Legacy Media is Frustrating

First and foremost, you should regard this as an opinion piece, and not one from any expertise background, because I’m far from one. I generally have no interest in politics, and I find it both boring and mind-numbing to think about and try to decipher (because deciphering is needed when it comes to politics... nothing is clear cut). But seeing the coverage of the recent attack on Israel and the aftermath in mainstream media, frustration and anger were building up inside and I had to let it out.

As we all know, there was an attack that was carried out by Hamas on Israel on the 7th of October, and they killed and kidnapped civilians.

Let’s get this out of the way and say that this attack was in no way Islamic. As you might have guessed from my name, I am a Muslim, and even I with my limited knowledge of the matter can tell you that this attack was not Islamic in any way, shape or form. In Islam, we are not allowed to harm the innocent at any time, and this is also the case explicitly in war.

Another misconception most people have is that Muslims hate Jewish people. That is not correct. I do admit that there might be animosity between the two, but the main reason for that is the state of Israel and not the religion of Judaism.

I just wanted to get these two points out of the way as they are irrelevant to the discussion. This attack and ongoing issues have to be looked at in the way they are: Political.

Now, let’s look at what Hamas is. If you look up “who is Hamas” on Google, the first result is “Hamas, officially the Islamic Resistance Movement...”. Once again, I am not politically inclined in any way, so I'm just here to talk logically. I searched the definition of Resistance, in case I’m somehow misunderstanding it, and here is the result:

The description of Hamas and the definition of resistance leads one to understand that Hamas is a group that is resisting something... so what are they resisting?

It baffled me how the news was portraying the attack by Hamas like it was a surprise terrorist attack. No, it wasn’t. And, as per the definition above, I conclude that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation.

The way the news was portraying Hamas and Palestine was as if they were the aggressors in this situation. Like the attack came out of nowhere at a time of peace.

They were talking as if Israel's occupation of Palestine, and the last few decades of them killing innocent civilians happened in some parallel universe!

The war was never over! Israel was still annually increasing the number of innocent Palestinians they’ve killed. They've killed far more people than Hamas did in this incident, but no one is acknowledging that. They've killed many children until this moment in time, but no one is acknowledging that. They’ve imprisoned far more people in the Gaza Strip, but no one is acknowledging that.

I’m not justifying the attack, as mentioned above, I don’t think innocent people should be killed in any circumstances. What I wanted to demonstrate in the above paragraph is that the attack didn’t come from nowhere, and it was not a terrorist attack.

The attack was from desperate people who have been pressurised for decades and they can't take it anymore. Desperation leads to desperate acts, and that is what this was.

As I said, I'm writing this because I was frustrated by the media coverage of this attack and the aftermath.

The media, whether we admit it or not, is a powerful tool when it comes to shaping opinions, and it seems like they are hell-bent on trying to convince people that the attack by Hamas is a terrorist act and that Hamas is a direct representative of the Palestinian people.

It was shocking to me how many people don’t actually know the background of what is happening between Palestine and Israel and have simply believed and taken the media at their word whenever the attack is alluded to as a singular terror attack on a nation.

A lot of people don’t actually know that Israel is an occupier state! As I understand it, Britain and Europe somehow decided to “give” Palestine to the Jewish people without caring that the land already had people living there! That is logically ludicrous! Since Israel became a “nation” they’ve systemically killed and pushed the Palestinians away until they eventually contained them in this small piece of land called the Gaza Strip.

After doing all of that to the Palestinian people, why are they surprised that some of them would retaliate brutally? Why are they on news stations trying to gain sympathy, as if it wasn’t of their own doing??

We’ve all seen many protests around the world supporting Palestine, including by Jewish people around the world, as well as Israelis in Israel. Of course, the news has twisted this as well, calling them anti-sematic protests when in reality they were protesting Israel’s response to the attack. Some are even calling Jewish people who are protesting “self-hating Jews”.

Israel decided to bomb and kill Hamas. They say that Hamas is hiding amongst the population of Palestine, therefore collateral damage is bound to happen. They’ve decided to bomb areas knowing full well that civilians will be killed in doing so. Eventually, after some pushback, they decided to give a “warning” to the civilians.

This warning and order to evacuate is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard throughout this incident. Israel ordered Palestinians to evacuate to the Southern part of Gaza ahead of a ground invasion to take out Hamas. They originally gave a 24-hour deadline for the Palestinians to evacuate.

24 hours for over a million people to evacuate from one part of Gaza to the other.

I searched online “how long does it take to evacuate a building” just so I can have some sort of scale when thinking about this evacuation order. The results came in saying it can take typically 15 minutes for regular buildings, and maybe over 2 hours when it comes to large high-rise buildings, because of the different needs and capabilities of the people evacuating (some could be older or disabled for example).

All of this is talking about evacuating the people from inside the building, to outside the building.

In contrast, think about evacuating over a million people from one part of the city to another. People of varying ability to move because of age, disability, or maybe even injury. Can you see how ridiculous it is to think this can be done in 24 hours?

Another thing that has annoyed me throughout the media coverage is that a lot of these news shows got Palestinians and Arabs (whether officially representing Palestine in some capacity or not) and asked them this question:

“Do you condemn Hamas for their attack on October 7th”

The consistency of their asking this question and their insistence on an answer had me thinking: do they think that an Arab or Palestinian agreeing with this statement would somehow legitimise Israel’s response? Why are they so hell-bent on having them answer this question? Why did they not ask Israeli representatives if they condemned the blanket response of killing Palestinian civilians (among their treatment and murder of Palestinians for the last few decades)?

If I was Palestinian, frankly speaking, I would not care about what Hamas did. They attacked an enemy state that has been murdering Palestinians for decades. I wouldn’t celebrate what they did (as mentioned, attacking civilians is forbidden), but I would not go on news shows and condemn them like Israel is somehow the victim.

My main frustration is the manipulation of the media. They are trying to get the public behind believing that Israel is justified in attacking all Palestinians because of the attack by Hamas. If you think that this is some sort of conspiracy theory, then I direct your attention to a proven example of this same thing happening before.

I only found this out recently because of this whole thing with this attack. My brother mentioned that America did this same thing when it wanted to get involved with the Iraq and Kuwaiti war in the early '90s. There was no clear justification for America to join in this war, at least not to the public, so America had to do something to get backing from the public, which would translate to votes by their representative when it came to this war.

America held hearings where testimonies were given to try and convince America to help Kuwait. One particular testimony by a young 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl called “Nayirah” went on to become a major turning point for the ultimate decision. This girl mentioned that her family was struggling and that she volunteered in a hospital, alone with other women, to help during the war. While she was there, she witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies from their incubators and letting them die on the cold floor. Her testimony, in particular the part about babies being taken from their incubators, was quoted multiple times by many politicians including President George Bush senior, which eventually garnered him the support needed to join the war.

Years after the war ended (before George Bush junior decided to jump in follow hid dad's lead), it was found that the testimony of that 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl was false. It was propaganda led by America to position itself in that war. Her claims were not verified by any outside source, and it was found that this girl wasn’t just some random Kuwaiti girl, but the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA, who had also testified separately in that same hearing!

The girl was even coached by a public relations firm which helped her in more believably telling this story.

What I’m saying is that the media is a powerful tool, but I hope that people are not blinded by what they hear. Do your research.

I hope that with the connectivity of the internet that we have now, such obvious attempts at manipulating public opinion are not easy to do and that the public can see through the smoke screens of the wider media.