If I make a claim like this — a claim this seri­ous — I must prove it first with con­crete evi­dence that isn’t just “some­one just told me xyz, trust me”. That is the kind of jour­nal­ism and whistle­blow­ing we need to encour­age, not spread­ing ފިތުނަ-ފަސާދަ, revenge p*rn, and base­less slan­der on vio­lent, evil anony­mous han­dles.

First, I want to make some­thing clear: do not engage in vio­lence, harm, or mur­der. Do not man­u­fac­ture con­di­tions to incite vio­lence against any­one either. That is what the fas­cists want. They want a prob­a­ble cause to demonise any resis­tance against them as ‘extrem­ists’ or ‘ter­ror­ists’. They want an excuse to launch ‘counter-ter­ror­ist oper­a­tions’ against the peo­ple they oppress. They want us to be hate­ful and blood­thirsty — then, we become the beasts they say we are. If you want some fur­ther read­ing, here’s my arti­cle about why so-called ‘ter­ror­ism’ is a mean­ing­less colo­nial con­cept we need to erase (and how it’s used to jus­ti­fy things like Vaanu­va Band­hu).

Now, nor­mal­ly, some­one’s polit­i­cal and per­son­al con­vic­tions are not my busi­ness; but if some­one is a Z!0n15t or any oth­er type of fas­cist, I will call them out, I will shame them, and I will make sure every­one knows who they are. We need to start treat­ing Z!0n15t$ the same way we treat N@z1$. We don’t nego­ti­ate with them, we don’t debate them, and we make no com­pro­mis­es with them. They are inten­tion­al­ly mali­cious and vio­lent. The only place they belong is in prison or in exile, com­plete­ly cast out from soci­ety.

So, for the first things in order, let’s estab­lish the pres­ence of lit­er­al Zion­ists (by def­i­n­i­tion of the word, not just as an insult) in the Mal­dives.

Prov­ing Z!0n1$t pres­ence in Mal­dives beyond base­less con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries

Let’s start with this web­site — maldivesroyalfamily.com. I’ve linked the web-archive ver­sion in case they decide to take the web­site down for good.

It’s quite open­ly run by Faree­sha Abdul­la and her hus­band Michael O’Shea. She was a Mal­di­vian gov­ern­ment and pub­lic lawyer by career, most notably appoint­ed as the pres­i­dent of the Com­mis­sion on Inves­ti­ga­tion of Mur­ders and Enforced Dis­ap­pear­ances (DDCom) dur­ing the 2018 MDP admin­is­tra­tion. Curi­ous, isn’t it, that all these mur­der cas­es remained unsolved?

But less about the per­son, and more about the web­site. This per­son is most like­ly just one among the many. Don’t focus only on a per­son.

If you scroll down a lit­tle bit, you’ll find a ban­ner that reads “friend of !5r@31” — a site that lists all the ‘friends’ of 1sr#3l, among which this web­site is list­ed too — with a link to some Israel char­i­ty site called “!$r43l La’ad” (don’t wor­ry, I used the web-archive ver­sion so you don’t have to vis­it the actu­al site). Here’s how it describes itself.

Now, the ques­tion is, who’s exact­ly behind this char­i­ty net­work? Let’s look at their board of direc­tors. We have:

• Ranaan ‘Rani’ Levy: an ex-advi­sor to the for­mer 1sr43l! prime min­is­ter Ariel Sharon — the infa­mous “Butch­er of Beirut”. Ranaan Levy wrote a book called Land for Peace: A Cen­tu­ry of Fail­ure, a book that argues that !5R@3l should’ve been less diplo­mat­ic and more aggres­sive in set­tling and colonis­ing p@13$t!n3.
• Avi Mazli­ach: a serv­ing mem­ber of the !5r@3l! Air Force and a CEO at Elec­tra FM, an Israeli com­pa­ny that pro­vides ser­vices from prop­er­ty man­age­ment to secu­ri­ty ser­vices.

There are two oth­ers, but I could­n’t find any oth­er infor­ma­tion on them. That’s not all, the endorse­ments are worse. We’ve got:

• Yona Yechiel Mezger: the for­mer chief Rab­bi of !sr@31, who plead­ed guilty to cor­rup­tion charges in his lat­er years, par­tic­u­lar­ly for fraud, bribery, and mon­ey laun­der­ing. The most inter­est­ing thing is this: “The inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that Met­zger is sus­pect­ed of pock­et­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of shekels he had raised for dif­fer­ent NGOs. It is sus­pect­ed that the mon­ey had made its way from the donors into the pock­ets of Met­zger and his asso­ciates.” Donors, NGOs… see how the dots con­nect?
• Sami Bar-Lev: the for­mer may­or of Katzrin, who led exten­sive Zion­ist set­tle­ment projects in Israel, such as in Golan.

Won­der­ful char­i­ty organ­i­sa­tion to list on their web­site, out of all the char­i­ty caus­es in the world they could’ve picked, isn’t it?

Anoth­er inter­est­ing thing I’d noticed is this oth­er organ­i­sa­tion that was list­ed on the web­site around 2008 right next to the ‘Friends of Israel’ ban­ner is this.

