Israeli discourse and de-humanization of Palestinians
Last updated: June 18, 2024
Dehumanization in Israeli institutions and the IDF
Much of the above is made possible through the consistent de-humanization of Palestinians, first and foremost those living in Gaza, discussed in this section, as well as the language and practice that makes them distant, inaccessible or absent to the Jewish Israeli population (on this see the section on the media and propaganda below).1 This dehumanization has proceeded from the top of the Israeli state. Israel’s Prime Minister has described the conflict as “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle”,2 stated that “this war is civilization against barbarism”3 and defined the war as a battle against the Biblical Amalek in both a speech and in a letter he sent to IDF soldiers.4 The Bible directs to annihilate Amalek completely: men, women, children and livestock.5 Israel’s President has stated that Israel did not distinguish between militants and civilians, “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible”.6 He also personally wrote a message on an artillery shell to be shot into Gaza.7 Israel’s Minister of Defense has described the Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals”. At least five other government ministers have made similar statements as late as May.8 Israel’s National Security minister told Border Police troops they should shoot terrorists even if the terrorists do not threaten them, against procedure.9 The minister of Social Equality and Women’s Advancement asserted that she was proud of the ruins in Gaza and that every baby there, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did.10 In late March, she stated that Israel’s was fighting against the Amalekites “of our times” in explicit context of the religious obligation to exterminate Amalek.11 A ruling party MP has stated on TV that he was told “it is clear that we need to destroy [or annihilate, depending on translation of להשמיד] all Gazans”.12 Other politicians have done the same.13 Israel’s Ambassador to the UK justified the destruction of Gaza because “every school, every mosque, every second house” was connected to a tunnel Hamas was using and therefore a legitimate target.14 In March, a former general described the people in three areas from which Israel retreated (Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon) as “human animals”.15 As late as mid April, Israel’s Finance Minister stated that “There are 2 million Nazis in Gaza who want to slaughter, rape and murder every Jew”.16 In early May, a Likud official stated that “there are no uninvolved [civilians] there, you have to go in and kill, and kill, and kill”.17 In mid June, Israel’s Foreign Ministry placed an ad that claimed that “there are no innocent civilians there [in Gaza]”.18
Institutions in Israel’s security apparatus repeatedly dehumanized Palestinians. The IDF ran a Telegram channel (“72 Virgins – Uncensored”) that propagandized Israeli audiences through explicit and uncensored “exclusive” videos and images that depicted killings and corpses in Gaza, using explicit language that also compared Gazans to cockroaches and rats.19 The IDF has published a series of eight poetry volumes that contained poems by civilians, soldiers (including the commander of the IDF Education Corps) and reservists – contained many revenge themes as well poems that treat the war as a religious war.20 Reservists have claimed that the IDF brought rabbis in uniform to speak to soldiers. At least one stated that all Gazans must be destroyed and shot.21 A similar attitude, calling for the extermination of all Gazans, including children, or alternatively ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip, has been voiced by dozens of middle-ranking officers in their social media accounts – sometimes claiming it is the moral thing to do.22 In January, over 130 reserve generals and colonels serving in Gaza called upon the military to lay siege to the Northern Gaza Strip, block humanitarian aid and stop the operation of any hospital.23 In mid-March Israel’s security apparatus attempted to return to Gaza about 20 Gazan children and adults suffering from debilitating conditions such as cancer and receiving life-saving treatments in hospitals in East Jerusalem and Israel.24 The decision was delayed after a petition by the charity Physicians for Human Rights to Israel’s Supreme Court.25 In April, the IDF scattered fake money bills in the Strip with a portrait of the local Hamas leader depicted as a rat.26
In May, the IDF began an open campaign to blackmail Gazans through airdropped pamphlets and a dedicated website. The campaign targeted Gazans who provided information about their neighbors – including their sexual orientation or extra-marital affairs – to the Hamas security forces. The pamphlets contained the images and IDs of 130 males who were such supposed informants (some were clearly minors). It called upon other informants to reach out to the IDF, and in the meanwhile began publishing the supposed personal information of these Gazan informants. The website provided information to Gazans about whether they were the targets of such surveillance. The information itself was said to be sourced from hundreds of thousands of internal records of Hamas.27
De-humanization in the IDF
The dehumanization of Palestinians is now normative, pervasive and obvious in many hundreds28 of images and videos, almost all of which were uploaded by IDF soldiers to social media.29 These videos and images present shooting civilians waving white flags,30 abuse of individuals,31 captives and corpses,32 gleefully damaging or destroying houses33, various structures and institutions,34 religious sites35 and looting of personal belongings,36 as well as randomly firing their weapons,37 shooting local animals,38 destroying private property,39 burning books within libraries,40 defacing Palestinian41 and Islamic symbols42 (including burning Qurans43 and turning mosques into dining spaces44) and declaring a new Nakba.45 More videos are covered by The New York Times46 and CNN.47
One video, for example, shows tens of Palestinian captives from Gaza sitting in a bus tied up and with their eyes covered. An Israeli solider then demands that they praise his family and state that they want to become slaves to his family “forever and ever”.48 Another testimony of a Gazan doctor states that the detained director of Al-Shifa medical complex was made to crawl like an animal, had a chain placed around his neck and was told to eat from a bowl like a dog.49 A Gazan detainee said that IDF soldiers placed women detainees from Gaza in the men’s section while being completely naked, and cut the hair of some of the women detainees.50 A detained Gazan woman recounted her story about the abuse and humiliation she suffered during her own detainment, during which she was separated from her little children and IDF soldiers beat her on multiple occasions as well as threatened to bury her alive.51 A Palestinian woman claimed that IDF soldiers carved a Star of David on her husband’s back during his time in detention.52 One soldier filmed a dog eating the corpse of a Gazan, exclaiming that it “took [the corpse of] the terrorist apart”, then moved his camera to discuss the beauty of the view and the sunset.53
Looting has become normalized54 to the extent that one case was featured approvingly in a popular Friday evening news segment,55 while a prominent Israeli journalist’s Telegram channel shared an image of a table full of money with the caption “The [IDF] paratroopers hit the jackpot in Khan Younis”.56 Soldiers shared an image of themselves with tens of thousands of shekels (thousands of dollars).57 A military doctor noted disapprovingly that looting had become “almost institutionalized”.58 An IDF soldier attempted to sell online a Gazan passport and other items he had looted while serving in Gaza.59 Another filmed himself sifting what appears to be flour originally delivered to Gaza by humanitarian aid organizations, and cynically thanking them as well as the UN and UNRWA.60
Revenge is a common theme in this content.61 Some IDF soldiers shared social media content that explicitly compared Gazans to the biblical Amalek (see above),62 as well as stating that they have fulfilled the religious commandment to annihilate the memory of Amalek.63 Other IDF soldiers opened a “Hamas Hunting Club”, complete with a patch and logo, and filmed themselves holding it with Palestinian detainees in the background.64 Other soldiers upload much revenge content and relate it to the destruction of the Gaza Strip, including the destruction they themselves caused.65 A collection of brief interviews with IDF soldiers, uploaded by an IDF soldier, reveals that many of them speak of destroying the Strip and exacting revenge. The creator asserts that “It’s us or them. There is no proportionality and no symmetry”.66 High ranking officers have said similar things.67 In January alone, the IDF burned hundreds of houses and apartments in Gaza which Israeli soldiers temporarily occupied, without legal approval in a procedure that became normative.68 During the Jewish Purim celebration, IDF soldiers filmed themselves reading the Scroll of Esther while indiscriminately firing a mortar found each time the name “Haman” was mentioned (in Jewish tradition, the mentioning of the name “Haman” during reading the Scroll is supposed to be accompanied by loud noise).69 Soldiers preparing to enter Rafah in early May called for “let’s take Rafah apart” as their battle cry.70
Many soldiers release videos that portray their experience and destruction in Gaza as fun and humorous,71 treating their experience like a video game,72 or content that ignores the war, such as conducting a yoga class in an abandoned home in Gaza,73 or a soldier holding up a sign advertising a barber shop in Israel with corpses of dead Palestinians around him.74 A group of armed soldiers in uniform held signs with the message “We, soldiers of the Jewish People’s Army from the [political] Right and Left will not disarm until we erase and annihilate Gaza”.75 One soldier expressed his will to poison the flour on the trucks bringing humanitarian aid to Gazans.76 Other photos include soldiers posing near election banners for local (Israeli) politicians and restaurant chains “coming soon” to Gaza.77 Recurring types of content include humorously presenting the lingerie of Gazan women78 or posing with items (often toys) from abandoned Gazan houses.79 Ha’aretz, the left-leaning Israel newspaper, covered without irony the good food that IDF soldiers were eating in abandoned homes in Gaza at the same time as their displaced owners were starving.80 N12 has featured a story about the graffiti Israeli soldiers leave in Gazan homes, presenting it positively and even comparing one soldier to the artist Banksy.81 The IDF has even brought influencers to mockingly “review” a “hotel” in Gaza.82 An IDF soldier reflected that other soldiers went into the Gaza Strip as a form of tourism to see the destruction.83
In late February, the top IDF lawyer acknowledged that the actions of some soldiers have crossed the criminal threshold, and said that action must be taken against them.84 I have seen almost no reporting on such disciplinary processes within the IDF since the beginning of the war, and in the few cases where such process took place the impact on the IDF soldiers committing the acts was negligible.85 In mid May during another round of ICJ hearings, for example, the IDF moved one soldier whose destruction videos went viral on social media away from the Gaza Strip.86 In late May, Israel’s chief military advocate stated that since the beginning of the war the Military Advocate General had opened 70 investigations on cases that included the deaths of Palestinian detainees (on this see below) and looting.87 As the evidence in this document indicates, this is a miniscule number of investigations compared to the evidence for committed crimes.
