The Case for the Resistance

It’s always "complicated" when you want to take something from somebody.

Artwork by Kamal Sharaf

We are nearly a week into a ceasefire that doesn’t truly feel like one. Palestinian people continue to die at the hands of their oppressors, albeit in smaller numbers. Why does this ceasefire seem like nothing more than the second phase of this genocide?

For the past sixteen months, I have written extensively about Gaza, delving into every angle to grasp how such atrocities can be inflicted on these people in this day and age. I’ve wrestled with how something so violent and unjust—witnessed in real-time by millions on their phones—can persist, as if the act of writing could somehow summon a solution to a catastrophe we are powerless to stop.

The angle I haven’t yet addressed is the resistance. I began drafting this article in October of last year and have never spent this much time on any piece. This is my War and Peace, my Crime and Punishment—the level of time, energy, and mental effort I have invested in this work. It also refuses to be finished.

I needed the right moment to lay out the case for the resistance. This piece began to take shape following the death of Yahya Sinwar, but I felt it needed a sense of completion—something to close the circle, like the ceasefire that finally happened this Sunday.

I’m far from naive; a ceasefire offers a much-needed reprieve from the unimaginable suffering of the Palestinian people, but it’s difficult to be confident that it marks the end of their suffering. As Alon Mizrahi aptly observed—“This could become another Oslo Accord moment; a great trap - a mass grave - presented as a historic breakthrough.” Only time will tell.

But this moment does feel like the pivot I had been waiting for. Whatever happens next, we must acknowledge just how much the Palestinian resistance has achieved—both militarily and politically—fighting not only their most brutal, depraved occupier but also the collective Western superpowers.

The core of the Palestinian cause.

Why is the case for the resistance an important conversation we have to have at this moment in time?

Because the greatest atrocities of the past 40 years have been committed under the guise of a terrorist designation, used as linguistic manipulation to justify war crimes. It’s time to move beyond the good West-versus-evil East paradigm of a Marvel superhero movie and awaken to this reality.

People resisting occupation throughout history have been labeled as savages, radicals, and terrorists. If we want to build a better world based on justice, tolerance, and peace, it’s crucial to understand that the designation of terrorism is used as a political label, not a behavioral one.

“If the terrorist label can only be affixed to one set of people but not another set of people, then you’re in an Orwellian zone, you’re down a rabbit hole of linguistic manipulation.” — Norman Solomon

Before a ceasefire took effect this Sunday, a Palestinian man living in the West posted an interesting message on his Instagram, playing exactly into a message I’m trying to convey with this article—“Palestinian resistance is the core of the Palestinian cause. Not victimhood.”

Please read it in its entirety:

“It was not 470 days of genocide, it was 470 days of Palestinians resisting their colonizer. And our colonizer reacted with genocide. So if someone were to ask you what happened over the past year and a half in Gaza, the answer should be—Palestinians resisted, and the oppressor responded with genocide. Genocide was a consequence of Palestinians resisting, not the actual event itself.

This is a very important concept for you to digest and drill into your head. Because the core, the foundation of the Palestinian cause is Palestinian resistance which includes armed resistance. The Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people, we would not exist to this day if were not for Palestinians resisting.

West only likes to discuss Palestinians and the Palestinian cause when we are the victims, never when we are heroes, because maintaining this public image of Palestinians only as victims prevents society, prevents the world from remembering what the actual issue is and what the solution to the issue is — the issue being the colonization of our land, and the solution being resisting the colonization.

This is the poison of the West, conditioning the world to think that the solution to problems is charity, peace, and love, and not justice and fighting for freedom.”

A linguistic manipulation.

Nothing made me more morally nauseated last year than watching the fall of the Assad regime in Syria last December, and the use of a terrorism designation by the Western empire as linguistic manipulation to rehabilitate Al Jolani, a designated terrorist affiliated with ISIS and Al-Qaeda—an organization the American government claims is responsible for 9/11—removing the $10 million bounty on his head, while giving him a CNN Western makeover.

