The "Truce" Shall (Not) Set You Free

The Palestinian resistance group, HAMAS, has reportedly come to a truce agreement with "Israel" which would allegedly end all "hostilities" between the two sides. I will refrain from commenting on the details and specifics of the "truce" as such "agreements" have been formed before and will probably be formed again in the future, but to no avail, as Palestine will remain occupied and "Israel" will continue to unabatedly kill Palestinian civilians and steal Palestinian land without consequence. My intention here is to expose the bias in the coverage of this conflict and to shed light on its true nature.

News media across the globe, including unfortunately many Arab news outlets, have consistently reported on this issue as if both sides have equal faults and equally legitimate claims, or in more extreme cases, pitting the blame for the entire conflict on the Palestinians and other Syrians for refusing to accept and acquiesce to "Israeli" occupation of their land. The very first sentence in the BBC’s coverage of this story reads "Israel and militant group Hamas have agreed to end months of bitter clashes with a six-month truce starting on Thursday, Palestinian officials say." There are two insinuations and implications in this one sentence that distort the nature of the entire struggle. First, the Palestinians defending their land against occupation are referred to as a "militant group," while the occupiers of the land are referred to simply as "Israel." This immediately gives the idea that the Palestinian side is a rogue, violent group, while the other side is a legitimate state. Second, the phrase "months of bitter clashes" places both sides on equal footing, a clear mischaracterization of the actual events on the ground, where "Israel" uses a vastly superior military force to destroy Palestinian civilian infrastructure and massacre Palestinian civilians, while Palestinians attempt to defend themselves with whatever minimal means they have. It also implies that both sides have equal grievances in a bitter dispute, while in reality there is a clear aggressor on one side, and a clear defender on the other.

What most people fail to understand, and what most media sources deliberately conceal, is that this struggle has its roots in a very basic concept; namely the refusal of a people to submit to the genocidal intentions and designs of a foreign occupying force and their rejection of a racist, bigoted ideology that aims to bring about their extinction. "Israel" was created on the basis of a racist, exclusivist ideology, which promotes the idea that a land inhabited by an indigenous people has been divinely promised to a foreign particularistic group, who must replace the natural inhabitants of that land. As such, the Jewish groups who mass migrated into Palestine in accordance with a clearly-defined scheme, proceeded to commit terrorist activities and massacres against Palestinian civilians and engage in acts of ethnic cleansing to clear the way for the rise of their exclusively Jewish state. Once this illegitimate state was declared by the very terrorists who had been murdering Palestinian civilians, it was naturally rejected by Syrians in general and Palestinians in particular. Much of the western world faulted our people for refusing to accept the rise of a cancerous, expansionist, racist entity on our land and blamed us for the ensuing conflict.

The very concept of the Jewish state runs contrary to every human value. It is based on the belief in the superiority of a particular people who are endowed with the right and duty to exterminate a whole population in order to create a state made exclusively for them. It is a concept that would normally be rejected by all righteous people around the world. Unfortunately, the major powers of the world have not only accepted this twisted ideology, but also actively supported and aided it in its ultimate aim. It is the support of this very concept that led to the massacring of tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese throughout this struggle and the deliberate killing of over 2 million Iraqis through both genocidal sanctions and an ensuing war of destruction.

Nevertheless, our people continue to be blamed for not willing to surrender and submit in the interest of their so-called "peace." After the division of our nation, the occupation of our land, and the deliberate killing of our people, "Israel" and its client, the United States, with the support of most western powers, continue to preach to us about the need for "peace." However, as Antoun Saadeh clearly spelled out, "the right to struggle is the right to advance, and we are unwilling to surrender this right to those who preach to us about peace and prepare for war."