Did Hamas-led ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ on October 7 occur in vacuum?

By Iqbal Jassat 

As the world gears up for a frenzy of Zionist-sponsored and Western-backed commemorations marking Hamas-led groundbreaking operations of October 7 dubbed ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’, expect massive displays of justification for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. 

Israeli regime’s goal will be to arrest the huge loss of global public opinion following its horrendous onslaught on the Palestinian territory, which continues unabated one year on. 

More importantly, the Zionist war criminals will be anxious to retake control of the fake narratives they spun around the events of October 7 last year.

However, notwithstanding the enormous amount of resources the Tel Aviv regime has plowed into crafting an image of a "rational government" in charge of the "most moral army in the world", the gruesome conduct of its war in Gaza will not dissipate among people. 

Nor will it erase from public memory the graphic scenes of dismembered bodies of babies in the ruins of bombed buildings and the harrowing cries of young and old trapped under tons of concrete rubble across the besieged territory.

The vengeful nature of the bloody slaughter of Palestinians resulting in the loss of lives of thousands upon thousands, including mothers and babies, medics and health care workers, international relief aid volunteers and journalists, set the world ablaze with anger, outrage and protests. 

From the perspective of Palestinians, particularly the resistance movements and global solidarity groups including many progressive forces, October 7 was a defining moment to challenge the normalization of the Zionist settler-colonialism. 

Though he took a lot of flak from Israel, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was on point when he underlined the importance of recognizing that October 7 did not happen in a vacuum. 

Former UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay's assessment of October 7 was equally spot on.

She made it clear that it did not occur in a vacuum, but that the operation was preceded by decades of violence and retribution, dispossession, unlawful occupation and denial of the Palestinians' right to self-determination.

October 7 was a natural response to the decades of oppression and inhumane military confinement of 2.2 million Palestinians in the world’s largest concentration camp for close to two decades. 

It was a justified rebellion against denial of the freedom, suppression of fundamental human rights, assault on dignity, and control of their access to medical services, drinking water, fuel and electricity. 

As one commentator noted, Israel could not reduce Palestinians in Gaza to a "state of abject immiseration" and expect them to come out on the other end as anything other than enraged and traumatized. 

As outrageous as it is, Israel’s Hasbara (propaganda) sought to depict Hamas's attack as the manifestation of Nazism. 

Invoking memories of the Holocaust, the Polish immigrant Mileikowsky/Netanyahu made ridiculous claims to garner public sympathy, but also to conceal his racist regime’s atrocities. 

Gilbert Achcar wrote in his blog that the Zionist regime is dominated by Likud, a party with a fascist pedigree, and includes ministers whom Israeli holocaust historian Daniel Blatman, a professor at the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, did not hesitate to describe as “neo-Nazi” in an Israeli newspaper.

Achcar raised a pertinent question: "... were the Hamas-led Palestinians of October 7 primarily motivated by antisemitism, or by hatred of Israeli colonial oppression? 

"The answers to these questions should be obvious to anyone who is not blinded by anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab or anti-Muslim racism and ‘narcissistic compassion with whitened Israelis". 

The challenge faced by Netanyahu and his criminal gang of warlords has been to mislead public opinion by promoting and sustaining a narrative that says that October 7 happened "without provocation or justification of any kind" and therefore warrants the genocidal assault on Gaza. 

One year since Op. Al-Aqsa Flood, fight against Orientalist narratives continues

Since October 7, Palestinian resistance fighters have not only had to fight for their land through armed struggle, but they also have had to challenge deeply entrenched Orientalist narratives.

Clearly, such claptrap did not wash in South Africa. In charging Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Ramaphosa government submitted evidence claiming "acts and omissions" by Israel "are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group".

The galaxy of top-notch legal brains deployed to The Hague by South Africa also provided evidence that highlighted Israeli public rhetoric, including hate-filled comments by Netanyahu, as evidence of "genocidal intent".

Israeli historian was right to say that the Hamas-led operation on October 7 “can be likened to an earthquake that strikes an old building.”

“The cracks were already beginning to show, but they are now visible in its very foundations,” he wrote. “More than 120 years since its inception, could the Zionist project in Palestine – the idea of imposing a Jewish state on an Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern country – be facing the prospect of collapse?" 

In the last 12 months since October 7, the murderous madness of Netanyahu backed by the United States has extended his genocide across the region. 

The assassination of Hezbollah's revered leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah which followed the targeted extra-judicial killing of Hamas resistance movement leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, has now escalated into a full-blown military assault on Lebanon.

October 7 has revealed that Israel's war-mongering is in keeping with Zionism's immoral worldview underpinned by racism, expansionism and defiance of civilized values.

Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)

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