3 March 2024. By Nigel Biggar for The Telegraph.
Opponents of the Jewish state smear it as a colonial project. This is a false narrative and fake history.
The “decolonisation” story is a moral melodrama, performed in stark divisions: black versus white, oppressed versus oppressor, good versus evil. That’s the comic- book source of its recruiting appeal, exciting the desire of mortal humans to plug their little lives into a grander narrative where they play righteous crusaders crushing underfoot unrighteous infidels.
It’s also the spiritual source of the decolonisers’ unscrupulousness. For, what does utter evil deserve except utter destruction? By this reasoning, what do MPs who refuse to vote for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza deserve except the intimidation of their families and death threats?
The sinister logic was laid bare last October by University of Kent lecturer, Dr Shahd Hammouri, who, the day after Hamas’s atrocious attack on Israel, asserted online that “resistance by the Palestinian people by all means available … is a legitimate act”. Two months later, on Al Jazeera, she invoked Israel’s “settler colonialism” in justification: “Israel is a colonising power and the Palestinians the colonised indigenous population.”
That’s the simplistic melodrama. Here’s the complicated truth …