The president of Israel said: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It is absolutely not true.”
An Israeli Knesset member said: “The Children of Gaza brought it upon themselves.”
The minister of defence described the current war this way: “We are fighting human animals.”
Statements of this kind, in which an entire group of people are demonized or seen as responsible for the actions of a few, are sheer bigotry. The very same racism when applied to other groups (like Jews, Blacks, or Native Americans) has led to pogroms, persecution, or genocide.
First, it is important to note, as I do in Palestinians, the Invisible Victims: Political Zionism and Palestinian Human Rights, Political Zionism has long promoted this view of the indigenous people of Palestine as less civilized, more violent, and less worthy than the settler movement that sought to displace them.
Theodor Herzl termed his project “an outpost of civilization against barbarism.” Chaim Weizmann echoed it when appealing for support from the West by describing the Zionist/Arab struggle as one between “the forces of destruction and the desert and the forces of civilization and building.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used similar dehumanizing rhetoric just last week, describing the ongoing conflict as between 21st century progress and “the barbaric fanaticism of the Middle Ages” and a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness.” Over the years Israeli political and religious leaders have also referred to Palestinians as “cockroaches” or “snakes.”
But what about the claim that “all Palestinians support Hamas”?
Our frequent polling across Palestine and Israel provides data that easily debunks that characterization. In our last poll in Gaza (July, 2023) only 11 percent identified themselves as Hamas supporters—as opposed to 32 percent identified with Fatah. Eleven percent hardly constitutes “all Palestinians.”
As for the claim that Palestinians voted for Hamas and are therefore culpable for their behavior, the same dangerous generalization would hold all Americans responsible for the actions of the US government, or all Israelis, or Jews, responsible for the atrocities committed by the Israeli government. But more to the point, most Palestinians did not vote for Hamas, and those who did, did not vote for them for the reasons being suggested.
In our 2006 poll, the Fatah margin over Hamas in Gaza was 34 percent to 29 percent. How and why, then, did Hamas win the 2006 legislative elections?
The slim Hamas margin of victory in that year’s election was 44 percent to 41 percent. Hamas took control of the legislature because of the way seats were apportioned and because of internal divisions within Fatah. And while “pundits” say Hamas won because of the PA’s corruption, polling tells a different story.
The outcome of the 2006 election was shaped by a classic “throw the bums out” message. Fatah and Hamas were viewed equally as corrupt.
* The author is the president Arab American Institute
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