Let's go into the weekend with this one - and notice which words are missing.
When someone says "Free Palestine".
It NEVER means "Free Palestine from Hamas".
It ALWAYS means "Be against Israel".
It's a linguistic construction that has become so ingrained that many have forgotten to notice it. The Palestinian population as living people disappears from the sentence. What remains is a political slogan directed at a state.
Take the test yourself.
How many demonstrations have you seen under the banner "Free Palestine from Hamas"? How many marches have there been to free Palestinian women from the morality police? To stop the indoctrination of Palestinian children for martyrdom? To shine a spotlight on the fact that the few remaining Christians in Gaza have systematically been driven out, harassed and murdered in the twenty years Hamas has ruled the place?
Not any. Not a single one.
Isn't that right?
Because the conversation isn't about the Palestinians.
It's about Israel.
That's the pattern I've seen unfold again this week in the comment threads under my posts about the Iranians, Islam and Jews. Every time the truth about an Islamist regime comes too close, Israel is brought in as a counterpoint. As if a comparison with a state with flaws should cancel out the fact that we're talking about a theocratic terror regime that uses its own population as ammunition.
So let's start over, so words get a chance to stand for something.
Because what do people actually mean by FREE?
When is something FREE?
Would one consider DENMARK FREE - if the country were led by a theocratic terror organisation that hangs homosexuals, that whips women if their hair is showing, that executes political opponents without trial, that throws opposition members from the roofs of buildings as Hamas did with Fatah members in Gaza in 2007?
Would one consider DENMARK FREE - if the few Christians remaining were pressed, harassed and murdered, precisely as has happened in Gaza since Hamas took power - where the Christian population has gone from around 3,000 to under 1,000 in under two decades?
Would one consider DENMARK FREE - if children in summer camps were trained in military tactics and martyrdom, where children's TV glorifies suicide bombers, where schools bear the names of people who have murdered civilians, where a six-year-old boy already knows what he's going to become?
Would one consider DENMARK FREE - if no elections had been held in twenty years, where a morality police patrols the streets, where music, dance and parties are considered un-Islamic, where a woman cannot travel without permission from a man, where a girl who is raped can be honour-killed by her own family while the regime looks the other way?
Would one consider DENMARK FREE - if billions in humanitarian aid were systematically redirected to weapons, to tunnel networks dug under hospitals and schools, to palaces for the leadership's families - while the population lives in poverty and is used as human shields in the next confrontation?
Would one consider DENMARK FREE - if the government's basic programme explicitly declared a neighbouring state's - that is, Sweden's or Germany's - annihilation as the religious goal, and where anyone who questions it can lose their life for it?
Is that what we're supposed to understand FREE means?
FREE for WHOM exactly?
It sounds like an absolute hellhole for anyone who grew up in the FREE Western world - doesn't it?
It's simultaneously the regime we're being asked not to oppose, because it's about "liberation".
Liberation from what? It can hardly get more unfree?
The Palestinian population's real occupation is the one happening from within. It is theological, political and structural, and it kills Palestinians every single day - before, during and after any conflict with Israel.
If one cannot distinguish between a state with flaws and a terror regime that uses its own population as ammunition, then it's not because we have a superficial disagreement.
Then it's a completely different conversation about what words like FREEDOM even mean.
Because it's as if many have completely lost the ability to see the sequence. What kind of freedom does the slogan deliver? And in what order?
If Israel disappeared tomorrow but Hamas remained, would the Palestinians then live in freedom? No. They would hang from the same cranes, be beaten for the same hair, be tortured for the same dissenting opinions.
If Hamas conversely didn't exist, would the Palestinians then be able to begin living freely?
Yes. That's where FREEDOM in any recognisable form begins.
FREEDOM has a sequence. First the regime must fall. Then the rest can be built. The other way around doesn't exist.
Free Palestine from Hamas. That's the liberation that can contain Palestinian lives.
Everything else is something else.
One is allowed to fight for it - but to call it Freedom.
No.
❤️🔥🪽
Happy weekend, friends.
Enjoy the Light ☀️
