War on Gaza: Why Frantz Fanon's words are more relevant today than ever

Middle East Eye

11-06-2025

Israel's ongoing violence against Palestinians, including the genocide in Gaza, have left many searching for historical and moral frameworks to make sense of the brutality.
The works of Martinique-born anti-colonial psychiatrist Frantz Fanon from the mid-20th century offer a valuable tool. Although none of his major works directly address Israel's colonisation of Palestine, they offer timeless observations about the axioms of political and armed struggle within the context of decolonisation.
From a Fanonian perspective, the war on Gaza is fundamentally a colonial war, coming decades after Europeans shattered and displaced a pre-existing community from their land.
Better known as the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine led to the destruction of around 530 villages and towns, as 750,000 Palestinians were made refugees to facilitate the creation of Israel.
The Nakba was not an isolated historical moment, but the foundation of a continuing project. Today, 77 years later, Palestinians continue to endure siege, bombing and deprivation - conditions made possible by a Zionist ideology that sees them not as human beings, but as obstacles.
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Fanon defines the colonial situation as one where the initial encounter between native and coloniser is marked by violence, sustained by 'bayonets and cannons'. He understood that naked colonial violence is justified by the notion of 'divine right', mirroring historical abuses like the transatlantic slave trade, and by casting the colonised as inherently dangerous, irrational or subhuman - 'the quintessence of evil', as he called it.
In Palestine, such logic plays out in disturbing ways. Israeli colonisers have referred to Palestinians as wild beasts, snakes, inhuman animals and cockroaches. These words are not careless insults; they are tools of dehumanisation, paving the way for policies of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Reframing violence
The Zionist discourse also fuels slogans focused on 'fighting Palestinian terrorism' or 'freeing Gaza from Hamas', language that reframes colonial violence as a moral necessity.
Fanon warned of such deliberate obscuring of reality, as measures including arbitrary detentions, movement restrictions, home demolitions, targeted assassinations and other forms of collective punishment are reframed as security measures.
What Frantz Fanon can tell us about the West's colonial war in Gaza Read More »
This environment of perpetual violence and dehumanisation corrupts both coloniser and colonised. Ordinary Israelis are conscripted into a violent and expansionist army, while Palestinians suffer not just physical attacks, but the trauma of generational oppression.
At the same time, privileged members of the colonised population reflect the coloniser's violence upon their fellow colonised people, as observed with the Palestinian Authority (PA), which effectively acts as a security contractor for Israel. From a Fanonian perspective, it is not surprising that PA forces have shot at protesters denouncing the war on Gaza, or otherwise cooperated with Israel by shutting down critical digital media platforms.
Even Amnesty International has sounded the alarm on the PA's repressive tactics, citing a crackdown on journalists, lawyers and civil society activists.
Yet Fanon insisted that the majority of colonised peoples were 'overpowered but not tamed'. Resistance is thus not only inevitable, but a means of reclaiming dignity and humanity in the context of anti-colonial struggles.
Global justice
If, as Fanon implies, the violent resistance of colonised peoples is proof of their humanity, then Israel's Zionist forces are attempting to prevent the Palestinian people from regaining that humanity by waging a genocide. Yet, by attempting to strip Palestinians of their humanity and their internationally enshrined right to resist colonial occupation, Israel has mobilised the world in support of a free Palestine.
Israeli Zionist colonisation converges with European colonialism as a system of total domination, naked violence and dehumanisation. But there are also differences.
Fanon's insights into the dehumanising nature of colonialism - and the transformative power of resistance - remain profoundly relevant today
Fanon argued that 'colonialism is not a thinking machine'. In the Israeli context, however, it is very much a 'thinking machine', characterised by a Manichean narrative and accompanying strategies, political objectives and timeframes.
The outcome is a land sliced in two; a zone where the Israeli colonisers live in safety and privilege, and a zone of nonbeing, where the colonised Palestinian people are denied recognition and rights.
Israel's exclusivist, racist, settler-colonial regime has appropriated parts of Judaism to justify the expulsion of Palestinians. The idea of a shared state, or a Palestinian state alongside Zionist Israel, is structurally impossible within this system.
Fanon's work ultimately provides a compelling framework for understanding the deep-seated violence and psychological toll of Israeli colonialism. While acknowledging the unique qualities of various anti-colonial struggles, his insights into the dehumanising nature of colonialism - and the transformative power of resistance - remain profoundly relevant today.
Fanon ended The Wretched of the Earth with a call for a 'new man' - a humanity healed from the scars of domination, racism and revenge. That future was possible, he believed, but only after the fall of the colonial world.
The struggle for Palestinian liberation, then, is not only a regional issue. It is a global question of justice, dignity and the right to live free from racist, supremacist ideologies.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.