this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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Based on the down votes, maybe I’m missing something, but what is dehumanizing about referring to “the people of Gaza”?
Maybe I have a misunderstanding who that means and it some how excludes Palestinians?
ETA: It occurs to me that I haven’t seen the full context of Obama comments so that could change my perspective too…
Edit 2: Read it. Didn’t change my perspective at all.
It doesn't necessarily exclude Palestinians, but my interpretation is that using this language emphasizes that family ties of Israelis while simply referring to Palestinians as people (which, to be fair, is better than most Western media). It's similar to, also in said media, calling out Hamas "terrorism" or "attacks" while in the next breath lauding Israel's "peacekeeping missions" or something.
My take is that he simply didn't want to use the same words twice that close together.
Ms Rachel's 'take' isn't the only one, and certainly not mine.
It's subtle but I agree with her on this. Families vs people embeds different connotations. Families necessarily imply interpersonal connection, and for a great many subconsciously conjure children and love.
People does not.
I don't expect the level of awareness of the distinction from the general population. A politician who spent decades with the highest skilled professional communication crafters on the planet, they know exactly the difference
That smacks of hypercritical, partial reading drawing unnecessary inferences.
From context, a simpler, more plausible explanation is choices driven to convey a logical distinction: only some Israelis (families of hostages) suffered whereas all Gazans (the entire people) suffered. The context recalls key phrases to elaborate: he writes about hostages "reunited with their families" & aide "reaching those inside Gaza whose lives have been shattered".
I would love to live in your world where politicians choose thier words based on logical simplicity rather than rhetorical value.
She's definitely not wrong but, to me, it seems obvious that it's capturing the level of scope. The hostages affect the families to which those hostages belonged but it's the entirety of Gaza that was being attacked and starved (and, hence, the entire people).
Granted, dehumanization doesn't have to follow any logic to get kicked off and the wording could still have that effect, nonetheless.
Well buddy…
It’s not rocket politics.
But that reads like families in Israel and Palestine suffered equally. Clearly they did not.
And we'd be reading that criticism right now instead of this one.
Yes we would, and rightfully so.
Maybe this really is Rocket Politics and word choice matters.
I feel like it's the kind of pedantic word play that people who love to argue online latch onto because it's an easy way to platform an argument.
It's a valid point but people are blowing it way out of proportion. They're acting like he said "fuck them kids, Israel forever."
To call him an uncle Tom over it is chronically online coded asf, OP desperately needs to touch grass
My initial reading was kind of the opposite. Everyone in Gaza but “families of Israel” read more like non-combatants
My take is that he's specifically referring to the families of remaining Israeli hostages, and every Gazan, respectively
Now that you mention this it seems really obvious.
It’s October 10th for me right now. The October 7th attacks were two years ago. He starts it with “two years of suffering for [some] Israeli families and the entirety of Gaza.”
Who has been suffering?
Families of the Oct. 7 attacks — Israelis as a whole haven’t been suffering. All people from Gaza have.
Went all the way to “uncle tom” for this one, huh OP?
Fun fact, every time you say Uncle Tom like this you perpetuate Jim Crow propaganda
The more I think about this the more I feel, if anything, it’s MsRachel who’s being offensive here. There is a strong implication that those of us without families aren’t human…
Most people don’t spend the time to look into it but there’s a huge furry community in Gaza so it’s usually proper to say ‘People and animals of Gaza’
Obama, of all people, should know better…