I have always found the criminalisation of the men of Hamas to be a disgrace. Why does anyone think they joined? There are a number of reasons I’m sure, and among them must be that:
(1) they’ve seen their relatives and friends killed by zionists;
(2) they’ve been orphaned by the zionist israelis, and the comradeship/family of being together in the resistance, calls to them;
(3) they are very brave men, and no-one would just give in to their country being brutally occupied;
(4) when your country is occupied, it’s everyone’s duty to try to get it back, ‘by any means possible;’
(5) in all countries that were occupied in WWII, resistance groups sprang up to fight against the occupiers, so why would Palestine be any different;
(6) unemployment in Palestine was very high;
(7) it is human nature to rebel against injustice;
(8) they may feel that if they’re killed fighting, at least they will then be with their already-martyred families;
(9) as The Palestinian Resistance, they are fighting for their people.
No doubt some would ask about what happened on 7/10/23, but my answer would be, as it always has been, that it was just another day in nearly eighty years of atrocities by the zionist israelis. The wonder to me, was that it hadn’t happened before. Anyone honest, would realise that if the Palestinians hadn’t been so appallingly treated, 7/10/23 would never have even taken place. What you sow, so shall you reap.
We come to the fact that many people are now pretty certain that 7/10/23 was allowed to happen. Netanyahu was warned twice apparently by Egypt, and also by the border guards at time of the breach of the wall. Nothing happened for hours, no army arrived - despite all the top-class surveillance equipment in place. They evidently thought that if they left the attack so that as much could happen as possible, they would then have a ‘good excuse’ to literally flatten Gaza. This is what has come about. Every time we have thought that the zionists couldn’t fall any lower, they have done so. In fact there is no excuse whatsoever for wreaking such devastation, for slaughtering, starving, maiming, and imprisoning men, women, and children. The men of the Palestinian Resistance are not criminals, they are human beings with human feelings and reactions. It’s about time people started thinking honestly about how they would react, if they were the subjects of an horrific occupation and then genocide. The zionist israelis are the criminals, and the instigators of everything that has happened.
This right here..."The Palestinian revolutionary is almost always depicted as a man. He is not one of the innocent women and children deemed worthy of protection. He is portrayed as having emerged without context, disconnected from reality. He is not the child who witnessed the murder of family members, or the one forced to grow up in a surveilled refugee camp. He is not worthy of anything above scepticism and hate. He is the one accused of ‘hiding’ behind the very civilians he has lived his life amongst." OMG. WOW.
You offer some genuine food for thought here. Even for those who have been conditioned to wrestle with the moral implications, resistance remains a historical reality. It has always emerged in the face of domination, and will continue to manifest as long as occupation persists.
I do question whether Netanyahu was truly aware of the plans since the supposed evidence I’ve seen remains unverified. To me, the suggestion itself seems designed to belittle the resistance, framing it as something that could only occur with Israeli complicity, rather than acknowledging the capability of the Palestinian people. This plays into a broader narrative that casts Israel as omnipotent, when in reality, its defensive capabilities have already shown significant cracks in the face of attacks from groups like AnsarAllah and even Iran. It may be that the occupation state is far weaker and more vulnerable than it presents itself to be.
Also, resistance has been quietly brewing for quite some time across The Occupied Territories. Since 2021, there has been a clear rise in grassroots mobilisation especially among the youth who have abandoned traditional party lines for coordinated, united resistance. The Lions' Den for example is a youth-led group that has cross-party membership, focusing their energy on confronting the main issue of occupation, rather than internal differences. For some reason, there has been a massive gap in the literature on resistance as a whole since the Second Intifada, despite there being many developments in their strategies, organisation, and reach. I may write something to expand on this soon.
In any case, I hope more people contemplate over these issues as you have, and focus their energy first on confronting the central issue which is ongoing occupation, rather than policing the actions of the Palestinian people.
"Their narrative is deemed acceptable to international audiences only when they suppress their emotions and *bravely* turn the other cheek— ensuring their suffering can be packaged neatly for consumption." Over the past week, I've watched Mohamed Hatem, a Palestinian gym influencer, appear in interviews with Jeff Nippard and Bradley Martyn, where he describes how, despite the ongoing genocide, he remains determined to continue writing his own story. Truly a remarkable story, and I urge anyone who hasn't seen his content to follow his journey.
I also want to preface this by saying I am glad his story was given the platform to reach larger audiences, but this quote really stuck out to me. While listening to the podcast, I couldn't help but feel that the suffering and trauma he has experienced over the past two years were being reduced to smaller, neutral, bite-sized portions for us to consume. Mohamed even, consciously, toning his language by describing forced displacement as relocation. There's a point in the Bradley Martyn interview at the 15:50 minute mark, where he asks who's doing the killing at the aid sites before quickly pivoting away once Mohamed tells him it's pretty obvious. This short clip encapsulates the entire coverage afforded to the Palestinians. Decontextualised suffering where man-made famines are given the dignity of impartial journalism.