A terrorist for hire, all of a sudden, not a terrorist anymore, as he aligns with the American interests in Syria.

Do you recall what was done to Muslims in America post 9/11? Are you even aware? I was in New York, and it was pure mayhem on the streets. A Morrocan Deli owner on my street who became a friend got his store tear-gassed by 1 pm on 9/11. The cars were sliding through my streets with “Nuke ‘em!” sprayed on the windshield. Homeland Security? Guantanamo Bay? Holding people without trial, human rights violations, torture, indefinite detention without due process.

What was it all for? To hypnotize the uninterested MTV generation to fight wars for profit under the guise of freedom and democracy?

A terrorist designation.

Where does the Palestinian resistance, Hamas, fit into this narrative? Where are they on a terrorism spectrum made up by the West, as they go along?

Caitlin Johnstone:

“Terrorist organization has a lot less to do with how an organization acts and operates and a lot more to do with whether or not they advance the strategic interests of the US empire.

The group that is committing the genocide is of course not a designated terrorist organization.

This is because the label “terrorist organization” is nothing more than a tool of imperial narrative control. In empire language, it just means “disobedient population who need bombs dropped on them”.

You can kill all the civilians you want using whatever methods you want without being considered a terrorist organization, so long as you are a friend of the US empire.”

Battle for your perception.

There’s nothing more dishonest on Earth than the portrayal of the Palestinian people fighting for their freedom and self-determination as radicals.

“As the discourse begins to open, more people are starting to understand this as a rights-based issue. Not an issue of radicalism. This is a movement for the rights of people who's rights are being denied – who are living under occupation; who want to live in their country, freely, just like anybody else.”

— Yousef Munayyer

Battle for perception. Did you watch The Occupation of the American Mind? It’s a documentary with an All-Star assembly of the most insightful thinkers and experts who have dedicated decades to studying the injustices faced by the Palestinian people. Narrators break it down for you; this isn’t just about America—it applies to all of us, as Israel wages a PR war on the collective West, aggressively propagandizing us about terrorism while stealing Palestinian land.

Sut Jhally:

“There’s really no way to fully understand why the Palestinian people have resisted Israel for so long without understanding this basic history of dispossession and occupation. But for the most part, this isn’t the story we get in American media coverage. Instead, the legitimate grievances of Palestinians, including their right to resist an illegal military occupation, get pushed out of the frame by this constant discussion about extremism, terrorism, and anti-Semitism.”

Talking about Hamas isn’t as much of a taboo as it was for the first few months of Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

Legacy media, social media, and institutions intimidating us into silence by merely invoking the word achieved the opposite. We looked, we researched, we dug. In a healthy society, everything should be open to discussion—preventing people from investigating or analyzing specific groups, individuals, or events only signals that crucial truths are waiting to be uncovered.

Truth is vital to the health and progress of society.

Those who block the discovery of such truths are usually the ruling class or the media that serves their interests—neither of which benefit from you uncovering these realities. Their goal is to prevent you from giving reason, humanity, and purpose to those they label as terrorists, using these labels to shut down a necessary conversation.

And we must have this conversation. How did we arrive here? And more importantly, when?

I say we arrived here at the corner of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Yahya Sinwar.

The release of The Message, a bestseller by Ta-Nehisi Coates documenting his visit to the West Bank, and the seismic death of Yahya Sinwar, in the same month, marked a pivotal moment for this conversation. After all that we have witnessed over the past sixteen months—a wholesale slaughter, shredding of children, relentless bombing, displacement, deliberate starvation, the destruction of infrastructure, and the international community’s complete unwillingness to intervene—we must have this conversation. In fact, not having it would be insincere.

There are no more roads to take that don’t end at the subject of the Palestinian resistance.

There are no angles left to take on the injustice inflicted on the Palestinian people in 1948, an injustice the world continues year after year, decade after decade—as if its balance depends on harming these 2.2 million souls in that small, remarkable strip of land; not necessarily for its geography, but for the resilience and spirit of its inhabitants.

