A few days ago I ended up being part of a conversation about lobbying for Palestinian rights at the EU level (against my will, I rarely find these conversations interesting because they are usually held by people whose analysis is not very deep). A Palestinian was also part of it and a white woman was talking, I would say that she was monopolising the conversation. She was saying very basic things that I heard of so many times, as I said it was not an interesting conversation and I couldn’t avoid thinking that she was imposing the topic on her Palestinian friend. It’s not because you are Palestinian that you want to talk about the occupation, settlement and checkpoints all the time! Isn’t imposing your mindset and choice of topics a consequence of colonialism? In this case there was also a dose of white woman saviourism, as, I guess, she was talking about her lobbying for Palestinian rights to show that she is doing something to change the situation.
I apologise if someone thinks that this question is silly, but I was never taught to reflect about and grasp what colonialism really is, the different ways it express itself or the consequences of it. A friend last week told me that she heard at a training that women were the first colonies. Makes total sense, women are indeed territory occupied and controlled by men but I never thought about it, I don’t have the tools to come up with such an analysis about colonialism. Why did I start thinking so often about it? My two years in Palestine.
Blabbering of a millennial 