Itamar Ben Gvir. Photo: CC0

Israeli Minister Ben Gvir made strong statements about eliminating Hamas terrorists. Statements that led to accusations of dehumanisation. Unlike in the case of Hamas, however, the media do not place his rhetoric in a mitigating context. That does not justify Ben Gvir’s statements: the dehumanisation of opponents is reprehensible and dangerous. Nevertheless, it would be good if Israel’s critics recognised how much pressure Israel is under. And anyone who demands that Israelis keep seeing the humanity in Palestinian terrorists ought not to engage in the constant dehumanisation of Israelis.

 

Recently, there was yet another uproar over Israeli minister Ben Gvir.

Whenever the media quote him, it pays to check what he actually said. These are usually provocative statements, which the media then blow out of all proportion. The next step is for moderates to be called upon to answer for ‘what Ben Gvir has said this time’, and, much to their annoyance, find themselves having to defend the provocateur.

Tweet text: Maarten Boudry: Ben Gvir is indeed a horrendous figure and a religious fanatic, but this is nonetheless irresponsible agitprop. The literal quote is: ‘We need to take out 30, 40 terrorists every night’ and ‘There should be targeted eliminations of 30 to 40 people.’ Not… (then X’s ‘Show more’ since the rest isn’t visible) quote-tweeting VRT Nieuws: Israeli minister Ben-Gvir wants to kill 30 to 40 Gazans every night: ‘They shouldn’t live, they aren’t human’

None of that exaggeration makes what Ben Gvir actually says and does any less immoderate. He humiliated the Flotilla’s deluded idealists, for instance, and flaunted it on social media. And although he did not call for the execution of random Gazans, he did make some ugly statements. His bizarre proposal to annex Gaza was not, in my view, even the low point.

Personally, I took particular issue with this statement: ‘There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.’ It is true that he meant Hamas members by this — not civilians — but it was dehumanisation nonetheless.

Dehumanisation

On the battlefield, soldiers have to suppress their natural empathy for their opponents in order to kill them. That dehumanisation is one of the horrors of war, but it is necessary to survive on the battlefield. Ben Gvir, however, was not only talking about a combat situation: he was also talking about terrorists in Gaza who posed no threat at that moment.

And thirty or forty targeted killings a night? That sounds like a quota to be hit, not a careful selection of targets. There are good arguments for the targeted killing of terrorists, and even the death penalty can be justified — if only to discourage the practice of kidnapping Israelis to trade them for dozens of terrorists. But Ben Gvir takes pleasure in their deaths. That was also clear from his reaction to the introduction of the death penalty for the worst terrorists.

The British author Terry Pratchett once wrote: ‘Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.’ The moment the other stops being human to us, our empathy disappears. Then anything is permitted; then it is even permitted to do that other person unlimited harm. That is the slippery slope Ben Gvir is on. But — to borrow the words of NRC (the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad) — there is, unfortunately, a context in which Ben Gvir makes his statements.

Monsters in Gaza

In the Netherlands, many have already forgotten, but for countless Israelis, the scenes of 7 October 2023 are burned into memory. It was not only the terrorists who crossed into Israel on that black day and committed the most gruesome atrocities. It was also all those civilians in the streets of Gaza who were euphoric about the violence, and who joined in the orgy once defenceless victims came within their reach.

As President Isaac Herzog said shortly after the Hamas attack: ‘It is an entire nation out there that is responsible… It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.’ Herzog, incidentally, drew a sharp line between militants and civilians: in that same press conference he stressed that Israel abides by international law and protects civilians.

 

Support for Hamas

Despite the spontaneous street celebrations in Gaza on 7 October 2023, there are still wishful thinkers who insist that only a small minority of Gazans took part. ‘Most of them just want a good life, and peace with Israel, honestly!’ Those who want to believe this have to ignore a great deal.

They have to ignore that — after Israel withdrew from the territory — Hamas won the elections, despite the 1988 Hamas Charter calling for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews. The wishful thinkers also have to ignore that opinion polls in the Gaza Strip have shown strong support for Hamas for years, especially after acts of violence by Hamas.

They have to ignore that for two years, hundreds — and later dozens — of hostages were held captive in the Gaza Strip, often in appalling conditions, and that not a single Gazan helped them. Not one, even though many undoubtedly knew where the hostages were being held. As I wrote earlier: unfortunately, there is context for Ben Gvir’s statements.

The most pitiable people

But does that mean Hamas members and their helpers are not human? That they might as well be exterminated like vermin? Right after 7 October 2023 — when the IDF was still fighting terrorists inside Israel — I wrote a piece in which I called the Palestinians the most pitiable people on earth.

