"Palestinians are the canaries in a coalmine, the Palestinian analyst Muhammad Shehada tells me. We're screaming of a major warning of what's about to come your way. When you have a media-political class that's relishing, delighting in the murder of our children, do you think they're going to care about yours? There is a warning from our recent, terrifying past that we should heed."
"Colonialism, warned Martinican author Aime Cesaire, works to decivilise the coloniser, to brutalise him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism. The horrors of western imperialism with its dehumanisation and violence were, he argued, ultimately redirected into Europe in the form of fascism. This was the imperial boomerang, as the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt agreed."
"Every genocide requires the total dehumanisation of its victims, and Palestinians are no exception. They were human animals and human beasts who would suffer hell, declared Israeli leaders. It is an entire nation out there that is responsible, said Israeli president Isaac Herzog. Other Israeli politicians called for erasing all of Gaza from the face of the Earth. It is not a far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians, declared Republican Congressman Brian Mast."
The assault on Gaza has produced systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians and normalization of extreme violence. Political and media rhetoric has described Palestinians as subhuman and justified collective punishment. Calls by some Israeli leaders and others advocated erasing Gaza or suggested few Palestinians are innocent. Historical analysis links colonial violence to a boomerang effect that brutalises colonisers, nurturing covetousness, racial hatred, and moral relativism that can return as fascistic impulses. The campaign has included attacks on hospitals, mass civilian casualties, and killings of health workers and starving civilians seeking food, signaling deep humanitarian collapse.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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