Al-Qalam 
The Hamas attack of October 7 was a natural response to the inhumane military confinement of 2.2 million Palestinians in an open prison, says Iqbal Jassat.
As the world gears up for a frenzy of Zionist-sponsored and Western-backed commemorations marking Hamas’s groundbreaking attacks of October 7, expect massive displays of justification for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Israel’s goal will be to arrest the huge loss of global public opinion following its horrendous onslaught of Gaza, which continues a year later to this day.
More importantly, the Zionist war criminals will be anxious to retake control of the fake narratives they spun around the events of October 7.
However, notwithstanding the enormous amount of resources Israel has ploughed into crafting an image of a “rational government” in charge of the “most moral army in the world”, the gruesome conduct of its war in Gaza will not dissipate among people.
Nor will it erase from public memory the graphic scenes of dismembered bodies of babies in the ruins of bombed buildings and the harrowing cries of young and old trapped under tons of concrete rubble.
The vengeful nature of the bloody slaughter of Palestinians, resulting in the loss of lives of thousands upon thousands, including mothers and babies, medics and health care workers, international relief aid volunteers and journalists, set the world ablaze with anger, outrage and protests.
From the perspective of Palestinians, particularly the Resistance Movements and global solidarity groups, including many progressive forces, October 7 was a defining moment to challenge the normalisation of settler-colonialism.
Though he took a lot of flak from Israel, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was on point when he underlined the importance of recognising that the attack by Hamas on October 7 did not happen in a vacuum.
“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of occupation… their people displaced & their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution… have been vanishing.”
Occupation
Former UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay’s assessment of October 7 was equally spot on. She made it clear that it did not occur in a vacuum but that the attack was preceded by decades of violence and retribution, dispossession, unlawful occupation and denial of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
October 7 was a natural response to the inhumane military confinement of 2.2 million Palestinians in an open prison for close to two decades.
It was a justified rebellion to denial of freedom of movement, suppression of fundamental human rights, assault on dignity and control of their access to medical services, clean drinking water, fuel and electricity.
As one commentator noted, Israel could not reduce Palestinians in Gaza to a “state of abject immiseration” and expect them to come out on the other end as anything other than enraged and traumatised.
As outrageous as it is, Israel’s Hasbara (propaganda) sought to depict Hamas’s attack as manifesting Nazism.
Invoking memories of the Holocaust, the Polish immigrant Mileikowsky/Netanyahu made ridiculous claims to garner public sympathy but also to conceal his racist government’s atrocities.
The challenge faced by Netanyahu and his criminal gang of warlords has been to mislead public opinion by promoting and sustaining a narrative which says that October 7 happened “without provocation or justification of any kind” and therefore warrants the genocidal assault on Gaza.
Clearly, such nonsense did not wash in South Africa. In charging Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Ramaphosa government submitted evidence claiming “acts and omissions” by Israel “are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”.
The galaxy of top-notch legal brains deployed to The Hague by South Africa also provided evidence which highlighted Israeli public rhetoric, including hate-filled comments by Netanyahu, as evidence of “genocidal intent”.”Hamas’s assault of October 7 can be likened to an earthquake that strikes an old building”, is the view of renowned historian Ilan Pappe.
“The cracks were already beginning to show, but they are now visible in its very foundations.”
“More than 120 years since its inception, could the Zionist project in Palestine – the idea of imposing a Jewish state on an Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern country – be facing the prospect of collapse?”
In the last twelve months since October 7, the murderous madness of Netanyahu, backed by the United States, has extended his genocide across the region.
The assassination of Hezbollah’s revered leader, Seyed Hassen Nasrallah, which followed the targeted extra-judicial killing of Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, has now escalated into a full-blown military assault on Lebanon.
October 7 has revealed that Israel’s war-mongering is in keeping with Zionism’s immoral worldview underpinned by racism, expansionism and defiance of civilised values.
*Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the MEDIA REVIEW NETWORK.
