The horrific images that came out of Israel’s so-called “Gaza Envelope” in the days following the 7 October 2023 massacre shocked the world. Footage of Palestinian militants shooting and abducting Israeli civilians, some of them bloodstained, others mutilating corpses on camera, went around the globe. The Hamas-led attack, in which over 1,100 Israelis were killed, including dozens of children and elderly, and more than 240 taken hostage, triggered a global wave of solidarity with Israel and condemnations of Hamas in the strongest possible terms.
Since the conflict had largely disappeared from the news cycle for years, the massacre came out of the blue for both Israelis and most Western publics. Few were aware that more Palestinian children, 47 in total, had been killed in the first nine months of 2023 than in any previous year.[1] The fact that Gaza had become an open-air prison for most of its inhabitants and that more than half of the population was food insecure as a result of 17 years of Israeli blockade was not making global headlines. As long as Gaza was quiet, it was forgotten. Only when occasional rocket fire with primitive homemade missiles triggered a – usually disproportionate – Israeli response, known as “mowing the lawn” in IDF jargon and carried out with similar regularity, roughly every five years, would Gaza briefly reappear on the international agenda.
Nothing can justify brutally killing and abducting defenceless civilians. To prevent such atrocities from happening again in the future it is no less essential to look at the context they occurred in. This was not the kind of discussion the Government of Israel (GoI) was interested in. When UNSG Guterres pointed out that the Hamas-led attacks did “not happen in a vacuum” on 24 October 2023, Israel’s ambassador to the UN called for his resignation. Placing the attack into its contemporary context, even while condemning it, was quickly met with accusations of antisemitism. From the point of view of the GoI, the only permissible context in which the attacks could be discussed was that of the Holocaust – with Palestinians in the role of the “new nazis.”
To long-term observers of Middle East affairs, the fact that most European political and opinion leaders went along with this approach was more surprising than the attack itself and was cause for alarm. Still, very few experts would have predicted in October 2023 that, more than 20 months and more than 50,000 Palestinian casualties later, Israel’s military retaliation for the attack would still rage on with no end in sight – despite legally binding orders by the International Court of Justice in a genocide case against Israel, despite arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court against its Prime Minister, despite repeated appeals by the UN Security Council and Israel’s closest allies and global mass mobilization at every level.
How Did We Get Here? Understanding the Problem
While the Middle East has been plagued with different forms of violent extremism for decades, the Gaza War has taken radicalization to levels never seen before. A recent poll found that 82% of Jewish Israelis are in favour of expelling Palestinians from Gaza, while 47% want to kill every single man, woman and child in Gaza.[2] On the flipside, wholesale rejection of the State of Israel’s right to exist is also hitting new records, even 75 years after its creation, far beyond the region: 54% of young Britons and 52% of young Americans aged 18-24 said that Israel should not exist in two different polls conducted in 2024.[3]
A recent poll found that 82% of Jewish
Israelis are in favour of expelling Palestinians
from Gaza, while 47% want to kill every
single man, woman and child in Gaza
Neither of these polls, concerning though they are, should be seen as more than a momentary expression of outrage, anger or frustration. To explain why that is the case, let us take a closer look at how violent extremism and dehumanization relate to each other. It requires no further explanation than the link between dehumanization and radicalization goes both ways: extremism dehumanizes, and dehumanization radicalizes. It is important to note, however, that there are different pathways towards violent extremism, where this two-way linkage plays out differently.
Different Pathways to Radicalization
What all forms of violent extremism have in common is that they are (a) directed by one human group against another and (b) triggered by a sense of humiliation and outrage over a perceived injustice. What this perception of injustice is based on can vary greatly, leading to at least two fundamentally different types of violent extremism that each require a distinct response: the first type results from real injustice, oppression, humiliation and often dehumanization. What constitutes “real” injustice can be determined by comparing the conditions of the radicalized group – material, social, legal and otherwise – to those of the targeted group. While this type of radicalization is the easiest to comprehend and empathize with, at least in its origins, it can be no less brutal and dehumanizing. History abounds with examples, from the countless slave and peasant rebellions to the tyrannies of Cromwell, Robespierre, the Russian Bolsheviks, the Iranian mullahs and so on. It is important to note that the radicalization does not have to be limited to the group experiencing the injustice directly but can actually extend far beyond the oppressed groups itself.
