# Dehumanization and the Shehada Family Eviction For years, and in particular since Oct. 7, I've felt the need for a new vocabulary to adequately navigate political discourse in light of what seems important to me. Terms like left and right, radical, progressive and liberal, never really felt on the mark, and now feel less useful than ever. What I need is a terminology that categorizes political positions based on how much violence they entail for civilians. A possible terminology suggests itself to me in light of a something in common among almost all arguments for violence against civilian populations: They require collapsing human beings into non-human categories. The population in question must be disenfranchised, dispossessed, expelled or exterminated because they are merely extensions of a non-human entity: A demographic threat, an enemy nation, settler colonialism, terrorism, the Zionist entity, radical Islam, the ruling class and a host of other things. Since such arguments so often require this kind of logic, I'll call this the camp of dehumanization. On the opposite end of this binary typology would be the humanizing camp: Those who deny that civilian populations can ever be reduced to non-human entities in such a way that violence against them is justified. The claim is not that the people under threat have clean hands: They are, like everybody else, implicated in countless crimes, from the way their clothes are produced to the political structures in which they participate. None the less, the humanizing camp is about protecting civilians from violence. All of them. Where they are. Now. While this simple typology conceals important differences between various schools of thought, I think it also reveals something important. I'll now utilize it to discussion two examples of dehumanization. The first is the dehumanization of the Shehada family by the State of Israel resulting in the unjust eviction from their home. The second is the rather more hypothetical dehumanization of Israeli Jews by elements in "the progressive left". This manner of thinking helps highlight how Sin-war and Netan-yahu are in the same camp and empower each other. However, at least in my circles, this recognition is commonplace. More innovatively, it also helps me clarify where I part ways with some of "the progressive left". In my community of discourse, I have not encountered justifications of Oct. 7. Almost everyone I read, with a few notable exceptions, has condemned those atrocities. However, I regularly encounter the idea that since Israeli Jews are "settler colonialists", we are an illegal or illegitimate population in Israel-Palestine. This means that many of us, such as those who were not born here (full disclosure: this includes me), should be stripped of citizenship and possibly expelled. Sometimes the argument advocates for "anti-colonial" violence by "any means necessary", that is to say, killing unarmed civilians. All of this is part of an allegedly moral and necessary process of "decolonization". Now, I think it undeniable that the State of Israel has and does utilize colonialist tactics to dispossess and oppress Palestinians. I think the state has committed crimes of persecution, Apartheid and, if not genocide, then the mass murder of defenseless Gazan civilians. I don't object to calling the process of putting an end to these abuses "decolonization". However, a common refrain is that Israeli Jewish civilians should "go back to where they came from" because we remain "settler colonialists" even after these policies cease. In other words, the very existence of Israeli Jews constitutes oppression of Palestinians. This position collapses the humanity of a civilian population into the oppressive policies of a political regime. It is tempting to attack this dehumanization of Israeli Jews in light of its falsification of history: The presence of Jews in Israel-Palestine predates not only European colonialism, but also the Arab and Muslim conquest of this region. However, this is beside the point. The humanizing camp seeks to protect civilian populations, where they are, now. They don't need to be extensions of larger entities, such as "the People of Israel in the Land of Israel". It is enough that they are a civilian population. The place they live is where they must be protected. Dividing the local population of a given territory into legitimate and illegitimate residents based on criteria like ethnicity, nationality or where they were born is the hallmark of the dehumanizing camp. It makes little difference whether the violence advocated against the allegedly illegitimate population is proposed by the "progressive left" or the "reactionary right". It is true that leftwing criticism of Israeli colonialist practices is rationally justified, whereas rightwing claims of Jewish supremacism are not. However, rationality ceases where the rejection of oppressive policies becomes the rejection of a civilian population. Advocating violence against Israeli Jews, such as disenfranchising or expelling any part of them, is merely a reiteration of the dehumanizing gaze that accompanies all blood-and-soil nativism-come-nationalism. The ascendance of dehumanization under the guise of post-colonialism (which in this context would be better described as neo-colonialism) poses a real threat to the future of all people who live in this land. This is not because I imagine that a progressive left-wing regime might actually be able one day to annul my citizenship, remove me from my home and family, and expel me from my country. It is much more likely that Ben Gvir or Sinwar will do that. The threat is that if decolonization means violence against Israeli Jewish civilians, then no sane members of this group will ever embrace it. No population will advocate for their own dehumanization. The militaristic jingoism of "go back to where you came from" leaves Israeli Jews only one option: military dominance. Since I believe that path leads to mutually assured destruction for all civilians in Israel-Palestine, it is the greatest threat to our survival. Only the humanizing camp, offering equality to neither natives nor settlers, but rather to all civilians as citizens, offers a real alternative to the never-ending violence of dehumanization.