The Human and the Animal under Siege
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“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” — George Orwell
If we compare human behavior to that of animals, many people will be offended. When we want to insult someone, we say that they behave like an animal, or simply say “you animal,” which angers the targeted person, and they may retaliate with equal force, pointing out that their animalistic nature is not something sudden but inherited from their ancestors, as they might respond with a greater accusation, saying, “you animal, you son of an animal,” and so on.
The truth is, that humans are arrogant and presumptuous beings, otherwise, it would have been clear to them that describing someone as an animal carries a lot of insult towards the animal, not towards humans. For example, animals like dogs do not kill their kind, and the popular saying is true when it says “a dog doesn’t eat its brother,” have any of us seen two dogs, cats, or wolves killing each other without human intervention? But that may only happen in very rare cases and with human intervention, as we will see shortly.
Other creatures (besides humans) do not kill even members of another species unless to satisfy their hunger. As for humans, they kill their kind, and even their offspring and race, in the millions daily, always for the most trivial reasons, and there’s no need to remember lying, fraud, conspiracy, and other things that are limited to humans rather than animals. This is not “poetic verse,” but I want to derive a lesson for humans from the behaviour of animals:
When a medical laboratory wants to find a cure for a human disease, the medicine is usually not tested on humans but on some animals, following the logic of evolutionary theory regarding the relationship between species. They start by giving the medicine to some rodents like mice, then move on to some lower primates like some monkeys, and if the experiment succeeds, they might move on to some higher primates like chimpanzees or gorillas, and only when such an experiment succeeds does it move on to its application on humans.
Behind this logic lies the assumption that the biology and physiology of the human body are similar to those of rodents, closer to those of lower primates, and almost identical to those of higher primates, so if the experiment succeeds, we can be confident in the possibility of administering the medicine to humans.
The truth is that similarity doesn’t stop at biological and physiological traits; it extends to behavioral aspects. Yet, humans deny and condemn this truth, attempting to ignore it, pretending not to know it. But why? Isn’t behavior derived from the interaction of the biological entity with its environment for the individual’s survival, and consequently, the survival of the species?
Even the mind, which we pride ourselves on and elevate above other beings, is based on the brain and the nervous system as a whole, merely a biological apparatus. However, its presence in humans has reached a higher degree than in other beings, and some of our relatives from higher primates share much of it with us.
Many experiments have been conducted on a variety of mammals, including some of our relatives among both higher and lower primates. From these experiments, it has been observed that when these creatures are removed from their natural habitat and confined in cages in laboratories or zoos, they are subjected to harsh and stressful conditions such as shrinking cage sizes, increased overcrowding, reduced food levels below acceptable standards, physical abuse, exposure to electric shocks, or other forms of cruelty and torture.
In response to such conditions, these creatures resort to abnormal and unfamiliar biological and behavioral strategies compared to their natural environment. One of the most prominent of these strategies is that animals in such situations cease to reproduce; they do not mate, and if they do, the females do not conceive. Another behavioural strategy is an increase in violent and aggressive behaviour towards each other, resorting to biting and gnawing, leading to cases where animals kill their own offspring. Females carrying offspring may neglect or even kill them, and in extreme cases, they may resort to eating their children.
Anthropologists and sociologists have noted similar cases among humankind, particularly among indigenous peoples in the colonies colonized and seized by Europeans, such as the inhabitants of the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. The “Red Indians” in America, and the Polynesians in the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, and many other colonies, saw their numbers rapidly decline until they were exterminated or on the brink of extinction. They were not a small number, as it is estimated that the number of “Red Indians” in America upon Columbus’s arrival was large enough that if Europeans hadn’t arrived, there would have been more indigenous inhabitants there than the total population of whites, blacks, and Indians at present.
