My grandmother talks about how growing up in Belfast, Ireland, British soldiers would raid the local Irish people’s houses, steal from them, smash up their homes or burn them out, beat up or kill or imprison the men, rape the women, and then justify their actions by saying the local people were harbouring IRA terrorists and illegal weapons stores even though they weren’t. Any time the British committed an act of violence against the Irish it was the same excuse.
And every time Israel blows up a school, hospital, refugee camp killing hundreds of civilians in the process and justifies it by saying they were harbouring Hamas it makes me think of that. Colonialism never changes.
