TMR

 For the sake of our humanity, keep all eyes on Gaza, Palestine

THE greatest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist” goes a saying from a 19th-century French poet.

Evil is most effective when it hides itself. However, once its out in the open, it is impossible to conceal its existence anymore.

Just look at the terrorist state of Israel.

After more than two years of perpetrating the most heinous, despicable crime of bombing, massacring and slaughtering 2.1 million helpless Palestinians trapped in the biggest open-air prison in the world, the Gaza Strip, under the lies of Oct 7, it is now trying to obscure its universally vile nature.

It found that the world is turning against itself. The supermajority of the members of the United Nations (UN) — the very organisation that legitimise Zionist’s mass land robbery from the state Palestine some 78 years ago — condemned Israel’s genocide against Gaza, by 149 to 12.

The highest global courts — the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN Commission of Inquiry and the International Criminal Court (ICC) — have asserted that Israel is committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip and have issued arrest warrants to, among others, Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

There were protests and citizen boycotts worldwide. In the former British empire, millions took to the streets of the UK to protest their government’s complicity in genocide, in the past and present.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, there have been at least 49,000 pro-Palestinian rallies across 133 countries and territories since October 2023, which is 15% of all worldwide protests during that period.

Even in the US, the land of the biggest and most important Zionist chattels ever lived, Israel is losing trust. A recent Gallup poll in September revealed that only 9% of Gen Z Americans aged between 18 and 34, approve of Israel military actions against Gaza.

After decades of demonising Muslims and Arabs through near-totally-Zionist-controlled global mass media, misinformation outlets, wire services and film industry, the proliferation of social media made it impossible to mask their sick attributes.

The world has a population of approximately 8.2 billion people. There are now 5.66 billion global social media users. When you drop explosives equivalent to seven or eight atomic bombs over the heads of 2.1 million people cornered in a strip measuring 360 sq km within two years, it would be very hard to be missed by seven in every 10 persons of the world wouldn’t it?

Neither would the lies of Israeli army morality hold water as aerial views showcased the total obliteration of Gaza. The visuals of the destruction of more than 90% residentials, all educational buildings, almost all 34 hospitals and almost all public infrastructure are there to be seen, on camera. 

An artificial-intelligence (AI)-driven propaganda is brewing asunder.

Israel is scrambling to regain control of its decades-old false narrative: That it was the victim and Palestinians, in particular, and Muslims in general, are the perpetual perps. They can no longer hide so they are hoping to obscure the truth.

Killing journalists by the hundreds does not work anymore, as Israel has murdered more than 275 journalists in Gaza – much more than any other conflicts on earth, ever, including the entirety of World War II.

The Devil has brazenly violated every human and international law that it could no longer fool the world.

Its biggest chief chattel, US President Donald Trump has alleged that his self-proclaimed Gaza ceasefire still stands, but everyone could see the reality that Zionist’s army has never stopped bombing the Strip, except changing its intensity. Since Oct 10, more than 200 Gazans have been murdered.

Within a span of 12 hours between Oct 28 and 29 alone, the terrorist regime bombarded Gaza and killed at least 104 Palestinians and wounded 253 others.

Israel recycled its lies claiming it was targeting Hamas, while Trump insisted it was a “rightful” Zionist retribution for the death of a single Israeli soldier. The world, though, sees that Israel has clearly violated the ceasefire in no less than 90 prior incidents. The resistance ceased, but the oppressors continued firing.

The new war of misinformation has already begun. Within the same week, when Trump announced the takeover of TikTok by Zionist sycophants, Netanyahu publicly admitted that Israel’s war over truth had just started, openly announcing a project to bribe over influencers in the US.

On Oct 30, it was reported that Israel has contracted at least three US public relation firms to bolster its image online, and, most importantly, among the gullible US Christians, the ultimate source of its military-aid power, fuelled by the American legion of bribed politicians.

The plan was primarily to embark on a new, targeted campaign of lies portraying Palestinians as extremists while falsely fostering positive associations with the Zionist regime.

Among other initiatives, plans are in place to further exaggerate Hamas’ excursion on Oct 7 through interactive experiences, obscuring the fact that most Israeli civilian casualties were the direct result of the Zionist army’s Hannibal Directive. This is despite forensic findings that victims at the kibbutz and festival were massacred by heavy military fire only possessed by the terrorist state.

One of the PR firms specified that it intended to use AI modelling to ensure that Israeli propaganda becomes prominent online, which media analysts termed as “poisoning the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)” data.

Experts explained that if these PR mercenaries can create enough online noise through Zionist-controlled social media or media websites, they could influence AI’s large models such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok. Associate professor of media analytics and expert in disinformation at Northwestern University Qatar, Marc Owen Jones said: “If they (the PR firms) can flood the information space with sites and content sympathetic to Israel — what’s called RAG poisoning — there’ll be enough there to at least muddy the waters around what others see as a clear-cut genocide.”

Against such despicable adversity, the only way to prevent it is to raise our voices in support of the Palestinian cause.

Do not forget the 70,000 plus documented Gazans, almost two-thirds women and children, who have been butchered. Do not forget the more 100,000 others who are forever lost under more than 80 million tonnes of rubble.

