My friend, Jon Bergdahl often uses social media to campaign against antisemitism. This week, he made these comments about the Hamas’ attacks in Israel and how they are being reported on and responded to.
This drew the following response.
Is Dean right? Was Jon’s language dehumanising? It is also worth noting in this context, especially as later in the thread, Dean picked up on it, that some Israeli spokesmen have described Hamas as “human animals.”
First of all, I do have one disagreement with Jon. Sadly, we cannot say that the horrific atrocities committed by Hamas are unprecedented. Whilst it was particularly shocking for Israelis to experience this vile-attack on their own soil, such atrocities have frequently been perpetrated throughout history and indeed against Jews, including here in England.
However, I do not see the problem with the language of demonisation. Jon is seeking to find language that describes the horror of this intense evil. The focus is not on the actions. He’s not saying that the people involved are not human. Rather, he is saying that their behaviours have been influenced by demons. We as Christians should certainly be open to the possibility that the devil and evil Spirits are involved in evil deeds. This may be through outright demon possession but the biblical concept of demonisation includes the broader influence of the devil on human behaviour.
By the way, I also want to say that yes, Hamas’ crimes were also deeply human. By this, I don’t mean “humanity” as made in the image of God but rather in respect to our fallen, sinful nature. The Bible uses the word “flesh” to describe this. The Bible also has a sense on which our behaviours are affected by the values of our culture and the systems and structures that shape us. So, Biblically we wouldn’t just say that Hamas’ atrocities were demonic. We would say that they were of the flesh, the world and the devil.
Now I expect that most of my readers are Christians and would have little problem with that concept but even if you are reading this as someone sceptical of religious belief, I think that there are points that still stand. We often seek to find language that describes behaviour, words and attitudes to make it clear that those words and deeds fall far short of what we value as humans. Let’s come back to the other example of “human animals”. Now, great care is needed here. First, for Israelis, that in their understandable anger, they don’t allow their thoughts, attitudes and words concerning the wider Palestinian population to spiral. It’s crucial that they recognise Palestinians as fellow human beings in their response. Second, we need to be careful in our quick responses to translated words and phrases that we don’t misunderstand.
Having said that, it is worth remembering that it has been consistent for us to use words like “beastly” (although that has lost its force) or to describe people as behaving like animals to express our moral assessment of behaviours that fall short of what we value as humans. We also use the word “inhumane” to describe actions without any suggesting that calling a response “inhumane” dehumanises the person.
It seems that part of Dean’s concern is the use of religious language but surely it is not for someone to police the language of those with religious faith just because it offends his sensibilities. Indeed, we might want to challenge his own use of language. See for example:
Dean’s suggestion that we are talking about “a human rights tragedy” is itself deeply unhelpful at best and potentially disturbing. This lifts of the horror of what happened last week to the abstract level. We want to be clear that no, the victims of Hamas, or indeed any victim of evil behaviour are not just affected by some tragedy like an earthquake or a hurricane. Evil was done to them personally and to fail to recognise this is to deny their voice and itself might be considered dehumanising.
It is important that we rightly describe the full horror of the evil done last week. We can do this without dehumanising others but at the same time holding them accountable and responsible. We can also do so trusting in the God who can free and forgive even the worst of Hamas terrorists.
Faithroots 