Palestine and its People: When Evil is Legitimized From Dehumanizatio to Genocid in the Colonial Mindset Written by Dr. Zahra Wahib Khadraj

Palestine and its People: When Evil is Legitimized
From Dehumanization to Genocide in the Colonial Mindset

Written by Dr. Zahra Wahib Khadraj
Translated by Aya Hussein

Introduction

They claimed that certain human races and nationalities are superior to others, asserting a supremacy that allegedly entitles those at the top to transgress against those deemed inferior through killing, genocide, destruction, and enslavement. More often than not, they marketed fabricated religious texts to validate these claims.
Moving in the name of God and acting upon His commands, they set out to crush those whom they perceived as "human animals" and troublesome villains.

During a press conference [Human Rights Watch Report on Gaza Blockade (2023)] held on October 9, 2023, two days after the onset of the Al-Aqsa Flood battle, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke of the Gaza Strip, stating: "We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed."

In one of his speeches during the early days of the war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked a biblical text from the Book of Deuteronomy (Chapter 17), stating: "Israel will continue this war until the security of the State of Israel and the people of Israel is guaranteed. We have one supreme goal: to destroy the murderous enemy and eradicate this evil from the world. You must remember what Amalek has done to you, as our Holy Bible tells us. And we do remember." Netanyahu added, addressing the forces deployed in and around Gaza: "We are now fighting with our brave soldiers and units who join the chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that began 3,000 years ago, from Joshua bin Nun to the heroes of 1948, the Six-Day War, the 1973 War, and all the wars fought by this state. You have one great goal: to crush your criminal enemy and ensure our stability in our land."

The "Amalek" of the distant past are thus equated with the Palestinians of today and perhaps all Arabs, whom Israel believes it must crush to maintain its hold on stolen land. It is widely understood that the first proclaimed objective of the war on Gaza was the obliteration of Hamas, a goal that cannot be achieved except through the absolute destruction of Gaza, the slaughter of its people, and the forced displacement of the survivors. By invoking these texts, a religious cover and moral justification are provided for the genocide of today’s Amalekites, who are framed as the epitome of evil.
Similarly, the Evangelical Pastor John Hagee, renowned for his fierce defense of Israel, frequently reiterates in his writings and sermons [John Hagee, In Defense of Israel: The Bible’s Mandate]: "The Bible proves that the Jewish people are the most exceptional people on Earth. They are a chosen people, the literal apple of God’s eye. The undeniable biblical truth is that the Jewish people are unique... She stands apart from all other nations on Earth, including Americans." This rhetoric is consistently deployed to affirm the inherent supremacy of the Jewish people over the rest of humanity.

This narrative did not originate on October 7--;-- rather, it began long before, exactly 143 years ago. It was initiated by thirteen young men and women, students from the University of Kharkov in Ukraine, who formed the vanguard of Jewish migration to Palestine in 1882. These individuals belonged to the BILU movement, which spread among the Jews of Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Poland. BILU was a youth movement that promoted Palestine as the historical and religious homeland of the Jewish people, advocating for immediate emigration and the establishment of agricultural colonies.

In that very year, the first Jewish colony was established in Palestine under the name "Rishon LeZion" (meaning "The First to Zion"). It was erected on the lands of the Palestinian village of Ayoun Qara, a locality famous for its abundant water springs, situated in the coastal plain south of Jaffa.
Subsequent waves of migration followed. Within the first fifteen years of the initial Zionist migration, twelve colonies were established across various locales in Palestine. In their quest to forge a nation-state out of nothing, the Zionist movement secured the Balfour Declaration in 1917, thereby gaining international political backing from global imperialism to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. At this juncture, the core elements of political settler-colonial ideology crystallized: the allocation of lands exclusively for Jewish settlers, the formation of armed militias, and a fundamental shift in the movement’s objectives--;-- moving from mere agricultural immigration to the assertion of absolute political sovereignty over the land.

