Ha'aretz correspondent Barak Ravid reported yesterday:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a tour to the construction site of a barrier on the eastern border on Tuesday that he wishes to surround the country with fences and barriers "to defend ourselves against wild beasts" that surround Israel.

Dehumanization of one's real or perceived adversaries, often in the form of animalization, has long been a hallmark of propaganda. As Netanyahu reinforces Israel's garrison mentality, he continues building a literal fortress by extending the apartheid wall further around the Zionist state, promising more division, segregation, discrimination, and violence.

"For most human beings, it takes an awful lot to allow them to kill another human being," Anthony Pratkanis, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told ABC News back in 2003, as the United States was gearing up to invade Iraq. "The only way to do it is to justify the killing, to make the enemy look as evil as possible."

The report also quoted Hayward communications professor James Forsher, an expert on propaganda films. "The secret in propaganda is that when you demonize, you dehumanize," Forsher explained. "When you dehumanize, it allows you to kill your enemy and no longer feel guilty about it. That is why during World War II, a lot of caricatures became animals... You can kill a monkey a lot more easily than you can kill a neighbor."

Nazi dehumanization of Jews as "vermin" to be exterminated and American anti-Japanese caricatures of rats and snakes from the 1940s are especially grotesque, but the phenomenon was around long before that. Anti-Tsarist and, subsequently, anti-Soviet propaganda often employed the image of an octopus, spreading its imperial tentacles across the globe. During World War I, Germany was depicted a crazed, club-wielding gorilla in a U.S. Army poster encouraging enlistment.

In their 1994 book, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam note that the common colonial/racist trope of "animalization" was "rooted in a religious and philosophical tradition which drew sharp boundaries between the animal and the human" and "renders the colonized as wild beasts... projected as body rather than mind."

Zionist colonists and Israeli officials have for years employed this type of rhetoric to dehumanize those they seek to forcibly displace, dispossess, disenfranchise, oppress, occupy and subjugate. The Zionist project is always presented as a bulwark of civilization against the savagery and barbarism of the brutish Eastern, Arab, and/or Muslim hordes; the settlement on the hill; the light amidst the darkness; the "villa in the jungle," as Ehud Barak once said.

"At the end, in the State of Israel, as I see it, there will be a fence that spans it all," Netanyahu fantasized yesterday. "I'll be told, 'this is what you want, to protect the villa?' The answer is yes. Will we surround all of the State of Israel with fences and barriers? The answer is yes. In the area that we live in, we must defend ourselves against the wild beasts."

The animalization of Palestinians, and other perceived enemies, in Israeli rhetoric goes back decades.

Dogs, Animals, Roaches, Grasshoppers and Worms

Shortly after Israel seized military control over the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan told officials in his center-left political party, Rafi, that unless Palestinians in the newly-occupied territories make "peace" with Israel, they "shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads."

On June 8, 1982, two days after the Israel invaded Lebanon, Prime Minister Menachem Begin delivered remarks before the Knesset justifying the military assault as a defense of Jewish lives worldwide. Begin insisted that the widespread rallying cry of terrorists around the globe was that "there is no innocent Jew. Every Jew is doomed - he must be killed." In response, he declared, "This terror must be eradicated." Setting Jewish people apart from the rest of humanity, Begin said:

The fate of a million and half a million Jewish children has been different from all the children of the world throughout the generations. No more. We will defend our children. If the hand of any two-footed animal is raised against them, that hand will be cut off, and our children will grow up in joy in the homes of their parents.

In April 1983, outgoing Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan (who was losing his post due to his responsibility for the 1982 Sabra-Shatila Massacre) reportedly told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, "The Arabs will never win over us by throwing stones. Our response must be a nationalist Zionist response. For every stone that’'s thrown, we will build ten settlements. If 100 settlements will exist, and they will, between Nablus and Jerusalem, stones will not be thrown. If this will be the situation, then the Arabs will only be able to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle."

During the First Intifada, on March 31, 1988, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir told reporters at the ruins of an ancient Herodian fortress in the occupied West Bank, "Anybody who wants to damage this fortress and other fortresses we are establishing will have his head smashed against the boulders and walls," adding that Palestinians who resist the Israeli occupation "are like grasshoppers compared to us."

In late 2004, Yehiel Hazan, a Likud minister and leader of the biggest settler lobbying group, declared on the floor of the Knesset, "The Arabs are worms. You find them everywhere like worms, underground as well as above," adding, "Until we understand that we're doing business with a nation of assassins and terrorists who don't want us here, there will be no let up. These worms have not stopped attacking Jews for a century."

On June 30, 2012, Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked of the religious nationalist Jewish Home party posted a Facebook message that identified "the entire Palestinian people is the enemy" and calling for the total elimination of Palestine, "including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure." The post, alleged written years ago by now-deceased settler leader Uri Elitzur, added that Palestinian mothers should be executed for giving birth to "little snakes," that is, Palestinian children. Less than a year later, Netanyahu appointed Shaked to be Israel's Minister of Justice.

