The discourses of dehumanisation that spread from Israeli narratives and are championed by Western media justify breaches of international humanitarian law in order to further the political economy of occupation. Constructing Palestinians as a sub-human enemy that is freely disposable by the Israeli occupying power, preferably in a spectacular fashion, has been called the symbolic order of our times by Achille Mbembe.

Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray lamented the importance of words when he mused ‘How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel!’ However, in the modern, post-truth reality that we live in, words are often cruel without being clear or vivid, and have been cleverly employed by international media in describing the Israeli response to the Great March of Return protests.