"[The Palestinians] are walking beasts on two legs..."Those are just some quotations and sayings I encounter when researching the Palestine-Israel conflict, whether on an internet archive or on a forum. Such racist, derogatory comments are aimed at the Palestinians to denigrate them and make them lose hope in their cause for even trying to stay alive if not trying to take their land back, whether based on pure hate or based on baseless scholarly assumptions.
-Menachem Begin
"There's no such thing as a Palestinian. It's not like we came and took their land. They never existed.
-Golda Meir
"Israel isn't a terrorist state. They just kill some subhuman barbarians on the border. So what? Got a problem with pest control"
-Poster on internet forum Political Crossfire
Racism against Arabs and Palestinians specifically is really nothing new, and is exhibited in many Zionists and radical pro-Israel supporters. In the early days of Zionist settlements, settlers at the time used to refer to the Arabs, whether bedouin, peasant or noble (landowner), as "culture-less" and "rag-wearers". This was aimed at not only understating their social status in a way that they are not unique, but also attempting at legitimizing the claim for a fully Zionist takeover of Palestine. In other words, the Zionists were propagandizing the notion that the Palestinians have no ties to their homes and their lands, which is kind of like mulling over future guilt on part of the Zionists that they would subsequently expel all Palestinians from their lands.
Ever since the inception of the Zionist state, this racism and "dehumanization" has taken different levels each time, and has been exhibited in routines of torture that the Palestinians suffered at the hands of the "IDF". During the so-called "war of independence" in 1948, the Palestinians were either killed or expelled for the simple "crime" of living on their land. Daniel McGowan writes on the Deir Yassin massacre,
On April 9, 1948, members of the Irgun and the Stern Gang massacred over 100 Palestinian men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem. The Deir Yassin massacre marked the beginning of the depopulation of over 400 towns and villages, and the exodus of 750,000 Arabs; it also marked the beginning of the Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe, and the creation of a Palestinian diaspora in refugee camps and in neighboring Arab countries.Well, let's take a look at a few more examples on the "dehumanization" of Palestinians. Gideon Levy, a well-known Haaretz journalist, writes,
But why build a memorial to the victims of Deir Yassin in the US? For Palestinians and most Arabs to remember Deir Yassin is a form of resistance to the humiliation and dehumanization Palestinians have suffered for over 55 years, much of it sponsored and nurtured by the United States, through its unwavering support for Israel. To memorialize Deir Yassin is a cry for the world to remember the ethnic cleansing Palestinians have endured, and the apartheid conditions under which they now live.
At least in some of these cases it was clear to the soldiers that they were shooting at children, but that didn't stop them. Palestinian children have no refuge: mortal danger lurks for them in their homes, in their schools and on their streets. Not one of the hundreds of children who have been killed deserved to die, and the responsibility for their killing cannot remain anonymous. Thus the message is conveyed to the soldiers: it's no tragedy to kill children and none of you is guilty.What's even more strange is that there are many people out there who actively claim that such acts are actually in "defense of Israel". How is murdering children, or innocent Palestinians for that matter, defense? It seems that not a lot of people care much about Palestinian deaths. However, whenever a suicide bomber blows up people in Zionist territory once in a while, people start to pay condolences and feel extremely sympathetic for the "plight" of the Jews living in Palestine. Well, what about the even more ongoing plight of the Palestinian people? It's not like I justify attacks against Zionists, even innocents, but what gives? Palestinians are human beings as well.
Death is, of course, the most acute danger that confronts a Palestinian child, but it is not the only one. According to data of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 3,409 schoolchildren have been wounded in the intifada, some of them crippled for life. The childhood of tens of thousands of Palestinian youngsters is being lived from one trauma to the next, from horror to horror. Their homes are demolished, their parents are humiliated in front of their eyes, soldiers storm into their homes brutally in the middle of the night, tanks open fire on their classrooms. And they don't have a psychological service. Have you ever heard of a Palestinian child who is a "victim of anxiety"?
The public indifference that accompanies this pageant of unrelieved suffering makes all Israelis accomplices to a crime. Even parents, who understand what anxiety for a child's fate means, turn away and don't want to hear about the anxiety harbored by the parent on the other side of the fence. Who would have believed that Israeli soldiers would kill hundreds of children and that the majority of Israelis would remain silent? Even the Palestinian children have become part of the dehumanization campaign: killing hundreds of them is no longer a big deal.
Noam Chomsky, author of Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, tells a tale of horror and torture that Palestinians were subjected to during the early years of the PLO uprising. He writes,
Take the West Bank town of Halhul. In 1979, according to Mayor Muhammad Milhem (later expelled without credible charge with a typical parody of judicial process), the town was placed under a two-week curfew after two young Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers in response to stones thrown at a bus. In further punishment, the authorities banned a wholesale vegetable and fruit project that was to be the key to the town's development. Several months later, after settlers claimed that stones had been thrown, the inhabitants of the town, including women and children, were held outdoors through a cold rainy night for "interrogation."11This, of course, is what is meant by Palestinians being killed "left and right". Outright attacks on civilians like this was, of course, extremely undignifying and humiliating, considering that Arabs themselves are usually humble and do not engage in acts that involve nudity or humiliation to this extent.
