This is utterly heartless but what is even worse is the fact that when Palestinians die or are killed by the Jews either on the battlefield, in their homes, in their hospitals, on their streets or indeed anywhere else and the Israeli Defence Force has access to their bodies they cut them open, remove their vital organs, take them back to Israel and sell them on the international black market!

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One is constrained to ask whether those that insist on doing such abominable things are really human beings?

The Palestinians of Gaza are a people that have been living under the most grotesque, repressive, repressed and insidious form of bondage and occupation for the last few decades yet they remain strong, focused, fearless, resilient, gallant, heroic, confident, courageous and irrepressible.

What makes the wickedness and cruelty that they have been subjected to all the more difficult for them to bear is the fact that contrary to Israeli and Western propaganda and their inexcusable and deplorable revision and outright perversion of history the Palestinians are a proud, noble, enlightened, refined, cosmopolitan, technologically-advanced, peace-loving people whose sacred values and noble heritage are second to none and whose rich history of peace, tolerance, civilisation, accommodation, religious diversity, charity, kindness and peaceful coexistence with their guests and neigbours goes back thousands of years.

Again they are by far the best educated people in the Middle East and possibly amongst the best educated in the world with 30% of them being PhD holders whilst 99% of their over 14 million population are literate.

There are seven million Palestinians living in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Israel put together whilst another seven million live in the diaspora and are spread all over the world doing skilled jobs, running businesses and attending universities and other institutions of higher learning.

Abandoned by much of the Arab world in their struggle for emancipation due to American and Jewish influence and pressure, they have soldiered on regardless making huge contributions in science, the arts, commerce, sports and virtually every other field of human endeavour.

They are not only industrious and hard working but they have remarkable foresight and have resolved never to bow, submit, capitulate or bend the knee to their Zionist oppressors and colonial masters but rather to stand firm, stand tall, maintain their self respect and dignity, thrive, survive and resist them till the very end even if it means that they all die trying.

This courageous thirst and quest for freedom, emancipation and liberation despite the horrific circumstances they have been subjected to can only but be admired and applauded by all right thinking people.

They are indeed a testimony to courage and a great source of inspiration to the downtrodden and those that the famous Afro-American author Franz Fanon described in his famous book titled ‘The Wretched of the Earth’.

Like the black majority population of the old apartheid South Africa who stood firm against all odds, fought hard, held on to their dream of freedom and were martyred in their thousands for hundreds of years till it eventually came they have refused to bend the knee and become slaves to the Zionists and instead, like Patrick Henry the famous American revolutionary courageously proclaimed to King George 111 of England in 1775 they have defiantly shouted “give me liberty or give me death” and they have courageously screamed “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

Literally every single Gazan and Palestinian is committed to this noble cause of liberation and is prepared to sacrifice their lives for it and nothing provides a more eloquent testimony to this than their willingness to protect themselves militarily and wage war against their oppressors.

Consequently they manufacture virtually all of their own weapons and their ably-trained and well- equipped armed wing, known as the Al Qasam Brigade, has proved to be a formidable fighting force in battle and one which has given the Israeli Defence Force a bloody nose.

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I watched the Minister of Social Services of Gaza, Dr. Ghazi Hamad, who is a leading member and an influential and powerful figure in the Hamas Government speak on Seun Okinbaloye’s Channels Television ‘Politics Today’ show last tuesday evening and I was very impressed by the way he marshalled his points and stated his case.

He spoke in a concise, eloquent, refined and effective manner and his arguments and submissions were irrefutable, incontrovertible and compelling.

Millions of Nigerians were spell-bound and star-struck when they heard him as he calmly enunciated the truth about the events of October 7th (for which he refused to apologise) and the history of the Palestinian struggle.

He made four notable points.

Firstly that a person whose home or country has been forcefully occupied by a foreign power and aggressor and whose family members and compatriots are being killed on a daily basis cannot be legitimately described as a terrorist as a consequence of his quest to throw the occupier out and free his people by any means, including violent ones.

This appears to me to be sound logic.

You cannot beg a famished wolf to leave the sheep pen and you cannot appeal to a hungry tiger to leave the chicken coop. You can only drive them out by force.

You either tread the path of violent resistance to evil or you shamefully submit, close your eyes, prepare for the worse and die a shameful and cowardly death.

For those who have bought the lies of the West and Israel and that continue to dismiss Hamas as nothing but a terrorist organisation I ask the following.

How can an occupier of someone elses land and a violent conqueror describe those whose land and people they have suppressed, conquered, subjugated, humiliated, enslaved and violently and forcefully appropriated describe their victims and those whose lives, homes and land they have taken and captured as terrorists simply because they have opted to undergo an armed struggle in an attempt to defend themselves, fight back, deliver their people and take back what is rightfully theirs?

Surely those that resist such oppression cannot fairly be described as terrorists but rather as freedom fighters.

This is precisely what happened in apartheid South Africa and after decades of suffering, degradation, oppression, subjugation, humiliation,  murder, persecution and destruction the black South Africans took their nation back through a gallant and courageous armed struggle which was waged by the armed wing of the ANC known as Umkontho We Sizwe (The Spear of the Nation).

History is replete with such examples.

The courageous and fiery black American preacher and slave Nat Turner did the same in the southern American state of Virginia when he led his fellow black slaves in a violent and murderous rebellion, known as the Southampton Insurrection, against their white slave owners in 1831.

The Americans themselves waged a violent and bloody revolution and war of independence against the  oppression and subjugation of their erstwhile British colonial masters in 1775.

The French broke their own shackles of bondage and oppression in 1789 with a violent and extremely bloody revolution against the subjugation of the monarchy and the ruling class durng which they killed or drove into exile most of the French upper classes and ruling elite and sent the King, his Queen and other members of his family to the guillotine.

The English waged their own war of emancipation in 1642 when Oliver Cromwell unleashed a violent revolution and civil war against King Charles 1st and not only removed him from power and established the Parliamentary system of Government but also beheaded him!

The Russians embarked on their own revolution in 1917 when Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks fought a civil war against Tsar Nicholas 11, removed him from the throne, ended 300 years of the brutal oppression of the Romanov dynasty, took power for the people and established a Communist nation known as the USSR.

Toussant Louverture did the same in Haiti in 1801 when he led his army of black slaves in a war of emancipation against the French, defeated them in battle and established the western worlds first free black nation.

Closer to home Fl. Lt. John Jerry Rawlings freed the people of Ghana from oppression, corruption, subjugation and suppressive military rule in 1979 when he organised a coup detat and effected what he himself described as a revolution after which many members of the erstwhile ruling class were executed.

I could go on and on.

If armed struggle against the unjust, vicious, relentless usurper and wicked oppressor is a legitimate form of resistance in all these countries and cases and if it worked successfully for them why should the Palestinians not do the same?

Are they not human beings too or are they less human than the rest of us? Do they not also have a duty to their people and indeed an obligation to God to resist every form of oppression, injustice and evil?

Do the great faiths of Islam and Christianity not insist on this in their Holy books?

They most surely do.

The second point the Minister made when asked about whether or not Hamas would release the remaining over 100 Israeli hostages that they abducted on October 7th, was that they would only do so once the Israelis released at least 5000 of the 7000 prisoners, most of whom were women and children, that they had arrested and kept in illegal detention and held without trial from both Gaza and the occupied West Bank for the last few months and years.

When asked about the targetting and killing of women and children by Hamas and particularly the ugly events of October 7th he made the point that it was not and had never been the practice and intention of Hamas’ Al Qassam Brigade to target women and children and that the Israeli Defence Force has targetted and killed thousands of Palestinian women and children over the months and years BEFORE October 7th and yet the world turned a blind eye to it, sat back and said nothing.

Though in my view two wrongs do not make a right again this appears to me to be a fair point.

Are Palestinian women and children not human beings as well? Does red blood not flow through their veins too? Do they not also have a right to life?

Israel has indeed been slaughtering them at will over many decades without a word from the world but the barbarity and brutality of their post October 7th butchery on Palestinian babies, infants, children and youths beggars belief. Such wickedness has never been seen in modern history.

The Zionists have murdered no less than 17000 Palestinian children in Gaza and maimed and wounded thousands of others in the last four months alone and yet they are still claiming to be the victims?

Surely this makes no sense. As bad as October 7th was, Israel’s response is disproportionate, barbaric, unacceptable and can best be described as a Nazi-like World War 11 second holocaust.

What Hitler and the Germans did to the Jews between 1936 and 1945 is precisely what the Zionists are doing to the Palestinians today.

