On the one-year anniversary of the Hamas incursion in Palestine, the “Israel was a victim” posts surged across social media and mainstream media. As expected.
It’s true that a year and two days ago Hamas fighters killed Israelis in an attack. It’s equally true that even at the low end of death estimates, and using the inaccurate figure of 1,200 Israelis killed by Hamas on that day, in the past year Israel has visited 35 October 7ths upon the people of Palestine. Factor in estimates of people trapped under the rubble and otherwise missing, and it’s more like 167 October 7ths. Finally, it’s true that Israel has been murdering Palestinians for 76 years now.
Meanwhile, much of what we’ve been fed since Oct. 7, 2023 by the governments of Israel and the USA has been untrue.
For example, you’ll notice I didn’t write that Hamas fighters killed approximately 1,200 Israelis on that fateful day. That’s because Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed many of their own people – soldiers and hostages – while implementing the Hannibal Directive.
I did not say Hamas beheaded babies or repeat any of dozens of other atrocious lies Israeli and U.S. officials have told since that day.
I also did not write that Hamas attacked Israel, because the fact is the fighters escaped from the open-air prison that was Gaza into lands that Israel had previously stolen from Palestinians. These Palestinians “attacked” occupiers in Palestine. The fact is, while Oct. 7, 2023, was certainly an armed incursion, it is more accurately described as resistance to 75 years of apartheid and brutal oppression by Israel.
You’ll notice, also, that I refrain from describing what Israel is perpetuating in Gaza and the West Bank as a “war.” Wars are fought by armies. Calling indiscriminate killing of unarmed, unhoused and starving men, women and children a “war” is a detestable act of propaganda.
Where were all the commemorations and words of consolation this week for the at least 40,000 Palestinians, and more likely 200,000, a majority of whom have been children and women, the IOF has killed since Oct. 8, 2023?
For about six months I’ve been asking U.S. citizens who attack me for saying these things, "What if Israel was bombing your children? What if the USA was funding weapons to wipe out your grandchildren? What if Israel was obliterating your neighborhood day after day after day? What if it was you?" I also ask, "Do you think George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were terrorists?"
Not surprisingly, not one responded to those questions, choosing instead to deflect with more of the propaganda they – we – have all been fed throughout our lives.
Meanwhile, The Times of Israel is reporting a poll of Israelis regarding their opinions about continuing operations in Gaza. According to the poll, one year after the nation began its genocide, 43 percent of Jewish Israelis support a continuation of the killing.
It's monstrous.
The facts are that Israel has repeatedly violated international laws in carrying out its attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank. The USA has repeatedly violated international and U.S. laws by supplying funding and weapons to Israel for that purpose.
I know this now, after reading hundreds of thousands of words about Israel’s actions since at least 1948.
I started with stories from U.S. mainstream media, but read less and less of those as I saw, with my own eyes, how they twist headlines and stories in favor of Israel.
I read “The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017,” by Rashid Khalidi, who is the Edward Said professor of Arab studies in the Department of History at Columbia University and director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding. I heartily recommend it to anyone who actually wants to understand Israel’s impact on Palestinians and the broader region rather than just believing the malarkey we’re constantly fed by Israeli and U.S. media and politicians.
I also follow and read blogs by people who are not afraid to call out injustices and hypocrisy when they see them, and there’ve been heaps of both in the case of Israel’s longtime apartheid and more recent genocide against Palestinians.
But on Oct. 7, 2023, I was one of the multitude of U.S. citizens nodding his head in agreement when the talking heads and members of the Biden administration kept repeating, “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
That’s because all my life my government and the mainstream media have told me Arabs are bad, if not evil, that they’re constantly attacking Israel for no good reason other than a difference in religion and that they want death for all westerners. That everything in the Middle East would be fine if the crazy Muslims would just leave Israel alone. That they’re unreasonable, insane people constantly lusting for blood of westerners, and that every single one of them would cheer another 9/11 attack every day of the week. (Those paying close attention also noticed that Israeli zionists described them as less than human.)
All. My. Life.
Nonsense.
If you doubt for a second that all of this is the result of deliberate propagandizing, then at the least you need to watch “The Occupation of the American Mind,” a documentary from the Media Education Foundation. And if you doubt the brutality and inhumanity of Israel, then you need to watch “‘The Night Won’t End’: Biden’s War on Gaza,” an Al Jazeera/Fault Lines documentary that, among other atrocities, focuses on the murder of five-year-old Hind Rajab.
