Aidan Haj Qassem
October 7th 2023 – Palestinian resistance shocked the world.
On this day, the martyr Mohammed Deif, the undaunted commander of Al-Qassam brigades, stated as the mujahideen he led flew over the walls that entrapped them: “الان و ليس غدا،” “Now, and not tomorrow”.
After Gaza had faced two decades of siege, after decades of settlement expansions in the West Bank, after Palestine being occupied for 76 years, the Al-Qassam brigades showed the world that it is now and not tomorrow that Palestinians will resist and shatter the Occupation. On this day, the resistance broke the myth of the Zionist entity’s invincibility. It was on this day that resistance called on the free people of the world to strive in the path of Palestine’s liberation. Yet, unfortunately, very few answered this call. For two years, the world has watched as Gaza bleeds. It has watched men, women, and children be starved, displaced, and exterminated. We are two years into this genocide.
“This city will expose all the normalizers, and disgrace all the coordinators [with “Israel”] and reveal the truth about all those who neglected and abandoned the cause.”
Two years after the beginning of Al Aqsa Flood, we see that it is the Zionists who perpetrate this genocide and the world governments that stand behind it. It is through Gaza, as revealed by the martyr Yahya Sinwar, that all the normalizers, all the collaborators, and all those who have built themselves on the blood of the oppressed. Gaza is a demonstration that genocide is not an aberration of the global system; it is constitutive. Imperialism and capitalism can only continue to exist insofar as they condemn people to death. The basis of this system accumulates in the blood of the oppressed.
How many corporations have we seen profit from the genocide? Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Palantir. How many regimes have we seen provide the Occupation with weapons, amnesty, agreements, etc? The U.S, Egypt, Jordan, Germany, France, UAE, UK – the list goes on. The Gaza genocide has made clear how development is denied, sovereignty withheld, resistance condemned, and the masses exterminated. We must be clear on this that Gaza has revealed this global system of death that we live in.
Throughout the past two years, cheap talking points have been exchanged for real analysis of the occupation. Many have tried to reduce the genocide to Netanyahu and his “far right” coalition, but few recognize that this genocide is simply Zionism. Netanyahu is not some figure who is saving his political career in spite of the occupation, he is leading the genocide at the behest of it. He is not a divisive figure in Zionist society; he is the sole figure who can bridge the gap between the secular fascists and the religious fascists as they rally together for more Palestinian land and blood.
These cheap talking points have not only been used to explain the genocide but also in place of action. One thing remains clear: the Zionists and their imperial coalition are moral decadence par excellence; they are not invincible, but their defeat will not come easy. In the United States, the majority of Americans disapprove of the lengths the U.S. goes to fund the genocide. Yet this remains inconsequential and the genocide continues.
“Rafah is a red line.” How long has it been since the Zionists invaded Rafah? How many lengths have they gone to break the rules of engagement that their patrons themselves set? They had no issue dropping 80 bunker buster bombs on Beirut upon the martyrdom of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah; they have no issue bombing Iran, Yemen, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, killing aid workers, killing children, killing doctors.
It is only when we realize that Zionism is a rabid dog that we realize we must get bit to put it down. Gaza cannot be relegated to the abyss, forced to suffer and burn.
We don’t have time; we are already 730 and 76 years too late. Gaza is losing its best men, its best women, its best people. Every martyr is a universe, not numbers. Each passing day, 100s of universes are destroyed. We cannot keep asking when this will stop; we must act to stop it.
This action is urgent, but it can not be willed into existence; it must be made. It takes effort, knowledge, and technical expertise. Liberation demands that we organize, not in ways that are solely spectacle, not solely in online realms, but in tangible and robust ways. The cracks may exist, but they can only be ripped apart with force.
It is the sons of Gaza who flew over the prison walls that have started the birth of a new world. A world of dignity and liberation, a world that can only be born in the ashes of the Zionist occupation.
Aidan Haj Qassem is a writer exploring questions of Islam, sovereignty, and struggle, and how they relate in West Asia.
