by MAJD ASADI
When a regime reaches a stage where its terror is overt, blatant and without masks, it is a sign that it has exhausted itself
The following exchange, reported from an Israeli cabinet discussion on enforcing the so-called Yellow Line – a boundary inside Gaza marking areas Israel says it will control militarily – captures the mindset of those overseeing the genocide.
Major General Tamir Yadai, deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army: “When we see an adult suspect, we shoot; a child with a donkey, we arrest.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, minister of national security: “Why not shoot a child with a donkey?”
David “Dudi” Amsalem, minister of regional cooperation: “Who should we shoot first: the child or the donkey?”
That seemingly shocking conversation, held in a cabinet room where senior officials joked about shooting Palestinian children, stripping speaker and subject alike of their humanity, is not merely a slip of the tongue.
To justify Israel’s sustained violence, a racist mechanism is
required to provide psychological and political legitimacy. The question
itself is a representation of that racist ideology in its most brazen
form – one that equates Palestinians with animals.
Such language has been deployed since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza,
during which various leaders referred to Palestinians as “human animals“.
It is a window into the nadir of dehumanisation: a linguistic method of legitimising institutionalised violence that does not distinguish between person and security object, because the goal is “annihilation, expulsion and settlement”.
When ministers speak this way, they do not address a person with a story; they invoke a faceless image severed from story and place.
This is a process in which the person becomes a worthless object, and the power to dispossess becomes the highest moral authority. Language precedes the bullet, preparing the ground for total erasure. It is a conversation among those who only appear human.
The deputy chief of staff tries to frame such violence as bounded by “orders” and “law”, but those phrases are an attempt to lend artificial order to a system whose limits have long been breached. When ministers join in, the mask is completely torn off: the violence is not a deviation but an essential means for establishing an ideological vision.
Linguistic erasure
This dialogue is not disconnected from its context. It follows the murder of tens of thousands of children in Gaza, after months in which the very concept of “child” was omitted from Israeli military and public language.
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