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If you had any doubt about the brutality of Israel’s war on Gaza and the Palestinians, then you should look no further than Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who stated last week that he “ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”
Israel has acted accordingly, not only by using animalistic metaphors, but other rhetorical tactics to dehumanize Palestinians in order to sanction, justify, and receive widespread support for its genocide in progress.
While Israel has continued to maintain that Hamas’ “unprovoked” attacks is what led to launching its current war on Gaza and the Palestinians, it has consistently deployed this narrative to erase the fact that Israel was built on a violent foundation of settler-colonialism—which has constituted an ongoing war against Palestinians from which freedom, justice, and dignity were never designed to be realized.