If your thoughts are disjointed, then I am positively nuts. Thank you.
In a game of chess, black and white pieces fight each other to the death, but the men who control them are often close friends.
I see many chess pieces around the world thinking critically on whether they are really pawns after all, realizing instead that they are creative, loving individuals capable of discernment and courageous action. I see people finding their own humanity at long last. We will see a restoration of the sanctity of life.
Bless you and all martyrs. There have been far too many.
Aymun, I'm so grateful for your thoughts expressed here. If they are disjointed, then your capacity for lucid explanation must be formidable. I think you have illuminated both the subtle and gross aspects of a colonial mindset. You have described the means by which colonising power usurps not only the lives, resources, and volition of those it oppresses, but also the minds of its own populace. It does so by defining, delimiting, and validating 'humanness' and legitimate human action. It prevents its own populace from understanding the experience and gaze of the colonised. The populace of the coloniser is not able to recognise the crimes carried out ostensibly in their name. You have shown how the determination of what is humane and humanist plays to something primal in defining 'the alike' and 'the other.' Yet it also infiltrates intellectual discourse as a disguise for servicing elite wants and suppressing resistance to their will. Thank you.
Thank you so much for your kind words. This piece was quite the departure from my usual work, which tends to focus on hard, fact-driven contemporary politics. Writing in a more reflective tone was a welcome change. I hope I get the chance to write more in this way.
One of the key aims of this article was to prompt the average reader of news, history, and politics to consider 2 things: first, how easily narratives are shaped to serve border agendas; second, the agency each individual has to disrupt this process, simply by being more critical.
If humanisation has the power to shift public attitudes towards resistance, then the reader also holds power to shift discourse by rejecting dominant narratives, and thinking more carefully about how they absorb, interpret, and reproduce what they read. To me, this speaks to the power of critique and contemplation.
It’s racism behind the Zionist screeching. Knowing some history helps one deal with the steady lies. The Palestinians have a right to use any means necessary to remove the occupiers. The White Supremacists who call themselves Jews are Genocidaires. The Crime of Crimes. It is hard not to honor the people in the previous Intifadas who blew themselves up to kill busloads of racist pigs. They were so justified and I revere them today. The fighters who resist the Genocide fight for all mankind and they are truly heroic and creative. Bless them one and all. Bless the DPRK for helping the Palestinians manufacturer sniper rifles and RPG’s to fight and the tunnels to win. They redesign drones and explosives. I love them and I love the Koreans.
I have always found the criminalisation of the men of Hamas to be a disgrace. Why does anyone think they joined? There are a number of reasons I’m sure, and among them must be that:
(1) they’ve seen their relatives and friends killed by zionists;
(2) they’ve been orphaned by the zionist israelis, and the comradeship/family of being together in the resistance, calls to them;
(3) they are very brave men, and no-one would just give in to their country being brutally occupied;
(4) when your country is occupied, it’s everyone’s duty to try to get it back, ‘by any means possible;’
(5) in all countries that were occupied in WWII, resistance groups sprang up to fight against the occupiers, so why would Palestine be any different;
(6) unemployment in Palestine was very high;
(7) it is human nature to rebel against injustice;
(8) they may feel that if they’re killed fighting, at least they will then be with their already-martyred families;
(9) as The Palestinian Resistance, they are fighting for their people.
No doubt some would ask about what happened on 7/10/23, but my answer would be, as it always has been, that it was just another day in nearly eighty years of atrocities by the zionist israelis. The wonder to me, was that it hadn’t happened before. Anyone honest, would realise that if the Palestinians hadn’t been so appallingly treated, 7/10/23 would never have even taken place. What you sow, so shall you reap.
We come to the fact that many people are now pretty certain that 7/10/23 was allowed to happen. Netanyahu was warned twice apparently by Egypt, and also by the border guards at time of the breach of the wall. Nothing happened for hours, no army arrived - despite all the top-class surveillance equipment in place. They evidently thought that if they left the attack so that as much could happen as possible, they would then have a ‘good excuse’ to literally flatten Gaza. This is what has come about. Every time we have thought that the zionists couldn’t fall any lower, they have done so. In fact there is no excuse whatsoever for wreaking such devastation, for slaughtering, starving, maiming, and imprisoning men, women, and children. The men of the Palestinian Resistance are not criminals, they are human beings with human feelings and reactions. It’s about time people started thinking honestly about how they would react, if they were the subjects of an horrific occupation and then genocide. The zionist israelis are the criminals, and the instigators of everything that has happened.
This right here..."The Palestinian revolutionary is almost always depicted as a man. He is not one of the innocent women and children deemed worthy of protection. He is portrayed as having emerged without context, disconnected from reality. He is not the child who witnessed the murder of family members, or the one forced to grow up in a surveilled refugee camp. He is not worthy of anything above scepticism and hate. He is the one accused of ‘hiding’ behind the very civilians he has lived his life amongst." OMG. WOW.
You offer some genuine food for thought here. Even for those who have been conditioned to wrestle with the moral implications, resistance remains a historical reality. It has always emerged in the face of domination, and will continue to manifest as long as occupation persists.
