"Manipulative opinion making in FOCUS against postcolonial studies"

In December 2023, FOCUS magazine published two articles strongly criticizing postcolonial studies. One by Jan Fleischhauer entitled "Hate teaching at German universities: Our students learn to despise our values" and one by Susanne Stephan entitled "Preferably revolutionary. Post-colonialism studies undermine the academic world and make anti-Semitism acceptable".

Even though the first article is even more drastic in its polemics (postcolonial theory is accused of "brainwashing" and compared to Nazi racial theory) and the second at least takes the trouble to quote "experts" and cite highly inaccurate "evidence", their common denominator is that their statements about postcolonial studies lack any basis and are part of a larger trend in the media, which I try to explain in an article in the Frankfurter Rundschau. I would like to illustrate the fact-distorting argumentation of the criticism of postcolonial studies with an example that concerns me personally.

Stephan writes: "In postcolonial studies, Jews are often considered "white", i.e. suspicious per se. Israel is then almost logically branded as a colonial project. At the same time, understanding is shown for those who want to eradicate the country. "If the political goal of the Palestinian militants is to reverse the occupation," wrote Aram Ziai, head of the Department of Development Policy and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel after the bloodbath on October 7, then this could be described as an "anti-colonial war of liberation". Mind you: in the diction of the Hamas fighters, the "occupation" is not about Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but about the entire state."

Some things are mixed up here that should be separated in a proper argument (postcolonial studies and critical whiteness, criticism of the occupation in violation of international law, criticism of the founding of the state of Israel in connection with expulsion and violence and the massacre of October 7), but among other things the impression is created that I would approve of this massacre.

The author refers to an English text of mine. This text contains the quote "if the political objective of Palestinian militants is to undo the occupation and regain the land from which Palestinians were forcibly displaced for decades and which has been taken a by settler state denying them equal rights, then yes, this can be framed as an anticolonial war of liberation". At first glance, the quote seems correct. The implication of this use of the quote is that "Palestinian militants" refers to Hamas and "anticolonial war of liberation" to the attack on October 7.

However, both are wrong. First, the sentence begins with "if", thus signaling that the classification of the militants depends on their goals. The next sentence continues this differentiation and reads: "However, if the violence is directed not only against occupying forces, but against Jews as such, it also resembles an anti-Semitic "race war"." Here I make a very clear distinction between armed Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupying power and the massacre of innocent civilians (including Israeli peace activists), as perpetrated by Hamas in this attack. The text continues: "Even if Hamas is fighting against a settler colonial Apartheid state (established as a refuge for Jews after the Holocaust, it should be mentioned), we have to ask: what is it fighting for? According to its charter: a religious fundamentalist state where the Jews have been killed. Only right-wing extremists would see this as liberation."

So although in the text I describe Hamas as anti-Semitic and religiously fundamentalist, compare the massacre with an anti-Semitic race war and write that what Hamas understands as "liberation" can only be seen as such by right-wing extremists, FOCUS suggests the exact opposite by taking the quote out of context: I would show understanding for Hamas and its murders. This is a distortion of the meaning of my statement and a disregard for journalistic standards with the aim of manipulating opinion.

Text by Aram Ziai