A lot of absolutely callous and pathetic comments are being expressed on the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza in Malaysian-based cyber media. I can understand if these comments are made in privately-owned blogs but for these to be given air time in online fee- charging portals, it is not only disgusting but also a travesty of the right of subscribers to true, accurate and unbiased information.

All the comments condemning and blaming Hamas for the Israeli invasion of Gaza have an undertone of Islamophobia and plays into the hands of pro-Israeli media which has an agenda of painting Israelis as the victims and Palestinians as the aggressors.

That some Malaysians can so nonchalantly express sympathy with this line of thinking on such a critical and heart-wrenching issue only shows the carelessness and laziness of these people in understanding the exact context of the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has now stretched for sixty-one years with the Palestinians being evicted from almost 80% of their land to create the state of Israel by the US and Europe with the collusion of the United Nations in 1948. With the creation of Israel, the Palestinians were left with two pieces of non-contiguous areas which are the tiny Gaza strip and the West Bank.

Most of the Palestinians evicted fled and today these 6.5 million people are living as refugees all over the world and many in very dire circumstances in squalid refugee camps. Not content with having taken over 80% of Palestine to create the state of Israel, the Israelis invaded the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967 and have been occupying, controlling and building settlements to house Jews in these territories as well.

To describe life for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as nightmarish would be an understatement as they have no liberty whatsoever in what is their own country. The economy is in ruins and there is no functioning social service as everything is restricted by the Israelis including the presence of almost 600 Israeli checkpoints to monitor the daily movements of Palestinians within what little is left of their country.

In short, the Palestinians have virtually been prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967.

The plight of the Palestinians for the last 60 years has received scant attention from the various power-brokers in the world be it the United Nations, the US or Europe all of whom are preoccupied with protecting the interests of Israel which is shamelessly painted as the victim rather than the aggressor which it is.

Is it thus surprising that the Palestinians in their utter desperation are fighting through whatever means available within their means be it firing crude homemade Qassam rockets or throwing rocks to seek their rights including getting back the lands from which they were evicted in 1948 for the creation of Israel and to expel the Israeli army from the West Bank and Gaza which has been occupied since 1967?

The Palestinians secured a small win in 2005 when the Israeli army withdrew from the Gaza Strip. However in withdrawing, the Israeli army imposed a total blockade of Gaza with the result that nothing including food, medicine, fuel and electricity can be imported without the approval of the Israelis which has mostly not been granted.

For the last three years, the 1.5 million people of Gaza have had no regular food, medicine, clean water nor electricity supply and are literally starving and ravished by disease and illness. Under such conditions, they have had to dig tunnels to reach the Egyptian border town of Rafah to import whatever little essential supplies to sustain life in Gaza.

To make matters worse, the Israeli army constantly makes raids on Gaza to harass and assassinate Palestinians especially those suspected of being politically active. Jewish settlers from the neighboring Israeli towns of Sderot etc constantly harass Palestinian farmers by destroying their farms which provide the barest minimum source of income for the Palestinians.

Given such dire conditions in Gaza, can Hamas, which has been legitimately elected as the ruling party through internationally-supervised democratic elections, be blamed for firing rockets into Israel now and then? These rocket attacks which have killed less than ten people over the last three years are like a child’s toy gun when compared to the Israeli guns, drones, airplanes, tanks and missiles which have killed 1,700 Palestinians over the same period.

Despite all their suffering, Hamas agreed to a six-month cease-fire with Israel in 2008 and agreed to stop firing rockets into southern Israel. Israel, however, never honoured its commitment for the cease-fire and continued to impose crippling blockades on Gaza and assassinate officials of Hamas through regular incursions.

Is it thus surprising that Hamas chose to resume its rocket attacks on southern Israel after the expiry of the six-month cease-fire which was abused by the Israelis?

Only the Palestinians can appreciate the kind of pain and suffering that they have endured for the last 61 years as result of the heinous crimes of the Israeli regime supported by the US and Europe.

If everyday images of children, men and women blasted to bits and crippled by Israeli weapons as shown on television and Internet cannot move people to gain a better understanding of the roots of this conflict, the least they could do would be to demonstrate their ignorance through neutrality rather than rub salt into the wound of the Palestinians.

Keep your misguided ignorant comments to yourselves and let those who are more enlightened about the Israeli Palestinian conflict do whatever little they can to lessen the pain of our brethren in the Gaza and West Bank.