Narrative... The Other Weapon of Colonialism

Author: Amir Dawood

In 1964, Nelson Mandela stood before a court in Pretoria accused of terrorism, sabotage, and attempting to overthrow the government, while the apartheid government presented itself to the world as a protector of law and stability. Three decades later, Mandela emerged from prison to become the first democratically elected president of South Africa, transforming from a "terrorist" in the official narrative to a global symbol of freedom. The facts did not change; rather, the narrative did, revealing that the official discourse was merely a tool of the racist system to criminalize the resistance of the victims and justify state violence. Since the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in 1954, the French colonial administration insisted on labeling members of the National Liberation Front as terrorists and bandits while describing its wide-ranging military campaigns as operations to maintain order and restore security. The struggle was not limited to controlling the land, but extended to controlling the very language itself, as the colonial authority sought to strip the resistance of its legitimacy, turning the colonizer into a protector and the landowner into a source of danger. After Algeria's independence, the official narrative fell apart, leaving the facts as witnesses that the liberation struggle was also a battle for the truth. These experiences were not exceptions in history; rather, they reveal a rule that accompanied most colonial projects, where the struggle was not confined to the land, but extended to the narrative that explains what happens above it. What occurred in "Tel" may not have been just a bloody attack resulting in the death of four Palestinian citizens, but it once again revealed the other face of the conflict—the struggle over narrative. At a time when Palestinian blood still stained the ground, the majority of Israeli official media treated the event as though the Palestinian victims did not exist. The names of the martyrs vanished, the images of the injured were absent, and any mention of the incursion into the Palestinian village and the aggressions and acts of violence that preceded it was omitted, leaving behind only one striking phrase: a Palestinian armed operation. This reduction was not merely an editorial or professional choice; it was a deliberate construction of a narrative that begins at the moment the Palestinian responds or attempts to defend themselves, while all that preceded it—the terrorism perpetrated by the colonizers against the Palestinian population—was erased. When context is omitted, the victim disappears, the causes are obscured, and what remains is not the truth, but an incomplete narrative presented to the public as the complete truth. The most dangerous aspect of the colonial project is that it does not seek to control the land alone, but to monopolize the definition of reality itself. Control is not complete with guns and bulldozers alone, but requires the ability to define who is the victim, who is the aggressor, who has the right to speak, and who is silenced. Thus, media become a parallel front in the conflict, where language and terms are employed just as force is used in the field. This practice is not new in colonial history; every colonial project has recognized that military power alone is insufficient to sustain control. Occupation always requires a narrative that grants it political and moral legitimacy, even if this legitimacy is founded on denying the existence of the victim or stripping them of their humanity. Therefore, it does not stop at producing facts but also works to produce their interpretation, because controlling the interpretation of events is no less important than controlling the incidents themselves. Ignoring the incursions of Palestinian villages, overlooking the rampages of colonizers, erasing the martyrs and the injured Palestinians, and recurring to the phrase "Palestinian armed operation" isolated from its context is not media neutrality but an editorial choice that shapes a public awareness built on erasing the Palestinian from the scene. The Palestinian only appears when they are to be presented as the source of threat, while when they are a victim, their presence fades from headlines, as if their lives are not worth telling. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of colonialism is not just its occupation of the land, but its continuous attempt to occupy consciousness. It does not impose facts solely by the force of arms, but also seeks to impose its interpretation of those facts, until the aggressor becomes the possessor of the narrative, and the victim is required each time to prove they are a victim. Bullying does not begin when the colonizer invades a Palestinian village and does not end when they shoot civilians; it extends to an attempt to monopolize the truth itself, to erase the Palestinian from the scene, and to reduce the crime to a moment of response, while obscuring the hours, days, and years that preceded it of killing, incursions, terrorism, and land seizure. It is an attempt to turn force into a source of truth, as if those who possess arms automatically have the right to define reality. Therefore, the Palestinian's battle is not just a battle for land, but also a battle for meaning. The occupation knows that the narrative that settles in public consciousness is no less important than controlling the hills and roads. If it succeeds in presenting the colonizer as "civilian" and the Palestinian as "threatening," and in depicting the incursions of villages as fleeting events while presenting any Palestinian response as the beginning of the story, then it has stripped the victim of their right to narrate before taking away their right to land. Here, language becomes part of the power system, and the choice of terms becomes a highly political act, because words do not just describe reality, but reshape it in the minds of people. Thus, terminology is not innocent. The difference between saying "colonizers invaded a Palestinian village" and that "confrontations erupted" or between mentioning that "four Palestinians were martyred" and merely referring to a "Palestinian operation" is not merely a linguistic difference, but a difference in the distribution of political and moral responsibility. Language does not just convey reality, but also determines who is held accountable in the awareness of the recipient. Ignoring Palestinian martyrs, failing to mention the injured, overlooking the incursions of villages, and repeating the phrase "Palestinian armed operation" isolated from its context does not represent mere media bias or professional shortcomings, but an mechanism for reproducing a narrative that legitimizes power and conceals it from the victim. It is an attempt to rearrange the facts so that the Palestinian always appears in the position of the accused, while the colonial act that preceded and paved the way for the event recedes into the background. In this sense, controlling the narrative is not less dangerous than controlling the land, because those who monopolize the interpretation of events also draw closer to monopolizing the moral judgment upon them, and thus influencing public opinion and decision-makers' positions. Hence, documenting events and telling the complete story is not merely a journalistic act, but an act of resistance against erasure and attempts to obliterate the image and memory. The narrative based on facts is not propaganda but a defense of the truth in the face of attempts to reduce it. If occupation seeks to impose the status quo in geography, it equally seeks to impose a reality in consciousness, whereby the narrative it shapes becomes the sole reference for understanding what occurred. From here, protecting the truth becomes an integral part of protecting rights, as a victim deprived of their narrative is also more vulnerable to having their rights stripped away. What happened in Tel reminds us that the Palestinian is not facing just one battle, but two intertwined battles: a battle for the land to protect their existence, and a battle for truth to protect their narrative. While the former is fought on the ground, the latter is fought in the media, in documents, in images, and in words, because in the end, it is a battle for memory, and for the victims' right not to be erased twice: once by bullets, and once by neglect. Therefore, the first thing targeted by the colonial narrative is memory. When the names of the victims are erased, events are reduced, and the sequence of facts is rearranged, it is not merely the distortion of a news item; rather, a public memory is being shaped that may, over time, transform into an entrenched "truth" in the minds of generations that did not witness the event. Therefore, the struggle for documentation becomes an integral part of the battle to protect national memory. Perhaps the most dangerous thing that can befall a people under occupation is not just that their land is stolen, but that their story is stolen as well. The land may be reclaimed, but the truth, if left to the narrative shaped by the stronger, becomes far more difficult to retrieve. Thus, defending the narrative is not a media luxury, but a defense of the right itself. Those who succeed in erasing the victim from memory come much closer to erasing their rights from human conscience. Therefore, the Palestinian's battle will remain two inseparable battles: a battle to reclaim the land and a battle to protect the truth, because occupation begins with control over geography but is not complete unless it succeeds in occupying consciousness.