{"id":73,"date":"2024-08-26T16:33:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T14:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/?p=73"},"modified":"2025-10-28T14:43:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T13:43:45","slug":"languages-of-dehumanisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/?p=73","title":{"rendered":"Languages of dehumanisation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Is this the whole story of dehumanization? <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There are many languages of dehumanisation. And war means dehumanisation, so its language will inevitably reflect that. Instead of just decrying how the other side dehumanises, one should try to find a language by which one can actually understand the realities of dehumanisation, of the killings and their motivations. If we just want to play the blame game concerning dehumanising language, this can be easily turned around: From the Palestinian side for example there is the <\/a>language of refering to all Jewish Israelis as \u201cZionist settlers\u201d to justify their murder. And there is the Palestinian dehumanisation of Palestinians themselves, where uninvolved children being killed are declared to be \u201cmartyrs\u201d to make their death serve the national or religious cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nuance would be required: For example I would prefer refering to concrete ages of victims on both sides, because the term children can be misleading on both sides (however, according to UN Convention on Children\u2019s Rights everyone below 18 is considered a child, if people want to use this terminology consistently and know what they are doing, okay, still the general public will be mislead).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concerning collateral damage: Yes, one has to differentiate between the intentional killing of civilians for its own sake (a strategy used by Hamas since the late 80s to sabotage any peace perspective with Israel) and collateral damage when achieving a military objective. Collateral damage however can be unnecessary or disproportionate (as it apparently often is with the IDF tactics) and then it is nevertheless a war crime. These standards have to be applied on both sides. There are also intentional killings of civilians for its own sake from the Israeli side\u2014either by militant settlers or (as it happens in most wars) by ruthless soldiers, however, these certainly do not constitute the majority of civilian deaths and they are also not at the centre of Israeli strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hostages and prisoners: Yes, not all of the persons taken by Hamas and PIJ on October 7th are hostages, some of them are prisoners of war. Yet most of them actually were civilians, which is a clear war crime by Hamas and PIJ. At the same time there is clear evidence that Israel detained Palestinians without charges for longer than necessary to use them for bargaining, which is unlawful hostage-taking, too. However, detaining militants is not hostage-taking, and not even every unlawful detention of suspects is hostage-taking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Human shields: When Hamas and PIJ are operating from within crowded civilian facilities, this is indeed human shielding. However, this does not justify any unnecessary or disproportionate collateral damage. Furthermore when the IDF strikes buildings merely because some rank and file Hamas militant lives there with his family, but not for achieving a concrete military objective like taking control of that building, it is utterly perverse to justify these killings with alleged human shielding. At the same time the use of Palestinian human shields by the IDF is likewise a warcrime (sending Palestinian civilians into tunnels, strapping Palestinians on military cars).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are many languages of dehumanisation. And war means dehumanisation, so its language will inevitably reflect that. Instead of just decrying how the other side dehumanises, one should try to find a language by which one can actually understand the realities of dehumanisation, of the killings and their motivations. If we just want to play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}