A guide for TV anchors on Palestine

Indian TV anchors are fond of shouting than reading perhaps the reason why they insist on labelling Palestinian fighters as terrorists They seem oblivious of the historical truth that Israel is a transplant on the soil of Palestine Or perhaps they are blindly following Prime Minister Narendra Modirsquos tweet ldquoDeeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks in IsraelrdquoIn this guide for TV anchors the reader should substitute ldquoPalestinerdquo and ldquoPalestiniansrdquo with ldquoIndiardquo and Indiansrdquomdashand they will realise that the most appropriate terms for Palestine fighters including those of Hamas are ldquomilitantrdquo and ldquofreedomfighterrdquo This does not exonerate Hamas of the crime of killing and abducting Israeli civilians including children notwithstanding Israelrsquos brutal occupation of Palestine that dates back tothe 19th centuryIn the 1880s Jews were three per cent of Palestinersquos population Then began the Zionist movement based in Europe which claimed the Jews were entitled to a State of their own in Palestine on the grounds that it was a promise God made to them in biblical times The Zionists funded 40000 Jewish immigrants between 1909 and 1911 to buy land from absentee landlords and establish settlementsIn 1917 Britain issued the Balfour Declaration saying it viewed favourably the ldquoestablishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish peoplerdquo It was palpably unjust of the British to conceive a Jewish homeland in an area where they were merely fivesix per cent of the population After World War I Britain was granted the mandate to administer Palestine and the percentage of Jews shot up to 18 per cent in 1926 Palestinians resisted the expropriation of their landSurely TV anchors can appreciate Palestinian sentiments given their penchant for fanning the paranoia about Muslims overtaking the Hindu population in IndiaThe rise of the Nazis in the 1930s saw 65000 Jews pour into Palestine in 1935 alone Bankrolling these immigrants was a ZionistNazi agreement that allowed Jews to transfer 100 million out of Germany The Jews grew to 32 per cent of Palestinersquos population in 1947 Yet the United Nations in its partition of Palestine on November 29 1947 gave 56 per cent of its territory to JewsWould we have accepted Pakistan getting all of Punjab Bengal Kashmir and AssamArmed conflict broke out on November 30 1947 The poorly armed Palestinians could not match the colonisers who on May 14 1948 declared the formation of Israel In the next round of fighting with the Arab armies Israel occupied 78 per cent of Palestine with Egypt retaining control over the Gaza Strip and Jordan over the West Bank and East Jerusalem Nearly 800000 of the 13 million Palestinians were compelled to become refugees Historian Ilan Pappeacute citing documents says the ethnic cleansing was plannedDonrsquot we lament the killing and uprooting of Hindus and Muslims from their homes during the Partition riotsIn the 1967 SixDay War Israel took over Gaza and the West Bank and began settling Jews in enclaves carved out of the Palestine Occupied Territory Since then Israel has built 160 settlements where 630000 Jews or 11 per cent of that countryrsquos population live today These settlements are separated from Arab habitations by walls making 61 per cent of the West Bank measuring just 5655 sq km inaccessible to PalestiniansWhy did we well after 1947 liberate Goa from the PortugueseThe Oslo Accords in the 1990s provided for two separate States Accordingly the Palestinian National Authority was constituted to govern the West Bank and Gaza but it had just 18 per cent of the former under its direct controlFor perspective try to imagine the India of 1947 without the princely statesThe Gaza Strip measuring just 365 sq km witnessed a Palestinian uprising between 1987 and 1991 Hamas was born then ironically with a decade of help from Israel During the 20002005 uprising Hamas led the resistance to Israel which withdrew from Gaza in 2005 Hamas won the 2006 elections and became the administrator of GazaThis had Israel and Egypt with Americarsquos support blockade Gaza now in its 16th year It is the most important factor why the poverty rate in Gaza is 64 per cent and the unemployment rate among graduates in the age group of 19 to 29 is around 70 per cent Between 2008 and August 2023 6407 Palestinians and 308 Israelis died in the conflict which Hamas escalated last weekHamas neither eschews the use of violence for achieving liberation nor does it recognise Israelrsquos right to exist In 2017 though Hamas said it was fighting the Zionists not Jews and was willing to accept an independent sovereign Palestine in the territory Israel occupied in the 1967 war Did this proposal engage IsraelTV anchors echoing the colonising Israeli State convey a sense that only nonviolent resistance is legitimate But Israel is a ruthless Statemdashin 2003 a bulldozer ran over American activist Rachel Corries as she stood before it to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home Last year they assassinated Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh whose reports they found inconvenientAsk yourself would TV anchors condemn Subhas Chandra Bose for raising an army to fight the British They need to contextualise Hamas violence and nuance their coverage of the PalestineIsrael conflictThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper