Media portrayals, hate crimes and the genocide in Palestine

Words can kill

How are grave crimes and barbarity allowed to happen? A cue from history is that the German Nazis were actively engaged in dehumanising the Jewish population long before the Holocaust. Linguistic studies of Nazi propaganda have shown how words such as rats, lice, cockroaches, foxes, and vultures were used to describe Jews in a bid to depict them as evil and scheming agents devoid of all human feelings. This way, the Third Reich was able to defy moral barriers to the genocide of six million Jews during the Second World War.

Similarly, the minority Tutsis in Rwanda were referred to by the Hutu majority as “cockroaches.” The call to “Kill the cockroaches!” reverberated brazenly on the radio and in the newspapers. Tutsis were hunted down and mercilessly killed in schools, churches, hospitals and even in prisons. What began with words of derision ended in a blood bath on a horrific scale, leading to the killing of an estimated one million Tutsis in 100 days in 1994.

These days, Palestinian children are writing their names on their bodies – their palms, wrists and legs –   so that they can be identified if they die, as corpses pile up all around them. They sombrely recognise that death awaits them in their childhood. Those who survive may never be able to fully overcome the psychological trauma inflicted on them.

Israel, encouraged by most Western powers, is drunk on taking revenge and in its blind rage, is creating the conditions for greater radicalisation and more violence. Most sections of the global media have not hidden their complicity in this depraved mission. Militarised violence, however, can never eliminate the Palestinian resistance to regain their lands even if it means accepting the two-State solution, dangled as carrots for decades without being realistically offered.

Today, on the streets of the besieged Gaza Strip, Palestinian blood is flowing freely while calls for an immediate ceasefire have fallen on deaf ears. Western powers even after three weeks of deadly Israeli attacks on unarmed Palestinians have avoided even the call for an immediate ceasefire. A genocide is unfolding with the fullest backing of Western powers

Hate crimes

“Mom, I’m fine.” Those were the final words of Wadea Al-Fayoume, the six-year-old Palestinian American who was fatally stabbed 26 times at his home in Plainfield Township, Illinois on 14 October 2023. The young boy’s mother, 32-year-old Hanaan Shahin also suffered more than a dozen serious stab injuries but survived. She could not attend her son’s funeral which was held two days later as she was still hospitalised.

Wadea was a hapless victim of a horrific hate crime. He was killed because he was a Muslim and a Palestinian. His assailant was a 71-year-old man, Joseph Czuba, the family’s landlord, who had allegedly screamed, “You Muslims must die!” during the attack. He is also reported to have shouted, “You are killing our kids in Israel. You Palestinians don’t deserve to live!”

Wadea’s family had no reason to suspect what was to occur as the landlord and tenants had previously enjoyed cordial relations. Czuba had bought the little boy toys, even built him a tree house, and allowed him to swim in a makeshift pool. “He was friendly to the whole family, but especially to the kid, who he treated like a grandson,” according to Yousef Hannon, Wadea’s uncle. On that fateful Saturday morning, the child had run to Czuba for a hug upon seeing him and was instead brutally knifed to death.

Media biases

The crime did not take place in a vacuum. The hatred towards Muslims was a result of a toxic media diet, culminating in the death of an innocent child and severe injuries to his equally innocent mother. It is among the many tragic incidents that underscore how negative media portrayals result in real-world violence, making it more acceptable to attack ‘other’ groups of human beings.

In the days leading to the violent crime, Czuba had grown paranoid about his tenants. A regular listener of conservative radio talk shows, he had become “obsessed” with the Israel-Palestine conflict and feared that Shahin was going to “call over her Palestinian friends or family to harm them,” Czuba’s wife Mary told investigators. Czuba was thus spurred by the hateful rhetoric and anti-Palestinian racism that reached him via at least one and possibly many media platforms.

The large, diverse gathering of mourners at Wadea’s funeral saw this lethal connection; they carried placards chastising the media for its role in the child’s killing. One placard read, “One-sided statements and media lies fuelled the hate that killed Wadea’s life.” At the funeral, Oday Al-Fayoume, Wadea’s father lamented, “They talk about us [Muslims] like criminals and terrorists and the Israelis as heroes.”

Illinois State Representative and Palestinian American Abdelnasser Rashid affirmed, “This was directly connected to the dehumanising of Palestinians that has been allowed over the last week by our media, by our elected officials who have lacked the moral compass and lacked the courage to call for something as simple as de-escalation and peace.”  

Ahmed Rehab of the Council on American-Islamic Relations concurred. “Wadea paid the price for the atmosphere of hate and otherisation and dehumanisation that, frankly, I think we are seeing here in the United States as a result of the irresponsible leadership and lopsided one-sided statements and coverage that we’re seeing in the media,” Rehab said.

The crime did not take place in a vacuum. The hatred towards Muslims was a result of a toxic media diet, culminating in the death of an innocent child and severe injuries to his equally innocent mother. It is among the many tragic incidents that underscore how negative media portrayals result in real-world violence, making it more acceptable to attack ‘other’ groups of human beings

Paralysis in Palestine

Today, on the streets of the besieged Gaza Strip, Palestinian blood is flowing freely while calls for an immediate ceasefire have fallen on deaf ears. Western powers even after three weeks of deadly Israeli attacks on unarmed Palestinians have avoided even the call for an immediate ceasefire. A genocide is unfolding with the fullest backing of Western powers. 

Since Hamas’ 7 October attacks, against the background of the Israeli desecration of Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, thousands of men, women and children have been slaughtered by Israel’s relentless ariel bombardment in the densely populated and heavily under-resourced Gaza. Their only crime was to be born in the world’s largest concentration camp controlled by an apartheid regime. Their lands stolen, livelihoods destroyed and hopes shattered. 

Despite the carnage, Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, insisted, “There’s no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” There’s no humanitarian crisis because she and other Israeli genocide promoters do not see Palestinians as human beings. Israel’s genocidal intent was stated in no uncertain terms and now it’s all about eliminating the human ‘animals’. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” proclaimed Yoav Gallant, Israel’s Defence Minister after cutting off water, electricity, fuel and food to the people of Gaza. 

As tennis great Martina Navratilova noted, the strategy is “right out of the Hitler playbook. Step 1 – dehumanise this particular group of people. Do enough of that and you can do anything with/to that group.”