By Lynda Brayer

Once again the bombs are fall­ing on the Gaza Strip, a stretch of ter­rit­ory excised from Palestine proper as a res­ult of con­tinu­ing illegal and ille­git­im­ate actions by Israel. In fact, Gaza has become a closed ghetto, first cut off from Palestine in viol­a­tion of the par­ti­tion plans and polit­ical pro­grams and then turned into a sealed ghetto, fol­low­ing the demo­cratic elec­tions which brought the Islamic Res­ist­ance Party ­­— Hamas — into power. Cat­egor­ized as a ter­ror­ist organ­iz­a­tion in the United States, with some of its lead­ing sup­port­ers there imprisoned for over twenty years for send­ing human­it­arian aid to Palestini­ans in Gaza, it can come as no sur­prise that the Israeli and West­ern media accuse Hamas for attack­ing Israel with rock­ets, rather than report­ing that Hamas sent off the rock­ets as a response to an Israeli attack!

This method of report­ing is part of con­tin­ued efforts of de-​legitimization of the Palestinian struggle for free­dom from the yoke of Zion­ist gen­o­cidal oppres­sion and viol­ence. Fur­ther­more, the con­dem­na­tions have not been accom­pan­ied by ref­er­ence to the his­tor­ical record: that the Zion­ist war, both cold and hot, against the Palestini­ans has not stopped for even one day since 1948, and that it went into relent­less high gear since 1967 and con­tin­ues unabated. This con­tinu­ous aggres­sion — admin­is­trat­ive and mil­it­ary — is never brought into the West­ern vis­ion or under­stand­ing, although a quick per­usal of the web­sites of the Palestine Cen­ter for Human Rights loc­ated in Gaza City, Mah­som Watch and Betselem provide chilling and detailed inform­a­tion of this con­tinu­ing quo­tidian warfare.