From names to numbers: How Israel is dehumanising Palestinians

Practice of referring to detainees only by number, even in death, helps Israel 'justify the unjustifiable'

A refrigerated lorry carrying the remains of unidentified Palestinians returned by Israel, outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. AFP

Israel's war on Gaza has revealed an unspoken but deliberate policy that reduces Palestinians from human beings to mere numbers.

Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and in military detention have been systematically stripped of their identities, their names replaced by numbers. The policy, say rights groups and former detainees, is part of a dehumanisation process that makes it easier for soldiers and interrogators to commit acts of abuse, torture and even killing, without moral restraint.

“Dehumanisation is the prerequisite for atrocities,” said Mohammed Shehada, of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

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“Israel has a systematic policy of trying to dehumanise Palestinians in every possible way – linguistically, physically, psychologically – to make it easier for soldiers to kill, to torture and to destroy.”

The Israeli army deliberately replaces human words with sterile military jargon, he said.

“They say 'neutralised' instead of 'killed', 'eliminated' instead of 'executed', 'target' instead of 'person',” Mr Shehada explained. “They even refer to taking civilians as the 'neighbour protocol' when using them as human shields. All of this is language designed to make mass murder sound surgical, acceptable, even necessary.”

This same logic, he says, extends to how Palestinians are treated once in custody or killed. “When Palestinians are detained, kidnapped, tortured, or killed, Israel assigns them numbers instead of names. That way, soldiers can handle them, living or dead, without emotional attachment. Once you take away a name, you take away a person’s humanity. You turn them into an object – and objects can be disposed of.”

Salah Ibrahim, 23, who now lives in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, has experienced that system. After losing his leg an Israeli air strike, he was arrested in a raid on Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza city in March last year.

“After my arrest, they gave me a number, 105,” he told The National. “That was my name for a year and a half. No one ever called me Salah again.”

The psychological toll was unbearable, he said. “Turning a human being into a number destroys your soul. I was no longer Salah; I was 105. Every time they shouted that number, I felt less human.”

Since his release, Mr Ibrahim said he cannot stand to hear numbers spoken around him. “They remind me of the prisons, of the humiliation. I've even asked my family not to use numbers near me.”

He said all detainees go through the same process, their names replaced by numbers from the moment they are arrested. “It’s a form of psychological torture,” he said. “Some prisoners even start forgetting their own names.”

The policy is applied not only during imprisonment but also after death. Israel has handed over 315 bodies of Palestinians since the October 10 ceasefire, but bearing only numbers, not names, said Ismail Al Thawabta, director of the Government Media Office in Gaza.

“A total of 182 unidentified bodies have been buried so far,” Mr Al Thawabta told The National. “The Israeli army knows exactly who these people are, their names, their identities, but refuses to release that information. It’s deliberate cruelty."

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Mr Shehada agreed, saying Israeli forces photograph everyone taken into custody, whether alive or dead, and document each detail, from their ID cards to their phones. This information is then sent to intelligence units. “So when they claim they don’t know who the victims are, that’s a lie," he said. "They know. They just choose to hide it.”

Only 91 of the 315 bodies have been identified. The task of doing so has fallen on the forensics department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where they are handed over after being released by Israel. The hospital collects DNA samples to help the identification process, even though it currently lacks the necessary equipment, and also posts photos and details of identifying marks online to help families looking for their missing loved ones.

Among those still searching is Mohammed Taimeh, whose brother Hussein, 29, went missing on October 7, 2023, the first day of the war.

Witnesses reported seeing Hussein near the Beit Hanoun border crossing between northern Gaza and Israel before Israeli forces stormed the area.

“Since then, nothing,” Mr Taimeh told The National. “We contacted the Red Cross and international organisations, but there has been no word.”

When Israel began releasing those detained and returning bodies, the family rushed to hospitals hoping for answers. “We went to Nasser Hospital several times to look at the photos of the bodies and their belongings,” he said. “We even searched the online database the Ministry of Health created. But we never found him.

“We don’t know if he’s alive, a prisoner, dead, or buried somewhere. The not knowing is torture. You drown in it every day,” he said, his voice breaking.

For Mr Shehada, this erasure, from name to number, from person to property, is no accident. It is a deliberate psychological and political tactic.

“When you take away a name, you take away accountability,” he said. “If you return a body with no name, you erase the evidence of who they were – a student, a child, a father – and you erase Israel’s responsibility for killing them.”

Turning Palestinians into numbers, he says, is the ultimate expression of dehumanisation. “It’s how you justify the unjustifiable,” he said. “If they are numbers, not people, then you can bomb them, torture them, burn them, bury them and call it security.”

As Mr Ibrahim put it: “When you stop being called by your name, you start to lose who you are. That’s what they want, for us to disappear, even before we die.”