The second type of violent extremism is essentially the flipside of the same coin. It is based on a sense of entitlement and superiority and usually triggered by a rebellion of the oppressed group which challenges the status quo. Since the entitled group is either unaware of its privilege or convinced that it is justified, typically due to the perceived inferiority of the oppressed group, the challenge is felt as a humiliation and outrageous injustice. This type of radicalization is almost always preceded by a high degree of indoctrination and often accompanied by dehumanizing narrative manipulation and atrocity propaganda. Historic precedents include the genocide against the Herero & Nama in Namibia, or the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China. In some cases, the propaganda seeks to single out one specific group as a scapegoat, regardless of its actual responsibility for the perceived humiliation or injustice. This was the case, for instance, with academics, intellectuals and scientists scapegoated as enemies of the people in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields and in China during the Cultural Revolution. It was also the case for the Jews in Germany, who were falsely accused by the Nazis of having caused Germany’s defeat and humiliation by the Treaty of Versailles.
The Role of Dehumanization
The good news is that humans everywhere, regardless of group identity, have a strong inherent preference for living in peace over conflict and violence, that their intrinsic ability for empathy and compassion is universal and immutable and that very few members of any human group are capable of committing atrocities or gratuitously inflicting suffering on other humans. It is also true to say that humans everywhere are also capable of selfishness, greed, complacency, dishonesty, sometimes of vengefulness, hubris, and, under specific circumstances, even of committing, or at least condoning, atrocities. This is, in broad outline, the image of humans that international law, the UN Charter, international humanitarian law, human rights law etc. are all predicated upon.
While empathy and compassion instinctively
prevent the vast majority of humans from
committing atrocities, brutality – including
the acceptance of brutality – has to be learned
While empathy and compassion instinctively prevent the vast majority of humans from committing atrocities, brutality – including the acceptance of brutality – has to be learned. There are very few naturals. Atrocities, as well as their acceptance by larger parts of a group, are almost always motivated by revenge for previous atrocities, whether real or imagined. To understand how we reach a situation in which we see people rejoicing en masse over atrocities committed against another group of people, in the streets of Gaza on 7 October and on the Gaza border and across social media since then, we need to go back further to the origins of the dehumanization.
For large parts of a group to overcome their instinctive empathy for other humans, they must first be dehumanized. They need to be convinced that the other group is inherently different from them, that they lack the attributes that make them human: that they have no compassion, no empathy, do not love their children like we do, or that they intrinsically hate us so much that they prefer living in eternal conflict to living in peace with us. The last part is where the dehumanization starts in the case of the Gaza War, and it goes back much further than the 7 October massacre.
Origins of Dehumanization in the Gaza Context
Over the past decades and since the breakdown of the Oslo Peace Process, the main purpose of Israel’s public relations (PR) known as Hasbara – “explaining” in Hebrew – has been to “explain” to the international public that the absence of peace is anyone’s fault but Israel’s: Palestinians rejected the most generous offers; they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity; Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah etc. are just out to annihilate the only Jewish State.[4]
Most Western publics knew little more about the conflict than these Hasbara talking points and believed them. One of the most frequent questions asked in interviews and talk shows to anyone pointing out Israeli war crimes was: how should Israel have reacted to 7 October? Underlying this question is a more fundamental question that many people asked themselves, often subconsciously: how can we apply international norms to a group of people who don’t conform to the attributes these norms are predicated on because they simply refuse to live in peace with their neighbours?
The question itself reveals a deep ignorance of the conflict’s reality. Not only was the Netanyahu government, in office since 2009, continuing to ignore a pan-Arab, pan-Islamic peace offer that addressed all of Israel’s legitimate concerns and had been on the table – and regularly reaffirmed[5] – since 2002; it was even bolstering Hamas in Gaza with the explicit aim of preventing a two-state solution to the conflict.[6] This is why the narrative manipulation that led uninitiated Western publics to believe that Palestinians are inherently unwilling to live in peace with Israel is where the dehumanization began.
The Mirror Effect of Radicalization
To understand how this narrative manipulation led to the levels of violent extremism on both sides of the conflict that we are seeing today, we have to factor in the inconsistent approach by key international actors, mainly the US and the EU, in dealing with hardliners on both sides. When the hardliners – i.e. those who reject a peaceful solution based on international norms – are treated differently on one side of the conflict than on the other, even well-intended efforts can prove not only fruitless, but outright counterproductive. When pressure – whether diplomatic or in the form of sanctions – is only applied disproportionately on hardliners on one side, the result is a mutually reinforcing mirror effect of radicalization: (i) Hardliners, who are spared from pressure will feel vindicated and emboldened by seeing those on the “other side” being sanctioned; (ii) The latter, in turn, will appeal to the sense of fairness among their constituents and present themselves as victims to garner support and solidarity: “why only us and not them?” Thus, inconsistent pressure leads to strengthening spoilers on both sides.
