MOSQUES around the nation held funeral prayers in absentia for Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh following his assassination in Tehran, Iran, a couple of days ago.

These prayers reflected the affection and regard Muslims in the country felt towards Haniyeh and their commitment towards the Palestinian cause.

Much as they mourned over the death of Haniyeh, in their eyes he was martyred and believed that he had redeemed himself before Allah as he had fought a good fight.

It is a fight to emancipate his people from the yoke of Israel’s occupation, a fight against an extreme injustice, cruel and inhuman.

By any standards, it is not only a good fight in Islam but that of other faiths and cultures.

Haniyeh may yet to attain the global iconic status but his quest is no different than that of Che Guevara, Michael Collins, Nelson Mandela, Subhas Chandra Bose, Ho Chi Minh, Simon Bolivar and Omar Al Mukhtar.

Locally, Malaysia had Maharaja Lela, Mat Kilau, Tok Janggut, Rosli Dhobi and numerous others who stood up against occupation and colonialism.

Like Haniyeh, they knew they were staring at death in the eye and many died in their quest. For the others, death blinked and they savoured victory.

Simply put, for these freedom fighters, they knew their options were only two – death or victory and the only thing redeeming when death paid a visit to believe that the struggle continues and is taken up by others.

But what makes Haniyeh’s and the Palestinian struggle extremely bitter and disturbing?

It is a story of a people, who suffered the worst sufferings from pogroms and cleansing and had now turned towards the very people who sheltered them when the rest of the world refused them.

Indeed, Israel is a product of the Western powers manipulation of the Middle East’s equation and the Israelis, upon gaining a footing, decided to behave very much like the Western colonialists and embarked on settler colonialism.

It is no different than how the Native Americans ended up in reservations and living at the mercy of the settlers or that of the Australian aborigines.

The Palestinians today suffer the same fate as that of the Native Americans and Australian Aborigines and it is something that the likes of Haniyeh or Yasser Arafat before him, refused to accept and fought against it, hoping to overturn such eventuality.

For decades the Palestinians have suffered the humiliation of being treated as lesser humans on their land by the Israelis and every time they retaliate, they get labelled as terrorists.

The Western media and their leaders hypocritically propagandise the terrorist label as a means to what Herman-Chomsky described as manufacturing consent, to justify retaliation and murders of Palestinians and to convince their people that supporting Israel is the right thing to do.

When Hamas decided to launch an attack on Israel on Oct 7 last year, the Israeli propaganda machine immediately embark on a narrative of how evil and ruthless the Hamas fighters were – murder/rape of women and beheading of babies.

US President Joe Biden picked up the narrative and claimed that he had seen pictures of the mutilated babies only for a White House spokesperson to later clarify that US officials and the president had not seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently.

Simply put, Biden was only regurgitating what the Israeli propaganda machine had fed him but much as the clarification was made, the damage was already done.

So instead of Hamas fighters fighting to liberate their nation, they became terrorists attacking Israeli civilians and subjected to horrendous inhuman acts.

Leaders of the so-called civilised world were falling over each other to show support and sympathy for Israel, allowing Benjamin Netanyahu and his murderous Israel Defence Force to embark on a genocide that the modern world had never witnessed before.

The lies used to manufacture consent are no different than those of the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) used to convince the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation by the American and British-led forces.

While the US and Britain need not participate in the genocide of Palestinians as Israel and Netanyahu are more than capable of conducting it, the two nations however are complicit as they prevented the United Nations and other concerned countries from stopping Israel’s mass murders.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in his condolence to Haniyeh’s family and Hamas was disgusted and he put it very succinctly: “Mr Haniyeh stood as a reminder of what a pariah state Israel is, and that all those who support the Zionist regime are themselves hypocrites and the actual terrorists.

The assassination of Mr Haniyeh proves just that. Israel’s extra-judicial murders of Palestinian freedom fighters demonstrate how arrogant, ruthless and dastardly the regime is.

And yet, the Western media and some of their leaders continue to condemn Hamas and Mr Haniyeh as terrorists, when there stood, right before their very eyes – Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israel Defence Forces and the illegal Jewish settlers – who for decades had been committing acts of terror on Palestinians.

The self-styled civilised Western leaders labelled Mr Haniyeh, Hamas and other Palestinian freedom fighters as terrorists. The utter hypocrisy of the West and their ilk is indeed nauseating.”

The death of Haniyeh cannot be allowed to pass overtime. Malaysians who feel the loss and share the pain of the Palestinians would want the nation to show its disgust and anger.

A suggestion from Hassan Karim, a Government backbencher that the administration cancels the Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) deal with Global Infrastructure Partners, a company controlled by BlackRock Inc.

His suggestion makes a lot of sense as BlackRock, a rabid pro-Zionist corporation, is known for fuelling Israel’s war machine and the incendiary device used to kill Haniyeh could very well be from the company.

Cancelling the deal could somewhat redeem the administration after unsuccessfully convincing pro-Palestinian Malaysians that the deal is justified.

In this sadness, Marley’s iconic lyrics seem poignant. Surely Malaysians want to help Haniyeh to sing his songs of freedom.

Cause that’s all he ever had, redemption songs.