Executive Summary
Governments, media institutions, and diaspora advocates should stop treating genocide as a slogan for one people and a joke against another. The practical step is to learn from Somaliland's genocide, treat Gaza's genocide seriously and not rhetorically, reject Hamas's terrorism against civilians, and reject the idea that genocide either erases a state or automatically creates one.
Full Text
You might have followed my account only after Somaliland's recognition, but during the Gaza war I called out both Hamas terrorism and the war crimes of the Netanyahu government. That matters because this article is not an attempt to excuse one side by condemning the other. It is an attempt to explain why Somaliland has lessons for both sides, and why our history makes selective morality impossible.
And before you pull up a "make this about you" meme, yes, it is about us. My family and my kids read this article, and they need to understand where we morally stand without appeasing anyone. My posts on the Gaza war were among the least popular because they upset many people on both sides, but popularity is not the goal.
Somalilanders look at Gaza through a memory that is not theoretical. We have seen cities broken, civilian life treated as an obstacle, and the language of security used to crush a people until the skyline itself becomes evidence.
That is why many Somalilanders called Gaza a genocide early. The destruction of urban life, the overwhelming force used against civilians in pursuit of a militia, and the scale of the dead touched a wound Somaliland already carries.
But the Somaliland mirror does not flatter anyone.
It reflects the Netanyahu government's destruction in Gaza, Hamas's terrorism, and the habit of invoking genocide when useful while mocking the genocide Somaliland survived. It reflects a world that wants moral language without moral discipline.
Civilian Standard
Somaliland's position begins with a simple rule. Civilians are not legitimate targets.
It is also why Hamas cannot be excused. The SNM did not build Somaliland's struggle by killing Somalian kids or raping Somalian women because Somalian Faqash did that. It fought a genocidal regime without making murder its signature.
Values are not proved when the victim is sympathetic. They are proved when rage is strongest. A man who attacks a woman and drags her into a car has not performed resistance. He has abandoned the moral world.
Somalilanders can say two things at once. Netanyahu's war in Gaza carries the stain of genocidal destruction. Hamas's attack carried the stain of genocidal intention. Numbers matter, but in Islam intention is the first witness.
Faqash Logic
Somalilanders have a word for the person who loses all moral restraint, Faqash. It names barbarism, weakness inside the soul, and the collapse of values. The Siyad Barre regime became Faqash when it tried to erase Somaliland. Hamas becomes Faqash when it turns Jewish civilians into targets. The Netanyahu government becomes Faqash when it answers terror by making civilian life in Gaza unbearable.
That is not false equivalence. It is moral consistency.
People often say Israel and Palestine should both be treated as states. If so, both must be judged as political actors responsible for their conduct. A weaker actor does not become innocent because it failed to kill as many as it wished. A stronger actor does not become innocent because it says it could have killed even more.
This is why Somaliland's experience matters, as I argued in Understanding the Somaliland Mindset. Its politics were formed by survival, but survival did not require worship of cruelty. Memory became a foundation for sovereignty, not a licence for vengeance.
Statehood Test
The harder question is what people think genocide does to statehood. Some Free Palestine rhetoric now speaks as if the State of Israel must be wiped off the map because of Gaza. If that is the rule, then it is a new Montevideo Convention, one where the four criteria of statehood disappear the moment a government commits genocide.
No serious person applies that rule elsewhere. Somalia is not told it must disappear because of what the Barre regime did to Somaliland. Turkey is not told it must disappear because of what has been done to Kurds. Sudan is not told it must disappear because of its mass atrocities. Only the State of Israel is treated by some people as if the crime of a government dissolves the existence of a country and stains Jews everywhere.
That is not international law. It is not Islamic ethics either. The Qur'anic rule is clear, no soul bears the burden of another. If crimes were committed in Gaza, Allah will ask those who ordered them, enabled them, and defended them. He will not ask every Israeli child, every Jewish family in the diaspora, or every Jew walking through a Western city.
This is where the hypocrisy becomes impossible to ignore. Many people making these claims live in Western societies. They have Jewish neighbours, colleagues, classmates, and friends. They know they are ordinary human beings with families, hopes, flaws, talents, generosity, grief, and civic lives like everyone else. Yet the same people speak as if every Jew must carry the guilt of a government they did not elect, command, or control.
That is not justice for Gaza. It is collective punishment wearing the clothes of justice.
Victimhood Test
The opposite mistake must also be rejected. Being the victim of genocide does not by itself create a state. Rwanda had a genocide and remained Rwanda. Somaliland suffered genocide, but Somaliland's claim is not that genocide created its statehood. Gaza has suffered terrible destruction, but suffering alone does not answer the statehood question.
Somaliland's case is based on state continuity, not rescue theory. The genocide matters because it shows why a shared government with Somalia has become practically impossible and morally absurd. It is evidence of broken union, broken trust, and the impossibility of forcing a people back under a political order that tried to erase them.
That is very different from saying that Palestinians deserve a state simply because Gaza was devastated. Recognition as rescue sounds elegant in theory, but it has not worked in practice. The United Kingdom's recognition of Palestine can be read as an attempt at that logic, yet the conflict remains. Recognition did not make Hamas disappear. It did not disarm armed movements. It did not make Israelis safer or Palestinians free.
The hard question is what kind of state would be created next to Israel, inside the reality of Gaza and the West Bank. Non state actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah have already caused enormous damage without the full apparatus of recognised statehood. If movements that use genocidal language gained the weapons, procurement channels, diplomatic cover, and institutions of a state, the danger would multiply.
This is why the words matter. When people chant from the river to the sea while denying Israeli Jewish self determination, they are not speaking the language of coexistence. They are speaking the language of removal. When the same voices mock the Holocaust, they prove that their concern is not human value. It is a card played for statehood while the humanity of the other side is denied.
Somaliland differs here too. It recognises the human value of Palestinians and Israelis at the same time. It does not ask for recognition because it suffered, but because it continued as a state after a failed union and built a political order that Somalia no longer owns. Genocide explains why reunification is impossible. It does not replace the legal case.
Forgiveness Test
After 1991, Somaliland did something much of the world now finds almost impossible to imagine. It forgave many people associated with the genocidal system inside its own political community.
That forgiveness was not forgetfulness. It did not absolve the regime, erase mass graves, or pretend the past was a misunderstanding. It recognised that people who must share a country cannot live forever inside total revenge.
This is one of Somaliland's least appreciated achievements. In a world where people are cancelled for shaking the wrong hand, Somaliland made peace possible without surrendering memory.
That is why the Gaza debate feels so sick when genocide becomes a weapon of camp loyalty. Some anti Somaliland accounts ridicule Somaliland's genocide and then speak solemnly about Gaza. Some Arab voices demand recognition of Palestinian suffering while denying Somaliland's right to recognition.
This is the hypocrisy I have challenged before in Normalise Somaliland's Recognition and Somaliland, Palestine and the Consistency of Australian Foreign Policy. If justice is real, it cannot depend on whether the victim fits the preferred geopolitical script.
The Somaliland mirror is harsh because it shows everyone at once. It shows the Netanyahu government what overwhelming force does to the soul of a government. It shows Palestinians what terrorism does to the justice of a cause. It shows Arabs and Somalians what their silence reveals.