Zohran’s latest statement is disgraceful. It hides behind the language of morality while reinforcing the same frameworks that dehumanize Palestinians.
He begins by calling October 7 a “horrific war crime,” centering Israeli suffering as the starting point of the story. That framing erases the decades of siege, occupation, and systematic killing that led to that day. It makes Palestinian resistance seem like senseless violence rather than a response to unending colonization.
He follows with mourning for Gaza, but only after reaffirming that Palestinian resistance must first be condemned. This is what passes for “balance” in liberal politics: treating a colonized people’s fight for survival as a moral failure while describing their annihilation as a humanitarian tragedy.
By calling for “diplomacy, not war crimes,” Zohran implies that both sides are equally guilty, softening the reality of a one-sided genocide into the language of “conflict.” He refuses to name power, which is the easiest way to protect it.
Invoking “universal human rights” sounds principled, but it empties the struggle of its political meaning. Palestinians are not asking for abstract ideals. They are demanding freedom, return, and liberation from a settler state built on their destruction.
At a time when Gaza is being erased, statements like this do not show courage. They show complicity.
Not to mention, Hamas wouldn’t exist if Isreal hadn’t eliminated the PLO. Netanyahu even funded Hamas back in its infancy. Like if you don’t want a “”““terrorist””“” organization launching attacks to take hostages, maybe don’t kill all the diplomats trying to negotiate a two state solution?
Of course, Isreal’s goal was always total extermination of the Palestinian people. There is no rock bottom to the depravity they’re willing to unleash to further that goal.
And they’re still killing the people they’re negotiating with. They’ve done it with literally every force they’ve negotiated with in the last two years, from Hamas to Hezbollah to Iran, in Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar, and probably other places I’m forgetting.
When you make a peaceful solution impossible, what do they expect the oppressed to do?