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What does it take to dehumanise an entire people? In modern times, it is only necessary to invoke the spectre of terrorism. With this slur, suddenly anything goes.

That is why one of the most advanced militaries on the planet can target civilian infrastructure with impunity, while the so-called Free World — only weeks ago parading around as defenders of freedom from occupation in eastern Europe — looks the other way.

For two years, we have listened as Western nations rallied their citizens to support Ukraine against a brutal occupation by Russia. As the Russian military used all its might to indiscriminately kill civilians, laying waste to entire cities and towns, we grew used to hearing of the heroism of the resistance.

As Ukrainian flags fluttered over English churches, you might have been forgiven for thinking there had been a sea change in our attitudes to occupied peoples. Certainly, with the United States providing the country with nearly 80 billion dollars of aid in one year, of which nearly 50 billion dollars was military aid, it might have seemed that they meant business.

But it turns out — as anyone living in the Global South could have told us — that our revulsion for the disproportionate use of force against civilian populations is highly selective. Though we may condemn Russia for shelling civilian housing in Ukraine, that is a standard not to be applied to our allies.

Note how our leaders stand solemnly with heads bowed, shedding tears for the loss of ten thousand civilian lives in two years of war in Ukraine. Then note how they shrug their shoulders when confronted with five thousand civilian deaths in two weeks, two thousand of them children.

Instead of calling for an immediate suspension of hostilities, men and women who only weeks ago praised themselves for standing with an occupied people, now simply reaffirm that their ally has the right to defend itself from terrorism with whatever force it deems necessary. That includes damaging or destroying homes, homeless shelters, hospitals, schools, ambulances, bakeries, critical infrastructure and places of worship.

How has it come to this? Enter the terrorist scourge. Two decades of global propaganda has firmly cemented in our minds the notion that anyone tarred with the terrorist slur is immediately stripped of their humanity, and thus becomes a legitimate target for all the world’s military might.

Implicit in our reactions is the idea that citizens of the Global South do not care for their families as we do. Parents do not care for their children. Husbands do not love their wives. Families do not have dreams for the future. Teenagers do not aspire to live fruitful lives. Communities do not yearn to live in peace. Societies do not want safety and security.

Planted in our minds, an all pervasive racism which associates populations of millions with the actions of a few. We cannot see their societies as being complex like our own, made up of individuals with all manner of unique interests and desires. Ignored, their orchestras, artists, writers, doctors. In their place, only an extremist hoard.

Who knew until the last week that there are churches in Gaza with active congregations, or that the Anglican church runs hospitals there? Who imagines that their population is diverse, with its left and right, its religious and secular, its rich and poor, its peacemakers and resistance?

Who sees that stretch of land as if it were superimposed on the streets of London, from Ealing and Hounslow in the west, through Shepherd’s Bush, Kensington, Westminster, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf and Greenwich, out to Barking and Dagenham in the east? Can you not imagine the great diversity in that stretch of land, 365 km square, and all the individual lives teeming in its bustling streets?

No, but we can’t, for this is a people tarred in their entirety with the terrorist slur, which has robbed them of their humanity. A variation on an older slur going back centuries applied to colonised peoples throughout the Global South, speaking of uncivilised savages, barbarians, hoards and fanatics, applied from the Americas to Africa to all of Asia.

So pervasive is it that we are barely even cognisant that we have been coopted by these games of strategic dominance, caring not in the slightest for a civilian life lost, unless it can be used to sell more war. How else could it be that we witness entire neighbourhoods pulverised to dust, the bodies of men, women and children piling up, and we still blame the victims for their demise?

Such is the power of the terrorist slur. “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” No, no, we’re not. We’re with the ordinary man and woman who simply wants to live their lives in peace, free of the harassment of warmongers everywhere. We’re with the common man, whose inherent humanity we recognise in full, regardless of the colour of their skin, the language they speak or the land of their birth.

We can only get there if we refuse to take part in the global propaganda machine which dehumanises entire peoples with a flippant slur.