Netanyahu, too, has a penchant for animal allusions when speaking about those he despises most, be they Palestinians, Iranians, or Muslims, in general.

Insatiable Crocodile

While a possibly apocryphal quote has then-Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak saying in August 2000, "The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more," Netanyahu brought the reptilian analogy up to date when, during a typically verbose and combative speech before the UN General Assembly in September 2011, he said:

[Israel's] critics continue to press Israel to make far-reaching concessions without first assuring Israel's security. They praise those who unwittingly feed the insatiable crocodile of militant Islam as bold statesmen. They cast as enemies of peace those of us who insist that we must first erect a sturdy barrier to keep the crocodile out, or at the very least jam an iron bar between its gaping jaws.

Netanyahu probably didn't realize he was channeling his fellow apartheid champion, P.W. Botha, who led South Africa from 1978 to 1989, and is credited with complaining that "the free world wants to feed South Africa to the red crocodile [Communism], to appease its hunger." Botha, incidentally, was widely known by the Afrikaans nickname Die Groot Krokodil, or "The Big Crocodile."

Nuclear Duck

The following March, in one of his most tedious diatribes about the non-existent threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, Netanyahu told attendees at AIPAC's annual conference that Iran's fully safeguarded uranium enrichment facilities and medical research reactor were actually a cover for a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Ladies and Gentlemen, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then what is it? That's right, it's a duck – but this duck is a nuclear duck. And it's time the world started calling a duck a duck.

Quack.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Appearing on Face The Nation on July 14, 2013, Netanyahu decried Iranian president-elect Hassan Rouhani as a "wolf in sheep's clothing," whose devious Persian strategy is to "smile and build a bomb." He repeated this description to a group of U.S. lawmakers the following month.

On October 1, 2013, Netanyahu returned to the UN General Assembly and accused Rouhani of being a "wolf in sheep's clothing."

"Rouhani doesn't sound like Ahmadinejad," Netanyahu wailed. "But when it comes to Iran's nuclear weapons program, the only difference between them is this: Ahmadinejad was a wolf in wolf's clothing. Rouhani is a wolf in sheep's clothing, a wolf who thinks he can pull the eyes -- the wool over the eyes of the international community."

Fittingly, Netanyahu's faithful lapdog, Yuval Steinitz, also took to the media in July and September that year to describe Rouhani the same way.

*****

Updated 02.11.16 to include references to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a "wolf in sheep's clothing," which I inexplicably omitted in my original post. Thanks to @PersianSteel for bringing this to my attention.

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UPDATE:

February 16, 2016 - Israel-based journalist David Sheen, who has cataloged and reported extensively on Israel's treatment of African immigrants and refugees, posted this on Twitter yesterday:

College engineering exam question posits non-Jewish African refugees in Israel as rats to be rounded up for torture pic.twitter.com/c56u2lihjR

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) February 15, 2016

The image was obtained by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev student Moran Mekamel.

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In a meeting with students this week, Iranian leader Ali Khamenei addressed the meaning of the phrase "Death to America," which gained popularity as a revolutionary slogan over three and a half decades ago in defiance of the U.S.-backed Shah.
"Obviously by 'Death to America', we don't mean death to the American people," Khamenei said. "The American nation is just like the rest of the nations." Rather, he explained, the phrase "means death to the United States' policies, death to arrogance."

Condemning American imperialism in the Middle East and the thirty-five year emphasis on promoting regime change in Iran, Khamenei said, "The truth is that the United States' objectives regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran have not changed at all. And they would not spare a moment if they could destroy the Islamic Republic; but they can't."
That the ubiquitous chant "Death to America" is not a murderous threat (or aspiration) directed at individuals, but rather at the policies and actions of the U.S. government, should be obvious. Nevertheless, many mainstream media reports seemed astounded by Khamenei's explanation, as if this revelation was brand new and signaled a shift from past statements from Iranian officials.

CNN's Don Melvin, for instance, was baffled by Khamenei's explanation, calling it "new" and "convoluted." Melvin was convinced that the Iranian leader was futilely attempting to "redefine the meaning of the slogan."

The Moon of Alabama blog breaks down this phenomenon perfectly:

A typical part of propaganda campaigns is to claim that the "villain" has very recently changed his political positions. Then follows "analysis" which interprets the "change" as a sure sign that the villain is under pressure and on the verge of loosing the fight. Often such claims are completely unfounded as the villain only repeated a long standing position. They are only made to repeat, repeat, repeat ... that the villain is or was up to something bad.

But the actual - and again, obvious - meaning of the phrase has been pointed out numerous times, both in recently memory and beyond.

