As Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza continues Stewart Smyth takes stock of the means by which racism has been used, both historically and in the present day, to dehumanise people and justify their slaughter.
Human beings are not naturally predisposed to killing each other. I know that statement appears hard to substantiate when we see the images of the slaughter in Palestine and the many other wars across the globe. But it is an important stance to hold onto. In part, because there is a whole debate about if human beings have a fundamental nature, that John Molyneux wrote about in the pamphlet – Is Human Nature a Barrier to Socialism?
More immediately, we can see evidence that we are no pre-disposed to killing each other in the first acts of any war – the need to dehumanise and “other” the enemy. At the start of the Israeli war on Gaza the war propaganda machine crank into action with horrifying stories of children being beheaded during the Hamas attack on 7th October. This claim was widely reported in the international media and repeated by US President Joe Biden.
Dehumanise and Other
Whether the claims are accurate – and the news network France24 stated on 27 October, “No verified photographs or video footage of beheaded babies have emerged since the attacks” – they follow a similar pattern to the start of other wars. When Saddam Hussein’s army invaded Kuwait in 1990 it was accompanied by media stories that Iraqi soldiers had targeted a hospital and ripped infants from their incubators, as the Western allies attempted to raise support for going to war against Hussein and Iraq.
Similarly, when the German army invaded Belgium at the start of the First World War, there were news reports in Britain of German soldiers bayonetting infants. This in no way is to distract from the terrible executions of prisoners and civilians that did occur in these and other wars.
The point is that the specific killing of infants is used as a key propaganda story to other the chosen enemy – “they are not like us, they kill babies”.
Alongside this othering comes attempts to dehumanise the enemy. We see this very clearly with the use by various Israeli spokespeople of the term “human animals”. The phrase originates with the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on 9 October. It is worth stating his whole quote:
“We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”
“We are just like you”
It is very clear from the combination of his words here and the subsequent actions that Gallant is referring to all the people of Gaza, not just Hamas, as human animals. This term has been used by others, such as the Israeli Ambassador to Berlin Ron Prosor. The ambassador doubled-down on Gallant’s language and conflating Hamas with the people of Gaza,
The people that you saw out, raping, killing and shooting families, little children and burning people alive in their own homes — those are the people in Gaza. So in essence, trying to differentiate that is a real problem.
There is another side of the dehumanising and othering of the Palestinians, where the Israeli state attempts to create an aura of being like the Western societies. For example, a regular refrain from Israeli soldiers or civilians interviewed on British news programmes is that “we are just like you”. And you see this played out in Ireland as well in the Wix case where the Israeli-backed company told employees in Ireland to “show Westernity” in social media posts backing Israel, as “unlike the Gazans, we look and live like Europeans or Americans”.
Prosor brought these two sides together when he said,
This is civilization against barbarity. This is good against bad. This is people who basically act as animals and do not have any, any respect for children, women.
These views – the othering, dehumanising, civilization versus barbarism – have deep roots in the expansion of Western colonialism. When the colonial powers, such as Spain, Britain and France, were expanding and taking over other territories they faced the problem of how to deal with indigenous populations.
Justifying Colonialism
One way was to claim that the new lands were empty – no one lived there. This approach was mobilised at different times across the globe and the centuries, so that the Spanish used the empty lands idea for the Americas in the sixteenth century, while various European settlers used the idea in South Africa in the nineteenth century. The empty lands (or terra nullis) concept has even become enshrined in international law and is still used today.
The second way to justify expansion into already populated territories was, and remains, to cast the indigenous population as not civilised, barbaric or even not human. This is why Prosor frames the Israeli action in Gaza as a battle between civilization and barbarism, and why interviewed Israelis eagerly assert that they hold Western values.
It has been clear to many before now but is even more obvious in the Israeli state’s response to the 7th October attacks that Israel is a settler colonial state, animated by Zionism. Zionism as a political movement is predicated on the belief that Jewish people cannot live in integrated societies and a Jewish homeland is necessary. These ideas predate the establishment of the state of Israel. Indeed, some early Zionist leaders contemplated establishing the Jewish homeland in Argentina or Uganda.
However, through the British promise of a Jewish homeland in Palestine (via the Balfour Declaration) and the political and military might of the US post-World War Two, Israel was established in 1948. Ilan Pappé, the Israeli historian and political scientist, explains the role of Zionism as a settler-colonial ideology:
“From the moment the more vague ideas of Zionism as the revival of Judaism as nationalism became the concrete project of settling in Palestine, Zionism became a settler-colonialist project and still is one today … Within the act of colonizing also come perceptions of the native, or the indigenous, population as being an obstacle for the success of the project.”