I called them that because no one truly stands up for them — nor do the pro-Palestinian activists – and because their misery has been perpetuated since 1948 in order to use it as a pretext to attack Israel. It is no coincidence that Palestinian refugee status is passed down to subsequent generations. And their children are indoctrinated with hatred of Israel from a very young age.

The great tragedy of the Palestinians is that they make such a perfect weapon against Israel. Even some of their own leaders have at times openly admitted that they declared the Palestinians to be a people in order to undermine Israel. That does not mean, incidentally, that there is no Palestinian people now. Every people has its origins somewhere, and the Palestinian people were forged into a unified whole by the refugee crisis of 1948 and the political manoeuvring of their leaders in the years that followed.

The suffering of the Arab refugees of 1948 was real, whether they fled the violence of war out of fear, left on the orders or urging of Arab leaders, had themselves taken part in the fighting, or were driven out by Israeli forces. Their leaders preyed on that suffering. They exploited it politically and pointed to Israel as the sole cause. They downplayed their own role, and hijacked UNRWA to serve their purposes.

Today’s reality

The result is that the Palestinians have indeed been forged into the perfect weapon in the propaganda war against Israel, while a peaceful future has been denied them. The Arab leaders and the ’international community’ have manipulated this conflict for decades, leading the Palestinians to believe that there is only one way out for them: Israel must be destroyed.

But the reality is that Israel exists. And whatever consumers of propaganda may say, it is not a ‘colonial entity’. There are two million Arab Israelis, and the majority of the Jewish population is descended from refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. Israel’s origin story is far less exceptional than is often assumed: most states are younger than Israel, and wherever borders were drawn, refugee flows followed.

Because this conflict has been reduced to a black-and-white story with a single culprit — Israel — any solution has been made impossible. The role of the British, the Arabs, Iran, the UN, the NGOs and UNRWA apparently does not count, to say nothing of the Russians and the Americans. This conflict could only be resolved if far more parties took responsibility for their part in it, but that is not the world we live in.

Arena

In fact, the Palestinians and the Israelis have been pitted against each other in the arena, while the rest of the world shouts from the stands about who should win. For a large part of this audience, the only acceptable outcome seems to be the destruction of one of the two peoples.

Many Gazans reached the point long ago where Israelis are no longer human to them. The Israeli peace activists who had campaigned on their behalf were slaughtered on 7 October 2023, and no one from Gaza warned them. The consequences in Israel were enormous. Hope for peace was shattered, and on top of that came another disillusionment: internationally, there was less solidarity with Israel than with… Gaza.

The UN, the NGOs and much of the Western media make no secret of their dislike of Israel. They subject Israel’s every action to intense scrutiny, while ignoring the role of Hamas and other enemies. They cheer whenever yet another opportunistic government recognises the ‘Palestinian state’. Following 7 October 2023, some of Israel’s most vehement critics have concluded that the founding of the State of Israel was a historic mistake.

But as Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary-General, said in 2006: ‘Even worse, some of the rhetoric used in connection with the issue implies a refusal to concede the very legitimacy of Israel’s existence, let alone the validity of its security concerns. We must never forget that Jews have very good historical reasons for taking seriously any threat to Israel’s existence.’

War of attrition

Annan’s warning has gone unheeded. There is scarcely any empathy for Israel — quite the opposite. In global world opinion, Israel has for years been the great villain: the Zionist entity, the colonial power committing genocide against the indigenous population. The mobs are gathering once again to hunt the age-old scapegoat, this time cast as the personification of colonialism.

In the eyes of the propagandists, Israel has long been guilty of dehumanising Palestinians. Every incident — such as Ben Gvir’s twisted remarks — is enough to prove it. And where necessary, they simply make up their own accounts of Israeli misconduct. Anyone who examines the evidence honestly can discover the truth: the sweeping accusations against Israel are false. The evidence to the contrary is abundant, no matter how many stories the NGOs, the media and UN rapporteurs invent.

But that does not mean it cannot become true. This is a war of attrition for Israel on several fronts. How much longer before Israelis grow so weary of it all that they give up and start thinking en masse like Ben Gvir?

But those who dehumanise others also dehumanise themselves.

Many Israelis are resisting this, no doubt partly on the basis of the Jewish tradition in which every human being has intrinsic value. Hopefully, most Israelis will manage to retain their humanity and continue to see their attackers as human beings. More importantly, let us hope that people throughout the world will stand up against the dehumanisation of Israelis.

 

This article was originally published in Dutch.

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