two-legged beast

two-legged beast (plural two-legged beasts)

1. (derogatory) human
   • 1999, "Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians" pg 257 by Noam Chomsky

     Dr. Shlomo Shmelzman .. wrote a letter to the press announcing his hunger strike in protest against the Lebanon war:

     I hear too many familiar sounds today, sounds which are being amplified by the war. I hear "dirty Arabs" and I remember "dirty Jews." I hear about "closed areas" and I remember ghettos and camps. I hear "two-legged beasts"* and I remember...

     Menachem Begin's statement in the Knesset, widely quoted in Israel and Europe since, interpreted as s description of Palestinians as "two-legged beasts." The government of Israel protested that this is a misinterpretation, and that Begin's "description is applicable to whosoever sinks to such moral depths that by killing or threatening a Jewish child, he proves himself bereft of any semblance of humanity"

   • 2015, Stephen Andora, Workers and Workplaces in Revolutionary China‎, page 45:

     They treated the dock workers like two-legged beasts of burden.

• beast
• beastly