Drowning in the Abyss:
The Dehumanizing Descent of a Year of War in Israel, Palestine, and Beyond.
By Zack Manning
October 8th, 2024
Over the past year, the Middle East has been roiled in war. The perpetual cycle of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians exploded on October 7th, 2023 when the gruesome operation al-Aqsa Flood unleashed by Hamas opened a new nadir of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict quickly metastasized to engulf the broader region and is currently intensified in the hills of Lebanon.
And yet, this is the same old story. Every Middle East war is worse than the previous war. Commentators and analysis abound. Books are written. Marchers protest in the streets. Most often, the contextualization, ideological viewpoints, values-driven responses miss the most crucial chasm between the two peoples in the same land:
Dehumanization
Israelis dehumanizing Palestinians.
Palestinians dehumanizing Israelis.
The world dehumanizing Jews.
The world dehumanizing Arabs.
Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians, and everything in between perpetuating this cycle.
Dehumanization is the rot at the very core of this conflict.
Every day since October 7th the dehumanization has tormented me. Reflecting upon all that has happened and the events that will continue to unfold, it's important to recognize that multiple realities are true at the same time.
Palestinians
Since before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 Palestinians have been subjected to unfathomable cruelty and violence by Jews and Israelis. In present times, even before October 7th, Israelis have killed Palestinians just because they are Palestinian. The Occupation of the West Bank and the stranglehold “open-air prison” of Gaza is widely recognized as an apartheid system. The rights of Jewish Israelis exceed the rights of Palestinians in the same territories. Palestinians have been caricatured and parodied as inherently violent. Their stories have too often been overlooked. Palestinians are a people of such beauty, art, history, language, culture, and so much more.
Palestinians lack self-determination. They are collectively denied rights that Jewish Israelis receive from the state of Israel: freedom of movement, economic opportunities, security, and pathways to a better future. Prior to 2005 in Gaza and presently in the West Bank Israeli settlers exercise acts of terror against the Palestinians simply because they are Palestinians. The legal systems in Palestinian territories have two realities: one for the protection of Jewish Israelis, the other for Palestinians. This climate has suffocated Palestinians, dehumanizing them for generations.
Palestinians have also committed sheer acts of violence against Jews and Israelis. The October 7th events were horrific and the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. A genocide of killing, because they are Jews.
The Israeli war in Gaza has led to a genocide of Palestinians. Killing because they are Palestinian.
Israelis
Israelis also carry immense pain and trauma. The violence perpetrated against Israelis did not begin October 7th. The existential threat to Israel’s very existence is unique in the world of nations. This generational trauma does not simply begin and end with the Holocaust in Europe. For millennia Jews have been violently oppressed across the entire world, including in the United States. This trauma exists in the bodies of every single Israeli and Jew in the diaspora.
Jewish Israelis are dehumanized by stripping them of their diverse identities. A people of all skin colors, a multitude of languages, and a shared indigenous homeland in Israel/Palestine. Palestinian scholars like Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi have acknowledged this indigenous reality but far too many refuse to accept this.
There is not a facet of life in the world that is not touched by humanitarian works from Israelis. From technologies to philosophy, agriculture, fashion, and more, the world has been enriched by the works of everyday Israelis from within the state of Israel. This includes creations by Arab/Palestinian Israelis who themselves suffer from second-class treatment within the state.
Zionism is Jewish self-determination. An idea. However, it is a catchphrase that too often is described in hateful and dehumanizing ways. It’s a contested idea with multiple realities for multiple peoples. Zionism in theory and Zionism in lived-practice have diverged for Israelis and Palestinians. The state of Israel’s ethno-nationalism has expanded and colonized Palestinian societies across generations. The expansion of settlements, the segregated structures of society, the inability to make hard and necessary decisions to achieve a political solution have been a bipartisan failure within Israeli society.
There are truly enemies of the Jewish people and the existence of the state of Israel from outside its borders. But it is the internal cancer within that perhaps is the greatest existential threat to Israel’s continued existence. Israel has a right to exist in the world. The threat of its very survival is real. Too often this is ignored by those who disagree with Israeli government policies, to those who believe Jews do not have the right to self-determination, and those who continue to espouse violence against Jews all over the world.
Others
The ferocity of this conflict has not ended at the contested territorial borders of Israel/Palestine. It has raged across college campuses, board rooms, and social circles. There has been both a rise in antisemitism and anti-Palestinian/anti-Arab violence across the world. A Palestinian life killed means less to some, while an Israeli or a Jewish life means less to others.
Too often the defenders of Israeli actions have failed to acknowledge the immense suffering of innocent Palestinians. Supporters of Israel are delusional in failing to recognize Israel’s own self-defeating actions that have led the country to the brink. Many consider any criticism of the Jewish state anti-semitic. It is possible to be a supporter of Israel and recognize the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people and way of life. It is possible to believe in Israel and dream of a Palestinian state for a Palestinian people so deserving.
Too often defenders of Palestinians delegitimize Israel’s right to exist. Many of the campus protests across the United States, though protected by the 1st Amendment, were incubators and carriers of historic and ongoing tropes of anti-semitism. You can be for a Free Palestine and accept Israel’s future existence. Furthermore, characterizations of Jews and Israelis as a “white people” or “priviledged” despite histories of segregation and ongoing discrimination is a form of racial prejudice and discrimination that does not prevent a future Palestinian state from becoming a reality. It is simply dehumanizing.
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In his new book, The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes chillingly of Israel:
“your oppression will not save you.”
The state of Israel exists both out of global and historical realities of being oppressed and is currently implementing its own systematic oppression against the Palestinians.
Conversely the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people, indigenous to the same land, will not save Palestinians from the realities that Israel and the Jewish state are not going anywhere.
The miasma of black and white thinking will not change the facts on the ground for Israelis, Palestinians, and the world. Only by humanizing the “other” will a better future unfold.
In memory of all those lost over the last year and the living who bear the burden of these circumstances.
Zack Manning is the Director of the Diwan Institute for Humanity.