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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.

By Nerdeen Kiswani