Even though the Star Wars franchise, which began in 1977 with a film written and directed by American filmmaker George Lucas, is best known for lightsabers, Jedi knights, and galactic battles, it has always been political.

Lucas envisioned the original films as a warning against authoritarianism, drawing inspiration from the Vietnam War, US imperialism, and the fall of democratic republics into fascist regimes. The central conflict, rebellion against a brutal galactic empire, is not just space fantasy, but an allegory.

That political subtext becomes explicit in Andor (2022–2025), a prequel series to Rogue One (2016) that reframes the Star Wars universe through the lens of anti-colonial resistance.

Unlike earlier entries that centred on mystical powers and family dynasties, Andor focuses on the gritty mechanics of Empire: surveillance, infiltration, torture, propaganda, resource extraction, and the slow, uncertain path to rebellion.

That Andor’s creators would draw from historical empires is expected. But that its second season would air during Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and feature storylines that mirror Israel’s tactics so closely, makes the show feel not just timely, but urgent.

One Reddit user wrote, “Never have I felt more on the side of the Palestinian cause than after watching this. I understand resistance in a way I never had before.”

This blending of pop culture and political critique isn’t new.

Literary scholars Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin explored exactly this dynamic in their seminal 1989 book The Empire Writes Back. The title plays on The Empire Strikes Back and highlights how postcolonial writers, those from formerly colonised nations, reappropriate language and narrative to challenge the ideological foundations of empire.

In many ways, Andor participates in this tradition. It is not just a Star Wars prequel. It is a commentary on state violence, occupation, and moral resistance, and, by implication, a searing parallel to the reality in Palestine today.

From rogue to revolutionary: A story of colonisation

Andor tells the origin story of Cassian Andor, a rebel operative first introduced in Rogue One, the film that depicts the mission to steal the blueprints of the Death Star — the Empire’s moon-sized superweapon capable of destroying entire planets. In Rogue One, Cassian is already a seasoned fighter. In Andor, we see the slow process of his radicalisation.

Cassian is from Kenari, a jungle-covered planet whose people live off the land and speak a language invented for the show, blending Spanish, Portuguese, and Hungarian.

As the series unfolds, we learn that the Empire has devastated Kenari in a mining operation gone horribly wrong, or simply disregarded. The landscape is left poisoned and uninhabitable. Cassian’s childhood memories show the forest turned to wasteland, a gaping industrial scar cut into the planet’s core.

In Season Two, we learn that the minerals extracted from Kenari, and other colonised planets are used to construct the Death Star. This link between environmental destruction, imperial violence, and technological terror mirrors Israel’s own resource control and the infrastructure of occupation, including the wall, the surveillance systems, and the siege of Gaza.

The philosophy of resistance: More than blasters

Unlike most of the franchise, Andor devotes substantial attention to why people resist.

A standout figure is Nemik, a young thinker who writes a rebel manifesto. His writings, which echo throughout the show, argue that no act of rebellion is too small, and that even gestures of defiance weaken the architecture of tyranny.

This sentiment resonates deeply with the global movement for Palestinian liberation.

Whether through boycotts, protest convoys, or even cultural expression, the idea that resistance is cumulative and morally essential reflects the lived reality of people in Gaza who resist occupation with existence, education, and memory.

The parallels become especially chilling in scenes of imperial violence.

In one arc, Cassian’s friend Bix is captured and tortured by an Empire interrogator. His technique? Broadcasting the screams of dying children from an exterminated species directly into her headphones. The show makes the aesthetic links explicit, the interrogator’s attire, demeanor, and justification of cruelty echo Nazi doctors. But for some, it was Israeli tactics that came most to mind.

Reports have long documented Israel’s use of psychological warfare in Gaza, including fake recordings of crying babies to lure Palestinians out in the open to shoot them. Also, knock on the roof tactics to terrify civilians, and real-time live streams of bombings.

These resonances are not accidental: Andor demands we consider how dystopian fiction is increasingly indistinguishable from current headlines.

Gaza by another name: The case of Ghorman

In Season Two, Andor introduces the planet Ghorman, famous for its artisanal textiles made delicately by spiders (a subtle nod to gauze, whose etymology traces to Gaza).

The Ghor people speak a language that mimics French, and their costumes evoke Europe under Nazi occupation. This seems, at first, like a story about Vichy France. But the fan forums have read it differently. With Ghorman’s fenced-off cities, lying occupation authorities, blockades, and surveillance, the audience sees not just WWII, they see Gaza.

A small monument in the centre of the capital, marking a prior massacre by the Empire, is overshadowed by a new, looming imperial administration complex. This detail evokes more than architecture. It gestures toward the legacy of Al-Aqsa Mosque and other sacred sites in Palestine, slowly being surrounded, surveilled, and subjugated.

And like in Palestine, the Ghor resist. They organise underground. They argue over tactics. They hope the truth will shame their oppressors. But when the Empire reveals its real motive, not resource management, but total extermination, it feels less like science fiction and more like a forecast.

The British Film Institute’s official compared the series to The Battle of Algiers (1966), Gillo Pontecorvo’s classic film on colonial struggle. But the emotional impact for many viewers comes not from cinematic references, it comes from the recognition that this is happening now.

As Andor entrenches itself in the body of work that addresses postcolonial resistance, ‘Was the massacre at Ghor worth it?’ becomes a moral refrain within the show.

The answer, perhaps, lies in a voiceover from Nemik’s manifesto, which closes the show:

“Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy.

Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere…

The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks.

Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

Remember that.”