From the extermination of Native Americans to Israel's genocide in Gaza

In the context of Hamas’s uprising against Israel, the international community had ignored history and twisted it so much so that every discussion about the conflict centred or seems to start on Oct 7, 2023.

It is far from the truth. Indeed, Hamas’s conflict with Israel is an uprising and not a terror attack as being depicted by the international or rather the pro-Israel Western nations.

Accepting Oct 7 as the point of reference means that we have participated in the lies that the conflict is a deliberate and unprovoked attack by Hamas against Israel’s occupation.

It is an occupation that started more than seven decades ago, long before Hamas was incepted. It can be Hamas or any other Palestinian movements before and after which share the same objective – to liberate Palestine from Israel’s occupation and oppression. 

We all know of the detention of Palestinians, their expulsion from their land and the seizure of Palestinian land for Israel’s settlements.

If the present generation, especially the youths, are unable to grasp this truth then we will forever repeat the lies and twisted history of those who were actually responsible for the current crisis.

Secondly, we have to condemn the occupation and the on-going genocide committed by the Israelis on Palestinians is more than just retaliation. It is an inhuman act that is a crime against human civilisation. It is excessive.

Once we accept that truth, then we will not only understand the mentality of the Israelis, we will also understand the perverse logic of the Americans and its Western allies in defending and supporting Israel, and actually providing the money and weapons to commit the genocide.

The United States as we know, is the biggest supporter and advocate of Israel and its genocidal war against the Palestinians.

Many would agree that if the US had not extended such support, aid and arms to Israel, the occupation of Palestine could not have happened. Israel would not have dared commit the genocide with impunity and United Nations’ sanctions against Israel would not have been vetoed.

If we were to reflect on the psyche of Americans who support Israel, they are without doubt merely pursuing what was committed by their forefathers, against the native people of North America.

They wiped out almost the entire population of Native Americans or indigenous peoples, the Red Indians. They forced these people to live on reserves, which they seize if there was gold in these land.

If we take the American prowess, we can draw many parallels in what we see in Palestine and by extension the rest of the Middle-East and Muslim world.

If the Native Americans were savages for trying to protect and defend their land, Palestinians and Hamas are terrorists for trying to end occupation and regain their land.

All the American media, the powerful and influential Hollywood included, until as late as the 1990s, still referred the Native Americans as Red Indian savages.

In many ways, these depictions justified the genocide of the Native Americans and justified the crimes of the early days white Americans.

Simply put, the white men liberated the nation from savages claiming that civilisation was brought forth by the former.

Despite present day attempts by civil rights movements to restore the dignity of the Native Americans, the genocide and near annihilation of the indigenous people is still denied.

And the loss of their land is sealed albeit some pieces of settlements painted as acts of charity from the occupiers.

Is there much difference between what the Native Americans had experienced and that of the Palestinians?

In fact, the Palestinians’ plight is more tragic given that the genocide and displacement are committed openly and in the full glare of television and other modern day information system. And they commit it nevertheless and carry on committing.

Some, maybe are of the belief that the Native Americans are finally getting some kind of justice as public opinion had begun to see them as victims displaced in their own land.

Actually, all these efforts to change the stereotype and derogatory labels used against the Native Americans change nothing.

They have lost their land and several generations were made to live on the fringes and wilderness of the American society.

If nothing is done to stop the genocide of the Palestinians, it doesn’t require a genius to figure out how they would end up.

In fact, the plight of the Native Americans is not peculiar. The world had witnessed what had happened to the Aborigines in Australia and their lost generations. 

By the time everyone agrees that genocide, displacement, colonialism and occupation are of the essence, the peoples that had been subjected to them are no more a people. They are footnotes of history.

This is part of a keynote speech delivered by the former prime minister at the 1st International Islamic Youth Conference, Jan 13, 2025, Kuala Lumpur.