Abstract

Amidst the intellectual and political tumult surrounding the genocide of the Palestinian people, this essay seeks to foreground and amplify a marginalised voice. We aim to intervene in ongoing debates within academia and the wider public in the Global North, which often fail to grasp the lived realities of the people in the Middle East, shaped for over half a century by twin forces of neocolonial warfare and despotism. We articulate a distinctly Middle Eastern perspective that is anchored in a legacy of resistance against both Western neocolonial imperialism and ethno-religious despotism. From the outset, and in keeping with the ethical and political legacy of our revolutionary predecessors, we express our principled recognition of diverse and vital traditions of resistance across the Middle East and throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. Our intention is not to disavow other liberatory intellectual and political currents, but rather to amplify an overlooked voice from the Iranian Independent Left, which has withstood and opposed genocidal violence and oppression. As we argue, the ongoing genocide in Palestine can only be fully understood when placed within the broader historical continuum of neocolonial mass violence and indigenous resistance across the Middle East over the past half-century. From this vantage point, we structure our discussion around three key lessons: First, the hegemonic conceptual framings of genocidal violence produce and perpetuate idealised images of victims and saviours. Second, these frameworks obscure the entanglement between neocolonial interventions and the root causes of genocidal warfare in the Middle East. Third, a critical step toward dismantling these hegemonic structures of violence lies in foregrounding the ethics and politics of indigenous liberatory movements throughout the region.