What reinforced the mirror effect of radicalization was the stark asymmetry of the conflict, namely the fact that Israel occupies Palestinian territory and not the other way around. Rather than counterbalancing the asymmetry by applying more pressure on hardliners of the stronger conflict party, US and EU sanctions were almost exclusively applied on spoilers on the Palestinian side. This has been weakening moderates on both sides of the conflict for many decades: (i) Israeli moderates, whose main counterargument vis-à-vis hardliners has always been that the world would not accept this or that breach of international law, were proven wrong time and time again, until they had essentially disappeared from the political landscape and were replaced by ever more hardline politicians. (ii) Palestinian moderates, unable to achieve a peace agreement in line with international law, had little to show to convince their constituents their approach was better than violent resistance and were increasingly seen as corrupt collaborators.
The Role of Atrocity Propaganda
Finally, the role of atrocity propaganda in boosting dehumanization and radicalization in the context of 7 October needs to be addressed. As if the well-documented brutality of the attack were not enough, unfounded reports of beheaded babies and mass rapes quickly became a central theme of Israel’s PR efforts. Although the story of beheaded babies was debunked quickly after it came out, it continued to appear in Israeli public diplomacy and was repeated by some Western media and leaders. Regarding mass rapes, all reports by international NGOs and the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Ms Pramila Patten, concluded that while there were “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred at several locations […], to establish the prevalence of sexual violence the overall magnitude, scope and specific attribution of these violations would require a fully-fledged investigation.”
However, the GoI has prevented such an independent investigation, whether at national or international level, defying legally binding orders by the ICJ to cooperate and provide full access to UN-mandated investigators.[7] In a regular criminal case, such refusal to cooperate in an investigation would be considered contempt of court and lead to coercive detention, as it essentially turns the presumption of innocence into a presumption of guilt. While there is currently no way to coerce the GoI into allowing international investigators to shed light on these allegations, they must be assumed – until verified – to be part of a propaganda campaign to vilify and dehumanize Palestinian resistance.
The Gaza War is unique in the international
dimension of how atrocity propaganda is used
to silence dissent in democratic societies against
what most experts have come to describe as the
first live-streamed genocide in history
Atrocity propaganda is nothing new in the history of wars. As many scholars of armed conflict have pointed out, false accounts of atrocities have been a hallmark of psychological warfare, used to stoke up passions and mobilize one’s own side.[8] History books abound with examples, where atrocity propaganda has led to real atrocities, perpetrated in revenge for the ones reported in propaganda. The Gaza War is no exception in this regard. It is unique, however, in the international dimension of how atrocity propaganda is used to silence dissent in democratic societies against what most experts have come to describe as the first live-streamed genocide in history. As such, it will likely serve as a case study for generations to come to understand how it could have happened – and hopefully to find ways to prevent it from happening again.
How Can We Get Out? Elements for a Solution
Gaza has become a watershed moment for all of humanity. Like no previous conflict, it has undermined the very foundations of the post-WWII order: the UN and its Charter, the Laws of Armed Conflict, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the credibility of Western democracies in defending human rights and international law. Any solution to address the twin issues of dehumanization and extremism in the region will have to involve a global effort, especially on the part of Europe, to restore faith in an international system that has utterly failed in its mission to protect the weak against the strong.
Protecting Fact-Based Discourse
Given the unprecedented assault on any kind of independent verification by journalists, international investigators, prosecutors and others, the first step must be to protect and strengthen the mechanisms designed to establish a common basis of facts. From what we know today, it must be inferred that we can only see the tip of the iceberg of what has been happening in Gaza since, as well as in southern Israel on, 7 October 2023. This means that, as more facts emerge that compromise decision-makers who have shielded the GoI from being held to account, the pressure on institutions mandated to uphold international norms will remain high or even increase.
It is no less important to address the issue of radicalization on social media driven by algorithms that seek to maximize user engagement – and therefore profit – by triggering outrage and reinforcing the confirmation bias. What the public sees is increasingly filtered by personal preference to show users what they already believe in, which fosters radicalization. Possible remedies include regulatory measures obliging tech giants to disclose and adapt their algorithms, as well as awareness campaigns and media literacy education in school curricula.
