Genocide Denial is Genocide Acceptance

Today, we (Georgetown University Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine) held a vigil to honor the more than 20,000 children murdered by the Israeli military during the past two years. I spoke briefly about genocide denial. Here’s the text:

We are here today to honor the memory of the child victims of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is not being carried out in the name of Israel, but rather in the name of Jews and Jewish safety everywhere. And that is a travesty of the Jewish tradition. It is being carried out with American weapons, with American financial aid, and with American diplomatic aid.

What do you people think about Holocaust deniers? If you’re like me, you probably feel nothing but scorn for them.

I used to think that genocide deniers  were monsters. But the last couple years have taught me something about denial I never wanted to learn. I now know that for every atrocity, there are those who will deny it, diminish its evil, or explain why it had to be done. I now know that many good people will deny genocide, or act as if it’s not happening, even as it takes place before their eyes, even as it takes place with the full support of their tax dollars, even as it is done in their name. I know this because I have many genocide deniers among my neighbors, colleagues, friends, and in my own Jewish family. For many of them, ‘Never Again’ doesn’t apply to Palestinians.

I now understand that genocide denial is a common, even banal fact. This troubles me. Because genocide denial adds a second level of evil to the crime of genocide. Genocide is merely about the mass murder of people. Genocide denial goes further—it aims to kill the memory of that murder, so as to leave the door open to other genocides in the future.

I now know that it is far easier to tolerate genocide than to oppose it. It is easier to turn away from the murder and starvation of Gaza than to keep your eyes on it. I know what it is to wake up each day to news of fresh massacres—it turns your stomach, and crushes your ability to feel. I know how exhausting it is to grasp the scale of these crimes in a moral framework that values human life in a universal way. For to admit that a genocide is happening and that our leaders and institutions have a hand in it means that we have an obligation to act. And not just to condemn the crime of genocide with words, but to stop it from happening by deeds.

This genocide isn’t being done by Turks or Nazis, or Serbians or Rwandans. This time, the genocide belongs to us. Israel may be the one conducting operations on a day-to-day level, but this genocide is American-sponsored and American-armed, and it has been cheered on by the leadership of both our political parties, and by our legacy mainstream media.

Which means, this genocide is not far away. It is not foreign. It is American. We paid for it, and continue to pay for it. The problem goes beyond our status as tax-paying citizens. This same American-Israeli genocidal regime has an established, even privileged place on this campus, like it does on many others.

I am not talking here about the individuals within our community who have been cheering on murder, or our expert colleagues who explain why Palestinian deaths are deserved or don’t matter. I’m talking about how our institution invests in mass murder. Yes: like other colleges and universities, Georgetown remains financially invested in weapons manufacture and arms trading with Israel.

We should not be naïve about this point: we have been demanding transparency on this issue for many years now, only to be ignored. If Georgetown University had no holdings in the business of mass death, our leadership would be open and proud about the fact. Instead, they act in shame, hiding the books, overturning student referenda on BDS, and punishing students for posing good questions. So much for cura personalis when it comes to Palestinians.

By the same token, we should not be naïve about where our leadership stands on Gaza: just this summer, in a congressional hearing, President Groves bragged about forging ties with Hebrew University, a prestige institution that plays a central role in the surveillance, incarceration and mass slaughter of Palestinians living under a military occupation that is as old as I am. President Groves also boasted that our administration is working with the ADL, which used to be a noble civil rights organization, but is now a notoriously racist institution whose present mission is to repress all criticism of Israel on American campuses. If this relationship blossoms, it will take years for this university to recover its reputation as a place of serious and free inquiry.

What I am saying is that genocide denial is alive and well at Georgetown University. This institution invests in Israeli militarism and genocide and punishes students for asking questions about that fact.

Those most vociferously denying the genocide today will tomorrow admit that the genocide happened. They will say that it was unfortunate, or that we need to move forward. And they will urge us to turn the page on the past so we can build the future. They will encourage us to be realists, or not caught in the past. They will advise us to forget about bygones. They did this with the Holocaust, they did this with Indochina, they did this with Iraq—and they will no doubt do it once again with Gaza.

But that is intolerable. There is no future worth building if we cannot face a genocide in our present, especially when it is done in our name. Genocide denial is genocide acceptance. Genocide denial is genocide normalization. I do not want to live in a world where genocide is normal, and where genocide promoters rule the roost. Gaza deserves much better, and so does Georgetown.