True, many of the indigenous populations were deliberately killed, and many died as a result of diseases introduced by the colonizers to which they had no immunity. Many also died as a result of alcohol addiction introduced to them by the colonists as well. But it’s also true that what hastened their destruction was the rapid and dramatic decline in birth rates compared to deaths without clear or justifiable reasons. Also, the spread of deadly conflicts and disputes among them, as if chronic frustration and loss of hope in overcoming the external forces they couldn’t control, gave rise to a biological and behavioral tendency towards discontinuing life, towards escaping from a losing battle through death.
In our present time, we see a striking similarity to the situation of the Palestinians now and throughout the last century, and what happened to the indigenous populations in America, New Zealand, and Australia. The groups sent to colonize these regions were generally seen as surplus by European countries, and their presence may have been detrimental to the interests of the motherland. We remember that Britain emptied its prisons and sent its inmates to Australia for colonization, and Europe as a whole sent religious fundamentalist groups to America for colonization and exploitation for the benefit of the motherland.
Similarly, Europe began sending Jewish groups to Palestine for colonization and to rid it of its indigenous population in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, all to possess a foothold in the Middle East for the benefit of Europeans. Undoubtedly, the peoples of Western and Northern Europe viewed Jews as an undesirable surplus population that must be disposed of, but in a way that serves the motherland.
The Zionist movement primarily consisted of educated Jews who fully understood the situation and agreed with Europeans that there was no place for Jews in Europe. They exploited European sentiment to crystallise and implement a colonial settler wave that served their goals as well as the goals of their motherland.
Many today claim that the reason for the Jews’ migration from Europe and their quest for an independent homeland was the result of the Nazi massacres of Jews during World War II. However, in this assertion, there is much distortion, as the Zionist movement and the settlement migration to Palestine had begun more than half a century before the Second World War. The European thinking of disposing of the Jews by exploiting them for the colonization of parts of the Middle East had started before that.
On the other hand, it is true that the Nazis annihilated vast numbers of Jews, but the direction of Jewish migration to Palestine specifically during and after World War II was neither spontaneous nor inevitable. It resulted from the closing of American and European countries’ borders to them and from the collaboration between the Zionist movement and European countries to direct the migration of Jews fleeing from the Nazis to Palestine to support and consolidate its colonisation and settlement, which had begun long before that. (CLINTON IN KIEV. — Jamestown)
From this, it can be inferred that the establishment of the state of Israel did not come as a result of a religious or national inclination among European Jews but as part of a much broader trend, namely, the European colonial settler trend seeking to seize new territories in the world, eradicate their indigenous populations, and replace them with European surplus populations, while simultaneously serving the interests of the populations they were sent from and supporting them in their homeland, Europe. Israel continues to fulfil this role in a positive light by the gradual annihilation of the Palestinian people and serving the interests of Europe and America in the Middle East and the Arab world.
I return here to the fundamental biological and behavioral similarity between humans and other primates. There are indeed similarities, but it’s also true that there are differences. Paying attention to these differences may be a way to avoid the fate of Palestinians and other peoples vulnerable to modern colonization, a fate similar to that of the indigenous peoples in America and Australia, as some indigenous peoples like the Algerians and the Vietnamese have succeeded in avoiding.
The key difference is the presence of self-awareness in humans and its absence in other primates. This means that humans can step outside of themselves, see themselves from the outside, and think about themselves, what happens to them, what surrounds them, and how they influence and are influenced by it. Thus, they may be able to control some of the biological and behavioural instincts stemming from instinctive reactions to injustice, oppression, frustration, despair, and loss of hope.
And here I come to the message I wanted to convey. I have noticed in recent years that a kind of frustration, perhaps even despair, has begun to appear among our youth and that the stressful conditions leading to such feelings have been accelerating. Our control over the variables that govern our lives diminishes every day, the walls of the cages close in on us, essential sources of life decrease, and injustice, repression, ignorance, and deprivation increase…
So, if you, my fellow human, feel a strong urge to seek revenge on your neighbor, or brother, or to unleash your anger on your spouse or child, or your friend, relative, or on a weak dog wandering the streets, then come and think first and deeply: Could the reason for all this be the jailer who controls the size of the cage and the amount of food?
