If proof were needed that Orient XXI is indispensable, the war against Gaza brings each day the horrific confirmation. Ever since Hamas and its allies attacked Israel on 7 October, we have seen an avalanche of propaganda from many French media, especially the television channels. With their carefully selected guests, their ‘experts’ who haven’t a clue, their commentators who justify the deaths of Palestinian children without the regulatory authorities raising any objection whatsoever and without an ounce of indignation forthcoming from politicians. True enough, the rhetoric of the cabinet ministers themselves fuels these excesses. Even in Israel, one hears more critical discourses.
The Palestinians’ reawakening
Immediately after 7 October, Orient XXI spoke out against these abuses, on the basis of ten years of research, trying to shed light on what is at stake in this war against Gaza; there are some who pretend surprise at this ‘reawakening’ of the Palestinians, feigning to forget what we have been explaining on page after page: that they have been subjected for years to a strict confinement in their territory and that the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination has been denied them for decades. The term ‘terrorism’ is used by the media to describe the war crimes perpetrated by Hamas but nothing is said about the massacres perpetrated by the Israeli army – over 10,000 dead as we go to press. For the benefit of Israel, a right to defend itself is invoked as though it had a monopoly on that right; the right to resist belongs to all peoples, especially when they live under occupation, as do the people of Palestine.
For many years, some thought – dreamt – that the Palestinian question would disappear into thin air as if by magic, that it was going to fade away quietly and gradually. The Abraham accords, imposed by former President Donald Trump and the recent rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel attest to that blind belief.
We have never thought that the Palestine issue was destined to dissolve into thin air or that the colonial character of the Israeli undertaking could be simply written off. We are not in the habit of overlooking misfortunes when they are inflicted on colonised peoples. We have always pleaded in favour of a solution which would take into account this reality: on the historic land of Palestine, there live as many Palestinians as Israeli Jews, but the latter are dominant and the former dominated. We are not afraid of the justice, the freedom and the independence as demanded by the ‘colonised’.
Against the thought police
We need your help to keep on with our work of counter-information and broaden its scope in this unprecedented atmosphere of thought-policing and free speech denial. As well as the increased difficulties encountered by on-the-spot journalism. Thus the fact that some fifty reporters have been killed has been met with utter indifference, no doubt because they were Palestinians.
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