Dehumanisation in any form is unacceptable

I cannot for the life of me decide whether the individuals who thought it was a good idea to write numbers on the skin of detained Palestinians were evil, devoid of any moral compass, or just terminally, irrevocably stupid. 

Following a recent raid in the West Bank, according to reports that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tacitly acknowledged, detained Palestinians were marked with numbers on their foreheads and other parts of their bodies. I find myself in full agreement with Ta’al Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi’s outrage on X that writing “identification numbers on the foreheads of Palestinians” was “shocking and sickening … This is what dehumanisation looks like: erasing the person and turning them into a number. An image reminiscent of dark periods, and one that should shock everyone.” 

It is woefully insufficient for the IDF to say in a statement that “the commanders stressed the seriousness of the incident, and the necessary lessons were learned”. 

What is this supposed to mean? Did someone senior in the chain of command figure out that the optics of branding people like cattle, even if it is with a pen rather than a tattoo needle, are horrific? Are the “lessons learned” that doing so results in appallingly bad public relations, or that this entire episode was unconscionable? 

We also know that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. As noted in Haaretz, “In April, Israeli soldiers wrote numbers on the hands of dozens of Palestinian women entering the Jenin refugee camp. The IDF later acknowledged the practice as an ‘error in judgement’ or ‘poor judgement’.” 

“Lessons were learned,” observed the Israeli-Palestinian journalist Hanin Majadli. “For decades, lessons have been learned here. After Palestinians are killed, lessons are learned. After detainees are abused, lessons are learned. After every act that was supposed to be an exception, lessons are learned. And yet, the lessons somehow are never learned in time to prevent the next incident.” 

Perhaps it is time for the lessons in question to be taught proactively rather than being used as an utterly inadequate response. 

I don’t write as a disinterested observer. On the night of 3 to 4 August 1943, my mother had the number 52406 tattooed on her arm at Auschwitz-Birkenau. At the end of that month, upon his arrival at the same Nazi German death camp, my father was branded with the number 140594. 

I want to be clear: I am decidedly not comparing the IDF to the SS at Auschwitz in any way, shape, or form, nor am I making any wholly unwarranted analogies between Israel and the Third Reich. I don’t question the motivation of the soldiers in question, who presumably wanted a practical means of identifying individuals who had been questioned during the raid, or whom they considered potential terrorists. 

What I question is the abject stupidity of providing ammunition to Israel’s enemies and to other Jew-haters across the globe who will unquestionably use this “incident”, to use the IDF’s term, as yet another cudgel with which to beat up on Israel, Israelis, and Jews generally. 

World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder, my former boss, recently noted that as good as Israel is militarily, “that’s how bad it is on public relations, and it’s losing the information war in the age of media-driven politics. Everyone has a computer in their pocket with the most vicious smears that will spread around the world and circulate instantly. Israel cannot afford to ignore its public relations.” 

Except that the numbers written on Palestinians’ foreheads are neither smears nor lies. They constitute an unforced error of monumental proportions and a self-inflicted public relations catastrophe. 

One example of antisemitism set forth by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”. Which is one of the reasons Tibi’s characterisation of the writing of numbers on Palestinians’ foreheads as “an image reminiscent of dark periods” resonates so profoundly and inexorably. 

I am writing as a law professor who has continuously defended Israel against the charge of “genocide”. I am writing as a lifelong Zionist who fights against the delegitimisation of the State of Israel by the likes of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. 

It is bad enough that we regularly have to denounce the racist obscenities emanating from the mouths of Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, or that we join US Ambassador Mike Huckabee in condemning extremist West Bank settlers as “terrorists”. 

What we should not also have to deal with is “incidents” like this one that cast a pall, to put it mildly, on the vast majority of IDF soldiers and officers who behave honourably. 

Just as we condemn the virulent hatred directed at Israelis, Zionists, and Jews generally by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and their international acolytes, we must do so as well when the dignity of Palestinians is violated. 

In the final analysis, dehumanisation in any form is unacceptable. 

• Menachem Z Rosensaft is visiting professor of the practice at Cornell Law School and lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. His most recent book is Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz.