Since the October 7 surprise attack by Hamas, large sections of western broadcast and print media have routinely condemned Hamas’ violence in severe terms, while simultaneously justifying Israel’s response (avoiding the term violence) as both indispensable and inevitable.
As part of narrative building this is not surprising. Narratives are used to mobilise and connect one’s own tribe and to divide, isolate, demonise and dehumanise the other. They are both the form and expression of power. In that sense narratives seek to legitimate existing power relationships and make them seem natural.
In situations where the power relationship is extremely one-sided, for example Palestine since 1948, the narrative not only demeans an entire people but perpetrates and perpetuates its own non-kinetic violence, often leading to actual, physical violence.
Israeli physical violence against the Palestinians, not just in Gaza but also in the Occupied West Bank, has been extensively and intensively documented by the United Nations, rights bodies (including B’Tselem, an Israeli non-profit organisation), reporters and scholars. These observers include sensitive, discerning Jewish voices, people who are dismissed by Zionists as “self-hating” Jews.
The current narrative adopted by the western media has to be seen in this light. Since the regular, slow killing of Palestinians, the demolitions of their homes and the routinisation of settler violence against them barely makes it to the western broadcast media — particularly local TV channels in the US — the Western media’s outrage at Palestinian resistance is in line with the current asymmetry of power.
But it does another thing too, i.e., takes a snapshot view of the situation, what was so aptly described by Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin, as a sense of “history [that] began on the weekend [Oct 7]”. This is deliberate. Focusing on the Hamas attack and the loss of life in that attack is a great narrative device to divert attention from over seven decades of Israeli violence against an entire people, an opportunity to obscure everything else and to present the attack as an “atrocity” that has happened in an absolute vacuum.
In other words, because Israel is a democracy and part of the civilised world, the Hamas attack must be decried and condemned for violating the laws of war. Hamas, on the other hand, being animals in human form must be hounded and killed as animals.
As part of this exercise, certain terms are crucial just like some key words are important for search algorithms — Hamas terror; Hamas terrorism; Hamas is ISIS; Hamas killed women and children in cold blood. The ISIS bit, repeated by various Israeli leaders, is particularly interesting. By equating Hamas with possibly the most brutal terrorist organisation in recent years, Israel is trying to designate Hamas as sub-human (we are dealing with human animals — Netanyahu), unworthy of protection under the normal laws of war.
In other words, because Israel is a democracy and part of the civilised world, the Hamas attack must be decried and condemned for violating the laws of war. Hamas, on the other hand, being animals in human form must be hounded and killed as animals. Any action against Hamas can be retributive and remains, if necessary, outside the canons of law.
Ditto for terrorism. The term is supposed to evoke a response, a negative one for anyone who is branded such. But its placement in the language is more than that. It is about setting a context and wielding power.
Robin T Lakoff, a linguistics professor who wrote the book The Language War, notes as follows:
“[M]aking meaning is a defining activity of Homo sapiens…. it is more than just a cognitive exercise, since those who get to superimpose a meaning on events control the future of their society. And since so much of our cognitive capacity is achieved via language, control of language—the determination of what words mean, who can use what forms of language to what effects in which settings—is power. Hence the struggles I am discussing…are not tussles over ‘mere words,’ or ‘just semantics’—they are battles.”
The problem with focusing on Hamas and bombing Gaza (as if the entire city is Hamas) should of course be obvious. Gaza has a population of 2.3 million out of which, according to rescue.org, 50 per cent are children. Eighty per cent of this population under complete blockade since 2007 is dependent on humanitarian aid for survival. And this is during normal times, i.e., if there can be any time, given the structural violence against Gazans, which can be termed normal.
Gaza is already dependent on Israel for electricity, fuel and water supply, as well as for all commodities and goods that can come in and go out of Gaza. The one desalination plant which was funded by the European Union and inaugurated by UNICEF in 2017 was delayed by seven years because Israeli monitors would not allow machine parts and pipes which they branded as dual-use — which means that they could be used for military purposes and thus constitute a security threat for Israel.
It’s almost the same in the Occupied West Bank. Israel controls 80 per cent of the water and has used the policy of water supply stoppage — illegal both under the Oslo Agreements as well as international law — to destroy Palestinian crops and orchards, forcing many into bankruptcy. A large number of such former farmers have been forced to seek menial labour in Israeli towns. Many Palestinian lands and orchards have also been possessed by Israeli settlers.
Equally, Israel and those supporting Israel’s horrific bombing of Gaza — which has killed nearly 3000 civilians, including over 700 children — and displacement of more than a million Gazans cannot use the argument that particular categories of violence generated by Hamas are condemnable because they are inherently evil and then reverse it for similar categories of violence perpetrated by Israel.
The point is that even when Israeli security forces are not shooting at the Palestinians, they perpetrate systemic violence against the Palestinians through non-kinetic means. None of this really makes it to the western broadcast media and consequently gets ignored by Western governments. Even when it does, geopolitical factors come into the equation and the Palestinians fall through those crevices.
Michael Walzer’s 1977 book, Just and Unjust Wars (updated in 2015) is a nuanced work. Despite some discerning criticism of Walzer’s positions, as Professor Terry Nardin wrote, Walzer’s “argument stands in a complex relationship with political realism, which it rejects in some ways and embraces in others”. But by 2004, Walzer seemed to have moved away from the original nuance. In a compilation of essays, titled Arguing About War he justifies—or at least tries to understand—direct killing of civilians in the essay titled, “Emergency Ethics,” and then follows it up with the essay captioned, “Terrorism: A Critique of Excuses”, where he reverses his previous argument. This move is in line with the way states have sought to develop what David Kennedy called Lawfare, the attempt to develop jurisprudence that serves the interests of the states, mostly the powerful states.
Deliberately killing women (unless they are combatants) and children cannot be justified under any circumstances. If Hamas fighters have done that, they must be condemned. But it is also important to set the context — not to defend any such action by Hamas but to place the cycles of violence in an ecosystem created by Israel.
Equally, Israel and those supporting Israel’s horrific bombing of Gaza — which has killed nearly 3000 civilians, including over 700 children — and displacement of more than a million Gazans cannot use the argument that particular categories of violence generated by Hamas are condemnable because they are inherently evil and then reverse it for similar categories of violence perpetrated by Israel. All this while doing so ahistorically, i.e., with no reference to why Hamas would be forced to do what it did.
To explain this, if it is not clear yet, let’s look at a situation where Palestinians not only have their state but also have sovereignty over that territory. Where no one can demolish their homes or destroy their orchards, deprive them of water or make them go through the humiliations of checkpoints, where Gaza is part of the world and not a prison. Would Hamas have attacked Israel?
Finally, and while I have stayed clear of getting into the technicalities of who can be branded as a civilian and what targeting strategies can be deemed necessary and proportional — since the same points can be argued from both sides — the important and fundamental issue in all this is Israel’s occupation and the systemic elimination of Palestinians. If we ignore that, we run the risk of entering a maze of arguments where every side presents its own set of facts along tribal lines.
Remove the occupation and you eliminate violence from Palestine; keep trying to eliminate the Palestinians and you remain mired in cycles of violence and misery.