The Haganah organization was formed in 1920 as an armed Jewish force. By 1936, during the Great Palestinian Revolt, organized and armed Zionist aggression became starkly apparent. The Haganah collaborated closely with the British Mandate authorities to launch joint assaults on Palestinian towns and villages, carry out targeted assassinations, and burn Palestinian localities to the ground. Concurrently, other extremist Jewish militias emerged, such as the Irgun (IZL), Lehi (The Stern Gang), and the Palmach, which systematically executed --dir--ect attacks against Palestinian civilians. By 1947, this aggression escalated into an open war of ethnic cleansing and terror. The historical record is replete with massacres: the Balad al-Shaykh massacre, the Deir Yassin massacre, the Tantura massacre, the Ramle massacre, the Al-Dawayima massacre, and the Abu Shusha massacre, to name but a few from a painfully long list.

The massacres perpetrated in Palestine were not unprecedented--;-- rather, they were preceded by the historical horrors that accompanied the arrival of European colonizers in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and parts of Asia. In Palestine, these atrocities remain ongoing, sustained by the backing and blessing of the global order established by international imperialism. This imperialist structure has subjected humanity to immense suffering, and its survival has historically depended on the erasure of indigenous populations through slaughter, destruction, siege, starvation, and the systematic plunder of land and resources. It is the exact same colonial mindset that devastated the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Africa, and Asia that today occupies Palestine and violates the sovereignty of nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Venezuela.


Although the 1948 United Nations Convention [United Nations Treaty Series - Genocide Convention Text] codified genocide as an international crime, defining it as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole´or in part, a national, ethnical, racial,´-or-religious group, these acts include killing, causing serious bodily´or psychological harm, deliberately inflicting living conditions calculated to bring about destruction, preventing births,orforcibly transferring children.

Despite the existence of provisions and conventions in international law, this type of massacre continues to be committed under the world’s watchful eye and often with its blessing. The massacres in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the massacres committed by France against the Algerian people, and the massacres in Kashmir, Chechnya, and against the Rohingya are only a few examples.


But where is the rest of humanity and the international community in the face of the massacres being committed against specific groups?

In the face of what resides within the human soul, does that inner voice remain constantly alert and sensitive, always ready to weigh one’s actions against moral standards and lofty values, thereby giving rise to feelings of responsibility and guilt´-or-a sense of reassurance? Does conscience remain alive within people’s chests, its sharp gaze continuing to trouble and unsettle them, no matter how much cruelty takes hold of hearts and minds?
How are those responsible for killings and massacres, and those who carry them out, able to set this conscience aside, so that they strike, slaughter, destroy, and eradicate with full will and awareness, without even the slightest flicker of hesitation? The human being then seems to become nothing more than a ferocious beast, endlessly driven by a thirst for bloodshed, with no humanity to restrain it. Why? And what is it that happens?


How does the colonial mindset permit itself to violate human lives and property without the slightest sense of guilt ormoral restraint?

The colonial mindset is not-limit-ed to any particular race, color,´-or-religion--;-- colonialism is, before all else, a mentality rather than an identity. The essence of colonialism lies not in who the colonizer is, but in the way they think and behave. This mentality is often adopted by those who find themselves in positions of power and become detached from basic human ethics--;-- individuals capable of committing grave abuses without fear of accountability´-or-restraint.
Through his critical analysis of Western discourse, particularly in his landmark work Orientalism, Edward Said argued that the West constructs a cultural and intellectual framework through which the East is portrayed as an inferior "other"--;-- backward, irrational, and static, in contrast to a West depicted as superior, rational, and progressive.
According to Said, the colonial mindset rests upon several fundamental pillars, foremost among them the production of knowledge as an instrument of power. The study and representation of the East, across literature, history, and academic Orientalism alike, are not neutral endeavors, but rather mechanisms designed to serve political and economic domination.

