XPost: uk.legal, soc.culture.jewish, alt.news-media   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats, alt.atheism   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   This question became seemingly ubiquitous following October 7. As   
   Palestinians defied the imagination, breaking out of Gaza after over a   
   decade and a half of living under total air, land, and sea blockade,   
   many found themselves having to face this question.   
      
   Whether it be from Zionists using the violence we witnessed on that   
   day as a means of creating story after story of atrocity propaganda —   
   to force well-meaning allies into a corner or even those who genuinely   
   considered themselves pro-Palestine who struggled with the reality of   
   decolonial violence — the question of whether or not Palestinian armed   
   resistance factions deserved support or criticism became a major point   
   of contention. It was easy for many to support the cause of   
   Palestinian liberation when they viewed Palestinians as perfect   
   victims, but when Palestinians fought back, suddenly the question of   
   solidarity became muddled.   
      
   Months later, after tens of thousands of Palestinians have been   
   murdered by Israeli Occupation Forces in Gaza amid an ongoing   
   genocide, and after thousands in the West Bank have found themselves   
   imprisoned or under regular attack, sympathy for those resisting their   
   own annihilation has grown, with the conversation becoming more clear   
   than it was in the days proceeding October 7. As videos spread by   
   resistance factions across Gaza and Lebanon find a regular and   
   enthusiastic audience and chants in support of those putting their   
   lives on the line take root in protests nationwide, it is clear many   
   have grown to accept the necessity of armed struggle in the   
   Palestinian context, though a true consensus has yet to be achieved.   
      
   To that end, the answer to the question “Do you condemn Hamas?,”   
   particularly for those of us on the Left as we analyze the history of   
   Palestine and why resistance occurs in a colonial context, should have   
   always been clear.   
      
   A violent phenomenon   
      
   As Frantz Fanon’s oft-cited statement from Wretched of the Earth has   
   made clear, national liberation, national reawakening, restoration of   
   the nation to the Commonwealth, whatever the name used, whatever the   
   latest expression — decolonization is always a violent event.   
   Palestine is not an exception to this reality.   
      
   The colonization of Palestine by Zionists, like all colonialism   
   throughout history, brought with it widespread and constant violence   
   levied in all forms against the Palestinian people. This was by   
   design, as the very nature of settler colonialism is a necessarily   
   brutal one given the end goal of the wholesale elimination of the   
   Indigenous population in all forms but nostalgia. This violence does   
   not simply manifest itself through the military campaigns waged by   
   Zionist settlers and the Israeli occupation army, but through every   
   part of the colonial endeavor itself — an endeavor that can only be   
   sustained through the suffering, exploitation, repression, and death   
   of Palestinians and all else that the colony wishes to conquer.   
      
   Palestinians, whether in Occupied Palestine, in refugee camps in   
   bordering nations, or in the diaspora around the world, are forced   
   every single day to wrestle with the reality of this settler colonial   
   violence. The very existence of the Zionist project poses an   
   existential threat to the lives of millions, who have in some cruel   
   twist of reality been deemed existential threats by the project for   
   the simple reason that their existence undermines its legitimacy.   
      
   This violence does not occur without resistance. Throughout history,   
   whether it be in Algeria, South Africa, Ireland, or Palestine,   
   colonized people have risen up in the face of brutal violence to free   
   themselves from the shackles of their own oppression. This resistance   
   does not generally start as armed struggle, but through civil   
   disobedience, protests, general strikes, and similar tactics. Yet when   
   these tactics fail, as they often have, or when exceptional violence   
   is waged against the people in response, armed struggle becomes a   
   necessity.   
      
   The colonial power, its legitimacy owed solely to the force it   
   undertakes to maintain its existence, creates the conditions for the   
   resistance that will rise against it. The more violence and repression   
   colonized people face, the more they resist. Violent resistance   
   becomes mainstream out of sheer necessity given their material   
   conditions. This creates a cycle of violence, one perpetuated first   
   and foremost by the violence of the colonial entity itself.   
      
   Even before the official foundation of the Zionist project in 1948,   
   this cycle was well established. The Balfour Declaration came into   
   existence in 1917, signifying Britain’s official endorsement of   
   Zionist aspirations. By 1929, a fifth of Palestinians found themselves   
   landless. By the 1930s, many Palestinians found themselves unemployed   
   and economically destitute, as Zionist capital, backed by favorable   
   imperial British laws and treatment, began flowing ever more   
   intensively into Palestine, according to Ghassan Kanafani’s seminal   
   work on the 1936 Great Palestinian Revolt.   
      
   These factors spurred resistance of their own variety, including the   
   Buraq Uprising of 1929, efforts by Palestinians to pool resources to   
   purchase land, sporadic violence, as well as Palestinian notables   
   lobbying for better treatment from their British overlords. This blend   
   of violent and non-violent efforts would all be suppressed or   
   ultimately met with limited success.   
      
   In 1936, when British forces murdered Syrian revolutionary figure   
   Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Palestinian popular resentment turned   
   into a general strike, and ultimately into popular revolt, which was   
   put down brutally by Zionist and British forces by 1939. Only a few   
   years later, Zionists would ethnically cleanse more than 750,000   
   Palestinians from upwards of 530 cities, towns, and villages and kill   
   thousands more in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or the   
   “catastrophe”. These ethnic cleansing campaigns continue up to the   
   modern day.   
      
   Palestinians would rise up as a result of the subjugation they faced,   
   again through a combination of violent and non-violent struggle that   
   would be met with even more violent oppression. When Palestinians   
   waged cross-border raids into occupied territory, they were met with a   
   Zionist invasion in Lebanon and massacres at Sabra and Shatila. When   
   Palestinians rose up during the First and Second Intifadas, they were   
   met with violent crackdowns, mass arrests, and widespread violence   
   that would lead to the intensification of their own violent resistance   
   efforts. When Palestinians in Gaza took to marching to the wall that   
   surrounded them in the March of Great Return, hundreds were killed and   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)