Committing a genocide – as a United Nations commission has found Israel has done in Gaza – requires one force to attempt to exterminate another people. But to commit that level of violence, it is necessary to see those being killed as not the same as you, as below human. The population needs to be dehumanised.

That’s the conclusion reached by Navi Pillay, the head of the UN commission responsible for saying that Israel is committing a genocide, joining a growing list of bodies that have come to the same conclusion.

“When I look at the facts in the Rwandan genocide, it’s very, very similar to this. You dehumanise your victims. They’re animals, and so therefore, without conscience, you can kill them,” said Pillay, a former International Criminal Court judge.

For many observers within Is

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