terrorism.” Israeli political and religious leaders have many times dehumanised Palestinians, calling them “cockroaches,” “vermin,” and “cancer.” Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” on Gaza Strip, declaring: “No electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” and said: “We are fighting inhuman beings and we are acting accordingly.” An Israeli army major, Ghassan Alian, stated: “Inhuman beings must be treated as such. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
By branding Palestinians as subhuman subjects, they exhibit notorious crimes that we have seldom heard of. Israeli army allegedly filmed themselves with undergarments of Palestinian women, and dehumanisation reached new lows by air-dropping aid into seas and Israeli settler colonies inaccessible to Palestinians. While these actions resulted in Palestinian deaths, often claimed as collateral damage, settlers have been accused of producing blatant lies, backed by Western states, especially US, to play victim card and justify heinous crimes as self-defense to deceive frustrated youths. Additionally, they securitise civilians by making statements like Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s tweet: “Anyone that is pro-Palestinian is pro-Hamas.”
Violence in language as a precursor to genocide was highly evident in recent Israeli settler onslaught on Palestinians. academic and general contention that Israel is an Apartheid entity, which it is, without considering structural and systemic nature of its existence, that is a settler colonial entity would leave us in dark with regards to how colonial modality works. As anti-colonial resistance is being waged from Gaza, auxiliary role in narrativising Palestinian discourse in its authentic form is being waged in universities. Undoing violence that legitimated genocide of 40, 000 people is a struggle in and of itself. Israeli hasbara propagandists have conceded historic defeat in gathering moral majority to their side.
