Israel

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of several books focussing on the Middle East including 'The Hundred Years' War On Palestine'. He explains some of the basic facts of the struggle for Palestinian independence and the creation of the Zionist project of Israel.

The reported cancellation of Hasan’s show has similarly caused outrage, with left-wing commentators saying that Hasan was both a unique on screen talent and a critical voice on the left and on the topic of Gaza in the sphere of corporate media.

“[MSNBC], make this make sense,” wrote human rights lawyer Noura Erakat. “[Mehdir Hasan]’s program has felt like an oasis on air and more needed than ever. His program with Mark Regev was a whole class on journalistic method. He should be amplified, not shut down.”

“It is bad optics for MSNBC to cancel [Mehdi Hasan]’s show right at a time when he is vocal for human rights in Gaza with the war ongoing,” wrote Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California). “MSNBC owes the public an explanation for this decision. Why would they choose to do this now?”

The encomiums have flowed voluminously for Henry Kissinger, and there have been some condemnations too. But even in the latter, little attention has been paid to his efforts to prevent peace from breaking out in the Mideast — efforts which helped cause the 1973 Arab–Israeli War and set in stone the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This underappreciated aspect of Kissinger’s career adds tens of thousands of lives to his body count, which is in the millions.

This is what Israel and Palestine look like now.

Every day for the last six weeks, journalists in Gaza have shown inhuman strength and bravery reporting from the frontlines. Journalists are losing their lives at four times the rate of the enclave’s general population. Since the start of the war, nearly fifty journalists have been killed by Israeli forces. That’s almost one every single day. Two are unaccounted for and at least a further six are missing. More journalists have died since the beginning of this violence than in the last twenty years.

At the same time, many journalists have been displaced from their homes, and are now living in tents around Khan Yunis. Collectively, they have lost around 1,000 family members.

This is the price they pay for doing their jobs, for documenting Israel’s ongoing devastation of Gaza, and for showing evidence of its war crimes to the outside world. Israel does not want the world to witness their atrocities.

Israel has freely admitted to destroying communications systems in Gaza ahead of their intense bombing campaigns. Israeli airstrikes have targeted and completely or partially destroyed the headquarters of several media outlets, including al-Ayyam newspaper, Gaza FM radio, and Shehab news and Palestinian news agency Ma’an, among others. The targeting of journalists is itself a violation of international law.  

As The Grayzone documented at the time, the ICC charges were based on a Yale HRL report which is rife with contradictions, plot holes, and the fairly significant conflict of interest of being funded by the US State Department. The report itself acknowledges that it found “no documentation of child mistreatment,” and that nearly all of the children were returned to their families in a timely manner.

But even if these points were all false and Vladimir Putin did just illegally kidnap six thousand Ukrainian kids to turn them into Russians, would that be worse than murdering them by dropping powerful military explosives on areas known to be packed full of children? Why is one a war crime and the other apparently fine? Russia is no more a party to the ICC’s Rome Statute than Israel is, after all.

It is astonishing to see that what was true in 1948 is equally true in 2023. Israel spreads lies and deceit. Western elites repeat those lies. And even when Israel commits crimes against humanity in broad daylight, when it warns in advance of what it is doing, Western establishments still refuse to acknowledge those crimes.

The truth, which should have been obvious long before, in 1948, is that Israel is not a peace-loving, liberal democracy. It is a classic settler colonial state, following in a long “Western” tradition that led to the founding of the United States, Canada and Australia, among others.

Israel has destroyed and nearly emptied the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia is next. Israel is deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers around the hospital and has fired rounds into the building, killing twelve people.

The playbook is familiar. Flyers are dropped by Israel over a hospital telling people to leave because the hospital is a base for “Hamas terrorist activities.” Tanks and artillery shells rip away parts of the hospital walls. Ambulances are blown up by Israeli missiles. Power and water is cut. Medical supplies are blocked. There are no painkillers, antibiotics and oxygen. The most vulnerable, premature babies in incubators and the gravely ill, die. Israeli soldiers raid the hospital and force everyone out at gunpoint.

This is what happened at Al Shifa hospital. This is what happened at Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital. This is what happened at Gaza’s main psychiatric hospital. This is what happened at Nasser Hospital. This is what happened at the other hospitals that Israel has destroyed. And this is what will happen at the few hospitals that remain.

October 7 was a response to decades of oppression and abuse by the Israeli regime. Israel created that violence, in the same way it created the violence that will with absolute certainty come its way in retaliation for its actions in Gaza today. The official narrative makers always try to restart history at the moment of the last act of violence from Palestinians, because it is only by framing such violence as unprovoked that they can legitimize the idea that it’s possible to bomb a population into submission and obedience.

But of course, it is not possible to bomb a population into submission and obedience. Every atrocity you inflict upon them will only increase their desire for revenge — a desire Israelis should sympathize with since it has consumed them and turned them into crazed genocide cheerleaders since October 7. But their desire for vengeance is only made possible by the false mainstream narrative that the attack came from nowhere, completely unprovoked.

In fact actual anti-semites are some of Israel’s strongest allies. The lion’s share of forceful support for Israel in the United States comes not from Jews but from Christian Zionists who support Israel because they believe it will bring Jesus back so he can damn all non-Christians to eternal hellfire. Televangelist John Hagee, who believes Hitler was sent by God to help create Israel, had a prominent speaking spot at Tuesday’s “March for Israel” in Washington DC.

While people who hate Jews so much they want them to writhe in eternal hellfire are warmly embraced as allies of convenience by Israel and its supporters, healthy leftists who oppose racism in all its forms are attacked by Israel apologists as Nazis and Jew-haters. This is because their actions are not designed to protect Jews or reduce anti-semitism — their actions are to facilitate the strategic objectives of the Israeli government and its allies.

Really what’s happening in Gaza right now isn’t about Jews or Judaism at all; it’s about using violent force to take land and resources away from an indigenous population, as history has seen happen time and time again in situations that had nothing to do with Jews. It’s a profoundly unhealthy impulse that’s been causing immense human suffering for centuries, and people who’ve noticed the same patterns in Israel that they’ve seen in all the other settler-colonial projects over the last 500 years are being shouted down and bullied into staying silent using some of the most unethical manipulations ever devised.