Letter to my fellow anti-colonialism fighters

By Rasha Shaaban, Cultural Organiser based in Gothenburg with roots in Alexandria, and Board Member of European Alternatives.

For the past two years, I have been angry. I’ve been feeling an anger coming out from disbelief and witnessing unbearable injustice. I feel it when I watch the news, listen to European politicians, or see police in Germany and the United Kingdom violently dispersing peaceful demonstrations for Palestine. Each image is a reminder of how easily the principles of democracy and human rights are set aside when it comes to Palestine.

In Sweden, my adopted home, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of Christian Democrats said proudly that Israel is ‘doing the world a favour’ by eliminating Hamas. I cannot hear such words without shame. I know that my tax money and pension savings are indirectly funding the machinery of destruction. For someone who once believed in the promise of ‘Never Again,’ this feels like betrayal of humanity itself.

I have learned to censor myself when speaking about Palestine, wary of being accused of antisemitism. As an Arab, a Semite, this accusation feels both absurd and cruel. Meanwhile, reports of rising antisemitism in Europe rarely acknowledge that Arabs are Semitic people too. And still, Islamophobia continues to rise unchecked, feeding the far right across Europe and the United States. Today, both Jews and Muslims experience deep insecurity in societies that claim to protect them.

I get frustrated when commentators continue to refer to a “conflict” between Israel and Palestine. It is not a conflict between equals. It is a colonial war and a project of domination that has dispossessed an entire people for generations. The fate of Palestine is not a local or regional issue, it is a mirror reflecting the failures of global justice and the hypocrisy of Western liberalism.

The so‑called two‑state solution has become a hollow slogan, a colonial compromise used to preserve the illusion of progress. Even Israel’s own leaders openly declare that there will never be a Palestinian state. Yet European governments continue to talk about this failed formula, unwilling to confront the reality of apartheid and occupation.

The genocide in Gaza has cancelled Europe’s self-image as a defender of human rights. Millions have marched across the continent demanding an end to the genocide, yet our governments remain complicit. This is not about geopolitics alone; it is about who is considered human and whose lives are worth defending.

In June 2025, I was devastated when I spoke to my father back home in Alexandria who told me that Israelis are crossing into Egypt through Taba to escape Iranian rockets, while Palestinians, even those seeking safety from bombs, must pay between six and eight thousand dollars to enter. Israelis can seek refuge; Palestinians must buy it. I told him, “I wish I hadn’t lived to see this day.” The myth of Arab solidarity has crumbled before our eyes, another illusion shattered by the genocide in Gaza. I am not against anyone’s right to seek refuge anywhere. I am only highlighting the double standards. 

The culmination of my anger came last month, when I watched former colonial powers at the United Nations recognise the fragments of what remains of Palestine, symbolic gestures offered by governments still complicit in its destruction. That was when I decided to leave social media, to preserve the last pieces of my sanity. Sometimes withdrawal is the only way to breathe.

The events since October 7 and the ongoing genocide in Gaza have exposed the emptiness of so-called Western values: equality, human rights, democracy, solidarity. What democracy, and equality for whom? How can European leaders speak of justice when they ignore the millions who have marched for over two years to demand an end to the bloodshed? The contrast with the West’s immediate and total mobilisation for Ukraine could not be starker. Even President Zelensky, once a vocal supporter of Israel, now speaks cautiously about Palestine, Sudan, and Somalia as proof of a world unable to prevent atrocities or deliver justice. His words reveal what many of us already know: the global order is broken.

In my view, the Zionist colonial project is profoundly anti-Semitic. After the Holocaust, instead of embracing the Jewish people and offering safety within Europe, governments promoted their emigration to the so-called “Promised Land.” Europe exported its guilt rather than confronting it. Today, the actions of Israel’s far-right government have tragically linked Jewish identity to state violence in the eyes of the world, a manipulation that harms Jews and Palestinians alike. And finally, Palestinians themselves are Semitic people. A genocide against them is, by definition, an anti-Semitic act.

Yet despite all the anger, I refuse to end on despair. Hope is what sustains us, fragile, flickering, but alive. I see it in the courage of activists across Europe and beyond, in the global Sumud Flotilla, in the thousands who march each week demanding justice.

As the late journalist Shireen Abu Akleh said before her assassination by Israeli forces in 2022: “It will take a long time. Keep the good spirit up.” And as Mahmoud Darwish wrote, “We suffer from an incurable malady: hope.”

Today, that hope lives in people like Louna Sbou, a fellow board member of European Alternatives, until recently detained in poor conditions, she is a mother who could no longer remain silent as children died of hunger and bullets.

We owe it to her, and to Gaza, to keep going, to keep organising, and educating.

Thank you, Gaza, for the awakening. Sorry Gazans for disappointing you. Free Palestine. Long live the resilience of the Palestinian people. Stay hopeful.