PNN – Ozkhan says: What the Zionist regime has done over the decades in Gaza are huge crimes, the amount of violence of which is tens of times greater than the October 7 operation.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, at the same time as Israel’s crimes continue in Gaza, some Turkish academics and analysts have looked into the historical context of Israel’s crimes and are looking for an answer to this question: Why can’t the harshness of October 7 operation be questioned? Why the Palestinians are right and Israel has turned the normalization and vulgarization of evil and violence into a lasting policy?
Taha Ozkhan is the director of research at the “Ankara Institute of Studies” and is one of the academics who have written about this issue.
Taha Özkhan, who was an adviser to Erdoğan during his prime ministership and represented the people of Malatya in the Turkish parliament, completed his studies in England and America and is currently the main research director of the Ankara Institute of Studies.
Analyze the Gaza scene correctly
If we look at the Palestinian issue in a clear historical and political context, we can clearly see that the October 7 attack against Israel, in all its dimensions, cannot be compared to Israel’s occupation and crimes.
Some may say why the Palestinians did such an act. But decades of Israeli occupation and brutal actions against Palestinians is a bitter truth that cannot be compared to any other operation or situation.
Even now, I can clearly see that Israel has been exhibiting massacres and massacres in Gaza for two weeks, which clearly shows its brutal and criminal nature.
According to the logic of the “banality of evil” noted by Arendt while watching the trial of Karl Adolf Eichmann, a prominent Nazi official in Jerusalem, the normalization of crime has become Israel’s main motivation.
In this “normality”, the “moral or geopolitical” sentences that are said about the issue of Israel and Palestine are not valid and the crimes of Israel cannot be ignored in any way.
The October 7 operation represents a failure and perhaps a significant change in the course of Israel’s occupation of Palestine since 1973. It is not possible that October 7 has a purely military purpose, because the asymmetry of military power between Israel and Hamas does not need to be explained.
Likewise, there can be no doubt about predicting the level of violence in Israel’s bloody response to the October 7 attack, because the simplest evidence is that the brutality of the occupation has continued for decades and the most fanatical and racist leadership in the history of Israel is going on in Tel Aviv.
Normalization by ignoring the Palestinians
The process that has been carried out in recent years has been to ignore the Palestinian issue from a humanitarian and political point of view. At the core of the policy of normalizing relations with Israel in the absence of the Palestinians and without consulting them, was practically ignoring Palestine and the Palestinians.
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This was a project to formalize the normalization of the occupation order that the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf were looking for. However, the October 7 operation destroyed the illusion that it is possible to reach the final point in the Palestinian issue without the presence of the Palestinians!
Mainstream media discourse was quick to make clumsy comparisons between October 7 and September 11. These comparisons focused only on the attack itself and ignored the tragedies caused by US policies after 9/11.
The debate about security and intelligence gaps continued on the weakness of intelligence that implicitly emphasizes Israel’s infallibility, ignores the Palestinians, and forgets the fact that the oppressed are creatively resisting.
October 7, as the events of the past week showed, was a special experience for the Palestinians; People who experienced similar events many times under Israeli attacks in the last half century. The approach that wants to show that October 7 is an unexpected attack is basically based on the huge power asymmetry between the Palestinians and Israel, the incredible support of Tel Aviv at the global level, the deportation of millions of Palestinians from their land.
The Palestinian people, they have been left stranded by Arab governments time and time again, but they have not surrendered. Even after the Oslo negotiations and the continuation of the occupation in the last 30 years and Israel becoming a fanatical apartheid state, the Palestinians still have the motivation to fight.
Basically, no incentive, support or organization could be more effective than Israel itself! Yes, the main motivation for the October 7 operation was Israel’s own crimes and occupation and nothing else.
For Israel, the denial of the Palestinians is not limited to a simple and rhetorical slogan. Ignoring the Palestinians for the apartheid regime is an intellectual foundation and a daily practice of denial that expresses a certain level of their religious ideals and in fact a complete disregard for the existence of the Palestinian nation.
Over the years, Israel has created an existential crisis with its policies that deny Palestine’s right to “exist” from which it cannot escape today. Israel has no vision to end the occupation.
On the contrary, he considers the occupation a religious ideal and is not in favor of a two-state solution. He cannot even imagine a one-state solution. It does not assume even the minimum responsibilities of an occupying power as defined in international law.
Aside from the hundreds of millions of Arab and Muslim populations around it, the population of Palestinians in the Middle East, which Israel imagines will never exist, outnumbers the population of Israel. He expects the Palestinians to disappear, even though the Jewish population is almost half of the Palestinians who have been deported to the countries of the region in the last 70 years! The theology of occupation is the first reason that has continued the occupation of Palestine as the longest occupation of the modern era. The next reason is the unconditional support of America and Europe for Israel.
It cannot be denied that the current outlook is bleak and discouraging. Nevertheless, in an atmosphere where this pessimistic atmosphere prevails, October 7 could mean an important turning point in the stalemate between the Palestinians and regional geopolitics and the resetting of the effective regional order.
Although the problems that the Palestinians have endured for decades will not end in the near future, there may be the potential for a new era after October 7.
They showed their presence to the whole world, including Israel, America and the countries of the region. Israel and Palestinian groups need a national political vision and new leadership to prevent continued tragic civilian casualties in Gaza and revive hopes for a solution.
Therefore, it is a big mistake to reduce October 7 to the Gaza issue, humanitarian aid, and prisoner exchange, fragile security agreement with Israel or temporary decisions and achievements of the countries of the region. Until an answer is given as to what will happen to the political existence of the Palestinians after October 7, this vicious cycle will continue.