After all that we’ve learned about the history of Palestine, why does it feel like the world literally runs on the slaughter of its people?

For the past sixteen months, the empathetic segment of the world—those who felt the anguish of people slaughtered by the hundreds daily for nearly 471 days has faced one question. A question posed at the outset of every conversation, whether on TV or in private: “But do you condemn Hamas?”—deceptively, as Piers Morgan repetitively proclaimed, “So I can decide on your moral standing”, with sheer arrogance, as if he had been anointed judge and jury of global moral authority. Piers, of all people? Look up what he was doing to people ten, twenty, or more years ago—if you think he’s just now skimming the cream.

Ta-Nehisi.

Ta-Nehisi Coates made a significant shift in the conversation about the Palestinian resistance. Award-winning author and journalist. Legendary scribe of the Black Panther and Captain America. Contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department at Howard University. His words had weight.

The Message:

“Were I 20 years old, born into Gaza, which is a giant open-air jail, and what I mean by that is if my father is a fisherman, and he goes too far out into the sea he might get shot by someone off the side of Israeli boats. If my mother picks the olive trees. If she gets too close to the wall, she might be shot. If my little sister has cancer, and she needs treatment, because there are no facilities that do that in Gaza, and I don’t get the right permit, she might die.

And I grow up under that oppression and that poverty and the wall comes down. Am I also strong enough or even constructed in such a way where I say this is too far? I don’t know that I am.”

Morally dicey, hey?

However you frame the issue of resisting the occupation, unless you are a psychopath who benefits from the subjugation of others, you will arrive at the same moral predicament.

The labyrinth.

This moral predicament comes in shades. If you are a member of a military-industrial complex that profits from testing its latest weaponry on the Palestinian people, or if you have the slightly smaller but still significant privilege of being an American who can obtain dual citizenship (and take someone’s home) to frolic on the beaches of Tel Aviv, then you are both benefiting from the occupation and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

But if you are a human being troubled by this injustice and refuse to accept privileges built on the suffering of others, you will inevitably find yourself at the same spot in the labyrinth.

That is the exact spot where Ta-Nehisi Coates landed with his book. The storm that ensued in the aftermath was as if he waved a gun instead of his pen. Ta-Nehisi was called an antisemite, an Israel-hater and so much more because he disturbed the Israeli battle for our perception.

Another person who inadvertently screwed Israeli perception being shoved down our throats was Yahya Sinwar. Because he died the way he did, not in the tunnel but fighting among his people, wounded, eye to eye with an Israeli drone, stick in his hand—he cemented himself as an actual, living, breathing personification of the Palestinian cause, one that will never, ever fade.

By throwing a stick at the drone that recorded his final moments, he didn’t actually throw a stick; he passed a baton to his people, who would later watch a live footage of it, thanks to the self-sabotaging arrogance of the Israeli Army. It was as if his last message to them was to persevere and keep resisting.

A ceasefire that isn’t truly a ceasefire; in the words of Francesca Albanese, “Israel’s consolidated interpretation of ceasefires: you cease, I fire”—is a pivotal moment to have this discourse.

“But he’s a terrorist?”

How can people be terrorists in their own land?

Terrorism: /ˈterəˌrizəm/ noun—the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

What political aims does the Palestinian resistance have? Is seeking freedom from occupation and self-determination a political aim? Since we all live in freedom and are self-determined, are we also terrorists?

Or is it a human right?

Or is Israel pursuing a political aim of trying to exterminate a population to take their land, and create hegemony in the region while building a Greater Israel?

Labeling people whose existence interferes with your political, economic, or territorial interests as 'terrorists' is what allows you to commit terrorism against those you label terrorists.

Yes, resistance is also violent. Most resistance movements in history were violent; oppressors usually don’t oppress with nice words. After 76 years of subjugation, dehumanization, rape, massacres, dispossession, illegal military occupation, and the latest—live-streamed genocide of the Palestinian people—do you have the moral clarity to decide who the real terrorists are: those inflicting this pain, or those resisting it?

