Logo of the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress. Image credit: World Uyghur Congress

Written by: Marthad Umucyaba

Uygur Muslim separatists and Zionists have become strange bedfellows on social media, and in the general public media space. In a bid to support their white supremacist backers, the Uygur “Independence” Muslims have in multiple instances shown support for Israel, and condemned Israel’s largest anti-colonial opposition force, Hamas. The World Uyghur Congress (funded by the CIA) even publicly condemned the most successful operation Hamas has launched in its 35-year history, known as ‘Al Aqsa Flood’, in apparent return for what Israel has done for the World Uyghur Congress against China.

The NATO think tanks and state apparatus in Canada, through “strategic policy analysts”, such as Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, and far-right pro-colonial mayors such as Olivia Chow, regurgitate the NATO party line on the ‘atrocities’ of the only legitimately elected government of Gaza and Palestine, and the largest effective resistance movement, Hamas (ironically created by Israel itself in the 1980s as a counterweight to the Palestinian Liberation Organization).

They also willingly ignore that Hamas is far from the only Palestinian resistance group working together to fight Israeli apartheid (others such as the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, Palestinian Islamic Jihad).

This has been used as a pretext to crack down on anti-colonial opposition in Canada, namely the Palestinian youth exhumed from their ancestral homes and whose parents have been forced to be used as cheap labour for the British colony of Canada. Olivia Chow, the newly elected Toronto Mayor, for example, threatened surveillance and hinted at arrests under the hate crime laws using the ‘anti-zionism is anti-semitism’ pro-NATO definition pushed by the Trudeau government. The plan will be to unleash the full force of Canada’s ‘rule of law’, or ‘flexible’ interpretation of it, in the ‘battle against foreign interference’, to crack down on anti-Zionists, and in the future, more general anti-colonial and anti-capitalist opposition.

Israel and Uyghur Secessionism: Strange Bedfellows

Israel, an explicitly anti-Muslim, white supremacist, and Jewish supremacist European colony, endorsed the nonsense joint statement issued by most of the West, including all of NATO, against China’s crackdown on the NATO-led colour revolutions in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, at the UN. Israel used the imaginary persecution of Uyghur Muslims and the ‘deterioration of fundamental freedoms’ as a pretext. The statement was shamelessly read by Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations Leslie E. Norton on behalf of her pro-colonial compatriots in the West.

The World Uyghur Congress, in apparent gratitude to those dishonest and pro-colonial theatrics, denounced the Palestinians, and in particular, Hamas, for defending themselves and righteously retaliating against the occupation in the West Bank and settler colonial violence. There are even Uyghur ‘East Turkestan’ activists jointly flying the makeshift East Turkestan flag and the Israeli flag on social media outlets such as X/Twitter with no shame.

This strange and unorthodox pro-colonial alliance has been a long time in the making, however. Uyghur militants fleeing justice from the Chinese government after committing multiple mass killings in Xinjiang from 2009, began drawing inspiration from the Zionist colonial project, and have used it as a model to draw on for their plans for an ‘independent East Turkestan’. As Israelis ethnically cleansed Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Nakba, the ‘East Turkestanis’ will seek to ethnically cleanse the Han, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Mongolians in Xinjiang. This ‘union’ is a ‘perfect’ match of two sets of Western supported imperialist colonialists.

Political Establishment Threatens Repression along with Rightist Mayor Olivia Chow

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston is a Director at the anti-communist ‘China Strategic Risks Institute’, a pro-colonial and politically toxic think tank. She also plays a pivotal role in passing on her colonial outlook to future students at the University of Ottawa as an educator at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and as a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Science, Society and Policy. McCuaig-Johnston plays the reactionary role of keeping Canadian imperialism and the Canadian colonial project going on the world stage by being paid for the privilege of brainwashing the next generation.

In typical lockstep with the rest of the pro-NATO establishment, she reposted a call from Joseph Varner, an educator at America’s Military Academy and former advisor to Canada’s Ministry of Defense, calling for students standing in solidarity with Palestinian resistance to be ‘investigated’:

“These people need to be investigated, potentially charged just like Al Qaeda and Islamic State activists. They are supporting and instigating violence on behalf of a foreign terrorist group.”

- Joseph Varner, @josephbvarner, X/Twitter

McQuaig-Johnston also posted an outrageous tweet from John Ivison, a pro-colonial propagandist masquerading as a journalist, calling for the hate laws to be updated to include banning ‘the glorification of terror’ in response to seeing Palestinian flags at a protest of over 1000. The race baiting against Palestinian Arabs was quite blatant with this tweet.

