Are they all "terrorists", that nuclear weapons-enabled Israel needs to defend itself from? By non-stop massive, deadly bombing campaigns? Where starving people are huddled together in makeshift tents in "safe places" they were ordered to go to. Whose homes are demolished. Who are being deprived of food, water and medicine. These unfathomable mass atrocities have nothing to do with a "war on Hamas", but instead we are witnessing an intensification of a seventy-five year-long campaign of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by a settler colonial, Zionist project intent on replacing the indigenous Palestinian population with a Jewish-only ethnonocracy.
Israel has been violently oppressing Palestine for decades. In addition to militarily occupying Gaza for 56 years, Israel has cut-off Gaza from the rest of the world since 2006. It is an isolated, besieged territory. Claiming Israel has a "right to defend itself" when beleaguered, encaged people resist their captors is simply nonsensical. A conqueror cannot claim self-defence when the oppressed people resist their subjugation. This is not a war between two armies. There is brutal, long-standing, illegal, military occupation confronting a people denied their fundamental freedoms who understandably refuse to be erased.
Peace cannot come about by a continuation of Israeli oppression and denial of basic freedoms. Lasting peace comes with justice. Justice means upholding international and humanitarian law, where all people are treated with dignity, freedom and equality. From the River to the Sea.
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