But what exact­ly is this web­site? Sup­pos­ed­ly, it’s a human-rights focused web­site found­ed in 2003. It was found­ed and run by David Hard­ing­ham, a school-friend of Mohamed Nasheed’s in the UK. Now, lis­ten, I obvi­ous­ly don’t buy the Mau­moon-era pro­pa­gan­da about him try­ing to con­vert Mal­di­vians to Chris­tian­i­ty — what pur­pose would that even serve? — I’m point­ing this out to high­light inter­per­son­al con­nec­tions.

Now that we’ve set the con­text, let’s look at some of the con­tent on maldivesroyalfamily.com

First, take a look at this arti­cle (warn­ing: graph­ic con­tent). It goes onto spew revi­sion­ist garbage about the Mal­di­vian his­to­ry, but what’s real­ly stood out to me was this par­tic­u­lar image (I can’t share it because it’s graph­ic) and its cap­tion: “Arabs who have a ter­ri­to­r­i­al claim on Israel in a pub­lic demon­stra­tion. They are wav­ing and eat­ing body parts of mur­dured (sic) Israelis”.

Not only is it a dis­gust­ing lie, but also, it per­pet­u­ates the exact geno­ci­dal nar­ra­tives about Arabs that 15r@3| is churn­ing out today — the fake news about mass r*pes, babies in ovens, and so on. Fur­ther­more, a reverse-search of the image helped me find the actu­al inci­dent: the 2000 Ramal­lah Lynch­ing. Now, we could go on about how lynch­ing and vio­lence is ter­ri­ble, though you should look at the con­text here: it was fol­low­ing the pri­or mas­sacre of over a hun­dred P@135t!n1#n$, of which dozens were chil­dren. Fur­ther­more, there was no can­ni­bal­ism. More­over, con­sid­er this: “four days ear­li­er, the bad­ly beat­en body of 36 year old Pales­tin­ian Issam Hamad had been dumped out­side of the city after being run over by a car, an autop­sy revealed”.

So, where’s the sym­pa­thy for them? None? Noth­ing at all? Only the IDF sol­diers, huh? Got it.

Then, there’s this update to the arti­cle, that goes on to con­grat­u­late the 2008 gov­ern­ment for re-estab­lish­ing ties with Israel.

The most fright­en­ing part is their prox­im­i­ty to pow­er. Faree­sha Abdul­la was not only the pres­i­dent of the DDCom in Ibu Soli­h’s admin­is­tra­tion, but also, she was an under­sec­re­tary at the high­est exec­u­tive office in Mohamed Nasheed’s gov­ern­ment in 2008. An under­sec­re­tary is, accord­ing to offi­cial hier­ar­chy, a pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial polit­i­cal posi­tion between a cab­i­net min­is­ter and pri­vate sec­re­tary.

But this may make it seem like PPM-PNF and PNC are exempt. No, no. They’re not off the hook, either. Not by a long shot.

Let’s talk about baaghee Mohamed Waheed Has­san, the ex-envoy of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment, a ‘best friend’ of the p3d0p#iL3 M055@d agent Jef­frey Epstein, and the idiot who infa­mous­ly brought about a coup only to receive about 5% of the votes in the 2013 elec­tions. What a lit­tle goof­ball. This man was giv­en a senior posi­tion with­in PPM when it was still func­tion­al, and recent­ly, one of the high­est gov­ern­ment posi­tions under the PNC admin­is­tra­tion (spe­cial envoy) until he had to resign.

Creepy, huh?

I’m not say­ing these peo­ple are explic­it­ly Z!0n15t$ them­selves — I’m say­ing that the ide­ol­o­gy and its influ­ences are present through a wide nexus of pow­er and rela­tion­al con­nec­tions.

My expe­ri­ence with Z!•n15t$

When I vol­un­teered anony­mous­ly for P@135t!n# dur­ing my stud­ies abroad — espe­cial­ly for P@135t!n# Action — we inevitably faced vio­lence from Z!0n1$t thugs in coor­di­na­tion with Hin­dut­va fas­cists (yay for British mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism right?).

I was once threat­ened after a uni­ver­si­ty sem­i­nar by some dumb 15r@3l! stu­dent because I dared to sug­gest that P@135t!n1#n$ were treat­ed like sec­ond-class cit­i­zens in so-called “!5r@31” (for con­text, the sem­i­nar top­ic was the for­mu­la­tion of exclu­sive laws, often used in apartheid set­tings to dis­crim­i­nate against ‘real’ cit­i­zens and sub-cit­i­zens). This moron prac­ti­cal­ly wait­ed out­side the sem­i­nar room for every­one to leave, stopped me, and went on an unhinged rant about how I should do my research, how ‘t3rr0r!$t5’ like me should be ‘arrest­ed’, and so on and so forth. For respond­ing to a sem­i­nar ques­tion.

Some­times, Z!0n1$t5 would come and harass us dur­ing protests and sit-ins. This was less fre­quent before the Octo­ber 7th in 2023 (yes, my par­tic­i­pa­tion began far before this, it’s almost as if this g3n0c1dal apartheid has exist­ed for over 70 years, right?); usu­al­ly, it would be pot­shots and maybe a cou­ple of slurs. After Octo­ber 7th, how­ev­er, things took a dras­tic turn.