Dehumanization in Israeli society
In the first month of the war, some 18,000 calls to flatten, erase or destroy Gaza were mentioned on Hebrew Twitter (compared to 16 in the month and a half before the war).88 Similar calls appear in public space, for example in graffiti.89 In October, an adviser to Israel’s Prime Minister called for torturing Hamas militants in a graphic way.90 In November, 90 Israeli doctors signed a letter calling to bomb hospitals in Gaza,91 while the president of Israel’s largest university compared Hamas to Amalek.92 A popular singer used a long series of expletives against Gaza during a show for Israeli soldiers.93 In early January, a long list of rabbis, academics and ten MPs have called for the cessation of all humanitarian aid to Gaza.94 In February, a former senior Mossad figure and an important journalist agreed that children aged 5 and up in Gaza are not uninvolved in the conflict and therefore do not deserve humanitarian aid.95 The Rabbi of Tzefat compared the Gazans to Amalek and claimed that they should be eradicated.96
In April, 42% of Israeli Jews claimed that Israel should not follow international humanitarian law.97 An Israeli media outlet has also noted with glee that the number of deaths of “Arabs” in Gaza in the current war is higher than all previous wars.98 Another prominent Israeli journalist stated on live TV: “there are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip, there are none… and the fact that they are now enjoying themselves on the beach instead of being starved, instead of being jerked around, instead of being severely tormented, instead of hiding from bombing… We should have seen there a lot more revenge, a lot more rivers of Gazans’ blood”.99 Similar sentiments appear on Israel’s main TV channels.100 Similar messages are directed at Arabs/Palestinians in general. An Israeli model/influencer stated that all Palestinians with Israeli citizenships should be annihilated,101 a sentiment followed by a cameraman for the Israeli Channel 14.102 When three members of a family of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship died in a car accident, large numbers of Israelis voiced their joy on social media.103 An Israeli DJ played the melody of the racist chant “May your village burn”, directed at Palestinians. The crowd at the party began chanting and dancing to the tune.104
An Israeli Telegram channel with 127,000 followers shared the image of a Gazan child with cerebral palsy who starved to death as the sequel to the film E.T.105 A rabbi at the head of a yeshiva for pre-military age men stated that according to Jewish law, all Gazans must be killed, including babies.106 A popular Israeli stand-up comedian mocked Gazans who were killed from faulty airdropped humanitarian aid, declaring that they were “such morons”.107 Israeli TV promoted a genocidal song in which a choir of Israeli children sang lines such as “In a year, there will be nothing there [in Gaza] and we will safely return to our homes. Within a year, we will annihilate everyone and then we will return to plow our fields” (the original song was removed).108 Several Israeli hip hop hits have been released as well, garnering millions of views on YouTube. These songs call for repeated attacks on Gaza, dehumanize Gazans (“All your Fatmas look like whores”) and express glee for Gazans not having food, water and homes (e.g. “You don’t have bread or water. Ah and you don’t have a home either”).109 A senior journalist asserted that Gazans “have earned that hell fairly, and I don’t have a milligram of empathy”.110 A senior commentator stated that “to destroy Hamas… you have to bring Gaza to a humanitarian disaster”.111 Many other media workers and artists have said similar things.112 Voices on the street speak openly and positively about the killing of civilians in Gaza in interviews.113 One t-shirt in Israel features the text “May your [i.e. Arab] village burn”.114 After the IDF bombed and killed 7 workers of an international NGO (discussed above), a popular Israeli telegram channel expressed joy for the deaths for the foreign citizens while discussing them in a humiliating manner.115 When the IDF killed three sons and four grandchildren of Ismail Haniyeh, one of Hamas’s leaders,116 an Israeli journalist cited the religious commandment to erase the memory of Amalek.117 Another Israeli journalist attached to an image of the Israeli bombing of civilians in Rafah in late May, which killed dozens, the text “the central lighting [i.e. of bonfires for Lag BaOmer, which took place that day] this year in Rafah”.118 Some Israeli police officers apparently believe that there are no innocents in Gaza, including a fetus in his mother’s womb.119
Israeli demonstrators have repeatedly attempted to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, including holding a rave/protest just outside the border wall.120 After the “flour massacre” on 29 February, Israel’s Minister of National Security called to “completely support” all IDF troops while also calling for stopping all humanitarian aid to Gazans.121 Some IDF soldiers have also called to stop all humanitarian aid.122 When the IDF transferred about 70 Gazan orphans to the West Bank as a gesture of good will to Germany, it was harshly criticized by both politicians and the government.123 In early May, an Israeli crowd attempted twice to set fire to UNRWA’s main building in Jerusalem, calling “let your UN burn” as well.124 When a teacher was suspended for participating in a Nakba commemoration, the children of her school demonstrated against her, repeatedly shouting “may your village burn”.125
