Hamass Media

Inside UMass Boston student newspaper's special edition on, like, totally free Palestine

Extra! Extra! Read all about it in UMass Boston’s student newspaper, Hamass Media!

Chief Editor’s note

Josh Pinkhurt (he/him)

Our new edition contains an extensive coverage of the totally unprovoked, out of the blue and genocidal attack on Gaza by the Israeli colonial imperial super-power. I have to admit that until a month ago I didn’t really know where Israel and Palestine even were, but I educated myself with the help of my professors.

Now I know that it’s really simple - Israel is totally the oppressor and Palestine is the oppressed. Our professor of Necropolitics, Andy Haena-Castrato, told us, so it has to be true.

I also know that Israelis are Settler colonialists that took the land from its indigenous people. We know it’s true because our professor Débil Allahuakbar says so. He also says we should seek to follow (the) leadership of Black Indigenous Womxn Queer Trans Working Class people in our communities. It means he’s awesome.

We here at the Hamass media join the call to free Palestine and fight for decolonization and collective liberation from ALL imperial and colonizing countries in the world. No peace on stolen land!¹

---

March for Injustice in Palestine was a Blast

Jessica Largima (she/her)

Ditch Sabra Hummus by any means necessary

On Oct. 25, in the lawn area near the Campus Center bus stop, a group of UMass students staged a protest for the injustices in Gaza for the world to see! It was magical. This slowly drew the attention of passersby students, who quickly turned into a captive audience.

The speakers were organizers from the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at UMass Boston. SJP is totally awesome, especially UMass Boston’s SJP. I mean, who doesn’t want justice? The speakers and signs alike stated that neutrality is siding with the oppressor. We know the oppressor is Israel because our professor, Comrade Gordon Schmoozy, says so.

The organizers went on brainwashing teaching the crowd of enthusiastic supporters what chants to follow while walking the set route. The march and walkout were entirely peaceful in nature, despite being surveilled by police (Boo! ACAB!). The chants called for an intifada, which is Arabic for “peaceful coexistence”. They also called to free Palestine from the river to the sea. I think it’s the Charles river and the Atlantic ocean but I’m not sure because we haven’t got to that part in our intersectional decolonial and queer theory courses. I’m sure our professors will tell us all about it.

The SJP chapter demanded that UMass Boston Drop Sabra Hummus. But for real this time! Other chapters of the SJP state that Starbucks, Dunkin’ and Burger King also fall into this category, and should be boycotted by protestors. I don’t care, our cafeteria sucks anyway. They also called for UMass Boston to fully renounce any support toward the Israeli military. That’ll show the Israeli military!

For more information regarding organization and protests in support of Gaza or more totally unbiased information on the conflict in general, join SJP and sign up for its new electronic newspaper - “The Written Jihad”. Jihad is Arabic for “peaceful coexistence”. You can also join SJP+, their subscriber-only service. The first 100 to join will get a free paraglider sticker.

We can do more! For example, call representatives and politicians and help force our country to look at the atrocities occurring, and decide whether or not they want their tax dollars to fund it.

---

Opinion: Western Media Is Totally Basic

Karen Whitehead (she/they)

Only Al-Aqsa TV from now on

In times of crisis, people rely on major news outlets to provide unbiased, evidence-backed coverage. We trust that the full story will be told, the bad and the good alike.

Not all news outlets explicitly take a pro-Israel approach to reporting. Some ensure that their writers remain as impartial as possible, but by doing so, they ignore essential context….

Oh wait, impartial is not good either? Not sure. I’ll ask my professor of Radical voices of resistance, Kristen Bubblehead. She surely knows.

We all know that the Zionist media is lying - no Israeli civilians were killed at all, and those babies weren’t beheaded - only had their skulls separated from their bodies, and they were settlers so they’re not civilians so it’s legitimate.

We know that Israel surely bombed the Gaza hospital. The Gaza ministry of health said so - it must be true! The IDF and the US government claim otherwise, and even AP disputes the number of casualties reported by the Gaza authorities, but as we said in the beginning of the article - Zionist media is lying, so everything they say must be false. We know they’re lying because our professors told us.

We know that the western media and their Jewish allies who control it are infected with Islamophobia. They dare call Hamas brave freedom fighters “terrorists”. We know it to be a lie because our Islamophobia and war terror professor told us.

It is just like the media coverage of the Black Lives Matter mostly peaceful protests! Black Lives Matter are awesome because our university loves them and because they are so pro-Palestine.

We need to trust the stories of those directly affected by the crisis. The families of victims, the doctors in the Gaza strip (but not in Israel because biased Zionist media) and the countless displaced civilians are telling their stories. We have the duty to amplify these first-hand accounts, not the carefully tailored and biased Western media. We know it’s biased because Professor Serena Mahmoud said so at the all-facts and no Zionist Propaganda teach-in on campus.

It is essential to have media literacy right now, and without it, we cannot question these harmful narratives. If we have doubts we can always ask our professors and they will tell us all about it.

Unlike those simps, we here at the Hamass Media are not biased at all. We represent the true diversity of opinions among our students from an informed, balanced, objective point of view.

Housekeeping Announcement

Josh Pinkhurt (he/him)

We hope you enjoyed the special edition of Hamass Media. I will temporarily step down as chief editor for the rest of the semester to focus on my group project in Feminisms, Intersectionality and Social Justice. Unfortunately I have to put in extra work because my team is one member down. Shayna Rosenberg, our group leader, has acted a bit weird lately, and two weeks ago she stopped showing up to class. She is not answering her phone either. No idea what’s going on with her, but the group project won’t write itself. See you next semester!

1. Correction: Our printed edition did not include a land acknowledgment. We apologize for the error. The university resides on the unceded territory of the Massachusett and Pawtucket peoples, Turtle Island.