From the beginning:
The truth they want to bury : October 7 BBC transcript - the complicit interviewer.
*Louis Goodall: Do you support what Hamas launched on Saturday morning?
*Husam Zomlot: Well, this is not the right question, Louis. Really, the right question—
*Louis Goodall: It’s an important question.
*Husam Zomlot: No, no, it is not an important question.
*Louis Goodall: Do you—
*Husam Zomlot: Because—whether you support their action or not is not an important question. Because—
*Louis Goodall: Why not?
*Husam Zomlot: No, no, no, no, it is not an important question. Hamas is a group, a militant group. You’re talking to the Palestinian representative. I am here to represent my people—the Palestinian people—what they are going through. I’m not here to condemn anybody. And if anybody needs to be condemned, it’s what you call the only democracy in the Middle East, that is Israel, between parentheses, that is doing what you have just reported: targeting civilians.
And this has not just happened in the last 48 hours. How many times have you interviewed Israeli officials, Louis? Hundreds of times. How many times has Israel committed war crimes live on your own cameras? Do you start by asking them to condemn themselves? Have you? You don’t. You don’t.
No, no, I’ll answer that question. You don’t. You know why I refuse to answer it? Because I refuse the premise of it—because at the very heart of it is misrepresentation. It’s always the Palestinians who are expected to condemn themselves.
This is a political conflict. We have been denied our rights for a long time. So this is the wrong starting point. The right starting point is to focus on the root causes—to try and get out of this extreme dark tunnel—as opposed to this business by the BBC and the mainstream media for 75 years, bringing us here only when there are Israelis who are killed.
Did you bring me here when many Palestinians in the West Bank—more than 200 over the last few months—were killed? Do you invite me when there are Israeli provocations in Jerusalem and elsewhere? Because Israel—what Israelis have seen, which we started by saying is tragic, these last 48 hours—the Palestinians see every day, for the last 75 years.
You know the situation in Gaza. You’ve just described it. This is the biggest open-air prison. Two million people have been taken hostage by Israel for the last 16 years.
So I’m saying this, Louis, to say perhaps it’s about time we abandon this dangerous rhetoric—this framework—and start giving people the real, ugly truth. Israel is an occupying force. It is responsible for providing protection to the people under its occupation.
And should they commit crimes and crimes against humanity in the coming hours and weeks, it must be held accountable by the international community and the international judicial system.
