When the ceasefire in Gaza was announced, Western media called it a “historic step towards peace.” Headlines spoke of hope, timelines filled with blue-and-white infographics, and politicians congratulated themselves on a “turning point.”

Even close friends texted me:

“Why do you keep posting about Palestine? Does it really do anything?”

“Will you keep posting? Isn’t it done now?”

“Thank God it’s over”

But for Palestinians, there was no turning point. There was only rubble, hunger, trauma, and silence.

The ceasefire might have stopped the bombs temporarily, but it didn’t stop the occupation. It didn’t bring back the thousands killed, the homes erased, or the generations left to grow up under Siege. Still, for many in the West, this moment signals emotional closure. The bombs stopped, therefore we can stop caring.

This is what we mean when we speak of white innocence: the ability to disconnect from violence the moment it no longer disrupts white comfort.

A ceasefire does not mean peace. It means the West can exhale again. It means timelines return to normal, the free palestine posts turn back to selfies, and the news cycle moves on.

This desire for closure is not neutral, it is colonial. It assumes the West holds the authority to decide when a conflict begins and when it ends. The same powers that armed, funded, and justified Israel’s genocide now brand themselves as mediators of peace.

When the world applauds a ceasefire while Gaza remains an open-air prison, it performs empathy while preserving oppression.

Language reinforces this performance. Western media calls Israelis hostages and Palestinians prisoners. One word difference, and an entire moral hierarchy is established. To be a hostage is to be innocent. To be a prisoner is to be guilty. This is not reporting; it is storytelling that protects power.

Even now, major outlets warn that Hamas is “using the ceasefire to regroup.” Rarely do they question how Israel uses every pause to rebuild its military dominance, expand settlements, and rebrand its global image.

The same pattern repeats: condemn Hamas, humanize the IDF, and call it “balanced journalism.” What is truly being balanced here are the scales of moral acceptability; deciding which counts violence, and whose right to resist is deemed legitimate.

Because make no mistake: resistance has never been tidy. Revolutions have never been polite. The history of liberation, from Algeria to South Africa, from Vietnam to the Americas, has always been framed as “violent” by those invested in maintaining order. But order, in colonial logic, means obedience.

When the colonized fight back, their rage is called terrorism. When the colonizer bombs hospitals, it’s called defense. The violence of the oppressed is hyper-visible; the violence of the oppressor is structural, normalized, invisible.

To speak of peace while condemning only one side’s violence is to take a side, the side of power.

The West’s obsession with peace without justice mirrors its colonial legacy: impose solutions, celebrate itself, and ignore the people still bleeding.

A decolonial understanding of peace demands more. It demands we name the occupation. It demands we reject two-state “solutions” that erase sovereignty. It demands we center Palestinian voices, not Western saviors.

Real peace will never come from negotiations between colonizer and colonized, but from dismantling the structures that made colonization possible in the first place.

WeDecolonize exists for moments like this: to challenge selective empathy, to deconstruct how media and institutions reproduce colonial logic, and to remind our communities that justice cannot coexist with occupation.

The ceasefire is not the end of the story, it is the next chapter in a long struggle for liberation.

Let’s not mistake silence for peace.

Let’s not mistake comfort for justice.

Let’s not mistake white relief for freedom.

Because Palestinians are not finally okay.

They are still surviving, 

and the least we can do is refuse to look away.

Today, on the 115th iteration of International Women’s Day, 63 women will be martyred in Gaza. 37 of them are mothers, many leaving behind families in dire conditions, and some with no families left to remember them. 

More than 9,000 Gazan women have been martyred since the beginning of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza. These estimates are conservative; they exclude all the women dying of starvation and diseases across the strip, as well as all the victims still under the rubbles. 60,000 women in Gaza are pregnant, babies are delivered under airstrikes and c-sections performed without anaesthetics or proper sanitary conditions. 

Modern expressions of Women’s Day, and by extension the broader feminist movement, often present a fractal mirror of the broader liberal-washing of feminist action and rights movements. Not only drawn from euro-centric and colonial foundations but also often are watered down by modern corporatism and racism. The struggle to decolonize Women’s Day is built upon the universality of the colonial experience and intersectionality between liberation movements. In this effort, it is vital to contextualize this history, and to step past the western-dominated and primarily American narrative. Decolonial and feminist scholars have repeatedly iterated the necessity for peeling back the layers of a conventional and simplified narrative in order to understand and correctly utilize the power of the womens movement for global reform. 

Critically, countless black and brown women and non-conforming people have shaped the landscape of gender identity, sexual rights, and bodily integrity. In decolonizing IWD it’s not only crucial to highlight the euro-centricity of contemporary feminism, but more critically, to deconstruct the narrative that women’s rights movements originate in the west and spilled over onto the rest of the world. Colonial histories only concede to western definitions of social struggle, thus colonial histories of feminism can only take into account the battle against western forms of patriarchy which were exported to the global south through colonial exploitation. Feminist and women’s rights movements in the third world have a long history of battling their indigenous patriarchal norms long before being forced to face the imported white patriarchies alongside.