There is no way to understand the 'problems' in the Middle East that destabilize the entire world while filling the pockets of the 1% if we aren’t ready to take on this hard topic. However we try to frame the understanding of what the Palestinian people have endured — especially over the past 471 days — if you have a morally sound compass and view all people as equal, you will always arrive at the same conclusion. It’s like playing a labyrinth game and consistently ending up at the same spot.

I confront these questions daily:

What would I do if this was happening to me?

What would I do if my father was abducted one night and made to walk 30 kilometers at age 75, then arrested, tortured, tied, abused?

What would I do if my child was killed with one sniper shot in the head while playing outside?

What would I do if my brother was arrested for throwing a rock, then raped and abused in Israeli prison?

What would I do if I have to rush to a hospital and was stopped at the checkpoint to bleed or die, because an Israeli soldier was put there to abuse and dehumanize me for kicks?

It’s paramount to have these conversations.

Palestinian people have no voice in mainstream media. Before October 7th, these people were ghosts. Their perspective was non-existent. We have the Israeli narrative, propaganda so grand it even has its name—crafted to justify the violence inflicted on the Palestinian people. Have you ever heard of an occupation that wasn’t violent? The whole premise of any occupation in history is violence.

As Sean Illing aptly put it: “I don’t believe there is any such thing as a moral occupation, because whatever the reasons for it, you cannot occupy a people without visiting cruelties upon them.”

Whether Martin Luther King was nonviolent or not, segregation was wrong. When Malcolm X was yelling “by any means necessary,” segregation was still wrong.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

We must have these conversations because the Palestinian people aren’t given space to share their stories in Western media. They are reduced wholesale to 'terrorists' so that Western audiences feel no empathy for their experiences. When people are reduced to such a label, their suffering becomes justified.

But what about the hostages?

How many articles did you read this week about three Israeli women being released? And how many articles did you read about the thousands of Palestinian hostages being released from Israeli prisons where they were kept in solitary confinement, tortured, raped, abused, and denied human rights — all while being held without charge?

Yousef Munayyer:

“And so this becomes the framing of the situation: Israel is defending itself, which means Israel is not the aggressor here. That doesn't square with the reality on the ground, and we know that. You have a right to defend yourself. You don't have a right to occupy people, deny them their human rights, and then cry foul when they resist. That's not the right to self-defense. That's the right to repression. That's what Israel is asking for here: Let us do away with these dissenters, these Palestinian dissenters, and call it defense.”

Caitlin Johnstone delved deeper into this as well:

“You see a lot of genocidal rhetoric from Israel supporters. The argument is basically that because the Palestinians will never accept the existence of the Jewish state, then the Jews don’t have to accept the existence of the Palestinian people.

You can immediately see the flaw in this logic when it’s written out like this, though. A wildly unequal dynamic is being falsely framed as equal: Israel supporters want an end to the Palestinians as a people, while Palestinians just want an end to the tyrannical apartheid state which murders their children and has taken everything from them.

Palestinians don’t seek the extermination of the Jewish people, but Israel’s supporters absolutely seek the extermination of the Palestinian people — or at least their perpetual subordination.

This isn’t two groups mutually opposed to one another’s existence, this is an apartheid settler colony backed by the most powerful empire in history getting dropped on top of a pre-existing civilization, with the people who had been living there being told that they must either submit to losing their rights, their property and their dignity, or face extermination.”

Execution.

One specific nuance about this whole genocide we’ve been witnessing and the “conflict” in the Middle East, for me, is the sheer casualness with which Israel and the collective West discuss exterminating the resistance. What truly blows my mind, and I haven’t heard many people address this—is the globally accepted notion that people, even if they are labeled terrorists, should be exterminated rather than arrested and tried in the court of law. Since when has it been legal to exterminate people, even if they are criminals or terrorists?

To do this right, we must also be unequivocal and accountable, as it is the responsibility of every human being on this earth: war crimes were committed on October 7th. However, what truly highlights the unacceptable levels of inequality and the supremacy inherent in Israeli society is a belief that one group of people is worth more than another, asserting that all who participated in the acts of October 7th must be eradicated from the earth — then actually proceeding to execute the entire nation.