The de-humanization of Palestinians is closely associated with a sharp increase in Israeli militarism. Israeli dating practices attest to both these changes.126 It became extremely common for soldiers and reservists during the war to upload to their social media accounts, including accounts on dating apps, content related to the war – such as images of themselves in uniform brandishing guns, standing in front of destroyed buildings, sitting in abandoned homes, or filming themselves with Gazan detainees.126 One Tinder bio, for example, stated that “We are not only here to fuck Hamas”.126 Both men and women, both within straight and LGBT communities and dating apps, have reported that these images have increased the “stock value” of those that upload them (a similar effect was reported for soldiers in uniform who frequented bars).126 All of the above legitimizes as well as incentivizes violent behavior in the war within the Gaza Strip.
Effects of de-humanization on detained and arrested Palestinians
Thousands of Palestinians have been detained and moved to camps within Israel.127 Many of these Palestinians (as much as 85-90% according to Israeli media) are detained without any concrete connection to Hamas.128 The conditions throughout the process of arrest and detainment are appalling, as a released Gazan poet has narrated in detail in The New Yorker in January.129 Many others have shared similar stories, including on the torture they experienced.130 One NGO wrote a report based on interviews with 100 released Palestinian detainees, revealing various kinds of torture and abuse and concluding that “the Israeli army routinely and widely commits crimes of arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, willful killing, torture, inhumane treatment, sexual violence, and denial of a fair trial.”131 For example, several Palestinians claimed that the IDF brought groups of 10-20 Israeli civilians to watch the torture they underwent when they were detained.132 Online videos provide more evidence for the torture.133 In one, a Gazan doctor who was detained by Israel said that he was held for 45 days, throughout which he was blindfolded and handcuffed, with his legs tied in clamps in what amounts to torture. He was subsequently released.134 The official position of Israel’s medical directorate recommends such blindfolding and handcuffs.135
At least 8 Palestinian prisoners and captives have died in Israeli jails since the beginning of the war,136 where conditions are appalling as well.137 The IDF has admitted that additional detained Palestinians from Gaza have died but refused to supply additional details,138 until in early March Ha’aretz revealed that 27 Gazans died in IDF detention.139 By late May, the number increased to 35 including two who died en route to the detention facility after soldiers beat them, and two who died because of poor medical treatment.140 By early June, the number of Palestinians who died in potentially criminal circumstances according to the IDF increased further to 48.141 For comparison, in the notorious American Guantánamo prison, 9 prisoners died over more than 20 years of operation.142 The IDF refused to answer whether it opened Military Police investigations for the deaths of these Gazans.143 In late March, Physicians for Human Rights Israel examined 10 cases of Palestinians who died in detention facilities, and participated in the autopsies of five. In two cases, the autopsies found severe signs of violence and assault, four people suffered from medical issues, and in one case the specific cause of death was medical neglect.144
According to a law amendment that was passed after the beginning of the war, Israel can now hold “illegal fighters” as detainees for up to 45 days without a warrant or notifying their families, and putting a detainee in contact with their lawyer can be delayed for up to 75 days (or half a year, if a judge approves).145 The same law was used, for example, to detain and imprison an 82-year old woman with Alzheimer disease for almost two months.146 Israel has declared that families of detainees can receive no information about them for the first 90 days of their detention, after which they can send an email to a generic email address to attempt to schedule an appointment between the detainee and a lawyer.147 As a result of these policies, for example, a Gazan who was detained with his wife said that she was separated from their children (a 4 year old boy and a half year old baby), and that since his release he has not found her or them.148
