26 December 2023

The false equivalence of the colonised and coloniser

Following Hamas October 7 attacks on Israel that caused more than 1,200 fatalities, there was a barrage of injunctions from Western mainstream media, politicians, and pundits insisting that anybody wishing to express an opinion on the events and the ensuing Israeli war crimes and genocide in Gaza, first denounce Hamas before expressing any other view. The failure to explicitly do so or any attempt to put events in their historical context or emphasise the root causes of the conflict were interpreted as condoning Hamass actions (that the speaker was a Hamas sympathiser) and conflated with antisemitism.