Muin Bseiso, “The Besieged City”

trans. Ahmed Saidam and Elliott Colla

To the stars, the Sea tells the tale of a captive homeland,

While, with tears and moans, Night knocks like a beggar

On the doors of Gaza, which are shut upon the grieving people.

It stirs the living who sleep upon the rubble of years,

As if they were a grave disturbed by graverobbing hands.
 

The morning light nearly shows from the weight of pain,

As it chases the Night, still youthful and strong                                   

But now is not the hour of its coming or going

The mighty giant has covered its lofty head with dust,

Like the sea which is shrouded in fog, but not killed by it.

Dawn speaks to the city, confused and unanswering.             

Before her lies the salty sea. Within her, barren sands.      

While alongside her, the suspicious steps of the enemy.              

What does Dawn say? Have the roads to the homeland opened?        

So we may bid the desert farewell and walk toward the fertile valley? 

To the wheat stalks that have ripened and await harvest:                  

Suddenly they are given to fire, to scattering birds, to locusts.      

Night marches on them, dressing them in black on black.                     

And the river, rushing through mountain and valley,         

He casts his staff down upon the ruins and turns to ash.                    

Here she is, Beautiful Gaza, as she wanders through her  funerals, 

Between the hungry in their tents and the thirsty in their graves.    

And a tormented man, feeding on his own blood, squeezing roots for juice. 

These are mere images of humiliation: My Captive People, you should rise in anger!               

Their whips have written our fate across our backs.

Have you read about it—or are you still weeping over the lost homeland?  

Fear has bound your arms, and so you flee from the struggle.    

‘I have drowned,’ you say. ‘The wind has torn my sail!’                     

O you, wretched in an earth roaring with light:                         

Sing the songs of struggle, and join the long march of the hungry!

Source: Mu‘īn Bisaysū, Al-Aʿmāl al-shiʿrīya al-kāmila (Beirut: Dār al-ʿAwda, 2008), 42.

"المدينة المحاصرة"

للشاعر معين بسيسو

البحر يحكي للنجوم حكاية الوطن السجين 

والّليل كالشحّاذ يطرق بالدموع وبالأنين

أبواب غزة وهي مغلقة على الشعب الحزين

      فيحرّك الأحياء ناموا فوق أنقاض السنين

      وكأنّهم قبر تدقّ عليه أيدي النابشين

     وتكاد أنوار الصباح تطلّ من فرط العذاب

     وتطارد الّليل الذي ما زال موفور الشباب

     لكّنه ما حان موعدها وما حان الذهاب

     المارد الجبّار غطّى رأسه العالي التراب

     كالبحر غطّاه الضباب وليس يقتله الضباب

   ويخاطب الفجر المدينة وهي حيرى لا تجيب 

    قدّامها البحر الأجاج وملؤها الرمل الجديب

وعلى جوانبها تدبّ خطى العد، المستربب

    ماذا يقول الفجر هل فتحت إلى الوطن الدروب 

    فنوّدع الصحراء حين نسير للوادي الخصيب ؟

لسنابل القمح التي نضّجت وتنتظر الحصاد

    فإذا بها للنّار والطير المشرّد والجراد

    ومشى إليها الليل يلبسها السواد على السواد

   والنّهر وهو السائح العدّاء في جبل وواد

   ألقى عصاه على الخرائب واستحال إلى رماد

   هذي هي الحسناء غزة في مآتمها تدور

   ما بين جوعى في الخيام وبين عطشى في القبور

   ومعذّب يقتات من دمه ويعتصر الجذور

   صور من الإذلال فاغضب أيها الشعب الأسير

   فسياطهم كتبت مصائرنا على تلك الظهور

  أقرأت أم ما زلت بكّاء على الوطن المضاع ؟

  الخوف كبّل ساعديك فرحت تجتنب الصراع

  وتقول إنّي قد غرقت وشقّت الريح الشراع

  يا أيّها المدحور في أرض يضجّ بها الشعاع

  أنشد أناشيد الكفاح وسرّ بقافلة الجياع

At the Ramparts of the Human

Here my words and bear witness to my vow. Night gathers and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realm of men.

— “The Oath of the Night Watch,” Game of Thrones.