Do not forget the 11,000-plus Palestinian hostages held unlawfully in Israel prisons. Nor should we forget the 1,001 Palestinians murdered in the West Bank since October 2023.

Do not forget the Zionist terrorists’ raining missiles on 12-year old and 6-year old girls, gunned down unarmed civilians — children, women, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, men, fathers and innocents alike.

Do not forget that it didn’t start on Oct 7.

We shall, and we will, keep our voices up. Free Palestine.

• Asuki Abas is the editor of The Malaysian Reserve.

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• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

The post Greatest trick the Devil ever pulled… appeared first on The Malaysian Reserve.

EDUCATION remains Malaysia’s perennial problem. Every few years, a new blueprint emerges, a new slogan is launched and another round of debates erupts about what went wrong. Yet the system, by most accounts, continues to drift. 

Recently, I spoke with several educators and schoolmates about this quiet decline. None were surprised. 

In a letter to the editor published by a local news portal, the writer summed it up well: “The decline of Malaysia’s schooling system isn’t a sudden implosion — it’s a quiet unravelling. You see it in the teacher who no longer smiles at the morning assembly; in the student who has stopped asking questions; in the parent who’s given up complaining because ‘it won’t change anything’. 

“It’s easy to label this generation as lazy or disrespectful, but that’s the lazy argument. These children are growing up overstimulated and under-supported. They’re competing in a world that values virality over intellect, yet studying in a system that hasn’t evolved since 2010.” 

In 1994, Pope John Paul II was supposed to have taken a hard look at TV and saw a bad picture, reported the Los Angeles Times. 

“Parents who make regular, prolonged use of TV as a kind of electronic babysitter surrender their role as the primary educators of their children,” he warned. 

Things have only become uglier. We are raising a generation that is overstimulated and under-supported. Gadgets have replaced parenting. As I write this article, I overhear my son teaching his classmate how to connect WhatsApp to the computer. They want to go hunting together in a game. Teachers now compete with screens for attention. Discipline has become a dirty word. 

A retired discipline teacher, reflecting on the recent debate over reviving corporal punishment, said that character building must go hand in hand with discipline. Children must understand boundaries. It’s fine to face punishment if it helps them learn and respect rules. Her bigger frustration, however, is not with the students but with parents. “Sikit-sikit buat aduan,” she said. Complaints fly to the ministry or the media, often without the full picture. 

Teachers, meanwhile, face abuse from both students and parents. After several confrontations, many simply withdraw. The loudest voice wins. In the process, bullying cases are ignored and classroom authority evaporates. One former teacher, known for her lifelong dedication, admitted she opted for early retirement just to escape the constant tension. 

Teaching today’s generation is not just about academics. Many children carry emotional baggage from broken homes or absent parents. “We’re their second parents,” another teacher told me, “but we don’t publicise it because it’s private. We have to earn their trust.” 

The system, however, offers little support for teachers to play that role. Policies change with every new minister. Priorities shift, curricula are revised and reform fatigue sets in. What Malaysia’s education system lacks most is continuity — and political will. 

One suggestion, floated half in jest but worth considering, is to make it compulsory for all politicians to send their children to public schools and universities. Only then, perhaps, would we see genuine urgency for reform. As long as the political class opts out of the system, the system remains someone else’s problem. 

Last week, I attended a forum in Kuala Lumpur, on the very day the US President Donald Trump arrived in Malaysia for the ASEAN 47th Summit. On stage was Indonesian entrepreneur and former minister Gita Wirjawan. His message was blunt: If Southeast Asia wants to fix education, just copy Singapore. 

He laid out the uncomfortable facts. ASEAN celebrates diversity, but also lives with wide inequality. Singapore’s GDP per capita is around US$90,000 (RM376,920), Myanmar at the bottom end at about US$1,250. Malaysia sits at US$13,000, while Indonesia is at US$5,000. These gaps show up clearly in education outcomes. Only Singapore and Vietnam have exceeded the global average in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) — the test that measures reading, Maths and Science skills among 15-year-olds. 

Singapore, he noted, is a “great athlete” in education, at both the school and university levels. Its top universities rank among the world’s best. Its PISA results have overtaken China’s. It has become a global champion in the region’s backyard. 

So why not learn from it? Wirjawan proposed that ASEAN nations adopt Singapore’s education model with different timelines suited to their contexts. The goal, he said, was simple: reduce educational divergence to narrow the economic gap, and strengthen ASEAN’s centrality in a fragmented world. 

His argument was compelling — and uncomfortable. Because while most ASEAN governments know Singapore’s system works, none wants to be seen as copying it. Pride gets in the way of progress. 

For Malaysia, the lesson is clear. We have been debating education reform for decades, yet the fundamentals remain stuck. Teachers feel trapped, parents are defensive and students are confused by shifting goalposts. 

Education should not be a political football. It should be treated as a national emergency. Until policymakers are willing to confront hard truths — to stay the course beyond election cycles and personal careers — Malaysia will continue to lag behind its regional peers. 

As I stepped out of the conference hall, I bumped into a friend from Singapore and was reminded of the pressure many Singaporean students face. 

• Habhajan Singh is the corporate editor of The Malaysian Reserve. 

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• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

The post Copying Singapore isn’t surrender. It’s survival appeared first on The Malaysian Reserve.