Washington — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly approved military operations on two vessels early last month that were part of a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying aid and pro-Palestinian supporters, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Two American intelligence officials briefed on the matter told CBS News that Israeli forces on Sept. 8 and 9 launched drones from a submarine and dropped incendiary devices onto the boats that were moored outside the Tunisian port of Sidi Bou Said, causing a fire. The officials spoke under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on national security matters.
It’s very crazy. Sadly this isn’t the first time it’s happened, and as a behavior it tends to get passed on from generation to generation.
See the Romans calling all non-romans “barbarians”, the numerous falsehoods used to justify European colonization of the rest of the world and the chattel slave trade, the decade or so of virulent antisemitism that the Nazis helped build up before they ever built the first gas chamber, etc. See also Radio Genocide in Rwanda for a more recent example, or how spokespeople from the Israeli government compared Palestinians to cockroaches and other vermin in the days after the October 7 Hamas-led attacks.
Nine times out of ten, it is no accident but rather intentional propaganda. Someone (or some group) decides that they need what others have, and sets about preparing their fellow humans to be ok with taking it.
In a sense, it’s precisely because it is so awful a thing that we have gotten so skilled at doing it [to each other]; if you can dehumanize someone it’s a lot more feasible to take their stuff for yourself. And it can be very tempting to take the easy way out and take from others instead of figuring out how to provide for yourself.
Not to mention it is easier to write off a being’s inherent wants or needs if you are convinced they are lesser than you, and in many Western societies we have an existing cultural legacy of “god gave humans the earth to inherit as their dominion” which predisposes us towards deciding for other beings what their existence should be like without ever considering that the being in question gets a say.
Sorry if this became a bit of a ramble, I’ve been hung up on the issue of dehumanization ever since learning about how the Nazis rose to power in grade school and realizing that nothing was being done in society around me to prevent that sort of thinking from taking hold [again].