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Violence in the Middle East has created heartbreaking images and statistics. While I’m writing this, at least 160 people, most of them Palestinians, including at least 41 children – most of them Palestinians – have been killed as Israeli army bombings in densely populated Gaza and Palestinian armed groups fire rockets into Israeli cities. Meanwhile, inter-communal violence has erupted across Israel.
In this regard, Western governments, led by U.S. President Joe Biden, have quickly condemned Palestinian groups for their rocket barricades, but have been much more cautious in condemning Israel’s attack on Palestinian civilians.
A sweet statement of “displeasure” and “grave concern” over the deaths of Palestinians have been interspersed with calls for continued support for “Israel’s security and Israel’s legal right to defend itself.” They have also included appeals for “moral clarity” that the actions of Palestinian groups, even if they cause a small part of the death and destruction caused by the Israeli bombing, are much more reprehensible.
Although some progressive politicians – such as US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – have expressed hypocrisy about the general assertion of the right of Israelis to self-defense, they have strongly rejected the Israeli justifications.
Colonial occupiers have long had a “right” to defend themselves from the resistance of the self-governing communities, including by committing mass murder. The history of African colonization is littered with the bodies and mass graves of those who dared to confront the top Europeans of the military.
Historian Caroline Elkins describes in her book, historian Caroline Elkins, the “murderous campaign” carried out by the British in colonial Kenya after the Mau Mau peasant uprising of the 1950s, among others. 1.5 million civilian kikuyu and a savage system of torture camps, which could have been suspected of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds, and thousands of lives committed to the uprising.
Imperial landowners have the right to terrorize, savagery, torture and kill land stolen under the rubric of “self-defense”, which “recognized the legitimacy” of peoples’ independence, territorial integrity, national unity and colonial and foreign freedom before United Nations General Assembly Resolution 37/43 of 1982 and all available means of struggle for the freedom of foreign occupation, including armed struggle ”. This resolution reaffirmed this right in the case of the Palestinian struggle.
Thus, in Gaza today, instead of seeking “moral clarity,” the West is using vague morality to justify attacks on a refugee population that has thrown its refugees out of their land, blocking them from what is essentially open. -a prison in the air, and then claims the right to rest.
When the Western media speaks of a “cycle of escalation,” it equates oppression with resistance to oppression, presenting violence as a conflict between two sides with equal security and territorial claims. He ignores the fact that Palestinians are fighting for national liberation against a decade-long illegal and immoral occupation, and the implementation of a racial and ethnic discrimination regime described by Human Rights Watch, according to a media report. it sharply leads to renunciation, says it fits the definition of the international crime of apartheid.
In interviews, Israeli spokesmen have repeatedly stressed that Israel is self-proclaimed “the most moral army in the world,” essentially finding and killing those who are leaders of the Palestinian resistance, hidden behind civilians.
The Western press is pleased to acknowledge that the leaders of Hamas and other groups are legitimate targets, and that while its tactics may be unreasonable, it says Israel is waging a legitimate war. The uncritical acceptance of this framework leads to the complicity of the Western media in delegitimizing the domination of the Palestinian colonial resistance and the expropriation of the Israeli state.
As Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, the re-throwing of the line that says “Israel’s right to defend itself” without even entering the context of oppression is an excuse and legitimizes even more oppression. But he would have to go further. If the Western media, politicians and diplomats are really looking for moral clarity, it is imperative to completely reject gas light and the horrific proposal that both sides have the right to defend themselves from those oppressed by colonial states like Israel.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the attitude of the Al Jazeera editorial.
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