They would harass us more often. They would pre­tend to be sup­port­ers of our cause to infil­trate our ranks, spread mis­in­for­ma­tion, and incite vio­lence to get our pro­tes­tors attacked or arrest­ed by the police (stew­ards had to work dou­ble time to vet the crowds and pre­vent sab­o­tage, it’s hard work that I can’t even imag­ine doing). Some­times, they would stalk and fol­low peo­ple from protests to their homes in their cars. I per­son­al­ly don’t know any­one who has been harmed by stalk­ers, but it has been report­ed. Things esca­lat­ed when some mem­bers and pro­tes­tors start­ed receiv­ing death threats and some­times gore images (some­times, they’d air­drop them to our phones).

They also doxxed pro­tes­tors from anony­mous ‘whistle­blow­er’ accounts and leaked their per­son­al infor­ma­tion along with delib­er­ate lies and mis­con­trued facts to pub­lic to get them in trou­ble with work­places and uni­ver­si­ty. They were pub­lic men­aces online. In more pub­lic-fac­ing uni­ver­si­ties in coun­tries like Amer­i­ca, you can see the intend­ed effects more clear­ly.

They also held ‘sup­port for !5r@31’ stands out­side the stu­dent union build­ing, right next to where we were protest­ing in camps to remove the IDF sol­dier from the Uni­ver­si­ty’s Jew­ish chap­lain­cy. The fun­ni­est thing about it is that the dork parad­ing around with the 15r@3l flag wrapped around him like Super­man’s cloak hand­ed me a god-damn falafel as an offer­ing to spread ‘Israeli cul­ture’ when I walked past it (unfor­tu­nate­ly, they are undis­put­ed cham­pi­ons of being annoy­ing too, sit­ting right out­side the stu­dent union gates). A falafel. ‘1$r@3l!’ cul­ture? A falafel? Real­ly? Fun­ni­ly, they had police watch­ing over them, but not over the rest of us in the protest camps.

My many expe­ri­ences of run­ning into these sick freaks has obvi­ous­ly rad­i­calised me against them even fur­ther — as if I could­n’t get any more rad­i­cal towards these freaks. This is also why my posi­tions on the top­ic are unfor­giv­ing and harsh.

How to recog­nise them

Obvi­ous­ly, Z10n!5t allies are not going to declare their alle­giance to the set­tler colony so open­ly in the Mal­dives. They’d fol­low a play­book a lot more sim­i­lar to the covert Z10n!5t$ in col­lab­o­ra­tor nations like Sau­di Ara­bia, Egypt, and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates: emp­ty con­dem­na­tions, hol­low words on podi­ums and twit­ter, and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Z10n!5t$ in their covert real-world actions.

Here are tell­tale signs of Z10n!5t allies (MDP types) or par­tial col­lab­o­ra­tors (PPM/PNF/PNC types):

1. Call­ing for a ‘two-state’ solu­tion instead of the com­plete dis­so­lu­tion of the Israeli set­tler-colo­nial project and the depor­ta­tion of the Euro-Amer­i­can set­tlers back to where they came from
2. Play­ing the ‘both sides are equal­ly bad’ game, com­par­ing the P@135t!n1#n resis­tance to the asym­met­ri­cal US-backed nuclear pow­er that is !5r@31
3. Nev­er speak­ing up about P@135t!n3 or any oth­er oppressed group unless to either sig­nal their virtue, col­lect votes, gath­er funds, or as a token ‘con­dem­na­tion’ to make the ‘oth­er par­ty’ look bad
4. Nev­er doing any­thing sig­nif­i­cant in sol­i­dar­i­ty beyond hol­low ges­tures and bans, espe­cial­ly if it’s some­one who is/was in a posi­tion of pow­er.

I bet you’re think­ing, “but isn’t that all of our politi­cians?” Yes. Yes, it is. I wrote about this before, too, but why take my word for it? Fur­ther­more, their covert Z!0n15t under­lings and oth­er arms can be recog­nised too, espe­cial­ly online, if they:

1. Active­ly engage in vio­lence and the incite­ment of vio­lence online under anony­mous han­dles
2. Active­ly spread mis­in­for­ma­tion and pal­tered truths to sow seeds of con­fu­sion, hatred, and vio­lence
3. Have pre­vi­ous­ly expressed sup­port for the 1$r@3l! estab­lish­ment but have now delet­ed these because the g3n0c1d# has got­ten to an extent where even they can’t open­ly defend it any­more and have to hide their beliefs

What can you do about these peo­ple with­out resort­ing to vio­lence? Easy. Call them out, name them, shame them, and flood the zone with this infor­ma­tion until no one can ignore it. Active­ly push to ral­ly more peo­ple against them, and even­tu­al­ly side­line their voic­es and let them fade into obscu­ri­ty. You don’t need to hurt them, slan­der them, or any­thing at all for jus­tice to be served. The truest form of jus­tice for these kinds of peo­ple is to sweep them under the rug and let them dis­solve into redun­dance over the rav­ages of time.