Missing Context

The violence that showed up on Saturday, October, in Gaza and the surrounding towns and kibbutzes didn’t began in October.

While it’s hard to say when this attack on Israel, resulting on another attack on Gaza, began, it’s clear that fifty years under military occupation, and a sixteen year blockade of Gaza have with increasing land grabs by Israeli settlers has something to do with what’s happening.

These historical contexts, mainly missing from the U.S. media, aren’t the only factors that led to this exchange of violence. Current affairs, which some mainstream media and a lot independent journalism mention, are also the reason for what’s happening. The Biden administration continues to push the Trump-project Abraham Accords, which are designed to remove the Palestinian cause from the Arab consciousness and make it easier for Israel to make the Palestinians disappear. The Biden Administration is pushing Saudi Arabia to become the next country to join the Accords; Saudi Arabia is also the closest country, physically, that would join the Abraham Accords.

Israel’s government, formed at the end of last year, is the most right-wing government ever formed in Israel. Right-wing Israeli settlers, against all norms and agreements, entered into the Al-Aqsa Mosque (Dome of the Rock to Jews) complex last week. Some have visions of building the third temple there. As the one of the most important places to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, this is intentionally inflammatory.

Israel’s government, which comprises of several settlers, is supporting tacitly and directly taking land from Palestinians in the West Bank, in violation of Israeli law, international law, and in direct violation of agreements like the Oslo Accords. Like all the Israeli governments before it, Netanyahu’s current government detains and arrests Palestinians who haven’t committed a crime without charge (a term nicely called ‘administrative detention‘), for as long Israel likes.

This context is largely missing from jingoistic “reports” published in the mainstream media. Hamas may have attacked Israel, but it didn’t happen out of the blue and it happened because Israel provokes Hamas into launching an attack. Everything in Gaza is controlled by Israel; the Palestinians are monitored by impersonal drones and other technology.

Apparently, Israel did a terrible job of monitoring Hamas as they planned and executed a mission to get through and around, by land, sea, and air, a border fence to hold them in. The other option, which I’ve heard rumors of, is that Israel staged this attacked and helped Hamas get through the border fence so that Israel could change the domestic focus from the protests against judicial form that Netanyahu has been pushing to create a “rally-around-the-flag” moment to get the reservists to recommit to fighting when the army calls them.

Regardless of how Hamas and Palestinian fighters made it around a wall to keep them in, the historical context and current affairs are, unfortunately, reasons that oppressed people fight to make themselves visible, and their request for a decent life we all long for something we work for.

Like everyone else, I hope that there is peace. To create that peace, I know that we need to understand the context.