Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, is a DAWN fellow.
On Saturday morning, Oct. 7, my phone starting ringing non-stop. From the sheer quantity of calls from Western media outlets, and without seeing the news, I knew that Israeli lives must have been lost. Why? Because after living in Palestine for many years now, I have learned that Western media outlets rarely call with such urgency when Israel kills Palestinians.
Indeed, I was right, and it was at this awful moment that the routine dehumanization of Palestinians began. It immediately became apparent that the lives of Israelis had meaning, while the lives of Palestinians did not. Those who claimed that the Hamas attack was "unprovoked" conveniently chose to ignore the reality that Palestinians live under: 75 years of ethnic cleansing; 56 years of military occupation and, for Gaza, 17 years of a brutal siege.
In ignoring our reality, they ignored the hundreds of Palestinians that Israel killed in 2023 alone (one quarter of them children); they ignored the more than 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners languishing in Israeli jails, 1,400 of them imprisoned without ever being charged with a crime. They ignore the nightly raids, the kidnappings by the Israeli army, the torching of Palestinian villages by Israeli settlers, and all of the ways in which Jewish supremacy is manifested against Palestinians. They ignore statements by Israeli politicians like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also effectively governs the West Bank, calling for Palestinian towns like Huwara to be "erased." They ignore when Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel's minister of national security, declares that his hero is Baruch Goldstein, a terrorist who massacred 29 Palestinians in a mosque in Hebron in 1994.
They forget that occupation is violent. It is a death by a thousand cuts—daily, painful, brutalizing.
It immediately became apparent that the lives of Israelis had meaning, while the lives of Palestinians did not.
- Diana Buttu
It is only in a world where Palestinian lives are so dehumanized that Palestinian suffering becomes normalized. And it is only when Palestinians are so dehumanized that the Hamas attack is seen as "unprovoked"—coming from nowhere. For we Palestinians are supposed to endure for decades what Israel suffered for a day. We are supposed to remain in our cages. It is in this dehumanized world that Israel underestimates, painfully, the desire and will of a people to break out from their cages.
But the dehumanization of Palestinians does not stop there. In the ensuing days, the Israeli military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spread the claim that Hamas had beheaded babies. It made outraged headlines around the world, even though it was never verified (the Israeli government even admits that now). Yet President Joe Biden repeated it from a White House lectern earlier this week: "I never thought that I would see, have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children." The White House soon had to walk that back.
I recall with painful clarity how the same media outlets that credulously amplified this allegation were skeptical when Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in the back of the head by an Israeli sniper last year in the West Bank. Despite eye witnesses—themselves journalists—who indicated that she was killed by an Israeli sniper, so many Western journalists demanded more and more "proof." When explosive allegations are made about Palestinians, however, no such proof is required.
The dehumanization does not stop there, either. When interviewed on Western media, Palestinians in Gaza who are barely managing to survive Israel's bombardment are put on the spot and asked whether they condemn Hamas's attack, as if they alone must answer for Hamas. I cannot ever recall an Israeli being asked in the media whether they condemn the Nakba or the occupation. But we Palestinians must prove our humanity. We must prove that we are worthy of the airtime that is given to us.
Such is the world of dehumanization—where crimes against Palestinians are ignored, where our suffering has become routine and where, ultimately, we are blamed for our own deaths.
- Diana Buttu
The dehumanization still does not stop there. Israeli and American officials openly use genocidal language against Palestinians. While Israel has cut off fuel, water, electricity and food to Gaza, Israeli officials, led by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have said they are fighting against "human animals." Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett erupted at a British anchor for asking about Palestinian suffering in Gaza: "Are you seriously [sic] keep asking me about Palestinian civilians? What is wrong with you?" In the U.S., meanwhile, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has said that Gaza should be "flattened," while Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley implored Netanyahu to "finish them."
In violation of international law, Israel has ordered Palestinians to leave northern Gaza to the south of the besieged strip, even though it is impossible with roads destroyed and bombs falling. But in the world of dehumanized Palestinians, we are expected to believe Israel and flee—even though the Israeli military is then bombing Palestinians as they flee.
Such is the world of dehumanization—where crimes against Palestinians are ignored, where our suffering has become routine and where, ultimately, we are blamed for our own deaths.
