"We" and the Palestinians

Ben Blushi's response about the dehumanization of Palestinians, Jews, Bosnians, Rwandans and Albanians

1.

I read Ben Blushi's article regarding the non-recognition of the state of Palestine, namely the mistake that according to him Great Britain and France (and many other European or non-European countries such as Australia) have made. Perhaps at the beginning I will make two clarifications that make the difference in the analysis between the act of recognition as a policy of states and the dimension of moral values ​​which in Blushi's writing reach a worrying level of dehumanization. So, it is the right of states to recognize Palestine or not and if Kosovo as a European state does not recognize Palestine it has a raison d'etat (reasons of a state nature), as do the major European states such as the United Kingdom or France that have recognized it. Kosovo has expressed its distance from Palestine with the fact that the Palestinian authorities have repeated to the Serbian authorities that they will not recognize the independence of Kosovo. Albania, which recognized Palestine in 1988 but abstained from the UN resolution recognizing the Palestinian state, may have more interest in maintaining relations with the Israel it is today and has demonstrated this by welcoming with a hug in Tirana the President of Israel Isaac Herzog, the state which on the same day (September 12, 2024) bombed a school in Gaza that served as a refugee shelter, killing 18 people, including women, children and 6 UN workers.

In both countries, the calculation of state interest has placed them in the camp of states that keep their distance from Palestine.

Moreover, and this is the second observation, the recognition of the state of Palestine has little practical effect. Palestine should have been a state since 1947 and the UN has repeated this to this day. Palestine is recognized by 157 countries, it has an ambassador in the UN that guarantees it the status of a permanent observer state, but this dimension of legitimacy has not protected it from the genocide that Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people.

2.

Here, on genocide, I believe it is worth pausing to express the essential differences with Mr. Blushi, who describes the Palestinians as a people who fail to create democracy, an economy and a state, and after suggesting that they "must go through an exorcism process, they must cast the devil out of their souls", he states that "Palestine is not ready to coexist with the rest of the civilized world", "it is not ready to coexist with us", "it is not ready to live like us". 

Since I assume that by "we" Mr. Blushi meant Western civilization and the Albanians within it, I believe he can express the deep dividing line in the interpretation I have with him. 

There is a fundamental reason why the Palestinians are in the situation they are in, and this is occupation and genocide. The Palestinian people, indigenous to their land, have suffered ethnic cleansing since 1947 (Naqba) until today, with the daily colonization of the West Bank (as the Albanian West Bank is called, a territory emphasized in Mr. Blushi's writing). Since 2023, Israel, in addition to the silent genocide with ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, is carrying out genocide in Gaza. And, Gaza, in parallel with the establishment of the state of Israel, was established as the largest refugee camp in the world. 

Palestinians have been denied land, property, and today in particular, the right to life. In that state, peoples are unable to create an economy, they are unable to hold democratic elections. Consequently, they are not like us.

3.

So no, we who enjoy democracy, a developing economy and a perspective in the comfort of the European continent are not like them, the Palestinians. But - I repeat - because they have been subjected to genocide and not because of the devil they carry inside that "must be exorcised". I find it difficult to imagine the ease with which a mother in Gaza who has lost her children in the bombing, from hunger or lack of medical care, is suggested to undergo an exorcism in order to be like us. I find it difficult to imagine the ease with which the 2.7 million persecuted inhabitants of Gaza are suggested to practice collective exorcism, the same inhabitants who have had an average of one child killed every hour since September 2023 until today - over 20 thousand of them.

And I find it hard to imagine the ease of preaching exorcism today, when such language has been shown to be dehumanizing. If the Palestinians have a devil inside them, then it is legitimate to kill them, even to commit genocide against them. On September 7, 2025, the Israeli defense minister, announcing the genocidal operation in the form of a “surrounding,” declared that “we are fighting against human animals.” Hunting against “animals” then becomes legitimate.

Dehumanization is the language that leads to a sure path to killing others. In Srebrenica, the genocide was preceded by the description of Bosniaks as infidels or “Turks,” thus their killing as a (belated) liberation from the Ottomans or as a defense of Christianity. In Rwanda, night after night the Tutsi people were described on state radio as “cockroaches”; the mass killing of these “insects” then became completely legitimate. At the end of the 19th century, the justification in Serbia for expelling Albanians from their homes (and therefore for mass killing) was that this people was still savage, they were not yet human, they were people with tails. 

And the founders of Israel were perhaps the greatest victims of dehumanization in the 20th century. In Nazi Germany, day after day, year after year, Jews were methodically portrayed as rats, as a disease that threatened the health of the nation, and so on. As a result of this dehumanizing campaign, the genocide against Jews in Germany, Poland, and other European countries was not, for the Nazi soldier (and his supporters who made up the majority of the population), a murder of people, it was an act of protecting public health. 

Today, a political class has been formed by the heirs of the persecuted of Nazism, which systematically pursues genocide as a means of cleansing itself of the obstacles to the formation of a Jewish state from the river to the sea, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. The obstacles are Palestinian children, women and men, their murder or expulsion is simply the elimination of the obstacle that prevents the "Jewish purity" of Israel.

4.

"We", with whom according to B. Blushi the Palestinians cannot coexist, have little power to prevent the genocide against that people. But some of "us" were saved from the genocide that was taking place thanks to NATO intervention. And, some of "us" who were saved thanks to the help of others have two essential obligations. One, to remind us that at a time when our lives were in danger in Europe, the USA and many other countries of the world, people were alerted whose only weapon was their voice and pen and who demanded that our lives be protected. Thanks to them, and the force of public opinion, Western democracies rose to guarantee us the right to life.

And two, so that with our words we do not further hurt Palestinians, especially mothers and children - living, maimed or dead - by accusing them of being at fault for not enjoying the fundamental right to life.

(This version of the article has corrected the error in the first version of the statement that Albania does not want to recognize Palestine. In fact, Albania recognized the state of Palestine in 1988. Palestine has an embassy in Tirana.)