Israel’s genocide is in its 19th month. Overnight, as airstrikes kept targeting hospitals and refugee camps, the apartheid state murdered 22 more children. UN officials are saying it is “deliberately and unashamedly” using starvation as a weapon of war amid imminent famine in occupied Gaza. But genocide apologists would rather get angry about Gary Lineker resharing an Instagram post with a questionable emoji on it. This is the utter absurdity we’re living through right now.
Emojis are never more offensive than ACTUAL FUCKING GENOCIDE (unless you’re attacking Gary Lineker)
Gary Lineker reshared an Instagram post about Zionism. As Jewish Voice for Peace has explained:
Zionism is a form of Jewish nationalism, and is the primary ideology that drove the establishment of Israel.
It adds that:
While it had many strains historically, the Zionism that took hold and stands today is a settler-colonial movement, establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others.
The Instagram post focused on a powerful speech from lawyer Diana Buttu critiquing Zionism as “the idea of not only creating a Jewish state, but at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population” – of “privileging and giving exclusive rights to one group of people at the expense of another group of people”. The account – Palestine Lobby – has insisted that:
every individual deserves the right to self-determination, freedom, and equality, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or religion.
However, it had apparently added a rat emoji on top of the video. And genocide apologists have jumped on that fact to go after Lineker, who later unshared it.
Nothing is more dehumanising than genocide itself
Genocide requires dehumanisation of the target population. Nazis famously did that by portraying Jewish people as rats before the Holocaust, and Zionists have done the same with Palestinians both before and during the current genocide in Gaza. Supporters of Israel’s actions have called Palestinians “roaches” and “rats”, for example. Israeli occupation forces actually ran a Telegram account which celebrated images of the massacres in Gaza with text saying things like:
Exterminating the roaches… exterminating the Hamas rats
Western mainstream media outlets have even joined in with dehumanising propaganda to support Israel’s efforts.
Language absolutely matters. And to truly take the moral high ground, we must refuse to dehumanise our enemies (even indirectly) despite the barbaric depths of their atrocities.
Gary Lineker has his heart in the right place, and rightly took action when he became aware of the rat emoji (and its negative connotations) on the post he’d shared. But as he’s previously stressed:
the mass murder of thousands of children is probably something that we should have a little opinion on
And that must absolutely be the focus. Because emojis don’t kill. Indiscriminate airstrikes from genocidal war criminals do.
Emojis haven’t killed at least one Palestinian child every hour in Gaza since October 2023. Israel has. Emojis haven’t murdered around 17,492 children in that time, including about 825 babies, 895 one-year-olds, 3,266 preschoolers, and 4,032 six-to-10-year-olds. Israel has. So if genocide apologists think we should get angry about emojis but not the actual mass murder of children, they can fuck right off.
Featured image via the Canary
