If MSNBC is a liberal news network, I fail to see it. In this anti-Palestinian hit piece, they make it so easy for the audience to see that Palestinians could live in peace and enjoy the comforts of modern life if they only surrendered their rights and land to Israel. Hamas is demonized as some irrational, bloodthirsty group, even though it is they who have made a constant effort to reestablish the unity government. Fatah, on the other hand, is applauded for accepting Israel’s conditions, in exchanging liberty for security.

And of course, don’t forget that the strife in Gaza is caused by the religious fanaticism of Hamas, not the tanks, bullets, or falling Israeli missiles. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is falsely framed as being an internal Arab conflict between secular modernity and religious oppression. Airtime is given to the usual media images associated with Gaza, rather than to provide context as to why things are this way. The general tone of the piece is, “Why are those backwards Arabs so ungrateful to the US and Israel for trying to bring them peace?” The choice for Palestinians should be as obvious to them as it is to us, right? Your life can be a heaven or a hell. Why choose hell? Join us. Nevermind the fact that the failed Fatah coup against your democratically-elected Hamas government was funded by us. Just sign on the dotted line so we can stop hearing about your depressing lives.

If you’d like to know more about why this MSNBC report is fucked up, watch the video below the fold. It’s a short speech by Dr. Saree Makdisi, who advocates a one-state solution. The commonly sought after two-state solution would merely create Bantustans out of the Palestinian territories. Dr. Makdisi is an author and professor at UCLA.