At this very moment, large, well-organized caravans of migrants are marching towards our southern border. Some people call it an “invasion.” It’s like an invasion. They have violently overrun the Mexican border. You saw that two days ago. These are tough people, in many cases. A lot of young men, strong men. And a lot of men that maybe we don’t want in our country.

— Donald Trump. November 1, 2018.

Turns out I wasn’t wrong to suggest back in the summer that there were deep affinities between Israeli and American border rhetoric and the apocalyptic imaginary of contemporary Hollywood. When I wrote, I was grappling with the border-wall imaginary around Gaza and how it worked to transform (in image and story) one of the most destitute and desperate societies of human history (contemporary, besieged Gaza) into vicious enemies who were not quite human. The more I thought about it, the more I saw how it resonated with genre narratives (from sci-fi and fantasy to Westerns) about the frontiers of humanity. Game of Thrones meets World War Z meets Lord of the Rings meets The Searchers.

In both news reporting and fiction entertainment, we now regularly encounter images of walls erected to protect beleaguered groups of heroes from invasion by masses of humanoid monsters in the form of zombies, orcs, White Walkers, and unruly natives.

At the time, I had not yet discovered The Green Line, the fash podcast from Border Patrol brass Brandon Judd, Chris Cabrera, and Art Del Cueto. Thanks to an especially brilliant episode of Intercepted, I learned about this podcast, which is sponsored by Breitbart, as well as a knife manufacturer, a boot company, and a Texas physical therapy provider corporation that specializes in workman comp cases. The hosts play up the fact that they are leaders in the National Border Patrol Council, a right-wing frontier militia that poses as a labor union for federal employees.

Day after day, the hosts bring the voice of nativist ressentiment and weapons-positive chauvinism to a discussion of American politics. They call for wider gun proliferation and criminalization of non-citizen residents. They also, unsurprisingly, advocate a cruel if familiar military strategy against refugees fleeing the ravages of US-backed dictators and death squads in Central American. If you ever wanted reasons to abolish the Department of Homeland Security, you’ll find them here.

What’s fascinating and disturbing is that this podcast very consciously broadcasts from the ramparts. Yes—the hosts see themselves as the Night’s Watch, as cosmic guardians not just of a particular civilization, but of humanity itself. Westeros is real to them, and so is the Wall. Take a listen to this 2016 episode of the Green Line or any other and judge for yourself.

Do Border Patrol leadership imagine they work for Jon Snow? How many patrolmen really believe that Honduran refugees are White Walkers? Shockingly, some do.

Sadly, Herzl and Sobchak were correct to point out that if you will it, it is no dream. For those with enough will and weaponry, the wall between the imagined and the actual is never too thick or too high.

Obviously, science fiction doesn’t cause zombie apocalypses. But apocalyptic-minded armed thugs, with the full force of the state behind them, might just act on their fantasies in this actual world.

Humanity's Border

In May, Israel and the USA staged a bloody diptych of spectacles. On the left, the opening of the new US embassy in occupied Jerusalem. On the right, the daylight massacre of unarmed Gazans by Israeli snipers.  

On one side, the age-old figure of the gleaming "City on the Hill," the Citadel of God's chosen, a favorite of colonial settlers from Cotton Mather to Golda Meir. On the other, the Gate to the citadel, or more exactly, the barbarians that lie outside that gate .

The City and the Gate: rarely are we afforded such a clear glimpse of this vision—on the one hand, civilization, on the other, barbarism. Freedom and tyranny. Or more simply put, humanity and inhumanity—which is to say, the human and the non-human, the latter less an intellectual category than a gory menagerie of animals, monsters, subhumans and inhumans. 

Wall v. Border

The US media, echoing IDF press briefings, has long referred to the barriers around Gaza as a "border fence." The reference to borders could not be any wronger. 

A border is the line that stands between two sovereign states. Gaza is not sovereign, and never has been; Israel's sense of sovereign territory fully encompasses Gaza. 

A border may be open or closed, but it is not something that is only ever open on one side, and only ever closed on the other. While Israeli forces freely move back and forth across the line that demarcates Gaza, the converse is not true. Israeli crossings into Gaza are not considered transgressions even when they are military and violent; any Gazan movement outside the line, whether accompanied by violence or not, becomes an aggression. 

