The ongoing bloodbath in Gaza is the result of decades of systemic oppression and manipulation against Palestinians, perpetuated by propagandistic narratives and supported by Western powers. This article by Tommaso Merlo highlights how Netanyahu exploits Hamas to justify continued occupation and mass violence. Despite historical and ongoing atrocities, mainstream media and politicians distort the truth, presenting Israeli actions as self-defense and Palestinian resistance as terrorism. This manipulation extends to international institutions, ensuring Israeli impunity while oppressing Palestinians.
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by Tommaso Merlo
The bloodbath in Gaza continues. Human beings treated worse than livestock. Moved from one place to another among the rubble and mercilessly exterminated. A disgrace that will mark this century.
Meanwhile, politicians and mainstream media continue to repeat the usual propagandistic litany, claiming the bloodbath is a legitimate consequence of Hamas’ attack on October 7, as if everything hadn’t actually started in 1948 with the deportation of 700,000 Palestinians from their lands to make way for Israeli settlers. The first Nakba of an endless series. For over seventy years, tragedies have followed one another; Gaza itself has been regularly bombarded for years and had become an overcrowded open-air prison under strict Israeli control.
Entire generations of Palestinians have grown up under oppression and injustice, which also understandably led to the rise of Hamas, a political party that even won the last elections granted to Palestinians back in 2006. A party, moreover, initially supported by Netanyahu because it split the Palestinian front in two, being more extreme than Fatah, and because it was functional to the Israeli occupation. To carry on its violent annexation while saving face in front of the world, Israel has always needed an equally violent enemy to provide excuses for retaliation. A trap into which Palestinians—albeit with all due excuses—have always fallen.
This is the plain truth. The bloodbath against Palestinians has been going on for decades, and the events of October 7 were a reaction. Violent and deplorable, but still one of many Palestinian reactions triggered by decades of oppression and not at all an unprovoked attack that would justify a genocide. Netanyahu is now fulfilling delusions he has always harbored. Yet the propagandistic litany says otherwise. Hamas is terrorism, while the far more violent Israeli actions that have killed tens of thousands of innocent women and children are not. That would be self-defense. A bloodbath of intellectual honesty as well.
An impressive mass manipulation resulting from a war that Israel has always fought on two fronts, among the Palestinian hills and in Western halls of power. It is recent news that Israeli intelligence has been shadowing the International Tribunal prosecutor who dared to call for Netanyahu’s arrest for nine years. They had identified him as a potential threat and targeted him to stop him and ensure impunity. Infiltrations not only in politics and the press but also in international institutions. To get free rein. To preserve the image of a model democracy victimized by brutal Arabs fighting for its sacred existence. Yes, Israeli martyrs and Palestinians worse than livestock. An unstoppable strategy.
Unconditional Western support has never wavered since the first Nakba, and Israel has always acted undisturbed despite continuous atrocities and violations of international law. An impressive historical distortion still echoed by politicians and mainstream media. And woe to anyone who dares dissent. A bloodbath of freedom and personal dignity as well.
But when this disgrace finally ends and a new page is turned, it will be necessary to start again from the plain truth of the past seventy years, among the Palestinian hills as well as in Western halls of power.
