Colonial Reckoning: The Unavoidable Conversation Gaza is Forcing Upon the West
From racism, to land theft, to genocide and ethnic cleansing, the myths of Western innocence are collapsing—maybe Gaza is where the lie finally ends.
“We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.”
— John F. Kennedy, May 1963—just months before his assassination.
A composite portrait. The face of a grieving child merges with a fragmented map of Gaza, as the myth of Western innocence begins to dissolve.
The Pattern Revealed
There are moments in history when the illusions upon which entire civilisations are constructed suddenly—and inexplicably—collapse.
When a single image, a single act, a single rupture tears through the very fabric of the lie that generations of denial have been built upon, there’s nothing the dominant narrative can do but vanish.
And the people, suddenly able to see clearly, behold the truth it had been concealing all along.
Once that truth is revealed, no effort—no matter how desperate—can ever fully hide what has been seen.
Rosa Parks forced the world to confront the deep-seated racism at the heart of America’s legacy of slavery—not just through words, but through stillness, dignity, refusal, and, perhaps most importantly: timing.
Mandela forced the world to confront the racism and violence of apartheid South Africa through will, patience, forgiveness—and timing.
And now, before our eyes, Gaza is tearing open the third veil.
Not just in relation to Israel—and the colonial premise of its entire agenda—but to colonialism in general, through the actions of the colonial West in supporting it.
While the children of Gaza starve at the hands of men like Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir, the lies we’ve been told evaporate like drops of rain on the surface of the sun.
And every effort to hide the truth only confirms that it has already been revealed.
This is not just a reckoning for Israel.
This is a reckoning for the long, brutal history of colonial atrocities committed over hundreds of years by a whole host of European powers.
Gaza stands now as the unwanted, unbearable reminder of the reckoning that has been delayed for far too long.
But as the children starve, and our media and political systems continue to deny what’s happening, the truth of colonialism is being exposed for what it is—and what it always was: a lie.
Because what we are witnessing is not a “conflict.”
We are not watching a religious war.
This is not a symmetrical battle between two peoples.
This is a settler colonial project facing the resistance of an Indigenous population.
Netanyahu and his bigoted government on one side, aided and abetted by the West.
Hundreds of thousands of starving children on the other.
And together, they are raising the one question the West has put off for as long as it possibly could:
Are we okay with this?
In 2025, are we still okay with colonialism?
And are there foundations laid by our colonial forebears that need to be re-examined in light of what we now see?
Not to shame the past.
But so that we might finally begin to heal.
Naming What It Is
Colonialism is not a moment.
It is not an event, a treaty, or a war.
It is a structure.
A logic.
A self-reinforcing story designed to erase.
Unlike classical empires that extracted from afar, settler colonialism rewrites the landscape.
It doesn’t just dominate—it replaces.
It removes the native, plants a new flag, and declares: this was always ours.
Patrick Wolfe called it “a structure, not an event.”
And there is no clearer example of that structure today than Israel.
The founding of Israel was not a tragedy of circumstance.
It was not the unfortunate side-effect of regional tension.
It was a deliberate settler project—designed to claim land by removing the people who lived there.
The Nakba—the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians in 1948—was not a tragic accident.
It was the foundation.
And Gaza?
Gaza is that foundation’s living echo.
Two-thirds of its population are refugees or descendants of refugees from villages now buried beneath Israeli suburbs.
Gaza is not a military problem.
It is a moral one.
The people of Gaza are not hostile because they are irrational.
They are hostile because they have been caged, starved, bombed, blamed, scapegoated, and dehumanised.
And in the 58 years since the Nakba, the world—including most Israelis—heard almost nothing of their plight.
Until, that is, they resist.
Then, suddenly, the world pays full attention.
Not to the siege.
Not to the starvation.
Not to the generational trauma.
Just to the resistance.
This is not an accident.
It is the machinery of a colonial mindset—designed to dissolve native identity, step by step, until the majority of the population no longer cares if they are exterminated.
This is the point we have reached with Gaza.
Today, polls suggest that more than 70% of people in Israel believe there is no such thing as an innocent Palestinian.
Not even a baby.
And it is for this reason that men like Netanyahu and Trump feel emboldened to speak openly of their plans for occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza—and expect to get away with it.
But the story is failing.
The illusion is cracking.
The mask is slipping.
And while the majority within Israel may still believe this is a necessary step, the world is staring on aghast at what it is seeing.
The spell is breaking.
The Western Mirror
If it is so obvious that Israel is a colonial state, then why is it defended so passionately?
Why are its loudest defenders the very nations that once claimed, killed, and conquered in the name of empire?
Because settler states recognise themselves in Israel.
Not in its religion. Not in its culture. But in its structure. Its logic. Its fear. Its mythology.
To defend Israel is, in many ways, to defend the fragile scaffolding of their own legitimacy.
Darryl Cooper, in his MartyrMade series, doesn’t speak of politics, but of survival psychology. Because that’s what it is. Settler nations survive not by facing their origins, but by mythologising them. Heroic pioneers. Civilising missions. Terra nullius.
Without these myths, the nation cannot look itself in the mirror.
In Australia, we told ourselves that Aboriginal people were not really people. That they had no homes. No laws. No history. That they wandered the land like animals. It was the only way to justify the genocide.
In Israel, the same logic is alive. Palestinians must be rendered subhuman. Terrorists. Animals. A death cult.
Because to recognise their full humanity would collapse the moral architecture of the state.