Thus the fence that separates Gazans from the world can not be called a border. It neither represents a relation of mutual recognition nor a balance of power. It is a line, unilaterally imposed by Israel on Gaza. (And, for the record, the example of Gaza is not unique: Israel has consistently refrained from defining its borders with all its neighboring states). 

So what is it? Most of it looks like a fence. But it is best understood as a prison wall. Just as prison walls are built with one-sided gates designed to allow prison guards to enter, so too does this wall have such gates. But the highest goal of a prison wall is to prevent incarcerated bodies from moving freely. The walls around Gaza accomplish this goal every day. 

Purity and Danger in Israel-Palestine

Conceptually, however, these walls do much more than trap bodies. They prevent also "Palestine" from mixing with "Israel." To borrow from Mary Douglas, they create one space imagined as safe, and pure. 

And a second space that is chaotic, inhuman and full of danger and contamination.  

In this, the walls build on the fundamental Balfourian and Zionist distinction between Jew and non-Jew in Palestine. Now, as during the British Mandate, this distinction between Jew and non-Jews is one between the fully human and the not-quite human.

Only in this conceptual sense can we call the line between Israel and Gaza a 'border'. It was built to mark the categorical division between Israelis (as humans) and Gazan Palestinians (as not-quite humans).

Monsters at the Gate

But as real as these resonances are with older colonial conceptual divisions, they reverberate even more strongly with stories and images in contemporary pop culture, particularly in dystopic sci-fi and fantasy genres, where noble humans fight against monsters in existential combat. Not accidentally, many of these stories involve epic sieges, where the humans of the citadel must fend off the invasion of creatures whose hideousness and evil derives in no small part from their likeness to humans. It is their status as humanoid—not-quite human—that is so monstrous.

Consider the above representations of Gazans at the gate against these images of embattled citadels pulled from recent blockbuster hits. 

World War Z (2013)

World War Z (2013)

White Walkers at the Night's Watch Wall, Game of Thrones (2017)

Battle of Helm's Deep, The Two Towers (2002) 

The suggestion I am making is that, as bizarre as it may seem, media representations of the Gaza massacres dovetail with these other narratives, and with their imagistic vocabulary, to buttress and extend the walls around Gaza. Whether this is conscious is another question, but the regularity of the shared conventions are unmissable. Just as these fictions imagine an existential battle at the very border of humanity, so too does the Gaza prison wall serve as a staging ground, in the imagination of Israel's right and its allies, in a war against non-human threats.

The media corps of the IDF appears to be fully conscious of these tropes. At the very least, it does not hesitate to make use of them, as we saw in May. 

Palestinians at the fence, negative image from This is Hamas' Plan

Consider the video, "This is Hamas' Plan," that was posted to the IDF Spokesman's Twitter account on May 15. In a series of shots, which simulate surveillance, infrared, night vision, drone and clandestine broadcast footage, this short video depicts Gazans as shadowy ghouls marauding Israel. 

Accompanied by a scratchy, distorted soundtrack that creates a mood of impending doom, it embraces the Blair Witch Project aesthetic so pervasive in contemporary horror-genre film and television. 

This, no less than any physical wall, is part of the larger project to dehumanize Gazans and to render them as morally expendable as any other orc, zombie or humanoid monster we might encounter in fiction or fantasy.

What does it mean for Israel to make a cheap horror film that depicts Gazans as monsters? The real horror, of course, is that there is a state that dispossesses masses of indigenous people, drives them from their lands, cages them as stateless refugees in an open air prison, assaults them for decades, and massacres them in broad daylight when they dare to protest—and then creates a cultural tradition filled with monstrous representations of its victims.

But then again, that's settler colonialism for you. 

Lithographs of events in the Seminole War in Florida in 1835. (Charleston, S.C.: T.F. Gray and James, 1837.

The Siege of the Fort at Detroit by Frederic Remington

The City and the Gate

It is not often we glimpse the cosmic struggle between civilization and barbarism, humanity and inhumanity, freedom and tyranny. But last week’s ghastly diptych was one such moment: on one side, Trump officials—led by stumbling, corrupt Israeli politicians and anti-Semitic millennialist preachers—celebrated the relocation of the US Embassy to Occupied Jerusalem; on the other, Israeli snipers murdered more than sixty Palestinians in broad daylight. 

American media commentators might have viewed the event as this century’s Sharpeville massacre. They might have compared the massacre to earlier colonial massacres, such as Amritsar or Sétif. Or they might have linked the event to American atrocities—The Orangeburg Massacre, The Jackson State Massacre, or The Kent State Massacre. 

