Standing with Scholarship: Why My Interrogation of Zionist Settler-Colonial Violence is Truth-Seeking, Not “Terror”

In working with the Culture-Centered Approach (CCA), I write and research from the conviction that justice must be spoken from the margins of the margins.

The CCA insists that genuine transformation emerges not from the corridors of privilege, but from the voices and struggles of those most systematically silenced. It is in listening to, theorizing with, and standing beside these communities that truth is uncovered.

Yet, this very commitment—to listen where power forbids listening—has made me, like many other academics who dare to publicly critique Israeli settler colonial violence, a target of relentless attacks. I, and we as a collective, have become a site of projection for the anxieties of imperial power.

The disinformation infrastructures that weaponize Zionist narratives have mobilized to erase, distort, and criminalize my scholarship. These campaigns are not random acts of disagreement; they are well-coordinated assaults designed to delegitimize critical inquiry itself. The power of the campaigns lies in the deployment of the trope of racism whenever targeted scholars point to the coordinated nature of the Zionist attacks. Such is the insidious influence the campaigns to silence much needed critique of Israeli terror produce that it becomes a challenge for livelihood and life to write about the colonial-imperial apparatus of Israel.

Disinformation as a Weapon of Empire

The attacks against me are part of a broader global strategy: a disinformation campaign that seeks to equate critique of Zionist settler-colonialism with antisemitism, and scholarly discussion of decolonial resistance with “terrorism.” This tactic is as old as colonialism itself. It relies on distortion—taking critical language born of anticolonial thought, stripping it of context, and recasting it as hate.

When I write about decolonizing resistance, I draw from the long lineage of global liberation movements—from India’s anti-imperial struggles to South Africa’s fight against apartheid, from Aotearoa’s Māori sovereignty movements to the Palestinian resistance to occupation.

Yet, my language of critical analysis is intentionally contorted. Concepts such as settler-colonialism, occupation, and resistance are twisted beyond recognition. In this rewriting, the colonizer becomes the victim, and the colonized—those struggling for dignity and self-determination—are framed as terrorists.

This is not accidental. It is what I describe in my scholarship as communicative inversion, a strategic turning on its head of historical facts, a deliberate erasure of history and a tactic to silence dissent.

By manufacturing outrage, my detractors weaponize fear and smear campaigns to pressure universities into policing thought. The goal is not scholarly debate—it is ideological conformity.

The Academic Duty to Speak Truth

My interrogation of Zionist settler-colonial violence is not an act of provocation. It is an act of truth-seeking, a moral and scholarly imperative to understand the structures of power that sustain inequality and suffering.

1. Uncovering the Root Causes

Understanding conflict requires confronting its origins. My work traces the historical continuities of land dispossession, displacement, and occupation in Palestine. Ignoring these structures while condemning only the symptoms is a form of moral evasion. To truly work toward peace, we must name the settler-colonial architecture that sustains ongoing violence.

 2. Centering the Silenced

The CCA insists that those most affected by violence must speak for themselves. In my scholarship and public interventions, I seek to amplify Palestinian voices—the farmers, mothers, students, and workers whose lives are shaped daily by checkpoints, military occupation, and dispossession. To silence them in the name of “academic neutrality” is to reproduce the very injustice that scholarship must resist.

 3. Exposing Communicative Violence

Communication is not neutral. Power speaks through propaganda, through censorship, through the erasure of inconvenient truths. My scholarship unmasks how Zionist infrastructures manipulate language, media, and knowledge to justify occupation and suppress dissent. To critique this machinery is not to attack a people—it is to analyze power.

 4. Towards a Just Peace

Peace cannot be built on erasure. A peace that demands silence about colonization is not peace—it is domination. The path toward genuine reconciliation requires that we confront uncomfortable truths, dismantle asymmetries of power, and acknowledge the full humanity of those rendered invisible.

The Real Face of Terror: Structural Violence

The true terror in our world is not critique—it is structural violence:

• The demolition of homes and olive groves.
• The imprisonment of children without trial.
• The bombing of civilian populations.
• The blockade that starves a people of medicine, food, and hope.
• The epistemic violence that denies Palestinians the right to narrate their own history.

This is the terror that my scholarship names. To call this “Zionist settler-colonial violence” is not inflammatory; it is analytically precise. To refuse to name it is to participate in its continuation.

Defending the University as a Space of Truth Telling

The attacks on me are not merely personal—they are structural attempts to police knowledge. They reflect a dangerous global trend where critical scholars, journalists, and activists who question power are surveilled, defamed, and disciplined. Universities, once envisioned as sanctuaries of critical thought, are increasingly capitulating to the pressures of donor influence, lobbying networks, and online harassment campaigns.

But the purpose of the university is not to comfort power—it is to speak truth to it. Academic freedom is not a slogan; it is a lifeline of democracy. When we allow the vocabulary of decolonization to be criminalized, we concede the university to the logic of empire.

To stand with scholarship today means to stand against censorship. It means defending the right to name violence even when that truth unsettles the powerful.

 Solidarity, Not Silence

To critique Zionism is not to hate Jews. It is to oppose a political project of colonization, just as one might oppose British imperialism or apartheid South Africa. Indeed, many Jewish scholars, activists, and communities stand alongside Palestinians and global decolonial movements in calling for justice. The conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism erases this solidarity and weaponizes Jewish identity to protect state violence from critique.

My scholarship stands in the tradition of global decolonial thought—from Frantz Fanon to Edward Said, from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o to Linda Tuhiwai Smith—each insisting that knowledge must serve liberation. To align with this tradition is to affirm life, dignity, and truth.

 Standing Firm

I will not be silenced by the machinery of disinformation. I will continue to write, to speak, and to stand in solidarity with all who resist erasure. The Culture-Centered Approach is more than a framework—it is a practice of courage, a commitment to the messy, uncomfortable, and necessary work of decolonizing knowledge.

Let it be clear:

To study oppression is not to endorse violence.

To name colonization is not to commit hate.

To defend truth from distortion is to defend the very soul of scholarship.

In solidarity with truth, justice, and the right to think freely,