I refer to a letter entitled Hamas to blame for Israel raids and the Malaysiakini article column Malaysia is like Israel .

The letter and the article just shows how successful the Islamphobia agenda is. While the Israeli military again bombs the starving and imprisoned population of 1.5 million Gazans, the world watches their plight live as the Western media scrambles to explain and, in some cases, justify the ongoing carnage.

None of this is a surprise; the Israelis just concluded a global public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of some Arab states. The media successfully portrays the crisis that we see today as something that began six months ago when the peace truce was concluded between Hamas and Israel. This so-called truce was concluded by Israel with the ulterior intention of isolating the Gazans from the democratically-elected Hamas by blocking all essential supplies from the Gazans such as food, medicine, clean water and even power generation throughout the peace truce period.

When Hamas retaliated against the blockade, the media then narrates the story that Hamas then started the war. The same picture was painted during the last Hezbollah-Israel conflict. On the so-called attack on civilians, we should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified.

This is a question for the weak, such as for the Native Americans 150 years ago, the Jews in Nazi Germany and the Palestinians today, to answer. Terrorism is a normative term which is used to describe what the 'other' does, not what 'we' do. Powerful nations such as Israel, the US, Russia or China will always describe their 'victims' struggle as terrorism.

However, they fail to acknowledge their acts of terror such as the destruction of Chechnya, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the repression of Tibetans, and the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Normative rules and what is legal and permissible are determined by the powerful. They formulate the concept of terrorism in normative terms and make it appear as if a neutral court made such definitions instead of the oppressors. For the weak to resist it becomes illegal by definition. This excessive use of legal jargon actually undermines the fundamentals of what is truly legal and diminishes the credibility of international institutions such as the UN.

The law becomes the enemy of those who struggle. It becomes apparent that the powerful - those who make the rules - insist on legality merely to preserve the ‘power relations’ that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism. Colonial powers use civilians strategically be they the indigenous populations in North America or Palestinians in what is today Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Attacking civilians, then, becomes the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance in the face of overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that such violence will destroy or defeat Israel. When the native population understands that there is an irreversible dynamic stripping them of their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can muster.

In 1948, when Israel was being established as a new state, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately expelled from their homes and hundreds of their villages were destroyed. Their lands were settled by colonists who even today deny their (the Palestinians’) very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world.

Israel, its allies in the West and some regional Arab countries have managed to corrupt the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and entice them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for the Palestinians. This eventually neutralised and transformed the PLO into a liberation movement which collaborates with the occupier.

The focus then shifted to Hamas, a movement which won the legislative elections nearly three years ago and thus became a target for the Israelis. By enforcing an embargo and allowing Israel's siege of Gaza, the world has effectively told the Palestinians that they are unfit for democracy. By informing them that they are not free to choose the leaders they trust but must conform to the requirements set in place by others, the world community is only further isolating and radicalising the Palestinians.

This radicalisation has increased several-fold as Israel pounds the Palestinian infrastructure, saying it is solely targeting Hamas targets. This is not true as Israeli forces have targeted Palestinian police forces, killing some such as Tawfiq Jaber, the chief of police - a former PLO official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza. With the vestiges of security and order debilitated in successive Israeli military campaigns, chaos will prevail in Gaza.

If Hamas is weakened, it will not be a more moderate Palestinian group which will take over the helm. It will not be the weakened, corrupted and unpopular Fatah but a more extreme group who will have been persuaded through blockades and incessant Israeli attacks that all compromises and negotiations with Tel Aviv are ill-fated.

In the past 60 years, Israeli leaders have toed the line that 'the only language Arabs understand is force'. However, it is Israel that has routinely used violence to solve problems. During the 2002 Arab Summit in Beirut, the Arab League collectively offered Israel a framework to end the bloodshed and move towards a comprehensive regional peace deal. Israel responded by invading Jenin and killing hundreds.

Last month, Fatah launched a media campaign to revive the 2002 peace initiative, but this, too, has been answered by Israel's extreme brutality. A Zionist Israel is no longer a viable long-term project. Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two-state solution impossible. There can be only one state in historic Palestine.

In the coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with a fundamental question - whether to ensure the peaceful transition towards an egalitarian society in which Palestinians are given the same rights as Jews.

History has shown that colonialism has only worked when most of the natives had been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and accept one state for both people and the Jewish colonists will be forced to leave.

And also remember that a colonised power will never be able to erase the memory of the native.