But that would have entailed viewing Gazans as human and their killers as vicious perpetrators. Instead, most American pundits tended to frame last week’s events into a familiar, even dominant narrative form: on one side, an Judeo-Christian “City Upon a Hill;” and on the other, barbarians at the gates. 

For some, the city-upon-a-hill narrative is apocalyptic in nature: the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy in an alliance that is as spiritual and civilizational as it is military and political. There exist both Christian-Zionist and Jewish-Zionist versions of this, and they are well represented in Conservative, Rightwing and evangelical media forums.[1]

But there is also a secular, often liberal version—a civilizing mission—which goes by many names: Light Unto The Nations, Making the Desert Bloom, Start-Up Nation, The Only Democracy in the Middle East, A Tiny Country Surrounded By Enemies, A Small Country in a Big, Bad Neighborhood, and so on. This myth may not necessarily be millenialist in nature, but it no less cosmic.

For right-wing commentators, Gazans who were protesting their interminable imprisonment were nothing more barbarians deserving to be shot. For most liberal pundits, however, Gazan demonstrators were simple people who had been manipulated by the barbaric Hamas. But either way, in this narrative, the Gazan victims can only appear as nameless hordes howling at the gates of The City. Whether as criminal subhuman, or merely dupe, the Gazan as barbarian is as fixed in liberal commentary as it is in conservative and right-wing opinion. 

Elite Commentary on Gaza

Right-wing commentary on FoxNews, The National Review, Brietbart, The DailyWire and elsewhere, presented the Gaza massacre/US embassy opening according to the city-upon-a-hill narrative in its baldest terms: the epic struggle between good and evil, us and them. Some voices in liberal-centrist outlets, like CNN and MSNBC, temporarily broke with the narrative when confronted with footage that showed thousands being shot by snipers sitting far away in quiet hunting blinds. But these voices were balanced (or canceled) by the many other pundits on those liberal-centrist platforms advising audiences not to cry over the bloodbath: these people brought the violence upon themselves. 

As usual, the New York Times opinion pages were emblematic of what is normal, possible and allowable in elite American commentary on Palestine. Bret Stephens put it most succinctly on 16 May: “Gaza’s miseries have Palestinian authors.” Stephens’ essay was a classic example of the city-upon-a-hill story where the vitality of Israeli humanity, ingenuity and entrepreneurialism is met by the baseness of Palestinian ignorance, resentment and rejection. Stephens was not alone in the paper of record: while NYT journalists were reporting—often, but not always[2], accurately and fairly—about the overwhelming and unnecessary Israeli violence against Palestinians, the NYT opinion pages filled with other stories, as if to off-set the damage done by stating facts clearly. On 16 May, David Brooks also weighed in to decry the rise of “extremist” thought on both sides of the conflict, placing the lion’s share of the blame on Hamas, as if the organization were capable of total mind control over the Gaza Strip. 

Only one other regular NYT columnist commented in the pages on the Gaza protests last week: on 14 May, Michelle Goldberg wrote forcefully about Palestinian rights and history and about the alliance between Israeli Jews and evangelical Americans, from a position that was not so much “pro-Palestinian” as it was progressive and diasporic Jewish. Two other columnists— Thomas Friedman and Bari Weiss—who might have been expected to write something were silent, at least on the page. For his part, though, Friedman had already advised that Israel deal with Arabs most aggressively in a recent column. And in an appearance on Bill Maher, Weiss blamed dying Palestinians for raining on Israel’s parade. She also admonished audiences for feeling sorry for Israel’s victims who were, nothing more than dupes of Hamas: “Let’s not fall for a trap that is being set by a theocratic, authoritarian group that are sending women and children to be human shields.”

By that time, there had already been a steady stream of other pieces in the opinion pages of the paper. On Monday, 14 May, one contributor made the provocative claim that Zionists invented human rights, suggesting—though not explicitly saying—that human rights and norms belong to Israel and its supporters, even when it comes to Gaza. On that same day, Ahmad Abu Artema—a Gaza organizer—effectively laid out the case and rationale behind the Gaza protests. On 16 May, an Israeli soldier-writer, Matti Friedman, reflected on his experience in the Israeli military to argue that American audiences were being tricked by Hamas. Friedman urged readers to reject "simplistic" stories, presumably like the ones that showed how Israeli snipers were shooting unarmed Palestinians. On 17 May, in a perfect counterpoint to Friedman, Gazan author Atef Abu Saif, published a poetic reflection on the experience of protesting at Israel’s fence.

