In the raw aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 assault on Israel, one could argue that use of extreme and dehumanizing language by Israeli officials was, if not justified, at least predictable.

Trauma of that magnitude can go some way toward explaining what came next: then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s characterization of Gazans as “human animals,” or Knesset member Yitzhak Kroizer’s claim that no Palestinian in Gaza is innocent and that “the Gaza Strip should be flattened, and there should be one sentence for everyone there — death.”

However, that rhetoric has not receded even after tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths, Gazan infrastructure and housing reduced to rubble and the displacement of 90 per cent of the territory’s residents. The persistence of such hate speech marks the presence of a moral and empathetic vacuum.

How else can more recent statements be understood? Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called it “just and moral” to starve two million Palestinians. Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor Aryeh King declared that “we will drive out, annihilate, kill and eliminate all the people of UNRWA” (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees). Retired Brigadier-General Ofer Winter told Israeli military cadets that “there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”

Such hatred and indifference to civilian welfare raises an important question: Do Israel’s government and military, along with those who support them without reservation, remain committed to universal human rights and to jus cogens, the body of legal norms considered fundamental and........

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