Colonial rhetoric grants the colonized resistance but only to justify violence against them.

Evidence

The range of Orientalist attitudes pervades “The Iron Wall” as a textual realpolitik. Jabotinsky’s construction of the “enemy,” the Oriental object, is highly calculated, for depicting the Palestinians as supine would of course preempt the very idea of an Iron Wall, since the Wall’s necessity is predicated on the native rejection of, and resistance to, colonialism. It was therefore necessary, in order to justify military and violent ventures, to bestow a degree of rhetorical agency on the Palestinians as people who will resist any colonial power in its bid to dispossess them. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 390

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and to the general pattern of colonial double-binds where agency is both denied and weaponized.
• SEED: The colonial ‘granted resistance’ logic — granting opponents agency in order to justify delegitimizing their claims — could frame an essay on how elites preemptively cast critics as unreasonable so force becomes self-excusing.