The Last Bastion of Hasbara: Why Does the West Reject the Legitimacy of Resistance in its Islamic Guise?

The Israeli propaganda machine, known as 'Hasbara,' no longer finds a safe haven in military fields or diplomatic corridors to market its narrative. Instead, it has moved to entrench itself behind an intellectual wall that relies on exploiting the West's inability to accept Palestinian resistance when it expresses itself in the language of political Islam. This shift comes at a time when the founding myths of the Zionist entity, such as the claim of 'the most moral army' or 'an oasis of democracy,' are crumbling in the face of the exposure of field realities to the entire world.

The last deceptive trick that still stands in the face of the comprehensive collapse of Israeli propaganda is the systematic and irrational demonization of resistance movements with an Islamic reference. This demonization is not limited to Western circles but extends to include a part of the Arab world, which explains the double standards towards the Palestinian issue and the coldness towards agreements imposed on the region's countries.

Observers believe that Western solidarity with Palestine often clashes with the religious identity barrier of the resistance; the Western intellectual may show sympathy for the 'secular' or 'leftist' Palestinian, but immediately withdraws this support if the resistance fighter relies on an Islamic reference. This contradiction reveals colonial residues that have not been overcome, where the 'other' is accepted only if they adopt the universal standards imposed by the West as the sole means of expression.

In a historical testimony dating back to 1992, Egyptian thinker Tariq Al-Bishri pointed out that the West always found political currents that understood Arab national aspirations as long as they were written in Marxist or nationalist language. But as soon as the vocabulary of Islamic religion was used to express the same liberation aspirations, a complete break occurred, and the Palestinian voice became unheard as if it were speaking a strange language alien to the concepts of international rights.

The secret to the persistence of this intellectual impasse is that the Islamic current represents in the Western colonial imagination an 'uncontainable declaration of independence.' Islamists not only reject political subservience but also reject the use of the cultural lexicon that the West thought it had imposed as the sole template for modernity and universality, making them, in the eyes of the West, 'worse' than traditional nationalists.

Israel exploits this excessive sensitivity towards political Islam to de-politicize the conflict and transform it into a purely sectarian or religious conflict. The Israeli narrative promotes that Palestinians resist because they are 'Muslims' who hate the other, and not because they are a people suffering under military occupation seeking to uproot them from their land, an argument aimed at stripping the resistance of its legal legitimacy.

Historically, Israeli racial superiority did not wait for the 'Islamization' of the resistance to commit crimes of incrimination and killing; Palestinian resistance was targeted with the same ferocity when it was led by secular and leftist factions. History recalls Ariel Sharon's comparison in 2001 when he tried to link Yasser Arafat to Osama bin Laden, in an early attempt to exploit the events of September 11 to brand the national struggle as global terrorism.

This obsession with hostility towards political Islam is not limited to the West but receives strong support from within Arab societies through authoritarian regimes that see this discourse as a means of survival. These regimes use the 'phobia of Islamists' as a widely consumed product to justify the suppression of any democratic alternative that might threaten their thrones, presenting themselves to the West as the last bastion against 'extremism.'

Informed sources reported that some Arab officials adopt a discourse that exceeds in its intensity the Israeli discourse towards resistance leaders, describing them with exaggerated criminal descriptions to win the favor of the Western interlocutor. This identification with the Zionist narrative reflects the depth of the crisis experienced by ruling elites who preferred to maintain their power at the expense of the national rights of their peoples.

Making criticism of the Hamas movement or any resistance faction a prerequisite for recognizing the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination is a logical fallacy aimed at hindering the universality of human rights. No external power has the right to impose on a people under occupation the type of leaders who should represent them, as political choice is a sovereign internal matter par excellence.

Researchers and thinkers who try to dismantle this demonization face campaigns of exclusion and stigmatization for sympathizing with 'terrorism,' simply because they refuse to blindly criminalize Islamic discourse. This intellectual terrorism prevents a rational discussion about the roots of the conflict and confines choices to ready-made molds that serve the continuation of the current state of occupation.

Ultimately, defending the right of Palestinians to exist remains the most urgent moral and humanitarian task, regardless of the ideology they choose to express themselves. Respecting political pluralism within Palestinian society is an integral part of respecting their right to freedom, which the West deliberately ignores in its dealings with the current crisis.

The real challenge facing the free world today is to break this last intellectual bastion of Israeli propaganda and recognize that resistance is a natural and legal reaction to the existence of occupation. The rights of an entire people cannot be held hostage to the whims of former colonial powers or the fears of regimes that fear the awakening of their peoples under any name whatsoever.

In conclusion, the conflict in Palestine remains a struggle over land, freedom, and dignity, not a struggle over the 'type of identity' the resistance fighter carries. Attempts to 'de-politicize' the issue and turn it into a security or religious file are doomed to failure in the face of the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their adherence to all forms of expressing their legitimate right.

Making criticism of the Hamas movement a prerequisite for recognizing the fundamental rights of Palestinians is equivalent to hindering the universality of the right itself.