The “dehumanization” of the Palestinian Arabs is a common feature of their victimhood propaganda against Israel as their never-ending jihad to destroy the Jewish state continues.
In late March, the far-left “journalist” Chris Hedges interviewed the deceptive anti-Israel propagandist Muhammad el-Kurd in a video decrying “the dehumanization and infantilization of Palestinians by Western activists and media, and the psychological toll it has on its subjects.” That video appeared shortly after another piece of Palestinian victimhood propaganda showcased a “Palestinian-Canadian doctor, Tarek Loubani, spinning tall tales of alleged Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
In describing the supposed dehumanization of the Palestinians, Loubani said: “Ask yourself: what did you feel the last time you killed a mosquito? A mosquito that bites and takes your blood is literally taking a drop of your blood to feed its children. They cannot complete the reproductive process without a tiny bit of your blood. And yet you felt nothing. That’s kind of a small window into dehumanization.”
Back in the real world, however, the dehumanization was all going in the other direction. In fact, the dehumanization of the Jews is deeply embedded in Islamic religious texts. The Qur’an is well known for describing Allah transforming the disobedient Jews into apes and pigs (2:63-66; 5:59-60; 7:166). To this day, Hamas and other jihadis delight in calling their opponents “the sons of apes and pigs.”
As Muhammad: A Critical Biography shows, however, less well known is the fact that this dehumanization is found throughout the hadith and sira literature. On one occasion, Muhammad sits down to dinner and is served “butter, cheese and a spiny-tailed lizard.” Ibn Abbas is depicted as recounting that Muhammad “ate from butter and cheese,” but did not touch the lizard. Muhammad explains: “This is a thing that I have never eaten. He who likes may eat it.”
Ibn Sa‘d then offers another version of this tradition in which, when Muhammad is presented with the spiny-tailed lizard,” exclaims: “Transformed people! Allah knows best.” A hadith elucidates his words. One of Muhammad’s companions is depicted as recounting: “We were in an army with the Messenger of Allah. We got some lizards. I roasted one lizard and brought it to the Messenger of Allah and placed it before him. He took a stick and counted its fingers. He then said: A group from the children of Israel was transformed into an animal of the land, and I do not know which animal it was. He did not eat it nor did he forbid (its eating).”
Another tradition has Muhammad suspecting that the Jews were transformed into a different animal. Abu Huraira recounts that Muhammad said: “A group of Israelites were lost. Nobody knows what they did. But I do not see them except that they were cursed and changed into rats, for if you put the milk of a she-camel in front of a rat, it will not drink it, but if the milk of a sheep is put in front of it, it will drink it.” This hadith contains an insistence that Muhammad really did make this statement, in the form of a Jew asking Abu Huraira if Muhammad actually said this. Abu Huraira says: “I told this to Ka‘b who asked me, ‘Did you hear it from the Prophet?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ Ka‘b asked me the same question several times; I said to Ka‘b: ‘Do I read the Torah? (i.e. I tell you this from the Prophet.)”
In another indication that the Qur’an had not yet been finalized at the time that the hadith literature was composed, Muhammad doesn’t seem to know that Allah transformed the disobedient Jews into apes and pigs, and isn’t sure what animal the Jews were transformed into; he prudently refrains from eating a lizard in case it might be a Jew. Then, in the tradition included in Ibn Sa‘d’s collection, he rejects his lizard dinner because it is a meal of “transformed people.” And he knows that the rats are Jews based on which milk they will drink and which they will reject.
Apes, pigs, lizards, rats. Yeah, Muhammad El-Kurd, tell us more about how the Palestinians are being “dehumanized.”
