Two days after Hamas’s October 7 attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed to fight "human animals." His words spread instantly, traveling from screens to streets and military briefings worldwide. Yet, the psychological roots behind this language run deeper and older than any digital network. Even in an era of live-streamed warfare, turning human beings into animals remains chillingly effective.
When political leaders use rhetoric that compares people to insects, pests, or wild beasts, violence typically follows. In controlled psychological experiments, participants exposed to dehumanizing language were 40% more likely to tolerate civilian casualties than those who read neutral language [Kteily & Bruneau, 2015, PNAS]. For the densely packed residents of Gaza, such language is not abstract—it’s life or death.
During the October bombardment, a Gaza City teacher, Samah al-Qawasma, spoke by phone as explosions rattled her neighborhood. Her nine-year-old son had asked her why Israeli television was calling them "snakes." Confused and frightened, he wondered aloud: "If I'm a snake, should I hiss instead of cry?" Al-Qawasma’s silence lingered painfully—a mother without answers, hearing the explosions and her child’s innocent questions.
Such language has a devastating history. Atrocities across centuries share a similar rhetorical beginning: colonizers depicted Africans as apes; Nazis portrayed Jews as rats; Rwandan Hutus labeled Tutsis "cockroaches." The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, too, is replete with such metaphors. In 1983, Israeli General Rafael Eitan described Palestinians as "drugged cockroaches scurrying in a bottle." More recently, in March 2023, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared the Palestinian village of Huwara should be "erased."
Psychologists have a name for this: animalistic dehumanization. As social psychologist Nick Haslam defines it, this is the attribution of savage, irrational, and instinct-driven behavior to groups considered outsiders, stripping them of moral worth [Haslam 2006, Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev.]. Its companion is mechanistic dehumanization, a type that reduces humans to objects or machines, seen when innocent civilians become merely "human shields."
Yet why do we, as human beings, succumb to viewing others as less than human so easily? Neuroscience provides a disturbing insight: brain scans show that when people view images of groups perceived as outcasts or rivals—such as homeless populations or enemy ethnicities—there is decreased activity in brain regions responsible for empathy and moral reasoning [Harris & Fiske 2006, Psychological Science]. Our brains limit emotional connection to those we subconsciously see as less than fully human. In the urgency and fear of conflict, this shortcut feels dangerously reassuring: it rationalizes brutality, turning cruelty into self-defense.
The predictive power of such language is shockingly clear. Researchers at Harvard analyzed Hebrew-language social media during Israel’s 2014 Gaza offensive and found that tweets calling Palestinians "animals" surged 81% on days immediately preceding significant airstrikes [Levy 2019, Journal of Conflict Information]. Similarly, an analysis of speeches by Israeli politicians from 2000 to 2023 shows an unmistakable rise in derogatory, animalistic references to Palestinians, with a sharp spike following the events of October 7 [Cohen-Almagor 2023, University of Hull Working Paper].
Critics often dismiss incendiary speech as mere catharsis—a harmless emotional release amid genuine anger and fear. Yet research strongly contradicts this. A meta-analysis of 23 studies examining political rhetoric found that exposure to dehumanizing language nearly doubles public approval for collective punishments, such as sieges and forced expulsions [Rothbart 2022, Aggression & Violent Behavior]. Far from being harmless, inflammatory rhetoric shifts society’s moral compass, gradually making previously unimaginable acts seem justified—even inevitable.
Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, who has long challenged violent language in the Israeli public sphere, warns against the normalization of such terms. He argues that persistent use of dehumanizing metaphors quietly widens the spectrum of acceptable violence. Critics respond that Hamas itself employs genocidal language against Israelis, arguing moral equivalence. Yet acknowledging one side’s rhetoric does not absolve the other’s. History repeatedly demonstrates how conflicts escalate rapidly when each side reduces the other to a caricature, a dangerous abstraction.
But just as language can incite violence, it can also help defuse it. During the Second Intifada, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz ran a powerful series titled "Neighbors," humanizing Palestinians living under curfew. Follow-up surveys revealed a 15-point rise in empathy among Jewish Israelis exposed to these humanizing stories [Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2004, Hebrew University]. Grassroots initiatives, such as Combatants for Peace, have brought Israelis and Palestinians together in joint memorial ceremonies explicitly designed to restore the humanity of "the other." Participants consistently report reduced hostility and decreased support for retaliation in the months afterward.
Internationally, legal frameworks have begun to recognize the lethal consequences of rhetoric. Following Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, the International Criminal Tribunal established a groundbreaking precedent: political leaders and media figures who call humans "insects" or "vermin" can be held criminally responsible when massacres ensue. Though no Israeli officials currently face such charges, this precedent echoes in international discussions and diplomatic channels today, a reminder of how far-reaching the consequences of speech can become.
Ultimately, dehumanization thrives because it echoes unchallenged within isolated narratives. Disrupting this cycle requires intentional effort: consciously replacing words like "cockroach" with "child," "animal" with "human." Changing language alone will not immediately end the violence, but without reclaiming our ability to see each other as fully human, neither side will find the empathy needed to stop.