On January 26th, 2023, the ‘Israeli’ Occupation forces carried out a deadly raid in Jenin. The resistance fought back valiantly; however, the IOF massacred 9 Palestinians and wounded dozens more. It was the deadliest attack on Jenin since the 2002 Battle of Jenin. The next day, the heroic martyr Khairi Alqam avenged the deaths of Jenin’s martyrs and liquidated 10 settlers in Al Quds. Khairi affirmed that the Palestinians will not surrender to the occupation—that escalation will be met with escalation—and that the resistance will continue to reach occupiers everywhere until they are driven out or eliminated. Following the successful operation, celebrations were held throughout Palestine, including in Jenin camp.
Among the western solidarity movement, the responses were quite the opposite. Neo-comprador activist Mariam Barghouti tweeted (Archive) confirming the operation was in an ‘illegal settlement’ and not inside of a synagogue. We should ask, what if the operation happened inside of a synagogue? What if the colony is 'illegal' or ‘legal’? Every settler is a legitimate target as long as they are in Palestine. In the words of the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigade: "There are no (other) options before you: either you leave our land or die on it.”
This point is not to single out Barghouti but to identify a larger pattern within the Western Solidarity Movement. Whenever an operation or battle occurs, their responses fall into one (or several) of four categories:
Totally ignore the operations and their consequences. Battles are reduced to being one-sided.
Condemn the operations as "tragic and senseless" and equate Palestinian martyrs with dead settler-invaders.
Downplay the operations as only "reactions" to Palestinian victimhood.
Say that "resistance is justified" and stop there.
In all cases, they dismiss the possibility that these operations are part of a larger national liberation strategy of armed struggle. They suppress the videos of Palestinians joyously greeting their resistance achievements, and instead endlessly circulate images of Palestinian suffering. For the neo-compradors—and almost the entirety of the Western Solidarity Movement—Palestinians are always in need of saving by the humanitarian West. Marketing the ideological virus of defeatism is advantageous for their imperialist sponsors.
We can clearly see these groups for what they are: Zionist ‘anti-Zionists’ playing their role in counterinsurgency. A recent conference declaration by the PA and BDS National Committee insists on the importance of “anti-Zionist Jewish forces as an ally in the struggle against colonialism, oppression and racism in all its forms, including antisemitism.” Its politics is based on, once again, lobbying the UN and ICC while deepening on the ground US-led “security coordination.” It never mentions imperialism, armed struggle, or the Al-Quds Axis.
This is about far more than the discourse and statements—these are manifestations of their material interests. For the Western Solidarity Movement, uplifting the commandos and the organizations waging armed struggle would cut off their funding. It's not surprising to see a 'Solidarity organization' researching how to use social media to start a color revolution in Gaza.
The space of solidarity is directed by these kinds of backwards groups and individuals who are tied to the imperialist apparatus. Swaths of the diaspora in the imperialist countries have even betrayed their role in the Palestinian Revolution in exchange for 'anti-Zionist' bourgeois integration via profitable academic and NGO positions.
Weaponizing Human Rights
January 27th was also the annual "International Holocaust Remembrance Day", falling on the day of the Soviet Union’s liberation of the prisoners in the Nazi German slavery and extermination camp Auschwitz. The day is commemorated by a slew of imperialist organizations, from the US-regime controlled United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and NATO to the normalizing Arab regimes. Astonishingly, none of the official observance statements pay tribute to the Soviet Union or its Red Army, who actually liberated the Nazi camps and played the primary role in smashing the German settler project of turning Eastern Europe into a "new West Indies". Nor do they acknowledge the 27 million soviets who paid their lives in that struggle. Rather, the commemoration, which was only created 60 years after, only references that six million Jews were killed. In 2023, Russia was specifically dis-invited from the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz—liberation without the liberators; history rewritten.
This is a manipulation of history to separate Nazi Germany from European colonialism and its centuries of extermination campaigns. The narrative of six million "sacred victims" exists ultimately to justify the imperialist's endless wars of aggression, now marketed under the catchphrase of "stopping genocide". The Zionist entity is but one front of this.
The same year that the US-led UN created "International Holocaust Remembrance Day" the UN also formalized the policy of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P). R2P is the idea that the UN and the imperialist powers of the West have a “responsibility” to wage war in the case of genocide. Genocide of course is defined by them, and its application is always carefully contrived to serve their strategies. This “human rights” justification has been the basis for many crimes against humanity including the destruction of Libya.
R2P, the definition and weaponization of genocide, the Holocaust, and antisemitism are all deeply connected in liberal humanism. The official EU and liberal humanist position—codified in the “Prague declaration”--promotes the myth of “double genocide” that equates Nazism with Communism. It is a revisionism in defense of “the good Nazis” who fought against communism to create a Zionism for Ukraine. This lineage explains the Western defense of Ukrainian Nationalists who follow Nazi-collaborator Stepan Bandera whose OUN-B organization killed hundreds of thousands of Poles and Soviets and specifically targeted Jews. In 2022, both the United States and ‘israel’ hosted delegations from the Nazi Azov regiment, who are known to use 'Israeli' weapons.
This is not new. The Zionists also engaged in many economic, security, and migration agreements with Nazi Germany such as the 1933 Haavara (Transfer) Agreement between the “Father of Zionism” Ben-Gurion & Adolf Hitler.
We can conclude that "combating antisemitism" is a meaningless concept today. Its contemporary articulation has been shaped solely for the purposes of imperialist domination.
