This article surveys the terms which are encountered in Israeli narratives that zoomorphically classify Palestinians[1] as members of different kinds of non-human species, as opposed to commonly-used derogatory terms like "(sand)niggers",[2][a] "savages" or "red Indians",[b] that simply imply racial inferiority.[3] Mutual dehumanization is commonplace among both the occupying and occupied peoples in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[4] Among Palestinians, Jews have been referred to as pigs, dogs, and bloodsucking vampires, while in Israeli discourse references to Palestinians as savage animals and or repugnant critters has also been attested,[c] and at least once, protesting Gazans have been described as mere ammunition weaponized by their "cannibal" leaders.[d][7][8] At times, such dehumanization, the systematic humiliation and oppression of other peoples, which is a characteristic of most conflicts, can form a prelude to genocide.[9][e]
A recurrent metaphor,[10] going back to a statement by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 1996 which pictured Israel, a "vanguard of culture against barbarism"[11] as a flourishing "villa in the jungle", implied that those outside the villa's grounds were wild beasts. Ariel Sharon's son Gilad Sharon stated that the aim of Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012 was "a Tarzan-like cry that lets the entire jungle know in no uncertain terms just who won, and just who was defeated".[12][f] According to Neve Gordon, who has spoken about statements which have been made during the recent Israel–Hamas war, Israel's military conflicts with Palestinians are frequently framed in terms of a conflict between civilized Israeli soldiers who are serving in the most moral army on earth and their adversaries, Palestinians, who are perceived as 'human animals' incapable of grasping the rules of war.[g]
With the aid of similes, Israel's wars have frequently been likened to battles with an adversarial creature. Such comparisons have been used frequently during Israel's conflict with Gazans, who have variously been depicted as "ants", "fish" or "sitting ducks". Soldiers who have spoken about the military operations which they have conducted in the Gaza Strip have compared them to burning up ants with a magnifying glass or shooting guns into a barrel which is crammed with fish.[h] Gaza itself has been called "a hornets' nest"[21] or "nest of wasps" (by Moshe Dayan)[22] just as Ain el-Hilweh, the Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, has been.[23]
- ^ Peteet 2005, p. 167.
- ^ Goldberg 2004.
- ^ Peteet 2005, p. 168.
- ^ Bruneau & Kteily 2017.
- ^ Rapoport 2008.
- ^ Winer 2018.
- ^ Ben Zikri & Kubovic 2018.
- ^ Aaron 2019, pp. 59, 64.
- ^ Gerteiny 2007, p. 93.
- ^ Chomsky & Pappé 2015.
- ^ Zalloua 2017, p. 54.
- ^ Sharon 2012.
- ^ Morris & Shavit 2004.
- ^ Oren 2019, pp. 89–118, 89–90.
- ^ Salaime 2016.
- ^ Finkelstein 2021, p. 74.
- ^ Zonszein 2017.
- ^ Chomsky 2014.
- ^ Finkelstein 2021, p. 16, n.39.
- ^ Seib 2016, p. 125.
- ^ Hass 2014, p. 9.
- ^ Bregman 2002, p. 86.
- ^ Chomsky 1999, p. 512.
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