In her profound work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt analyzed the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi bureaucrat tasked with organizing the deportation of Jews to extermination camps. Arendt did not merely recount the history of the Holocaust-;-instead, she posed a fundamental philosophical question: How can an ordinary human being commit such monstrously evil acts?

Arendt advanced her famous thesis that Eichmann was neither a demonic monster nor a psychopath, but a terrifyingly normal bureaucrat who operated within a rationalized administrative logic, completely devoid of independent moral reflection. For Arendt, radical evil does not always stem from a fanatical hatred-;-rather, it often thrives because individuals abdicate their capacity for independent moral thought and self-interrogation. The most horrific crimes are executed by ordinary people who feel no guilt because they view themselves as mere cogs in an administrative chain of command, simply enforcing the laws dictated by higher authorities.

Responsibility is fragmented across bureaucratic desks, numbing the individual conscience and providing a profound sense of moral comfort under the protective cover of the law.
To commit atrocities, a human being requires a moral alibi and psychological cover--;-- a law that legitimizes evil provides both. Actions are rationalized through a dangerous prism: "If it were wrong, it would not be legal." This is far more insidious than spontaneous violence, because institutionalized law silences the conscience and completely inverts the moral compass.


In colonial systems, injustice becomes institutionalized as the prevailing order, while resistance itself is rendered a crime. Colonialism does not fundamentally rely on a single massacre oran isolated episode of violence-;- rather, it depends on a long-term structure built upon land laws, demographic classifications, and permit systems that turn domination into an ordinary, unquestioned part of daily life.
The transformation of the human being into nothing more than a permit, a racial classification,´-or-a bureaucratic file ultimately leads to what may be described as the death of moral thought. Thought is what gives rise to conscience, and conscience is what restrains acts of evil-;-consequently, the absence of thought creates the conditions for a form of evil devoid of conscience.


At this point, the representative of the colonial system no longer sees a human face, hears a personal story,´-or-recognizes a lived human reality. What stands before him is merely an administrative "case" to be processed. It is precisely here that Hannah Arendt drew a distinction between ancient evil and modern evil. In earlier times, evil, in her view, was embodied by a tyrant who knew he was unjust and fully understood that he was killing. Modern evil, however, takes shape within bureaucratic systems, where an employee obeys orders without moral scrutiny, allowing crimes to be committed within a system operating without conscience.

She has a famous saying: evil can become banal because it is thoughtless--;-- and the most dangerous moment in history occurs when human beings cease to ask, "Is this just?" and concern themselves only with asking, "Is this legal?"
In his book Palestine: Matters in Settler Colonialism, the Palestinian philosopher and political theorist Azmi Bishara asserts that colonialism is not merely a military occupation´-or-a physical army seizing land. Rather, it is an integrated ideological apparatus that redefines the very concepts of humanity, rights, violence, and justice. Crucially, it produces a violent ethical discourse that is entirely self-justifying.
Azmi Bishara does not accept the reduction of colonialism to mere military occupation, the presence of an army, and --dir--ect control over territory. Rather, he views it as a comprehensive system that reconfigures and governs fundamental concepts themselves. Colonialism controls land, and it also controls the way in which land is thought about, as well as the meaning of who is entitled to it.


It is a system that redefines violence, justice, rights, and the human being itself. Within this framework, the human being becomes conditioned by identity, as the question of entitlement is also conditioned by belonging. Thinking about land becomes inseparable from thinking about collective affiliation.
Thus, the human being becomes "complete" through belonging to the dominant group, and "incomplete"or deficient through belonging to the other. The other is not necessarily denied outright as human-;-rather, their humanity is reduced in degree and their human status is lowered.