It’s time to stop saying “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism”. This empty statement is repeated time and time again in the circles of Zionist ‘anti-Zionists’. The implication is that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, but yes, armed struggle against Jewish occupiers is reprehensible”. This narrative is an attempt to make the Palestinian liberation movement another toothless ‘anti-racist’ cause for Western liberal sponsors.
Palestinian Liberation will require the elimination of many Jewish occupiers in Palestine—that is an indisputable fact. Who cares if that fact is considered 'antisemitic' by imperialists?
The ceiling of Western solidarity (is very low). Many solidarity activist speeches calls for a reduction in the level of Zionist killing of Palestinians or a reduction in the use of force. (They are) content with criticizing the policies of “racial discrimination” as if the people of Palestine are a population group or a minority that suffers discrimination in the country of the Zionists, and that the rightful owners of the land are required to beg sympathy to demand less mistreatment by their occupiers, invaders, and murderers of their children and parents.
~The Project of Solidarity and Its Illnesses: Curbing the Palestinian Struggle
Rethinking Solidarity
Palestinians are liberating themselves with their own hands: with rockets, guns, and the sacrifices of martyrs. As supporters of Palestine, whether Palestinian or Arab or neither, it is our responsibility to centralize this fact in our analysis of the situation and the position of solidarity. When we dilute our positions in order to make them more tolerable to liberal-fascists, we are actively aligning ourselves with the enemy and limiting the depth of our solidarity.
Genuine solidarity does not come cheaply. Iran is paying the price of solidarity with Palestine. So to are Hezbollah, Yemen, and Syria paying that price. And yet they do not waver in their support.
In a recent interview with Al Mayadeen, Ziad Al-Nakalah, the Secretary General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement noted that "[w]e are fighting the United States in Israel, as it is its main and first supporter, and we do not see supporters of Palestine except Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria."
This is a deep indictment of so-called “Solidarity Movement” in the West. He is telling us that the awareness campaigns, protests, boycott campaigns and numerous false victories are not materially supporting the revolutionary forces in Palestine. He is also telling us that the fight against "Israel" as a political, economic, and military entity is also a fight against the United States as a political, economic, and military entity.
We must make a clean break from the counterinsurgent forces and their so-called solidarity strategies. Collaboration with American and British politicians will not advance the cause of liberation. Collaboration with imperialist-backed organizations and neo-compradors who espouse Zionist ‘anti-Zionist’ ideology will not advance the cause of liberation.
The struggle for the liberation of Palestine is here. The Third Intifada is beginning. There is no more time for arguing with Zionists or appealing to their liberal-fascist associates. Armed Struggle is the only path forward for the people of Palestine and it will mean the death of many ‘Israeli’ settlers. We must unconditionally support the popular resistance in their struggle. We must broaden the horizons of what our solidarity can and should be. In the words of Al Hadf:
This is not an attack on solidarity activism; in support of Palestine, its cause and the struggle of its people, but an attempt to raise serious questions around a context that tries to dominate this activity. (Challenging) a solidarity activism that even tries to expand to redefine and shape the Palestinian struggle and action; in accordance with its standards, which were originally made in compliance with the criteria for accepting the camp hostile to the rights of the Palestinian people.1
Those who refuse to engage with this reality are useless at best or doing the work of the enemy at worst. The time is now to break with the Zionist ‘anti-Zionists’ and their enablers.
Glory to the martyr Khairi Alqam, to the martyrs of Jenin, of Al Quds, of Al Aqsa, and all of Palestine—from the River to the Sea.
“The normalizers and those who betrayed the Palestinian struggle believe that victory and liberation are far-fetched, but we see it as imminent” --Ismail Haniyeh, Head of Hamas Political Bureau
The Project of Solidarity and Its Illnesses: Curbing the Palestinian Struggle
“ There is nothing wrong with the endeavor of a people waging a battle for national liberation to mobilize global support and sympathy and to bring about an adjustment in the equation of international positions in their favor. But turning this quest into an imagined alternative to the real struggle on the ground and in the arenas of confrontation is a deception, spreading misinformation, and undermining the existing tools of struggle with which people are confronted.
Over the past decades, it has escalated in the Palestinian arena; Propaganda that heralds the role of international solidarity and the value of propaganda work within the Western world, and stresses the need for Palestinians to work on trimming the tools of their struggle and refining their image; To fit the standards of marketing it as an issue of solidarity in the Western world. This included, to varying degrees, challenging the validity and effectiveness of the popular and armed struggle, and its centrality in confronting aggression, or even condemning this struggle. Under the guise of "solidarity and realism” presented equality between the struggle of a people and their families with sporadic statements elicited by the supporters of Palestine from some solidarity groups, or a simple verbal modification in a statement of a Western colonial government.
The main problem in this context; the (solidarity activist) assumption was the ignorance of everyone except for those engaged in mobilizing solidarity or, more precisely, those engaged in propaganda about the manufacture of sympathy. This discourse asks the Palestinians to assume their ignorance of the real impact of their struggle and the tools of their action in confronting the colonizer, and invites them to accept (Western) assessment of this struggle, and secondly he assumes - or at least he (solidarity activist) asks the Palestinians to assume - that the attitude of Western colonial governments and elites; stems from a lack of information about the reality of the colonial invasion in Palestine, as if decades of political, financial and armament support by these governments for the Zionist invaders were only as a result of a misunderstanding of the situation in Palestine. Or that these governments build their policies and positions based on standards of truth, justice, and fairness to the rights of peoples, as if they did not plow the land with the bodies of the oppressed peoples of the countries they colonized. Or that the Zionist entity had fallen from the sky on Palestine to occupy it and displace its people and that these governments did not start it and continue to sponsor it.”