Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared, “Israelis were dehumanized in the most horrific way on October 7.”
Blinken’s statement demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what happened on October 7 and calls into question whether he can be an effective mediator of a solution since he doesn’t understand the problem. Palestinians did not dehumanize Israelis on October 7.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has been dehumanizing Jews and Israelis since the launching of the Oslo process. What happened on October 7 was the Palestinian population, led by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah, implementing what they believe Jews and Israelis deserve after 28 years of their leaders dehumanizing Jews.
Hatred that led up to the October 7 massacre
Just three months before the October 7 atrocities, the most important Palestinian religious figure, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Mahmoud Abbas’s adviser on religious affairs and the PA’s top Sharia judge, warned Palestinians about the danger of Jews.
He described Jews as people who “have left the path of humanity and followed Satanity. Satanity is an exit from humanity… Satan does not have to be in the form of a demon, hidden, he can also be in your form, but he is Satan. In the form of man, but he is Satan.” (Official PA TV, July 7, 2023). Satan in Islam is the source of all evil in the world. Fighting and killing the Satanic Jew is not only an act of self-defense for Palestinians but also makes the world a safer place.
In an earlier sermon, Al-Habbash said Jews on the Temple Mount are “grazing herds of humanoids, people, or creatures that Allah created in the form of humans… those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He became angry and made of them apes and pigs.” (Quran 5:60). He therefore urged Muslims to visit al-Aqsa Mosque so that it does not remain “the prey of humanoids.” (Official PA TV, September 30, 2022).
THREE TIMES in the first half of 2023, official PA TV broadcast the opinions of Palestinian researcher Muhammad Al-Yahya, who explained: “Jews are by nature arrogant, do not accept the other… The Europeans hated them and wanted to get rid of them, so the European countries... had the idea of establishing a Jewish state for the Jews... .
“Their [Jewish] thinking is based on racism that caused them to be hated everywhere... In the Protocols of the Elders of Zion... there is a sentence that they are fulfilling that has caused them to be hated by all peoples... The pure Jew has the outlook that he is of the people chosen by God.”
On October 17, Palestinian political commentator Kamal Zakarneh explained on PA TV that Western nations support Israel because “Europe and America succeeded in getting rid of the Jews, whom they themselves view as human waste, and they threw them out into Palestine... They don’t want [a weak Israel which will cause] reverse migration now and their [Jews’] return to Europe again.”
The PA leadership has made it clear that the dehumanizing of Jews is not just a technical categorization but something to be acted upon. The PA leaders present the murderers of dehumanized Jews as Palestinian role models and heroes.
After the murderers of Lucy Dee and her two daughters, Maia and Rina, had been tracked down and killed by Israeli forces in May 2023, the Palestinian politician, Muhammad Shtayyeh, posted the pictures of the murderers on his Facebook page and honored them: “Glory and eternity to our righteous Martyrs.”
When Palestinian murderers Maher and Karim Younes were released from prison last January after 40 years in prison, Mahmoud Abbas had a video made of him calling them on the phone to say, “You and Karim are prominent figures among this Palestinian people. We are proud of you... You are models of this nation, models of this people. You are icons of the Palestinian people…” (Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page.)
When the two top leaders of the Palestinian Authority are defining murderers of Jews as Palestinian “models and icons” deserving of “glory and eternity,” dehumanization was already complete and being acted on.
OCTOBER 7 did not happen in a vacuum and was not the initial act of dehumanization. Years of successful PA indoctrination of the Palestinians had already dehumanized Jews in the Palestinian perception, which made Palestinians believe that October 7 was proper moral behavior.
Palestinians trusted that they were merely acting in self-defense on behalf of all humanity against the dangers and suffering caused by “Satan Jews,” and “humanoid Jews” who are “human waste.”
At a press conference accompanying the release of Palestinian Media Watch’s report on Palestinian schoolbooks in the US Senate in 2007, then-senator Hillary Clinton said Palestinians were “profoundly poisoning the minds of these children.” What happened 16 years later, on October 7, were the actions of the poisoned generation.
Secretary Antony Blinken and the United States must understand that if they are seeking a solution, it cannot be achieved by merely treating the actions of October 7 as a one-time horrific isolated event and by replacing Hamas’s rule of Gaza with the rule of the PA.
It was the PA that poisoned a generation of Palestinians and created support for Hamas. Before anyone should talk about giving additional jurisdiction to the poisonous PA, Israel needs to see a fundamental and extended detoxification of Palestinians, a process that will take years and possibly decades.
Only then can Israel consider extending jurisdiction to the PA, and only then will there be a population with which Israel can start a peace process.
The writer is director of Palestinian Media Watch.