The implication of this are stark as Pappé states:
“I think that this part of Zionism stays at the heart of the ideology even before the state was founded. The state [of Israel] just enhances the ability to colonize but does not change the vision of colonizing Palestine.”
In their book, On Palestine, both Pappé and Noam Chomsky make the point that Israel enters into negotiations about a two-state solution to buy more time for the creation of settler colonies in the West Bank. While the settler strategy was abandoned in Gaza with the blockade being in place accompanied by a general attitude of waiting for an opportunity to drive the population out of Gaza or establish an agreement that another country takes over the 2.2 million population.
Zionism from the River to the Sea
This what lies behind Netanyahu attending the UN with a map of Israel that shows no Palestinian territories. The irony here is that those who criticise protesters for the “River to the Sea” chant, not only do not know the history of that slogan but have no issue with Israel actually pursuing a strategy of wiping Palestine of the map.
The settler-colonial concept also raises the question of who actually benefits from the establishment of the Israeli state in Palestine? Despite the logic of Zionism it is hard to make the argument that the Jewish people are safer either in Israel, as the 7th October attacks highlight, or outside where reports in London and the US shows significant increases in anti-Semitic attacks (along with increases in anti-Muslim attacks as well). The repercussions of the Zionist project make the world a more unstable and less safe place.
Western Imperialism
There is one group who do benefit from the establishment of Israel and that is the Western powers and the US in particular. Israel plays the role of safeguarding US/Western interests in the Middle East. You don’t have to take my word for it, Joe Biden in 1986 when he was a Senator stated,
“If we look at the Middle East, it is about time we stopped … apologizing for our support for Israel. There’s no apology to be made. It is the best $3billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region. The United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.”
This investment is considerably higher now; in fact Israel “is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II”, according to a US Congressional Research Service report from March 2023. Importantly it is not just any assistance but military,
To date, the United States has provided Israel $158 billion (current, or noninflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. At present, almost all US bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance.
Since 2007 the US has only given military aid to Israel.
This is now the scale of the investment that Joe Biden referred to. So if the US is investing this level of resources in one country it seems natural to ask what are they getting in return? Again, Joe Biden tells us, it is to protect US assets in the region. Top of the list of assets is access to the oil from the region on terms set by, and favourable to, the US and Western powers.
This is what lies behind the establishment of Israel it is naked imperialism and the priorities of the capitalist system. (Brian Kelly has analysed in more depth the role of Israel as part of the US imperial design in the region – see here.)
Implications
Some initial implications that flow from the above. First, we need to continue to build the anti-war movement, remembering that the main enemy is at home. Raising the demands for a ceasefire now, expel the Israeli ambassador and sanctions on Israel are important expressions of the international solidarity movement. And they also help to expose the Irish ruling elite’s complicity in supporting the genocide in Gaza. This was shown sharply as Fianna Fáil hosted the Israeli ambassador at their recent Ard Fheis.
Second, it seems obvious but does need to be stated that the anti-war movement must be anti-racist to the core, rejecting all forms of racism including islamophobia and antisemitism. Anti-racism is needed to build the biggest united movement but also plays a crucial in undermining the attacks by pro-Israeli supporters on the anti-war movement. For example, in Britain the huge marches in London and elsewhere have been labelled as antisemitic hate festivals by the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. Any antisemitic comments or behaviour needs to be called out and members of the Jewish community encouraged to join the movement.
Third, socialists have a particular analysis of the role of Israel in the Middle East and as part of the US-led imperial design. There is no guarantee that the anti-war movement will move automatically come to a clear anti-imperialist understanding. Fintan O’Toole showed this recently when comparing the West’s response to Ukraine and to Gaza: “The only consistency we get is the dreary persistence of shameless inconsistency”.
O’Toole is clearly wrong here – there is consistency in the actions of the West, if you understand the role and nature of imperialism. O’Toole’s comments illustrate that there is a battle for ideas outside and within the anti-war movement that will develop further in the coming weeks, especially as looks likely that the IDF will occupy northern Gaza indefinitely.
War exposes the underlying nature of capitalism and imperialism. It brings to the fore the worst, most reactionary ideas. But at the same time it can fuel movements from below that have the chance to not only stop the immediate impacts of the war but also to go much further in reshaping society both here and across the Middle East.
