Opinion — Jane Waters Article Grounded in Inaccuracy: It’s All About the Ants

The entire point of the article by Jane Waters “The Struggle for a Free Palestine: How animals play a pivotal role in dehumanizing rhetoric” is grounded in a misrepresentation. It should not have been published.

Waters asserts that the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Arieh King, in a now-deleted tweet — “They aren’t human beings and not human animals. They’re subhuman and that’s how they should be treated.” — was referring to, as Waters writes, “the dehumanization of Palestinian lives.” Ironically, Waters then explains, “As if the wanton extermination of life was ever an ethical position to defend, this language strikes at the human/animal binary, weaponizing twisted conceptions of the natural world to justify evil.”

The primary problem here is that King was referring specifically to Hamas militants, men under arms explicitly committed to a campaign of genocide to wipe out the State of Israel and kill all Jews, a point directly in the headline of a fact-check published by USA Today (“Jerusalem deputy mayor referred to Hamas militants as ‘subhuman’ in X post”).

I discussed the stated goals of Hamas and its background at length a year ago (“Opinion — Has the Hamas attack on Israel started World War III? We’ll soon find out”). I call Waters’ statement ironic because those she is defending from criticism by King were literally responsible for the planned and intentional “wanton extermination of life” of more than 1,100 Israelis, in addition to raping and kidnapping.

Insofar as King is not a biologist and Waters is, his understanding of the natural world and consequent use of it as an analogy may be wrong, and I personally would not agree with him even with regard to Hamas militants who, in my view, have made a conscious moral choice to be inhuman rather than subhuman. Nevertheless, Waters’ implication that King intended to refer to Palestinian Arabs broadly rather than Hamas militants narrowly is simply wrong.

The applicability of ant society to humans is itself a matter of enormous legitimate scientific controversy, and my time in college coincided with the vicious furor provoked by the publication of Sociobiology by entomologist EO Wilson, which led to allegations of his supporting racism and eugenics. I had the opportunity to hear both him and some of his main critics such as Stephen Jay Gould. At the 1978 AAAS meeting, Wilson was physically assaulted by protesters chanting, “Racist Wilson you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” Wilson and his co-author Bert Hölldobler in 1991 won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction with their massive textbook The Ants.

Waters in her official Providence College web page states “She is active in the community, organizing with Jewish Voice for Peace…” an organization that is not merely pro-Palestinian but is (according to the Anti-Defamation League) actively pro-Hamas:

On October 7, 2023, the day Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and killed 1,400 Israelis, and kidnapped at least 203 people (including Americans), most of whom were civilians, JVP released a statement claiming that “the source of all this violence” was “Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression.” In interviews, JVP Executive Director Stefanie Fox and JVP Action Political Director Beth Miller both said that Israel was the “root cause” of the violence. Prominent JVP activist Ariel Koren said she believed Hamas’s actions were consistent with “Palestinians’ right to resist.” 

JVP was removed from Columbia University for “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” but continued operating as part of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which a few weeks ago retracted their prior apology issued on behalf of a student who was expelled for saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” (The matter is in litigation.) The retraction statement said, “We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance … violence is the only path forward.” According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “In August [2024], weeks ahead of the beginning of the school year, CUAD hailed the Oct. 7 attack and posted, ‘We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.’” 

This is the preconceived and biased perspective Waters is coming from, but not acknowledging, when presenting the arguments in her article.

One of Wilson’s key ideas in Sociobiology was the extension of “eusociality,” the concept that some innately social societies, notably ants, survive because they share purpose and divide labor, such as finding food and caring for the young. There are certainly no ant colonies that would attack a neighboring ant colony, heedless of their own destruction, in a delusionally nihilistic quest for holy martyrdom.

How delusional? According to PalWatch: “Another astonishing finding is that even though most of Hamas’ terror army is destroyed, and most of the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip either destroyed or damaged, still 79% of West Bank Palestinians believe that Hamas will win the war.” Maybe the Hamas militants are not so much subhuman as they are sub-ant.

The opinions stated here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Motif, its staff or other contributors.