In an interview with CBS in September, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was perfectly clear about what the "Death to America" means:

This slogan that is chanted is not a slogan against the American people. Our people respect the American people. The Iranian people are not looking for war with any country, but at the same time the policies of the United States have been against the national interests of Iranian people. It's understandable that people will demonstrate sensitivity to this issue. When the people rose up against the Shah, the U.S. aggressively supported the Shah until the last moments. In the eight year war with Iraq, the Americans supported Saddam. People will not forget these things. We cannot forget the past, but at the same time, our gaze must be towards the future.

A month earlier, in August, journalist Reese Erlich reported for the Global Post (and syndicated by USA Today) how Iranians have always understood the slogan's meaning:

"Death to America" expresses the anger many Iranians feel about U.S. policy toward Iran, said Foad Izadi, an assistant professor of world studies at the University of Tehran. Iranians remember that the U.S. overthrew the legitimate government of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and supported the dictatorial Shah who followed.

The slogan "means death to American foreign policy," said Izadi. Iranians "have problems with the American government, not the American people." In fact, he said, Iranians are friendly to Americans. "When you walk around town, and people see you're an American, everyone wants to take care of you."

In July, it was more of the same. Speaking with The New Yorker's Robin Wright, Rouhani's chief of staff Mohammad Nahavandian noted:

If you go and ask anyone who uses that slogan... what he is against, it is interference in Iran's policies by overthrowing a nationally elected prime minister at the time of Mossadegh. For them, what they are against is the kind of government who shoots an airplane full of innocent passengers. For them, it's not the people of America, per se. For them, they are opposed to that sort of policy, that sort of attitude, that sort of arrogance. It's not a nation. It's a system of behavior.

On January 26, 2014, CNN's Fareed Zakaria aired an interview with Rouhani, during which Rouhani said, "Well, the people, when they say 'Death to America,' do you know what they are really saying? What they mean to say relates to the aggressive policies of the U.S. and intervention and meddling by the U.S. We don't want those to continue. We want people to decide for themselves."

But this definition is not only the position of the current administration. Rouhani's predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of the West's favorite bogeymen, was equally clear about what the phrase means.

In a February 12, 2007 interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer, Ahmadinejad said this:

When you heard death to America slogans, I think you know it yourself, it is not related in any way to American public. Our people have no problem with American public and we have a very friendly relationship and this friendship is so great, that I wrote a letter to the American government, the aviation sector of our country and we wanted to establish direct flights from Tehran to New York and we want to have free travel of citizens.

We do not have any problems with the people and right now, for example, we have our scientists and a sportsman traveling to the U.S. The "Death to America" chant you have heard, they go back to some of the policies of Americans, American politicians in Iran. People still remember the support of American politicians for some murders. For example, Saddam, who was hanged, and eight years of war to us, and the current American administration. The current incumbent [vice] president provided support. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian youth were killed and the U.S. administration, instead of doing what was right and supporting Saddam... People are now wishing death for these policies.

Statements by Iranian officials about the "Death to America" slogan have been consistent for a long time. It's about time the press started paying attention and not act so surprised when it inevitably happens again.

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To read about other examples of consistent Iranian commentary that has shocked our lazy press, click below:

Part I: Are Rouhani's Statements About the Holocaust Really a Huge Break from the Past?
Part II: Are Rouhani's Statements About Palestine Really a Huge Break from the Past?
Part III: On Khamenei's Referendum Rhetoric, Reuters is Wrong
Part IV: Javad Zarif and the Detrimental Perception of Nuclear Intentions

*****

Last month, the Tampa Bay Times' fact-checking site PolitiFact published an post debunking some outrageous claims made by presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz about the Iran deal. While PolitiFact's assessment of Cruz's claims were correct, a number of details about the deal itself, as presented in the article, were problematic.

So I wrote my own article addressing these errors and contacted PolitiFact editor Lou Jacobson, who co-authored the Ted Cruz piece, asking for a correction to be made. After all, considering PolitiFact is a valuable resource whose very existence - by definition - relies on and respects accuracy, it is vital they address the mistakes they themselves publish in their own fact-checks.

After corresponding briefly with Jacobson and his own editor, Aaron Sharockman, I was informed that PolitiFact would indeed be issuing a correction on its article. The erroneous PolitiFact claim that the deal compels "Iran to give up 97 percent of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the kind needed to make nuclear weapons," would be replaced with the less inaccurate statement that, under the deal, "Iran will be required to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by 97 percent."

The update was also accompanied by an official correction:


Well, to be accurate, the "previous version" actually described the uranium differently, not so much the reduction. The original fact-check, as mentioned above, wrongly identified Iran's stockpile as containing "highly enriched uranium, the kind needed to make nuclear weapons." It does not. Iran has never ever enriched uranium to weapons-grade levels; all fissile material ever stockpiled in Iran has been low-enriched uranium, suitable only for reactor fuel and medical research.

Nevertheless, the correction is certainly a welcome change and my gratitude goes out to PolitiFact, Mr. Sharockman and Mr. Jacobson for addressi