Hamas is Israel's excuse, to distract from the real reason - occupation, colonisation and apartheid.

It is troubling and at times astonishing that so many people are defending Israel's war crimes and human rights atrocities because, as they say, Hamas is a terrorist organisation.

Well, have not occupiers and colonisers always termed freedom fighters and those who mount resistance, as terrorists? I am sure the Nazis did as they occupied Europe, or at least they would have done if they had thought of it.

So Israel, which uses massive military power in the form of State sanctioned terrorism to maintain occupation, colonisation and apartheid, is in the 'right' because some members of the Palestinian Resistance are extremists? I am not quite sure how anyone can perform the mental contortions to reach that position but many do. Too many.

Purely as a matter of principle and justice it is the occupier and coloniser, particularly when they act with brutality and use violence in their cause, who are in the wrong and those who are held under a vicious military boot of occupation are in the right! Not so for the poor Palestinians.

Not only have the Palestinians been subjected to a farce, inflicted on no other occupied and colonised indigenous people, that they are responsible for their suffering and are equally to blame and are not using the 'power' that they have - stage left, hysterical laughter - to change things, but, they are the aggressors because they have some resistance fighters who hold extremist views!!!!

Of course, no regard is given to the even more extreme views of many Israeli politicians and Government ministers, let alone the fanatical Israeli settlers strewn across Occupied Palestine, when, in truth, extremism in the name of occupation, colonisation and apartheid is a far greater crime than that expressed by subjugated, oppressed, abused and suffering people.

Not that Israel or its supporters ever let facts, let alone reason, get in the way of propaganda.

While it is part of Israeli propaganda to keep the name Hamas up there because that is a defined 'enemy' and the craven world at large has gone along with Israel's plot to have Hamas defined as a terrorist group, the fact is that Hamas is not the source, cause or core of this issue.

The source, cause and core are Israel's occupation, colonisation and apartheid. Sure there are extremist elements in Hamas but Israel has been occupying for nearly seven decades and Hamas has been around for about twenty-five of those years.

And Israel was instrumental in the 'creation' of Hamas as a foil against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. And while one rarely hears anything other than PLO, where the word Liberation is conveniently omitted and forgotten, the fact is that both the PLO and Hamas arose out of the injustice and suffering of Israel's occupation. The goal of each was Liberation. The goal of Hamas remains liberation.

When the PLO was neutered, Hamas rose to the fore, but as much as anything because it was not corrupt like the PLO and because it actually was effective in improving daily life for Palestinians.

Israel was enraged when the Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006 to represent and to lead them, because their goal was that the Palestinians should have no effective leadership. Any functional leadership complicated Israeli/Zionist policy of  maintaining occupation and continuing to colonise Palestine.

The Israelis and United States, in a hypocritical betrayal of every principle of democracy and justice,  then unilaterally declared that the democratic election was null and void. Israel's task now was to neuter Hamas as it had the PLO. Leadership and organised leadership for the Palestinians was just too dangerous to tolerate.

Israel, aided and abetted by the Americans and other nations prepared to abuse principles of law and justice, then worked to have Hamas declared a terrorist group. No doubt large amounts of money and some very interesting photographs and data were involved in that process.

So Israel had her enemy! Henceforth, whatever Israel did could be said to be done in defence, as the victim, against the evil that was Hamas, with no mention of the evil that Israel was doing to the Palestinians. In Israel-speak, and read what they write and listen to what they say, there were no Palestinians - there was only Hamas, the terrorist.

Hamas, a  flag of 'terror' which could be waved, again and again and again,  thereby distracting those who were easily distracted, which seems to be many if not most, or it was until Israel's Palestinian kill-rate got too high, from what was going on - the continued colonisation of Palestine;, the continued brutalisation of the Palestinians and the creation of an apartheid State of Israel on all of Palestine.

So many then came to believe that the relevant factor in this conflict was Hamas - a terrorist organisation. It was all going perfectly according to Israel/Zionist plans. Despite the fact that anyone who did some research and applied a modicum of reason and intelligence to the issue could see that it was not about Hamas and it could not be about Hamas as long as Israel maintained occupation of Palestine, the belief that Israel was only acting as it was because it was threatened by terrorists took hold.

If anyone had sought to make that argument against resistance fighters in the First or Second World Wars they would have been rejected out of hand. But Israel has gotten away with it - at least until now. 

Hamas was and is Israel's excuse and an excuse does not constitute a valid reason. Given that Hamas is a political group within the Palestinian Resistance fighting to free themselves from occupation, colonisation and apartheid, they are as relevant as the ANC were in regard to the issue of justice concerning whether or not South African blacks should be freed from apartheid.

For anyone of conscience who believes in rule of law, human rights, justice, democracy and common human decency it was deemed to be an issue of justice purely in regard to apartheid, and what the ANC did or did not do, were or were not, might or might not be in the future, was irrelevant in the greater scheme of human rights and that applies to the Palestinians across the board, including Hamas.

White South Africans were quick to point out the extremist elements of the ANC, ignoring their own extremist elements and as I am sure you know Nelson Mandela went to gaol for choosing violence and was called a terrorist for using violent tactics, when in essence he was a freedom fighter, while the white South Africans used even more violent terror tactics and said it was their right to do so.

Just as Israel does. Given that there has not been a suicide attack by Palestinians for TEN YEARS and during those ten years Israel has mutilated, maimed, murdered  in a bomb-driven shredding of lives and bodies, some thousands of Palestinians, many of them children, most of them women and children and civilians, talk of Palestinian violence, i.e. Hamas, is a tad hypocritical for anyone with a reasonably open mind.

More to the point, if Israel did not maintain the most murderous and brutal occupation and colonisation, by a democracy in modern history, and had not done so for nearly seventy years, there never would have been suicide bombers and there would not now be primitive missiles coming out of the Gaza concentration camp.

So, the core issue is not Hamas extremism and neither,for that matter is it Israeli extremism, for these are merely distractions from the core issue. And the core issue is the injustice of occupation.

It has always been the occupation, it is the occupation and it will always be the occupation until the occupation is ended.

That is the salient fact! And it will remain the salient fact until justice is done.