Holding Perpetrators Accountable
If the 7 October massacre was met with collective punishment of historic proportions, the response to the genocide unfolding in Gaza must be individual accountability. It may seem like a far cry at this time, but it is the only way to break the vicious cycle of retaliation, since it is the absence of individual accountability that fosters calls for collective punishment. Given the scale of destruction, the extent of dehumanization and the shameless display of impunity by Israeli soldiers committing war crimes, the acceptance of Israel in the region going forward will depend on bringing perpetrators to justice.
Accountability is also a prerequisite for efforts to counter extremism across the region to be sustainable. Since radicalization is usually triggered by a sense of injustice, restoring a sense of justice is essential to eliminating its key driver. To tackle Israeli extremism, however, a different set of remedies will be required.
Reaffirming a Shared Sense of Humanity
If proof was needed that no human group is immune to the risk of radicalization and dehumanization, the Gaza War has provided it. The key to preventing extremists from gaining the upper hand is to understand the circumstances that cause societies to buy into their identitarian ideology. In the case of Israel, its allies carry a significant share of the responsibility for allowing a new form of exceptionalism to spread unchecked for many decades by not holding the Jewish State to the same standards applied elsewhere, for reasons linked to the history of Europe rather than the Middle East. Reversing this trend will require a balancing act on the part of Israel’s allies between firmness in confronting hardliners, while reassuring Israelis that their existence as a country is not called into question.
The only way to truly deradicalize the region
in the years to come is to collectively –
as friends of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples –
reaffirm the shared sense of humanity that has been lost
The only way to truly deradicalize the region in the years to come is to collectively – as friends of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples – reaffirm the shared sense of humanity that has been lost. Even in the best of cases, this will be a long process that will require a variety of different measures taken by different actors. Civil society has a key role to play in bringing together agents of peace and reconciliation, through initiatives such as the “Reclaiming Our Shared Humanity” conference, hosted by the IEMed in October 2024. Governments and intergovernmental organizations should actively support such efforts, including through strategic communication and by promoting peace education in school curricula. Holocaust remembrance will have to be fundamentally reformed to highlight the universality of the lessons learned from the Shoah and other genocides and to counter any form of exceptionalism. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance has a particular responsibility in this regard.
Moving Towards Peace
The first and most urgent step towards peace is the realization of Palestinian self-determination through the implementation of the two-state solution in line with international parameters. This is the principal responsibility of Western governments to live up to their longstanding promise. Establishing an independent, viable Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel, while no easy feat by any measure, is neither an end in itself nor can it bring about peace by itself. It is merely the default option for a political end to the conflict and precondition for moving towards a lasting peace in the region. As a first, long overdue step, all countries that have not yet recognized the State of Palestine should do so without further delay.
Convincing both peoples of the other’s intrinsic willingness to live in peace will be a generational challenge that requires the active engagement of civil society. Building on existing initiatives, efforts to “rehumanize” the other side need to pave the way for reconciliation, including by promoting the Arab Peace Initiative as the cornerstone for bringing the conflict to an end, as well as highlighting Israeli activism for Palestinian rights in the Arab world. As Europeans, we know better than anyone that reconciliation is possible even after the worst atrocities imaginable, and that there is no last word in history.
[1] www.dci.plo.ps/en/article/22723/October-6,-2023—The-New-Arab-2023-is-.
[2] www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-03/ty-article/.premium/a-grim-poll-shows-most-jewish-israelis-support-expelling-gazans-its-brutal-and-true/00000197-3640-d9f1-abb7-7e742b300000.
[3] https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/majority-of-young-brits-believe-israel-should-not-exist-stosprhi.
[4] One of the key sources of these talking points is The Israel Project’s “Global Language Dictionary”: www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-israel-projects-2009-global-language-dictionary.pdf.
[5] https://new.oic-oci.org/Lists/ConferenceDocuments/Attachments/2619/Palestine%20Final%20Resolution.pdf.
[6] www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-20/ty-article-opinion/.premium/a-brief-history-of-the-netanyahu-hamas-alliance/0000018b-47d9-d242-abef-57ff1be90000.
[7] Point 57 of the ICJ orders of 24 May 2024: https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204091.
[8] Cf. Linebarger, Paul M.A. 1954. (2nd ed.) New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, as cited in: Budge, Kent. “Propaganda.” The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11 November 2012, http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/P/r/Propaganda.htm; Traverso, Enzo: Gaza Faces History, 2025.
Header photo: Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages