My sister told me on our video call Monday afternoon that a guest on CNN that morning was explaining to the whole world that while Hamas’ incursion into Israeli towns, farmsteads, and homes over the past few days may seem brutal and horrific to those not in the know, the world needs to understand that they had no choice. That they have been living under brutal occupation for so many decades, deprived of rights and freedoms that we all take for granted, and that they simply couldn’t take it anymore. They had to throw off the oppressive yoke of the white colonialists any which way they could, and this is how they have finally burst at the seams.
He certainly knows how to speak a language that my students and colleagues at home can understand. I myself have been deeply involved in efforts to de-colonize the humanities program in which I teach, to bring in more voices and texts and art from different parts of the world and show that “humanities” consists of much more than a focus on a linear Western trajectory from Plato to NATO. But he also knows that very few, if any, of the people watching him around the world realize the half-truths he is spouting. The brutal occupation regime under which the Palestinian people have been living for the past 18 years is the Islamist, repressive, intolerant international terrorist organization known as Hamas. In 2005, under the belief that ceding control of this territory for Palestinian self-governance would lead to peace and stability for everyone involved, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers took apart entire settlements that had been set up by Jews in the region and moved everyone out, so that Gaza could form the basis for the development of an independent Palestine. After internal fighting among Palestinian factions (including Hamas’ kidnapping leaders of the rival PLO organization and throwing them off of rooftops; about 160 PLO leaders and their supporters were murdered in the fighting), the radical Islamist group Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2006. For the past 18 years, although Hamas has refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist, Israel has supplied 75% of their electricity, their water, their gas, and their food. Billions of dollars in aid to Hamas from around the world to help them build an infrastructure and become self-sustaining has repeatedly been funneled to instead fund suicide bombings and continuous rocket fire into Israel. And of course when Israel retaliates, they are always the bad guys.
There is no question the Palestinians in Gaza have been suffering from a brutal authoritarian regime. There is no doubt that they are poor and they have little or no opportunity to provide better lives for their families. And they have been taught that the Jews are at fault, so I can understand their deep hatred for us, and I can even understand why they unleashed the terror that they have over the past three days; this is what they have been raised to believe. What I can’t understand, and have never been able to wrap my mind around, is why the western media allows the same narrative to be broadcast uncritically across the world; why they feel the need to allow any kind of justification for the brutal massacres – and the joyous celebrations thereof – to be relayed to the public, let alone why they don’t feel any responsibility to correct the record, to tie the narrative to some kind of actual history. It is precisely because they have never done so, that Hamas has not only remained in power, but has used the money you may have sent in sympathy for the Palestinian cause to wreak the havoc that they have over the four decades that they have existed. It is precisely because they have never done so that well-meaning activists race to raise more money for them, or actively intervene to end Israeli or Egyptian blockades on supplies to Gaza when Hamas is blowing up busloads of civilians and launching rockets into cities. It is precisely because they have never done so that you may be learning all of this for the first time. But I’m not making it up. You can read the Hamas charter for yourself here. The basic goal is to murder Jews or die trying. They believe in an interpretation of Islam that justifies rape culture, violence against women, and torture and death for anyone even sympathizing with the LGBTQ+ community, anyone considered an “infidel” (i.e. all westerners, including Muslims who don't agree with them), and of course Jews. And their brutality, deception, intolerance, and refusal to deal justly with anyone, including especially the people they are supposed to lead and govern, is a matter of public record if you want to look it up.