A Palestinian firefighter dousing flames in a printing building in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes were said to have killed two Hamas officers. Photo: Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
by Rachad Antonius, Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, December 31 2008
The Israeli government’s propaganda about the war in Gaza has been uncritically accepted by Canadian media, becoming the dominant discourse in most news reports. The violence we are witnessing is explained by declaring that Hamas has broken the truce with Israel, and therefore it is responsible for the current level of Israeli violence, which is thereby represented merely as a reasonable and justified retaliation. According to this view, Israel is only defending itself against a vicious enemy which is still intent on destroying it. At best, the excesses of the attacks against Gaza are deplored, but their presentation as retaliation is not even questioned.
The meaning that the government of Israel wants to give to the event is thereby internalized, becoming the frame through which the present situation is perceived and understood. The principle of using violence to resolve a dispute is not put in question, so long as it is Israel that uses the violence and the dispute is one with Palestinians. In this case violence is seen as legitimate, but illegitimate if committed by Hamas. This remains the case even if the means at the disposal of each of the protagonists are not comparable and even if neither the damage they suffer nor the capacity each has to inflict damage are not at all comparable.
This logic suffers from two fundamental flaws. First it contradicts the empirical facts on the ground, which are well documented and are not so much called into question as they are conveniently forgotten. Second, this logic is openly a colonial logic.