“Decolonization is Not a Metaphor”

hat is the essential context when considering the response of many leftist journalists and academics to these horrors. The last several days have been incredibly clarifying. While social media feeds fill up with videos of unspeakable atrocities perpetrated against the most vulnerable people—of Israeli teenage girls with bloodstained pants being shoved into Hamas vehicles to suffer more abuse, of old women being snatched from their homes, of little children being mercilessly bullied by their captors—these people have decided to tell us precisely who they are. It is important that we listen. They are telling us what they mean by ‘decolonization’ They are defining their terms. As freelance writer Najma Sharif wrote on X: “what did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers.” As it turns out, this is what they meant all along—and Sharif is not alone. These people saw these things—and then they said these things.