I do question whether Netanyahu was truly aware of the plans since the supposed evidence I’ve seen remains unverified. To me, the suggestion itself seems designed to belittle the resistance, framing it as something that could only occur with Israeli complicity, rather than acknowledging the capability of the Palestinian people. This plays into a broader narrative that casts Israel as omnipotent, when in reality, its defensive capabilities have already shown significant cracks in the face of attacks from groups like AnsarAllah and even Iran. It may be that the occupation state is far weaker and more vulnerable than it presents itself to be.
Also, resistance has been quietly brewing for quite some time across The Occupied Territories. Since 2021, there has been a clear rise in grassroots mobilisation especially among the youth who have abandoned traditional party lines for coordinated, united resistance. The Lions' Den for example is a youth-led group that has cross-party membership, focusing their energy on confronting the main issue of occupation, rather than internal differences. For some reason, there has been a massive gap in the literature on resistance as a whole since the Second Intifada, despite there being many developments in their strategies, organisation, and reach. I may write something to expand on this soon.
In any case, I hope more people contemplate over these issues as you have, and focus their energy first on confronting the central issue which is ongoing occupation, rather than policing the actions of the Palestinian people.
Exactly.
"Their narrative is deemed acceptable to international audiences only when they suppress their emotions and *bravely* turn the other cheek— ensuring their suffering can be packaged neatly for consumption." Over the past week, I've watched Mohamed Hatem, a Palestinian gym influencer, appear in interviews with Jeff Nippard and Bradley Martyn, where he describes how, despite the ongoing genocide, he remains determined to continue writing his own story. Truly a remarkable story, and I urge anyone who hasn't seen his content to follow his journey.
I also want to preface this by saying I am glad his story was given the platform to reach larger audiences, but this quote really stuck out to me. While listening to the podcast, I couldn't help but feel that the suffering and trauma he has experienced over the past two years were being reduced to smaller, neutral, bite-sized portions for us to consume. Mohamed even, consciously, toning his language by describing forced displacement as relocation. There's a point in the Bradley Martyn interview at the 15:50 minute mark, where he asks who's doing the killing at the aid sites before quickly pivoting away once Mohamed tells him it's pretty obvious. This short clip encapsulates the entire coverage afforded to the Palestinians. Decontextualised suffering where man-made famines are given the dignity of impartial journalism.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this, thank you.
If your thoughts are disjointed, then I am positively nuts. Thank you.
In a game of chess, black and white pieces fight each other to the death, but the men who control them are often close friends.
I see many chess pieces around the world thinking critically on whether they are really pawns after all, realizing instead that they are creative, loving individuals capable of discernment and courageous action. I see people finding their own humanity at long last. We will see a restoration of the sanctity of life.
Bless you and all martyrs. There have been far too many.
Aymun, I'm so grateful for your thoughts expressed here. If they are disjointed, then your capacity for lucid explanation must be formidable. I think you have illuminated both the subtle and gross aspects of a colonial mindset. You have described the means by which colonising power usurps not only the lives, resources, and volition of those it oppresses, but also the minds of its own populace. It does so by defining, delimiting, and validating 'humanness' and legitimate human action. It prevents its own populace from understanding the experience and gaze of the colonised. The populace of the coloniser is not able to recognise the crimes carried out ostensibly in their name. You have shown how the determination of what is humane and humanist plays to something primal in defining 'the alike' and 'the other.' Yet it also infiltrates intellectual discourse as a disguise for servicing elite wants and suppressing resistance to their will. Thank you.
Thank you so much for your kind words. This piece was quite the departure from my usual work, which tends to focus on hard, fact-driven contemporary politics. Writing in a more reflective tone was a welcome change. I hope I get the chance to write more in this way.
One of the key aims of this article was to prompt the average reader of news, history, and politics to consider 2 things: first, how easily narratives are shaped to serve border agendas; second, the agency each individual has to disrupt this process, simply by being more critical.
If humanisation has the power to shift public attitudes towards resistance, then the reader also holds power to shift discourse by rejecting dominant narratives, and thinking more carefully about how they absorb, interpret, and reproduce what they read. To me, this speaks to the power of critique and contemplation.
love this i find the current 'discourse' (feels wrong to even call it that) on Palestine to be frustrating, disgusting and as you say dehumanising
It’s racism behind the Zionist screeching. Knowing some history helps one deal with the steady lies. The Palestinians have a right to use any means necessary to remove the occupiers. The White Supremacists who call themselves Jews are Genocidaires. The Crime of Crimes. It is hard not to honor the people in the previous Intifadas who blew themselves up to kill busloads of racist pigs. They were so justified and I revere them today. The fighters who resist the Genocide fight for all mankind and they are truly heroic and creative. Bless them one and all. Bless the DPRK for helping the Palestinians manufacturer sniper rifles and RPG’s to fight and the tunnels to win. They redesign drones and explosives. I love them and I love the Koreans.