We must condemn all terrorism, not just one side
Calls only condemning terrorism of extremist Arab and Muslim groups is an immoral form of hate that ignores the terrorism of Israel's extremist government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
By Ray Hanania
FREE/Politics Middle East/Monday Oct. 7, 2024
The terrorism by Hamas that took place on Oct. 7, 2023 was horrific, but it is not the only terrorism that has taken place between Palestinians and Israelis.
There is no defense for the carnage that took place and the lives lost or taken hostage.
Yet, this isn’t the first time that terrorism has scarred Palestinians and Israelis. It has happens repeatedly. But one side seems to be a priority and the other seems to be marginalized here in America where the mainstream American news media thrives on death and violence and fueling hatred between people.
Terrorism has been a part of theMiddle East for a Century but it has been reported on in the most biased and one-sided manner. That one-sided media bias has only fueled more violence and empowered “protected” terrorists like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who opposes peace, scuttled the Two-State Solution and whose disciples were blamed for the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
Netanyahu has unleashed a reign of terror that he provoked prior to the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Why? Because he faces three corruption indictments and he has managed to suppress the legal system in Israel by aligning with themost extreme radicals in Israel to form one of the most racist extremists governments in Israel’s history.
His strongest allies today are among the most violent Israeli leaders, Bezalel Yoel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, both leaders in Netanyahu’s cabinet.
The first terrorists in Palestine were led by Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, who later became Israeli prime ministers for the terrorist Likud Party after Israel’s founding in 1948. Begin and Shamir attacked more than 40 civilian villages killign scores of people. But only a few massacres were publicized in the pro-Israel media in the 1940s, one of the most notable was the killing of more than 100 old men, women and children at Deir Yassin whose bodies were dumped down water wells. The massacres were used to provoke fear among Palestinian Christians and Muslims to flee the lands.
They have been followed by several Israeli terrorists who also rose to become prime ministers including Ariel Sharon, who led many massacres in the 1950s of Palestinian Arab villages in Israel, and by Netanyahu, who continues to lead Israel to the furthest and most violent extremes.
But the media covered up the crimes of Begin and Shamir, Sharon and Netanyahu, describing them as “acts of retaliation.”
When Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, the media portrayed the horrific inhumane violence as the “start” of a wave of violence.
Yet in the years prior to Oct. 7, 2023, the media mostly ignored or downplayed and marginalized Israeli military violence against Palestinian Christians and Muslims. More than 450 Palestinians were killed in 2022 and nearly 300 were killed in 2023 before Oct. 7.
Routinely, Israeli forces fired across the border with Gaza injuring and killing Palestinians who were protesting against Israel’s inhumane treatment and blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Thousands of Palestinians have been injured and killed by Israeli soldiers in the Occupied West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem.
But because the American news media favors Israel, violence by Israel is marginalized as “a response” rather than a provocation.
The reason there is no peace today is because Sharon and Netanyahu have done everything possible to prevent that peace from taking place. Immediately after an Israeli follower of extremist Benjamin Netanyahu murdered Rabin in November 1995, Sharon and Netanyahu rallied their followers to take over the Israeli government.
Their incendiary rhetoric fueled more violence and provoked more violence from Palestinians who were constantly being attacked.
Israel’s government continued to confiscate lands owned by Palestinians — encircling my own land near Sharafat adjacent to East Jerusalem — in order to build armed settlements exclusively for Jewish residents only. These settlements have doubled since the alleged “peace process” and the violence by Jewish settlers is marginalized and downplayed by the mainstream news media.
A big part of the problem is that American politics is not objective. It is biased, bought and paid for by pro-Israel activists. The political action committee AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) donates hundreds of millions of dollars to support elected officials — Democrats and Republicans — who support their rejection of establishing a Palestinian State or who embrace the Two-State Solution which would recognize both Israel and Palestine.
Click this link to see how much your elected member of the U.S. House or U.S. Senate has received from AIPAC affiliated pro-Israel PACs.
The idea that the news media justifies the suppression of Israeli killings while showcasing the killings of Israelis by Palestinians is an immoral and disgusting factor that fuels more violence.
If you want to see the documented history of who has been murdered by both sides, which overwhelming tilts towards Palestinian deaths, all you have to do is visit the website of B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
Or, you can continue to live the big lie that only Arabs are terrorists and Israelis are the victims.
There are many Jews and Israelis who support peace, and many Christians and Muslims and Arabs and Palestinians who support peace, too.
You can continue to cheer on mass murder in the Gaza Strip or the holding of the hostages on both sides and be complicit in the continuing suffering in the Middle East. Or, you can embrace morality, the International Rule of Law, objectivity and fairness and human rights, and condemn the violence by both sides.
Oct. 7 is not just a date marking the massacre of 1,200 Israelis. It is a date that marks the massacre of peace, the obliteration of justice, and the empowering of political lies to sustain not only anti-Semitism but Islamophobia and anti-Christian hate.
Release the Israeli hostages AND the Palestinian hostages. Israel has been taking hostages since 1948 under the British Defense Laws originally enacted to suppress Jewish violence but later adopted by Israel’s government to suppress Palestinians who protested against Israel’s land confiscations, destruction of Arab villages and detention of Palestinian Christins and Muslims without charges.
Under Israeli laws, a Christian or a Muslim can be arrested without charges and held for up to six months, renewed repeatedly without legal review. There are thousands of Palestinians who have been held hostage by Israel for protesting against Israel’s racist laws in Israeli prisons who never get a chance to challenge those arrests. Many have been tortured and murdered by Israel in prison but the Israeli media — which is censored by the Israeli government — rarely reports fairly on the circumstances of the killings.
They are hostages, too.
Instead of using Oct. 7 to fuel more hatred and violence, it should be a wakeup call for Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and Christians that violence begets more violence. More than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the vast majority civilians and predominantly women and children.
If you cry for one side but not both, you are an accomplice to mass murder in the Middle East, and a hypocrite too!
Stop contributing to the terrorism and the violence. Start speaking up for life, justice and peace.