The Architecture of Dehumanisation
How Two Conferences Reshaped Global Conflict
In the summer of 1979, as the world grappled with the Iranian Revolution and Soviet expansion, an ambitious intellectual project began in Jerusalem. What appeared to be an academic conference on international terrorism would prove to be something far more consequential: a systematic effort to redefine how the world understood conflict in Muslim-majority regions, with implications that would reverberate across decades and continents.
The Jonathan Institute, founded three years earlier by the Netanyahu family following the death of Benjamin's brother in the Entebbe raid, convened what it called the first-ever international conference on terrorism. The timing was deliberate. As contemporary documents suggest, organisers explicitly sought to capitalise on Western anxieties about Iran and Soviet influence to advance a broader strategic communication campaign. The 700 attendees who gathered at Jerusalem's Hilton Hotel represented a carefully curated audience. Future President George H.W. Bush delivered remarks alongside Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres. The guest list read like a directory of neoconservative intellectuals, defense officials, and journalists who would shape Western policy discourse for the next generation. Despite being nominally private, Israeli officials acknowledged the conference operated with the assistance of the Israeli government.
What came out of this gathering was not just analysis but ideological architecture. Conference participants advanced a revolutionary redefinition of terrorism that would prove historically significant. They argued that political violence in the Middle East was not driven by specific grievances over territory, sovereignty, or human rights, but represented an existential civilisational threat to Western democracy itself. This framing served multiple strategic purposes. By characterising Palestinian resistance as part of a Soviet-sponsored international terror network, the conferences transformed a regional conflict over land and rights into a front in the global Cold War. Local political struggles became episodes in what participants repeatedly described as a clash between civilisation and barbarism.
The 1984 Washington conference, held at the Four Seasons Hotel with Secretary of State George Shultz and UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick as featured speakers, refined and expanded these themes. The resulting book, "Terrorism: How the West Can Win," edited by Benjamin Netanyahu, became required reading in policy circles and reportedly President Reagan's favourite book on the subject.
Perhaps most significantly, the conferences pioneered the systematic linkage of Islam itself to terrorism. The 1984 proceedings included dedicated sessions on terrorism and the Islamic world, where participants argued that Islam possessed an essentially political character from its foundation that made it inherently conducive to violence against non-believers. Contributors claimed that Islamic theology justified the shedding of all moral inhibitions and that Muslim societies were uniquely prone to terrorist activity.
Conference participants promoted an essentialist view that treated Islamic culture and religion as breeding grounds for violence. They argued that terrorism was not a tactic employed by various groups for diverse reasons, but a manifestation of Islamic ideology itself. These conferences constructed intellectual frameworks that reshaped American foreign policy toward the Muslim world. The frameworks developed at these gatherings, emphasising civilisational conflict, promoting preemptive military action, and systematically dehumanising Muslim populations, directly influenced decades of military interventions that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
This reframing went far beyond academic analysis. Conference participants created intellectual cover for policies that would fundamentally alter global conflict patterns. Their frameworks treated Islamic culture and religion as inherently threatening to Western civilisation, providing the conceptual foundation for military strategies that would view entire populations through a lens of suspicion and eventual violence. Participants refined specific rhetorical strategies across both conferences. They systematically denied the political legitimacy of Muslim grievances, characterising resistance to Western or Israeli policies as pathological behaviour. They championed preemptive retaliation, arguing that suspected terrorists should be eliminated before acting, which stripped legal protections from broad categories of people.
The conferences also pioneered media strategies designed to make this dehumanisation appear reasonable to Western audiences. Participants included prominent journalists and devised sophisticated approaches to news coverage that would emphasise Muslim violence while minimising the context that might explain such violence. They understood that controlling narrative was as important as developing policy.
The human cost of these intellectual frameworks became apparent in the decades that followed. The conceptual tools developed in Jerusalem and Washington appeared repeatedly in policy documents justifying military interventions across the Muslim world. The language of civilisational conflict that participants promoted became standard rhetoric for defending actions that resulted in massive civilian casualties. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and numerous other conflicts, policymakers drew explicitly on frameworks developed at the Netanyahu conferences. The characterisation of Islamic ideology as inherently threatening provided intellectual cover for military strategies that treated entire populations as legitimate targets. The emphasis on preemptive action justified interventions that destabilised entire regions.
The conferences' influence extended beyond direct military action to encompass surveillance programs, immigration policies, and domestic security measures that systematically discriminated against Muslim populations. The frameworks developed in 1979 and 1984 provided intellectual justification for treating millions of people as suspects in their own countries. Today, four decades after the first Jerusalem conference, the intellectual architecture constructed by Netanyahu and his collaborators continues to shape global conflict. The language they pioneered appears in contemporary policy debates about military intervention, domestic surveillance, and immigration restriction. The civilisational framework they promoted provides ongoing justification for policies that disproportionately harm Muslim populations worldwide.
The conferences represent a case study in how intellectual frameworks developed in academic settings can have devastating real-world consequences. They demonstrate the power of strategic communication to reshape how entire societies understand complex political phenomena. Most importantly, they reveal how the systematic dehumanisation of entire populations can be packaged as scholarly analysis and policy expertise. The human cost of this intellectual project continues to mount. From the rubble of destroyed cities to the grief of families torn apart by conflict, the real-world impact of ideas developed in Jerusalem conference rooms decades ago remains visible across the Muslim world. The conferences that began as strategic communication have become monuments to the power of ideas to shape human suffering on a global scale.
Understanding this history becomes essential for anyone seeking to comprehend how contemporary conflicts developed and why they persist. The Netanyahu conferences were not just the origins of current policy frameworks, but the deliberate intellectual process through which entire populations were marked for perpetual suspicion and, ultimately, violence.
References
Netanyahu, Benjamin (Ed.). International Terrorism: Challenge and Response. Transaction Publishers, 1981.
Netanyahu, Benjamin (Ed.). Terrorism: How the West Can Win. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986.
Executive Intelligence Review. "Jerusalem conference plots International terrorist bloodbath." July 17, 1979.
Office of Justice Programs. "International Terrorism - Challenge and Response - Proceedings of the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism." U.S. Department of Justice.
Reagan Presidential Library. Files on International Terrorism Conference, 1979-1984.