The genocide in Congo rages on. Since the beginning of the 90’s eastern Congo has been a region plagued by violence due to the mineral wealth of the territory. Approximately 70% of the world’s Cobalt supply is mined in east Congo, alongside huge amounts of copper and lithium. Cartellized terrorist groups, financed by western corporations and governments, maintain the instability of the region and the steady cheap supply of mined raw material. These minerals are widely used for electronics and particularly for batteries in the growing electric car industry, with an impending explosion in global demand and no limitation on violent extractionism the crisis only threatens to worsen. Vicious extractionism threatens the contuguity of local communities and encircles them with massive resource extraction projects, many are forced to take manual jobs in mines and in brutal conditions, effectively enslaving the population. Massive criminal extraction schemes have created a wound which only threatens to worsen without intervention, and the silence of the world speaks volumes. Join WeDecolonizeVUB in breaking this silence on the 29th of February at the Flemish African House for our ‘Congo is Bleeding’ event.

Leading up to the event, BRUZZ radio hosted an interview with Patricia Da Costa, the host of WDVUB’s panel next thursday. The interview discussed the contemporary characteristics of the crisis as well as exploring some of the broader contexts, Patricia also expanded on the event and its purpose. You can listen to this enlightening interview here, and read the English transcript below, to get cued in before attending our panel discussion.

Robbe Petitjean: Good morning Patricia da Costa, you’re a student at the UGent and part of wedecolonizevub. Next Thursday on the 29th, you guys hold a debate. What is the purpose?

Patricia Da Costa: The purpose is to come together. It will take the form of a panel talk, where our main goal is to inform people about what exactly is happening in East Congo because there is aswell a lot of fake news but also to explain the historical context because this could be complex  but also to support the Congolese diaspora in Belgium and see what we can do here.

Robbe: Is it also the goal to reach them because it’s located in Kuumba the African house?

Patricia: It’s also the goal to reach them so we are hoping that people could feel supported.

Robbe: That conflict, I know it is very complex but can you briefly explain what is happening over there, is that possible?

Patricia: Yes of course, currently there is genocide going on in Congo. Since the beginning of the 90s in East-Congo, this because this location is rich with minerals mostly the mineral cobalt that gets used in smartphones, batteries en electric cars. It’s everywhere. Approximately 70% of the worlds Cobalt comes from East-Congo. So what is happening in Congo right now, is that the West is financing terrorist groups to destabilize Congo. So this cobalt could be took over for a cheaper price and easier can get smuggled outside the country. Because this cobalt is under authority of these terrorist groups do Congolese people have to cultivate these minerals manually, that makes them slaves in their own country. 

Robbe: That cobalt is in the smartphones we use everyday, is everyone to blame?

Patricia: No because it’s very difficult to know which companies or even which countries support this genocide in Congo. This causes it to be very hard to boycot something.

Robbe: Yes, that indeed really looks very complex for me. Wedecolonizevub is going to give extra attention to it, how is the situation over there right now? A lot of people are on the run.

Patricia: Yes that is true, the situation over there is really bad. Until now more than 6 million people have died and there is totally not a lot of media coverage going towards the issue that causes to situation to be happening in silent.

Robbe: Why do you think there is not a lot of media coverage about the situation?

Patricia:  I think there is little coverage about this because the whole problem is so complex and it has been going on for very long but it is also very difficult to say which companies have a role in this genocide and which one specifically can we boycott because we do not know which companies finance this genocide. I also think that in the media it gets seen less as a priority, maybe because it is from far away.

Robbe:  Yes maybe because it feels like that, what do you think of important people such as a Romelu Lukaku posts about this?

Patricia: If an important person such as Romelu Lukaka posts about this then you know It is very urgent to talk about this. We cannot be silence anymore.

Robbe:  And next Thursday that is going to happen, Wedecolonizevub is going to have a sort of debat, on the intercalary day in Kuumba the Flemish-African house. Are you yourself going to participate?

Patricia: Yes, I actually moderate the panel talk. I’m going in conversation with Kabeya and Sephora Wondo.

Robbe: How many people do you expect?

Patricia: We hope approximately to welcome 50 people but we are not sure yet.

Robbe:  Perhaps this is a call, you can go to Kuumba the Flemish African house, if you wanna know more about it is between 19-22h, the intercalary day, there is going to be talked about the problems in Congo. It is maybe weird to say but I wish you good luck, Patricia.

Patricia: Thank you

While the clock is tocking the heart of Congo still beat yet bleeds. Our goal in having this panel talk is to discuss and highlight the events the events that have occured in the heart of Africa during the past decades. Join us the 29th of February at the Flemish African House to show support and compassion for the people of Congo.

Join us on for a panel talk with guest speakers February 29th from 7-10PM at Kuumba to listen, learn, and love as we make space to discuss the wounds of Congo. The conversation will span the historical and political context of Congo, the current events and how the media portrays it as well as discussing the future impacts. Followed by a Q & A with the audience.

Don’t forget to register here for the event and we hope to see you there!