Zoometrics and the Dogs of Gaza: Species, Race, and Settler-Colonial Violence

Abstract: Zoometrics—the shifting hierarchies that calibrate value between the more-or-less human and the more-or-less animal—is a core technology of settler colonialism. Such hierarchies govern life and death, authorizing both violence and care. Drawing on the literature on posthumanism, more-than-human geographies, political ecology, Black and decolonial studies, and critical animal studies, this project identifies strategies of humanization, dehumanization, and feralization performed in Gaza through companion, free-roaming, and military dogs, especially since October 2023. Most acutely, I trace how conceptual violence through zoometrics precedes, and often precisely predicts, physical violence. I write about dogs not to center their suffering over that of Palestinians, but to reveal how species difference intersects with race to rationalize and justify extreme atrocities. At the same time, the dogs in Gaza are not mere metaphors; they are living beings with relations and capacities that matter and resist.