In a shocking Facebook post this week, Israeli screenwriter and actor Gil Kopatz openly compared Palestinians in Gaza to sharks and called for their extermination.
“If you feed sharks, they end up eating you. If you feed Gazans, they end up eating you,” Kopatz wrote.
He went even further, stating bluntly: “I am in favor of shark extinction — and in favor of exterminating Gazans.”
He ended his post with a chilling note: “Reflections on Holocaust Day 2025.”
The reaction online and in political circles was immediate.
Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian politician and Israeli citizen, slammed Kopatz in a post on X (formerly Twitter), calling him a “neo-Nazi degenerate” for choosing to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day with such hateful language.
Rather than walking back his comments, Kopatz doubled down in a follow-up post.
“I don’t have even one drop of compassion for Gazans,” he wrote. “For Arabs in general, yes. For humans in general, yes. For sharks, no. And not for human animals either.”
Despite the openly dehumanizing rhetoric, Kopatz still tried to paint himself as “a humane, liberal and moral person.” He added: “Those who grew up in Gaza and were raised on murderous racist hatred against my family — I don’t treat them as human beings.” And in one of the most disturbing parts of his post, he wrote:
“It’s not genocide. It’s pesticide. And it’s essential.”
A Pattern of Dehumanization
Since the beginning of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023, many Israeli officials and public figures have been criticized for their increasingly inflammatory and dehumanizing language toward Palestinians.
At the start of the ground invasion, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referenced the biblical story of Amalek — an ancient enemy that God commanded to be completely wiped out — a reference many critics said amounted to a genocidal call.
Earlier in the war, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also made headlines when he called Palestinians “human animals,” while announcing plans to cut off Gaza’s electricity, water, and food supplies.
Other Israeli ministers have even suggested using a nuclear bomb on Gaza or called for erasing the Palestinian territory “from the face of the earth.”
These repeated statements, combined with ongoing actions on the ground, have raised serious alarm from human rights organizations around the world — warning that such rhetoric and policies are paving the way for atrocities on a massive scale.
Shortlink for this post: https://daysofpalestine.ps/?p=62458