Naturally, rightist mayor of Toronto Olivia Chow, a supporter of the NATO coup attempt in Hong Kong in 2019, responded to the calls from the pro-colonial establishment and promised police surveillance of the ‘illegal protests’ in an extraordinary statement:

“The Government of Canada has rightly listed Hamas as a terrorist organisation and we simply must not tolerate any support of terror, full stop. The rally to support Hamas at Nathan Phillips Square is unsanctioned, without a permit and I unequivocally denounce it. Glorifying this weekend’s indiscriminate violence, including murder and kidnapping of women and children, by Hamas against civilians is deplorable. I am receiving updates from the Chief of Police, who assures me they will investigate and address any suspected incidents of hate.”

- Mayor Olivia Chow, @mayoroliviachow, X/Twitter

Hamas, and Operation ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’

Almost all ‘atrocities’ allegedly committed by Hamas during the operation Al-Aqsa Flood have been found to be lies. In fact, on many occasions, they’re actually projections of war crimes committed by Israel in previous colonial crackdowns when the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was prominent, and when it wasn’t a complete puppet of the west like it is now. An I24 TV correspondent, Nicole Zedeck, alleged that Hamas had killed 40 babies in ‘Kibbutz Kfar Aza’, but soon had this allegation widely debunked. The only allegation that has any semblance of weight is the attack Hamas committed on Kibbutz Reim, where they raided the Supernova Festival on October 7.

Shameless outlets like The Guardian and CNN even misrepresent what’s going on in videos from the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Reim, relying solely on the viewers’ anti-Arab racism to maintain credibility. The Guardian video for example claims that a woman is being dragged, when no woman can be seen, and another video from CNN alleges Hamas shooting a hostage at point blank range and looting from him, even though the Hamas soldier is seen picking up that very captive off the ground and recovering him as a prisoner of war, clearly alive and well.

Moreover, one wonders about the claim of Israelis at the festival being ‘civilians’ when there is mass conscription of everyone over the age of 18 to begin with. The only civilian in this circumstance would have been a conscientious objector who refused conscription, or someone unfit to serve due to a disability. Would a conscientious objector have been found in a festival near the concentration camp of Gaza? Gaza is only 12.9 kilometres away from that festival location.

Of course there are white supremacist state media mouthpieces of the US empire such as Voice of America (VOA), who insist on 'peaceful protest' to address Palestinian issues. However, even those outlets are forced to admit, even when hiding or whitewashing the level of brutal crimes committed by Israel, that Israel has 'effectively left Palestinians no choice but submission to a regime of systematic repression, or violence.' (VOA quoting Omar Shakur of Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine). All of this assumes, of course, that Arabs shouldn't be violent towards white thieves, murderers, and colonizers in the first place.

Police officers and Israel Defence Force soldiers on active duty were the primary targets of Al-Aqsa Flood, which is natural if the resistance is trying to reclaim stolen cities and land to begin with. For those of African descent, and those genuinely opposed to racism feeling sympathy for the Israeli police, here’s a statement to remember:

“When a police officer confronts an [Ethiopian Israeli], it is natural in his mind to suspect him more than he would someone else. This is natural.”

Roni Alsheikh, former Israeli Police commissioner, in 2016

On the colonial project of Israel and its opposition

The truth about Hamas is that it is a more morally sound and humane military force than the Israeli Defence Force, more disciplined (3:05-4:06), and better performing man to man. That’s why it is a threat to the West and a registered terrorist organisation, just like Hezbollah, the militia that defeated Israel when they invaded Lebanon in 2006.

There is an obvious reason why the Canadian government has declared that the comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany is a hate crime, under the IHRA definition: because the comparison is spot on. Israel is a fascist state, just as Nazi Germany was.

The promise of statehood to Palestine was already a ridiculous one in 1967, because it was a breach of a previous promise from the 1917 Balfour declaration not to breach Palestinian land rights, which were breached in the 1948 Nakba. These vacuous promises from the west are simply to buy time to facilitate the ‘final solution’ against Palestinians.

The IDF has an active conscription not because Palestinians are resisting, but because they are still there, and they haven’t been killed off yet in a genocide that the West is now openly supporting. This support comes as “all restrictions” have been lifted by the Israeli defence minister, on the actions of Israeli soldiers in attacking Palestinians in Gaza, after Israel declared war against the people of Gaza.

Israel is a live and active colonial project from the West, just like the United States, Canada, and other colonial appendages born from the United Kingdom. They would rather the Palestinians roll over and die, or get entirely decimated like the Indigenous Nations of the past, only now able to lead a small, tepid resistance to prevent a completed genocide.

Unfortunately for the West, Hamas has stood in the way, as well as many militias and other countries in the Middle East like Iran. The Canadian state apparatus, meanwhile, has declared war on Palestine liberation solidarity protests and anti-China actors are firmly in support, showing their true pro-colonial and imperialist character.

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Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba (formerly referred to as Christian Shingiro) is a Rwandan-born naturalized Canadian expat. He is known for his participation in Communist/anti-imperialist national and international politics and is the radio show host of The Socially Radical Guitarist.

He is also a freelance web developer in Hong Kong, China, striving to provide “Socially Radical Web Design at a socially reasonable price”.

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