In 1982, a delegation of Labor Alignment leaders, including noted hawks, presented to Prime Minister Menahem Begin detailed accounts of terrorist acts against Arabs, including the collective punishment in Halhul: "The men were taken from their houses beginning at midnight, in pajamas, in the cold. The notables and other men were concentrated in the square of the mosque and held there until morning. Meanwhile men of the Border Guards broke into houses, beating people with shouts and curses. During the many hours that hundreds of people were kept in the mosque square, they were ordered to urinate and excrete on one another and also to sing Hatikva [the Israeli national anthem] and to call out `Long Live the State of Israel.' Several times people were beaten and ordered to crawl on the ground. Some were even ordered to lick the earth. At the same time four trucks were commandeered and at daybreak, the inhabitants were loaded on the trucks, about 100 in each truck, and taken like sheep to the Administration headquarters in Hebron. On Holocaust Day, ...the people who were arrested were ordered to write numbers on their hands with their own hands, in memory of the Jews in the extermination camps."
The report describes torture and humiliation of prisoners by soldiers and settlers allowed into the jails to participate in beatings, brutal treatment of Arabs by settlers, even murder with impunity. There was no reaction, because, as Yoram Peri wrote bitterly, the victims are just "Araboushim" (a term of abuse, comparable to "nigger" or "kike").12 The Hebrew press provides an elaborate record of similar practices over many years.
Zionists have also been known to be racist to even Oriental Jews. Ben Gurion wrote,
"Even the immigrant of North Africa, who looks like a savage, who has never read a book in his life, not even a religious one, and doesn't even know how to say his prayers, either wittingly or unwittingly has behind him a spiritual heritage of thousands of years. . . ."Also, in his autobiography, written by Shabtai Teveth, he writes,
"We do not recognize the right of the [Palestinian] Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders." In 1928 he pronounced that "the [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to close the country to us [Jews]. What right do they have to the Negev desert, which is uninhabited?"; and in 1930, "The [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to the Jordan river, and no right to prevent the construction of a power plant [by a Jewish concern]. They have a right only to that which they have created and to their homes."This, of course, is part to the myth that "Palestinians don't exist". This, of course, is another attempt at dehumanization and denial of political rights, which was inherent in Zionism itself.
Inherent racism, which was also dominant in people who consider demographic issues important, is really unjustified. According to this article from the Guardian, a poll conducted in "Israel" deduced that
-41% were in favour of segregation,Even more recently, though, is attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinian Arabs. According to Wikipedia,
-40% believed "the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens",
-63% believed Arabs to be a "security and demographic threat" to Israel ,
-More than two thirds would not want to live in the same building as an Arab ,
-36% believed Arab culture to be inferior,
-18% felt hatred when they heard Arabic spoken
During the 2000 October riots, thousands of Jewish Israelis rioted in Nazareth and Tel Aviv, throwing stones at Arabs, destroying Arab property and chanting "Death to Arabs" [7]. Two Arabs were killed in the violence and Haaretz editorialized that that year's "Yom Kippur will be infamous for the violent, racist outburst by Jews against Arabs within Israel" [8].Sad, really...
The Israeli political party Yisrael Beitenu, whose platform involves redrawing Israel's borders to include about 500,000 Israeli Arabs in a Palestinian state, won 11 seats in the 2006 Israeli elections and may form part of a coalition government alongside Kadima. This policy has been described as "anti-Arab" by The Guardian [27]. Labour party chairman Amir Peretz, referring to Yisrael Beitenu, has said "Anyone who opposes racism must not let the extreme right-wing bloc run Israel" [28].
Some Israeli politicians and leaders have used negative language when discussing Arabs and Palestinians. In 2004, Yehiel Hazan, an Israeli member of parliament, declared at the Knesset that "The Arabs are worms. You find them everywhere like worms, underground as well as above." and went on to describe them as "murderers" and "terrorists". [29], [30]. Raphael Eitan, former Israel Army Chief, once said "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." [31]. In 2004, then Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim asked "What is it about Islam as a whole and the Palestinians in particular? Is it some form of cultural deprivation? Is it some genetic defect? There is something that defies explanation in this continued murderousness." [32].
In Hebron the slogans "Arabs to the crematoria" and "Arabs - sub-humans" were once spray-painted on a wall, and anti-Arab graffiti has been spraypainted in Jerusalem [33]. Leftists have noted that this graffiti remains for long periods of time, and have therefore painted swastikas beside the graffiti in order to hasten the city to take action.[34]
A comic strip for children was carried in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish weekly, Sh'a Tova, that negatively depicted Arabs, and made the statement, "Yes, a good Arab is a dead Arab." [35]
...but there is hope that can beat this dehumanization. Palestinians are human beings; terrorists who kill civilians from both sides represent neither side. So are the Zionist Jews living in Palestine. People, don't make the wrong assumptions that Palestinians want nothing but war and violence. Palestinians will choose peace whenever they are not in conflict. Sadly, as the Zionists continue to pound Palestinians and oppress them, the conflict will continue. Let's just hope that there is an end to this conflict as soon as possible.
Salaam, from
Saracen
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