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Violence is violence. Calling terrorism ‘decolonizing’ does not change the terror event into a positive. Post colonial theory should not be the only lens that is used when viewing events in our world. From Jonah Davids on the Hub:

“So why do Canadian universities find the murdering of innocent Israelis less objectionable than innocent Ukrainians? Or for that matter, why do they find terrorism less condemnable than parents protesting the way many schools are teaching gender and sexuality to young students? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that for years, universities have been teaching and promoting postcolonial theory, which views relationships between people, organizations, and countries through a simplistic oppressor/oppressed framework. It’s easy to view these theories as ivory tower pantomime, but this week’s events have made clear that their adherents take them very seriously, and believe that violence is acceptable if it’s an “oppressed” or “colonized” group rising up against an “oppressor” or “colonizer.” Pro-Palestinian protesters across Canada have employed this rhetoric, calling Israel and Canada colonialist states and justifying Hamas’ activity as part of decolonization. 

Such an explanation, however, may overintellectualize what is simply a gross failure to educate the Canadian public on the atrocities committed against Jews historically and to dissuade them from antisemitism. In a 2019 survey, half of Canadians said they did not know that six million Jews had died during the Holocaust, and one in five young Canadians had never heard of the Holocaust. Canada is an increasingly diverse nation lacking a sense of identity or common values, and pro-Hamas protests demonstrate the limits of our pluralist approach to statecraft. Perhaps university administrators trying to size up the conflict, knowing little of Jewish history but much postcolonial theory, opted for a “both sides” approach. This is a charitable reading, but it is the one I would prefer to be true, rather than them actually believing that hundreds of Jews in Israel are less worthy of a public statement than the death of a single Black man in America.”