Early details from an UNRWA report based on over a hundred interviews with released detainees contained many gruesome details, such as a Gazan law student who was beaten so badly that his genitals turned blue and his urine continued to contain blood for weeks. He was forced to sleep naked in the open air, next to a fan blowing cold air, and was played music so loudly that his ears bled.149 The released UNRWA report added details, referring for example to some detainees being forced into cages and attacked by dogs (several released detainees, including a child, had dog bite marks).150 Detainees were threatened with prolonged detention, injury or the killing of their family members if they did not provide information.150 One detainee stated that the soldiers shot nails on his knee, and that those nails were kept there for about 24 hours. Other forms of abuse include drinking from toilets, keeping at least one group of detainees naked, and sticking an electric probe up the anus of male detainees (one person is said to have died after such treatment).150 An ABC report interviewed one Palestinian who described how Israeli forces would bring dogs on a leash to pee on the detainees and feed detainees rotten food and salted water.151 Another detainee recounted he lost 37 kilograms during his period in detention and described experiencing electric shocks as a form of torture.151 One released detainee recounted that he could use the restroom for only four minutes, after which he would be electrocuted.152 One British doctor returning from Gaza recounted the case of a Gazan who had to use a wheelchair and had been detained for a few weeks during which he was handcuffed and developed pressure sores on both sides. When he was released, his hip bones were visible on both sides.153 A BBC investigative report in mid-March found that the IDF beat, humiliated and detained for days dozens of Gaza medical staff from Nasser hospital. The UK foreign secretary said that the report was “very disturbing”,154 while the UNICEF spokesperson revealed the extent of destruction in the then-empty hospital.155 As of June, according to one NGO, international press reports documented at least 7 cases of rape against Palestinian prisoners and detainees.156
In early April, an Israeli doctor in the hospital in the detainment facility Sde Teiman described in a letter the harsh conditions in which the detained Gazans are held. His letter stated that in the week of his writing, two patients’ legs were amputated because of injuries they sustained because of the way in which their legs were restrained during their detainment (“this is a regular event”). All patients in the hospital are straw-fed, wear diapers, are blindfolded and their hands and feet are all handcuffed157 (even before the war, 95% of prisoners were restrained when they received medical treatment)158. Another doctor reported the same and added that the detainees are naked except for the diapers. He believed that “even the medical treatment at the base amounted to torture”.151 A medical source described the situation as “it’s like a different world or a black hole. There’s a disease incubator there”.159 In mid-April Physicians for Human Rights Israel called to “Shut down the Sde Teiman Facility Now”, stating that it reflects “a moral and professional low point”.160 A further investigation by CNN in May confirmed the aforementioned findings based on three Israeli whistleblowers who worked at the camp. It also added descriptions such as that “the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot”. Gazas were regularly beaten “out of revenge”, while the Gazans were “stripped down of anything that resembles human beings”.161 A New York Times report in June provided additional similar evidence, adding details about the rape of male Gazan detainees.162 An Israeli medic said that he was ordered to perform medical procedures outside his area of expertise, and that he was ordered to perform these medical procedures without anesthesia.163 For weeks the facility’s hospital lacked medicine for treating chronic illnesses. In early April the facility held some 600-800 Gazans (and 849 others were arrested in Israeli prisons),157 but Israel began phasing out the camp in early June.164
The number of women detained in Gaza (and the West Bank) since Oct. 7 has been in the hundreds (140 in Gaza in mid-December165). In mid-February, a panel of experts appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Council found evidence for egregious human rights violations, including keeping Gazan women in a cage in the rain and cold, without food, sexual assault against detained women including rape in two cases, and threats of rape and sexual violence, as well as uploading pictures of female detainees in degrading circumstances.166 One Palestinian detained woman stated that “For the most of the interrogations, I and the majority of the detainees were repeatedly threatened with rape”.167 Another Palestinian woman has spoken about the sexual, emotional and physical abuse she has experienced for over a month in which she was detained.168 Other women have said similar things.169 In late March, an Israeli former general claimed that a US official accused the IDF of “systematically” abusing Palestinian women.170 In late May, an NGO report described that women detainees were sometimes kept nude in front of male soldiers and were threatened with rape, as well as undergoing the same forms of torture that men detainees underwent.131