It was on October 9, 2023, that a former Israeli minister made the statement, “[w]e are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” “Acting accordingly” took the form of intensifying what was later recognized as the increasing rhetoric for “[e]ras Gaza,” as published and discussed on the website of The New Arab. The official version, as of March 9, 2025, has been slightly altered and was re-launched in a revised form. To be more specific, another statesman, according to The Times of Israel website, clarified that the Israeli “government was setting up a ‘migration administration’ to oversee the exit of Gazans.” From October 2024 to the present, the proposals, rhetoric, and official actions have all been regarding plans for the elimination or displacement of Gaza’s population or its replacement with Israeli settlers or overexaggerated military presence. This focus on displacement and elimination is the report’s fundamental problem.

What is particularly disturbing about this issue is the way United States President Donald Trump’s adoption of the same rhetoric regarding Gaza’s populace “doubles down on plans to empty Gaza,” which appears in an article by Lee Keath, published by the Associated Press on February 12, 2024. This article remarks on a heightening desire to kill and more generally destroy the existence of the other, which is referred to here as dehumanization. The process is examined through an exploration of how it impacts social relations and conversations, thereby transforming into a psychological process. Such psychology is referred to as the “psychology of dehumanization,” which can be witnessed in most political matters but is greatly relevant in the Gazan situation.

This report is guided by a simulation of Hannah Arendt’s “Banality of Evil” theory, in which she demonstrates that evil may be carried out by following orders. Arendt formulated this idea through the criminal trial of Eichmann in the Jerusalem court proceedings, as presented in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Yet this report perceives a will to kill and exterminate that is very different from a mere will to obey orders or comply. This will has evolved alongside the behavior of devastation of the official institution, triggering the spread of individual or collective abuses and violations. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, documented the case in a new prison established and named Sde Teiman. In a report titled “Sde Teiman Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg,” B’Tselem details the systematic forms of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians in this prison. This shifting desire has turned into a far more complex phenomenon than a simple expression of compliance with political orders. It is, instead, a hidden compulsion to kill or destroy, based on a desire that seems to be psychologically and internally ingrained in the mindset of those who are dehumanizing.

The second interpretation of this desire is through applying Max Weber’s concepts in Politics as a Vocation. Weber identifies a gray area, such as fearing the power-holder or anticipating a reward from the ruling faction, where it is generally feasible to “justify,” “legitimize,” and even rationalize certain forms of domination. Overall, the psychology of dehumanization has to be considered within the framework of what Weber called “organized domination,” where domination is enforced by the state’s official institution. The development of such a dehumanization psychology under these circumstances is characterized by a top-down operational approach, in which dehumanization is enabled by formal institutions to shape the behavior of soldiers or people. This is relevant to “Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza,” as outlined in a report by Human Rights Watch, published on November 14, 2024. Such organized and systematic crimes were also present in the actions of ordinary soldiers, who justify every kind of crime, including the murder of 16 children in the West Bank, recorded by an N.G.O. and reported by the Anadolu Agency on March 1, 2025. The scale of the killings and violations of human rights has made it easier to illustrate the other (the Palestinians) as less-than-human, or even inhuman, and the dehumanization of the people in Gaza has become much easier.