My Take | Hamas terrorism must be condemned, but Israel’s response will cost more lives
- One thing I have learned from China and Israel is that terrorism committed by militants will inevitably be met by ruthless state repression
“Unprovoked”, again? The fiercely independent Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone has pointed out why practically all mainstream American and most British pundits and politicians used the word “unprovoked” in denouncing the attacks on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“It’s clear by now that whenever you see the word ‘unprovoked’ being forcefully repeated in a uniform way across the entire political/media class, whatever they’re talking about was definitely massively provoked,” she wrote.
It must be pointed out that what Hamas has done is terrorism pure and simple, and that it is an atrocity to commit violence against civilians, taking them hostage, desecrating the bodies of victims and even cheering and celebrating the act.
But such horrors and atrocities are not being committed by Palestinian militants without a background and a context. They did not come out of nowhere as unadulterated and uncaused evil.
To claim that the latest terror attacks were “unprovoked” is to whitewash the background and context that constitute the very history of this unending conflict in Palestine. It’s morally reprehensible propaganda of the worst kind that the mainstream Anglo-American media culture has been guilty of for decades.
But the real problem with that is not only with morality but also with the very practical politics of searching for a viable peace settlement. By legitimising violence from one side while delegitimising and demonising violence from the other – for whichever side you happen to support – it makes it impossible for an already intractable conflict to find a solution or a compromise. With their unconditional and uncritical support of Israel, the West and the United States in particular have essentially made such a peace impossible.
In my youth, I supported 100 per cent the Palestinian cause for statehood against the Israeli state. Now, though, after the sustained terrorism committed by some members of minority groups in Xinjiang over the past decade as they specifically targeted Han Chinese, I appreciate Israel’s position more. As they say, when the shoe is on the other foot …
Of course, vast China has a geographic advantage that tiny Israel doesn’t have. There is a great distance, a huge buffer, between China’s centres of power and commerce from Xinjiang, while Gaza and the West Bank are within spitting distance, indeed continuous with Israel. Moreover, the Palestinians have access to powerful deadly weapons, as Hamas has just demonstrated with its thousands of missiles fired into the Israeli population. However cruel and ruthless those terrorists from Xinjiang and neighbouring states might have been, they had no easy access to powerful weapons.
