Shamikh Badra gave the following speech at a public meeting hosted by the Northern Beaches Committee for Palestine on April 13. He spoke alongside Honorary Associate Professor Peter Slezak.

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As the violence in Gaza continues to devastate Palestinian lives, conversations around resistance, justice and human rights become more urgent — and more distorted. One of the most dangerous is the false equation of Palestinian resistance with antisemitism.

This false conflation not only misrepresents the Palestinian struggle, but it actively undermines global solidarity against injustice.

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To understand the resistance of Palestinians, we must centre history, theory and truth. The heart of the Palestinian cause is not hatred; it is a struggle for freedom, dignity and liberation from a settler-colonial system.

To accuse Palestinians of antisemitism for resisting oppression is not only inaccurate, it is a manipulation that obscures the reality on the ground and shields colonial violence from accountability.

To understand the roots of the conflict, we must first recognise that what is unfolding in Palestine is a settler-colonial project — not a religious dispute or a civil war.

Unlike classical colonialism, which seeks to exploit land and labour, settler colonialism seeks to eliminate Indigenous people and replace them with a settler society. Scholar........

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