They are re-described as a "form," stripped of full human standing.
They are reclassified as a non-threat, a non-security issue, a non-demographic risk, and a non-civilizational obstacle. While in reality their existence remains contingent, defined only in relation to the existence of the dominant power.
And once that happens, what is considered a moral crime becomes, within the colonial logic, a rational and necessary procedure. In the colonial logic, rights do not arise from existence itself, but from power, from narrative, and from the law that power produces. Colonialism does not say: "I am unjust." Rather, it says: "I am the owner of rights, because I define what rights are"-;- because I have defined what is right: The right to life, the right to housing, and the right to movement all become revocable privileges. They are granted only under conditions--;-- and they are withdrawn under conditions, under the name of security, exception,´-or-emergency.
And he emphasizes that it is necessary, in this context, to present violence as a moral necessity: "We repress in order to preserve values-;- we displace in order to protect..." And the official discourse describes it as moral firmness, not a brutal desire, and portrays cruelty as a virtue. Thus, violence becomes embedded in the conscience itself: extermination becomes the preservation of order, and killing becomes self-defense, transforming from a deterrent into a justification for evil.

The colonial discourse justifies itself through a closed circle of legitimation: "We are moral--;-- therefore, we use force-;- We use force because we are moral." Without the need for external recognition´-or-independent accountability. In this way, any form of resistance is stripped of legitimacy and framed as chaos, terrorism,´-or-hatred, and as a threat to values themselves. The victim here does not lose life alone--;-- rather, they also lose the right to be recognized as a legitimate subject of grievance´-or-moral standing.

However, this is a painful contradiction, but it is necessary, as there is no alternative. In such a situation, collective conscience becomes an "ethical false witness," and it remains silent regarding the violations committed against human life and human rights. Azmi Bishara emphasizes that colonialism does not achieve victory through military force alone. More dangerously, it first convinces itself that it is in the right. Colonialism is not victorious through weapons alone. The moment of killing is not merely the moment of violence itself, but the moment in which the act of killing becomes fully integrated with the self-image.

And the countless living examples of massacres have been committed in many regions around the world, and at the same time those who carry out killing insist that they are in the right, and that they must do what they do.
Why are human beings stripped of their humanity? It is the madness of race and nationalism.
In Aristotelian philosophy, human beings who did not enjoy full rights were classified through a racial and cultural division as the "disposable human".
Aristotle divided humanity into two distinct categories: the Greeks, whom he viewed as intellectually complete, naturally endowed for governance, and inherently free-;- and the non-Greeks, whom he classified as "barbarians" by nature, mentally deficient, incapable of self-governance, and fit only for enslavement.

This division was not merely linguistic-;- it carried profound political and ethical implications. Through this paradigm emerged the concept of the disposable human,the non Greek entity stripped of political, ethical, and human value.
Subjugating´-or-enslaving such an entity was not viewed as an injustice´-or-an infringement upon dignity, meaning the master’s conscience remained completely undisturbed. So how could there be an objection orany pangs of conscience when this object is a slave by nature, whose life and dignity are not protected under Greek law in the way a free Greek’s life is? In fact, this slave´-or-object is considered ideal when possessing a strong, healthy body but a deficient intellect, serving the master’s interests, fulfilling his demands, and obeying him in everything asked of him. However, when it comes to governance, they have no place and are inherently unfit for it.
This Aristotelian conception was regarded as a justification for slavery, colonialism, and exclusion. It served as an early example of anchoring full humanity to cultural´-or-ethnic belonging.

Such notions of ethnic´-or-cultural superiority of one group of humans over others did not confine themselves to the Greeks´-or-certain ancient civilizations--;-- rather, they evolved with the passage of time. They transitioned to become even more arrogant and hubristic, fueled by the material progress achieved by humanity. Thus, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racial theories emerged in a Europe that was undergoing a cultural, scientific, and economic renaissance. Consequently, Europe turned its gaze toward Africa and parts of Asia to colonize them, plunder their resources, and enslave their peoples.


Nationalist ideology spread strongly throughout Europe, and peoples sharing a common national identity sought to establish their own nation-states. The Germans formed Germany, the Italians formed Italy, and so on.
The emerging European states competed in building armies, despite the fact that none of them consisted of an entirely pure nation.

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