In November 2023, while analyzing the mainstream news immediately after the 7 October Palestinian breakout from Gaza and defeat of the Israeli Gaza command, legal scholar Noura Erakat noted that there was “a discourse on day one that understood Oct. 7 as a prison break or the Tet Offensive; people were distressed, but there was an understanding of the logic.”
This, however, soon shifted, as a counter narrative established a “framework that subsumed Hamas squarely within the War on Terror and Islamophobia and synonymized Hamas with ISIS.”
And it has been clear that since the first day, Western liberal commentators, labor unions, and so on, have largely made sure to “condemn Hamas” before calling for a ceasefire, what The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah has called a “kind of condemnation olympics.”
Others have attempted to sidestep Palestine altogether, such as during the late-2023 and early-2024 US Congressional funding debates over a proposed combination of fascistic US border policies with weapons funding for Israeli, Ukrainian and Taiwanese “defense.”….more