Do not avoid. Do not recoil. Do not look away. If you’re a U.S. citizen, you have a responsibility to watch documentaries and read stories about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and destabilizing presence in the Middle East. After all, your tax dollars are paying for everything depicted in them.
Speaking of which, what’s been worse than realizing I never questioned the lies about Muslims, Arabs and the Middle East is learning the USA has stoked the violence with billions of dollars in funding and weapons year after year after year for decades, not to mention political cover for Israel at the United Nations and other international bodies and misleading reporting by the USA’s mainstream, legacy media.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin lied to Congress about Israel blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, and the gaslighting – from Democrats just as much as from Republicans – has been unbearable. Again, there are hundreds if not thousands of examples from the past year, but the most blatant is the use of “Israel has a right to defend itself” as justification for the genocide and the USA’s enabling of it.
It’s painfully obvious that Israel’s actions have been anything but defensive. In truth they’re as offensive as it gets, in all senses and meanings of the word.
Even so, Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris has said “Israel has a right to defend itself” so many times it might as well be her campaign slogan. To be fair, Donald Trump’s might as well be “Let Israel finish the job.” Both have promised under no uncertain terms to continue arming and funding Israel so it can continue its genocidal actions in Gaza and the West Bank, expand them into Lebanon and continue bombing other nations.
At least now Israel has exposed its own lie of “This will end once all the hostages are released"; there are no hostages in Lebanon, nor in Syria, Iran or Yemen, each of which Israel has bombed in the past two months. However, that’s little consolation for the 40,000-200,000 Palestinian and Lebanese dead and hundreds of thousands left either maimed, parentless or both.
Unlearning everything I thought I knew has been painful, initially because of my embarrassment at believing it all in the first place without bothering to seek out information on my own or trying to find other perspectives. It’s also been distressing to listen to people I once thought of as my friends, some of whom I even admired, brushing off the deaths of Palestinian children as if they were nothing more than bothersome flies at a backyard bar-b-que. And listening to them try to justify their upcoming votes for Harris and Trump has been excruciating.
Despite their having access to all the same information and ability to see photo after photo of shredded Palestinian children just as I have, many if not most Americans still accept, if not parrot, the version of events that stars Israel as a perennial and perpetual victim.
I’ve worked through the shame of having been propagandized. But no more; now I am paying attention, asking questions, thinking for myself.
The result is I fervently support Palestine and Palestinians, along with people of all religions, nationalities and beliefs around the world who are being oppressed.
One last thing – spare me the cries of antisemitism. That’s nonsense, too. Whether someone is Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu or any other of the hundreds of religions in the world does not enter my calculations, especially when people are killing their neighbors.
And as I’ve said many times over the course of the past year, resistance to oppression is a human imperative. It’s just as true for oppressive propaganda as it is for murderous occupation.
Most people have no idea that the countries of the Middle East were drawn on a map by the British and French after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, in a way that it would guarantee future frictions among the populations. Frictions that they kindled in societies that were peaceful, multicultural and for the most part secular. They created radical Islamists to use as tools against peaceful Muslims, who were in their majority (according to British polls of the time) in favour of the creation of one country, "Greater Syria" that would encompass the Levante and would be multiethnic and multicultural. And then they promoted the cartoonish version of a violent deranged Muslim, through their movies and media, to manufacture consent for their bloody wars. How many people know that socialism, panarabism, and secularism was on the rise across the Middle East when the West murdered their leaders and installed puppets? Or that Hassan Nashrallah was a book worm, close friend of Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky?
Disgust does not even begin to describe how I feel
yeah... I'm not American, but this has been pretty much my experience the last year.
I was sich a naive fool... but tbh, to this day I'm not sure if I'd take the blue pill next time.
Cipher was right. Neo died for nothing and we could have been all eating steak and drinking Canernet.
Don't get me wrong, I take this shit fucking serious, but it also brought me down to a lvl of despair that's almost unsustainable.
I knew the world was kinda fucked up, but this shit... that's Germany WW2 lvl of depravity, and people are cheering it on or indifferent to it, while I pull my hair out