So we project. The parts of our history we cannot bear to face, we export onto others. We cast the oppressed as threats. The colonised as monsters. The resistance as evil.
But the veil is lifting.
And that spell, too, is breaking.
Inverted Realities
The brilliance of colonialism is that it teaches the oppressor to call himself the victim.
It is the masterstroke of inversion: when resistance is called aggression, and violence is renamed self-defence.
We have seen this before.
When slave revolts were branded as savagery.
When apartheid crackdowns were sold as keeping order.
And now, as Gaza is flattened and starved, we are told it is security.
October 7 is the beginning of every conversation. It is the ritual disclaimer.
The price of admission to any Western media conversation is the phrase: “Of course, what Hamas did was horrific…” It’s the unquestionable starting point.
But as Darryl Cooper put it: “When every conversation must open with a reference to the evils of one side alone, they have won before we even begin.”
Ask yourself: why must we always begin there?
Why, in a conflict that began in the late 1800s with the rise of political Zionism and organised settlement in Palestine, must we begin only with reference to the actions of one side on one day?
According to the United Nations, Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) have been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
*To name what follows is not to excuse terrorism. It is to understand the impossibility of a people offered no viable alternative but to either vanish—or explode. And to highlight this not as an accident, but as the coordinated outcome of a colonial structure at work.*
In this light, October 7 and every act of Palestinian resistance between 1967 and today could easily be viewed through a lens of legal resistance to illegal occupation. Remember, this is not a symmetrical conflict. Israel has removed any army or even arms that Palestine could use to stand up for itself legally.
Terrorism is the only option it has left. That—or passive acceptance of Israel’s will, imposed through occupation.
Through this lens, you can begin to see the absolute impossibility of the Palestinian situation.
Remain passive and cooperative, as the Palestinian Authority largely has, and accept the creeping land acquisitions of the settler movement, along with the strangling grip of an apartheid regime regulated by the Israeli military.
Or, play directly into Israel’s hands and fight back through the only other means other available—terrorism.
And what happens when Palestinians try to engage peacefully, through diplomacy or unity under the PA?
It is often Israel who sabotages it—because a cooperative Palestinian state threatens the very logic of the occupation.
So, you ask, why must every single Western media conversation begin with October 7?
Because if we don’t begin there, the whole inversion collapses.
And then the truth becomes visible: This is not a sudden war.
It is the latest eruption in a long and coordinated campaign of systematic erasure.
It is the latest example of what Noam Chomsky referred to as “cutting the grass.”
Only this time, they’ve decided this is the moment to remove the entire lawn—and replace it with what Donald Trump referred to as “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
This is what British actor Khalid Abdalla poetically described as “the old world dis-order on steroids, and acid.”
But the mask is slipping.
Netanyahu blames Hamas while voting to permanently occupy Gaza.
He denounces them on one hand as terrorists, while the world learns that on the other he strategically supported their continued hold over Gaza for over a decade, explicitly to prevent Palestinian unity and movement toward a two-state solution.
The man committing a genocide and ethnically cleansing an entire population in the name of “destroying Hamas,” is the same man who sought financial support to keep Hamas in power.
If this is not the ultimate hypocrisy—then please tell me: what is?
The lie is exposed.
The children die with ribs protruding and hollow eyes, while we are told this is about defence.
The illusion disintegrates.
*This is not an endorsement of violence, but a reckoning with the structural conditions imposed by colonial occupation consciously designed to produce a predictable outcome. Naming these conditions is the essential first step to breaking the cycle they sustain.
From Denial to Reckoning
There is a pattern.
Slavery was once law.
Segregation was once policy.
Colonisation was once destiny.
All of it justified. Normalised. Protected by myth.
Until suddenly—it wasn’t.
And of all the lies, the one the West has most refused to face is colonialism.
Why?
Because it never ended.
It is not past. It is alive. Funded. Militarised. Diplomatically protected.
In most places it wears a different mask, that of corporations, political assassinations, and power grabs. But it is colonialism nonetheless.
And it is playing out in real time.
Israel is not the only colonial state—but it may be the last one employing the old tactic: open, remorseless, and justified—ethnic cleansing.
And because of this, it has become the pressure point.
The place where the old stories have begun to collapse.
The place where the reckoning can no longer be delayed.
As an Australian, I see this clearly: we have never truly faced what was done here. We have apologised—quietly, conditionally. But we have never truly reckoned.
Because reckoning requires truth. And truth requires courage.
Gaza is forcing that courage to the surface.
This is no longer a geopolitical debate.
It is no longer about strategy or security.
It is moral.
It is civilisational.
Are we still okay with colonialism?
Maybe the answer will be yes. But at least we’ll have begun to be honest, with ourselves and with the world.
If the answer is no, then the question becomes: are we willing to say so?
Clearly. Publicly. Without shame.
Not to blame our ancestors.
But to reclaim our future.
For the children that starve in Gaza.
For every child who will inherit this world.
The Threshold
We are not just watching a genocide.
We are witnessing the death of a story.
The final myth of the West—that colonisation was noble, justified, regrettable but necessary—is crumbling.
And in its place, something older is returning:
A reverence for land.
For memory.
For justice.
For truth.
Rosa Parks had a bus.
Mandela had a prison.
Gaza has the innocence of its starving children.
And what happens next depends entirely on what we are willing to see.
And whether we are willing to draw a line in the sand—as those before us have done—and stand on the side of history where the lie finally ends.
It’s up to us.