Over the past year or so, multiple news channels have reported various senior Israeli officials as calling Palestinians 'animals' in a crude and obvious attempt to deny their personhood. Hitler's Third Reich used exactly the same kind of language against the Jews. The removal of personhood is always a prerequisite to the committing of atrocities.

The fact that calling human beings 'animals' is so powerful is a testament to just how successfully other species have been relegated to the status of non-persons in almost every culture around the world.