Committing a genocide – as a United Nations commission has found Israel has done in Gaza – requires one force to attempt to exterminate another people. But to commit that level of violence, it is necessary to see those being killed as not the same as you, as below human. The population needs to be dehumanised.
That’s the conclusion reached by Navi Pillay, the head of the UN commission responsible for saying that Israel is committing a genocide, joining a growing list of bodies that have come to the same conclusion.
“When I look at the facts in the Rwandan genocide, it’s very, very similar to this. You dehumanise your victims. They’re animals, and so therefore, without conscience, you can kill them,” said Pillay, a former International Criminal Court judge.
For many observers within Israel, that process of dehumanisation – where the value of Palestinian life is negligible – didn’t begin with Israel’s war on Gaza, but reaches back throughout the country’s short history and continues to inform the attitude of its public and politicians today.
Israel is currently pummelling Gaza City, knowing that tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians remain there, in a region where famine has been declared. The Israeli objective appears to be to force civilians to leave so that the city – once the hub of Palestinian life in Gaza – can be destroyed, making it easier to fight Hamas, and showcasing some sort of victory to the Israeli public.
The suffering of the people of Gaza City is rarely considered in public statements from Israeli officials. Bombing them to force them to move has become normalised, and even celebrated.
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz has openly bragged that “Gaza is burning” – Gaza City, the place described by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) as “the last refuge for families in the northern Gaza Strip”.
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