The Germans called it the “Final Solution” then and I call it the “Final Solution” today.

The only difference is that the race of the victims are different and the hunted has now become the hunter.

Finally he made the point that whilst the whole world appeared to have abandoned the Palestinians and were indifferent to their suffering and struggle over the last 70 years and given the fact that the path of peaceful negotiation that Fatah, the PLO and the President Mahmoud Abbas-led occupied West Bank Government had chosen to tread had not produced any positive results over the last 30 years, Hamas had no intention whatsoever of abandoning their people, renouncing their armed struggle or submitting to Israel and her allies.

Can anyone legitimately fault the logic of his position? Yours truly certainly cannot.

This is especially so given the fact that Netanyahu has proclaimed that there will and cannot be a two-state solution as long as he is in power and given the fact that he has thrown the American-brokered Oslo Accord agreement into the dustbin.

To him and those that share his views the Palestinian people must either be totally subjugated, enslaved, colonised, occupied and beaten into cowardly submission or they must be totally and completely eliminated, exterminated and removed from the face of the earth.

Given this, would any right thinking person that has even a modicum of self-respect and honor not fight back?

Should one not rather be prepared to die on their feet than live in chains and on their knees?

That is the position of Hamas and frankly it is unassailable in its rationale and logic.

It is no wonder that Juilus Malema, the fiery young South African MP and politician, recently said “anyone that condemns or does not support Hamas in their armed struggle against the Israelis is a coward!”

I commend Channels Television and Seun Okinbaloye for providing Dr. Hamad with their powerful platform and for cultivating the courage to enable us to hear the other side of the story.

The Israeli Ambassador to Nigeria, one Michael Freeman, who appeared on the same show the following evening in a futile attempt to do some damage control by responding to and countering Dr. Hamad was not only completely out of his depth but was also inexplicably agitated, overly emotional, unnecessarily abusive, deeply insulting, overtly and manifestly offensive and worse of all he was disingenuous, deceitful, dishonest, vulgar, out of control,deranged, enraged, condescending and wholly and completely ineffective.

Simply put he spoke nothing but specious lies and rubbish and he did so in the most simplistic and condescending manner.

His appearance was merely a pitiful regurgitation of the puerile  propaganda and infantile lies that the Jews have peddled and churned out over the years and he painted the picture of a drowning man who was representing a dying, discredited, old and mortally wounded flogged horse.

He was not only unconvincing and irritating but also malevolent and bellicose in his approach and choice of words and thoroughly nauseating.

I could literally see two little devil horns sticking out of his balding head and smell the sulphur of hell seeping through my television screen as he bellowed whilst the words “mendacious”, “deceitful”, “liar”,  “propagandist”, “artful dodger”, “lover of carnage”, “drinker of blood”, “eater of flesh”, “poisonous viper”, “child-killing terrorist”, “dark oppressor”, “dung-eating coprophiliac” and “accuser of the brethren” were spiritually inscribed on his ugly Zionist head.

I guess one can expect no less from a creature who represents satan’s kingdom on earth, who speaks for a

a vile race of quislings that fawn before their masters and genuflect at their every word and whose nation thrives, flourishes and excels on lies, falsehood and the premeditated and systemic mass murder, ethnic-cleansing, genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and wilful slaughter of innocent and defenceless men, women and children.

Whether Freeman likes it or not Ghazi Hamad’s appearance on Channels proved to yours truly and millions of other Nigerians that the leadership of Hamas are not the primitive, barbaric and ignorant stone age cavemen and blood-lusting terrorists that Israel and the West portrays them to be.

They are not a bunch of ignorant and illiterate savages, village idiots, genocidal maniacs, cruel beasts,  unrefined field hands, war mongering and blood lusting meglomaniacs and primitive barbarians that they have been portrayed to the world to be but rather a cerebal, intellectual and highly knowledgeable group of civilised men and women who have leaders that are quite capable of holding their own with any others in the world.

It is no wonder that the Zionists have not been able to defeat them or break their spirit despite the fact that no less than 70% of Gazans have at one time or the other been detained in Israeli prisons.

It is no wonder that if there is an election in Gaza today Hamas would win hands down just as they did in previous elections.

This is the bitter truth and unpalatable reality that the world does not wish to hear.

We pray for peace and justice for the Palestinian people and we cry to the Living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to bring the State of Israel back to her senses before it is too late. Shalom.