Reflecting on these pieces, we can reasonably say that the editors at the opinion page were working to create a balance. On one side, three pieces that begin from the premise that Palestinians are human beings who possess inalienable rights and who are survivors of a long history of dispossession that includes the 1947-8 Nakba and also a brutal military occupation that has lasted from 1967 until the present. And on the other, four pieces that do not acknowledge this history, do not grant Gazans normal rights and agency, and do not axiomatically recognize Gazans as humans. Given how rarely Gazan realities appear in the pages of the New York Times, it is striking that two of the seven pieces were penned by Gazan authors. While three out of seven does not strike a perfect balance, it does indicate an attempt to include narratives of Palestinian humanity.

 That attempt was torched on 18 May when Shmuel Rosner, an American-Israeli contributing opinion writer to the NYT, was effectively given the final word on Gaza. Rosner wrote, “It is customary to adopt an apologetic tone when scores of people have been killed, as they were this week in Gaza. But I will avoid this sanctimonious instinct and declare coldly: Israel had a clear objective when it was shooting, sometimes to kill, well-organized “demonstrators” near the border… I feel no need to engage in ingénue mourning.”

What does it mean for Rosner put the word demonstratorsin square quotes? That and the observation that they were well-organizedimply that they are not “real” for at least two reasons.  First, because protestors are being manipulated—by Hamas, no doubt. And second, because the demonstrations are being organized at all, rather than occurring in a wholly spontaneous fashion. In other words, these are not authenticdemonstrations and therefore the demands apparently being made by protesters—ending the siege of Gaza and allowing them return to their homes—can be ignored out of hand. And what do protests become when we take away demands? Nothing less than a riot. A seething, angry—and inarticulate—threat that must be dealt with in terms of security and control. 

But Rosner’s comments went far beyond dismissal of demands. He was also arguing that to mourn Palestinian losses was ingénue, that is, naïve and childish. We might ask Rosner: when are Gazan lives worthy of mourning? Fortunately, Rosner tells us: when they cease resisting their defeat. In this, he is in line with Stephens who delivered the same message to Gazans in his column: 

No decent Palestinian society can emerge from the culture of victimhood, violence and fatalism symbolized by these protests. No worthy Palestinian government can emerge if the international community continues to indulge the corrupt, anti-Semitic autocrats of the Palestinian Authority or fails to condemn and sanction the despotic killers of Hamas. And no Palestinian economy will ever flourish through repeated acts of self-harm and destructive provocation.

According to these authors, there is no point in lamenting Palestinian losses. Whatever tragedy befalls them, they have no one else to blame but themselves. Lest we mistake callousness for thoughtlessness, Rosner rejects empathy with Palestinians by way of timeless wisdom from the Talmudic tradition: 

The Jewish sages had a famous, if not necessarily pleasant, saying that went something like this: Those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind. As harsh as this sounds amid the scenes from Gaza, as problematic as this seems to good-intentioned people whose instinct is to sympathize with the weaker side in every conflict, sometimes there is no better choice than being clear, than being firm, than drawing a line that cannot be crossed by those wanting to harm you. By fire, if necessary.

This is how the opinion pages at the NYT ended a very busy week last week: with a call to slaughter, wrapped in an exhortation not to mourn the Palestinian death that would occur as a direct result.

As we have already seen, the narrative of the City and the Gate is fully portable, and ready-for deployment in the USA. And it resonates deeply with a pop culture crowded with humanoid monsters. Those who use this framework to dehumanize Palestinians will use it to dehumanize others. And in fact, they already are, and have been for some time. It is not just Ann Coulter asking to shoot people on the US-Mexico border, or Trump referring to immigrants as "animals."  It's not just loonies on the racist right either: these arguments already appear routinely in the nation's leading liberal newspaper. 

[1] As David D. Kirkpatrick reported this same week, the alliance with Christian Zionists is severely straining the older alliance with Jewish Americans.  

[2] A particularly egregious exception was the “shooting-and-crying” piece filed by Isabel Kershner and David Halbfinger on 14 May.