No innocent occupier

American columnist CJ Werleman posted on X: “there is no such thing as an innocent occupier.” In every story of global politics, when a powerful nation is attacked by some weak and small entity, the big-noise media always like to start the story from the event of the attack and almost entirely discards the reasons and the events leading up to and driving the attack. Days before the latest Hamas attack against Israel, the Jews in Israel had entered the Al Aqsa Mosque. There is a Jewish law that clearly says that Jews must not enter the Al Aqsa Mosque compound but the Settlement Movement inside Israel wants to defy that religious authority and wants to break things.

There are government-paid organisations inside Israel whose job is to spin this narrative that only a tiny part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, which is called the Holy of Holies, is sacred and not the entire compound. The rest of the compound of the Al Aqsa Mosque can be accessed by the Israeli Jews. Every time the Israelis have done that, it creates enormous anger but it yields enormous fruits for the political leadership. Ariel Sharon defied the Jewish law in 2000 and saw his approval ratings go from 3% to 70%. There is no reason to believe that it wouldn’t do the same for Netanyahu. The Israeli attack on Gaza is triggered by the Hamas attack, which was also triggered but the mainstream media only talks about the Israelis being provoked.

More importantly, almost everyone in the western world advocates for and agrees with the Israeli right to self-defence, which also means for Israel to attack Gaza, which by the way did not attack Israel. Suppose the Palestinians argue, well, we have been under a brutal Israeli aggression since 1967 facing bombings, assassinations, terrorist attacks, therefore, we have a right to carry out attacks against Israel. Would anyone accept it? After all, the Palestinians would have a much stronger claim than the Israelis do. This is no symmetrical war. It is the most advanced weaponry versus stone throwers. The Israelis don’t have a leg to stand on. They are the occupying power, not the reverse. Article 49 of the 1949 Geneva Convention IV states that “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Yet, the Israeli settlers continue to annex more and more Palestinian land and build settlements.

I came across some commentary by a US-based Pakistani YouTuber who pointed to a discussion between Fareed Zakaria and The New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman. Zakaria asks Friedman if this was Israel’s 9/11. Friedman responds by saying that it was abhorrent to even suggest that because the Israelis know that Hamas is always ready and willing to attack and so unlike the Americans who didn’t know their enemy, the Israelis did. Furthermore, he adds that the flawed policies of Netanyahu are responsible for this attack. I have nothing but respect for the mentioned YouTuber but I am shocked how even someone so intelligent like him missed the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of this unhinged and ridiculous argument.

The CIA knew about the big wedding attack too. And furthermore, this is not about one person’s policies but rather the actions of a state over decades. Aggression is the supreme war crime because it involves everything that follows. For example, the American invasion of Iraq created IS. The 9/11 attacks were the result of American aggression around the world and were carried out by a group created with American support. Hamas attack is also the result of not just Netanyahu’s policies but the result of the aggression that the state of Israel has committed against the Palestinian people. Hamas was created by Israel as a counterweight to the secular group called Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). This is a story of blowback and that is how it should be told.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2023.

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