Since when do crimes, even war crimes warrant execution? Anyone who commits any type of crime should be apprehended, arrested, tried, and jailed. During Milosevic’s aggression on Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia 30 years ago—a war I lived through — war criminals on each side, responsible for the worst crimes against humanity, weren’t executed; they were arrested, tried, and jailed. Many are still sitting in The Hague today.

Are you aware that you live in a time when one state holds so much impunity that it is allowed not only to execute those who participated in the October 7th, but an entire nation en masse?

Do you understand the damage done to the very foundations of civilization by witnessing people executing not just their opponents, but those they oppress?

Phyllis Bennis:

“October 7th, those are horrific attacks, which should be condemned. They are violations of international law, period. But the problem is that Israeli violence is assumed to be legitimate because it’s always self-defense.”

Are we living in a rule-based society?

We aren’t. As Caitlin Johnstone points out:

“This mass atrocity is being tolerated by huge parts of the population exactly because we see it as intolerable for large numbers of Jews to be killed by those who hate them, not understanding that the people who were killed on October 7 were killed not because of their religion, but because they were part of a settler-colonialist project which is premised on the perpetual abuse of a preexisting Indigenous population.”

This deliberate misperception is allowed to fester in Western society because there aren’t any Palestinian voices allowed in the mainstream spaces to plead their case. But for those of us who want to find those voices and listen—there’s nothing complicated about decades-long, brutally oppressed people burst for liberation.

A prison break on October 7th, whichever way you view it, was their manifesto. We won’t be prisoners anymore, we won’t be subjugated and oppressed, we rather be dead than imprisoned; we are going to be breaking free until we ARE free.

You cannot be reading this right now and tell me—but the violence on October 7th, unless you are a blatant supremacist, viewing one group of people more worthy of another. The level of carnage, displacement, dehumanization, rape, torture, subjugation, prison without charge, slaughter, shredding of children, massacres, and finally a full-throttle genocide the Palestinian people had to endure for 76 years—will produce violent acts. Violence begets violence.

Hamas is a militant group resisting military occupation. These people have repeatedly told you—they want liberation.

Know thy enemy.

Palestinian resistance managed to achieve the impossible for the past sixteen months, militarily and politically, I cannot stress this enough—because they know everything about their occupier, who knows nothing about them.

Benjamin Netanyahu keeps throwing these lines to the US Congress: “The last thing Palestinians want is a political settlement. What they want is more demonstrations, more riots, more bodies – that’s what they want”, reducing the very people his party bankrolled and propped into existence to a blanket 'terrorists' label, battling for Western perceptions to feel no empathy for their experiences, thereby justifying their suffering.

Changing the course of this biblical billion-dollar battle for our perception—do you realize just how much the Palestinian resistance achieved in the past sixteen months?

Aaron Mate:

“When you are a colonial power, you are so consumed by hubris—you can never really understand your enemy. Whereas if you are on the receiving end of the colonial power’s violence, you do have a much better understanding of your enemy.”

Scott Ritter:

“It’s not possible for the mindset of Israelis to understand Hamas. They have so dehumanized the Palestinians that they're incapable of instilling notions that we normally attach to movements that lead to nation-building.”

People who defend Israel’s actions on the ground always claim Israel has reasons for doing things the way it’s doing them. They have to bomb Gaza — they suffered an unprovoked attack from a bunch of evil terrorists. They have to bomb all the hospitals and schools and mosques — that’s where Hamas are hiding. They have to bomb areas that are packed full of children — Hamas is using those children as human shields.

But those who commit mass atrocities always justify their actions. They always have reasons for doing them. They always frame it as a necessary act of self-preservation.”

“It’s exactly in the violence where we come to the biggest injustice. One side is allowed by the world and morally justified to violate the other side, and the other side isn’t allowed.”

— Aaron Mate

Claim to the land.

Israel’s biggest fallacy lies in its parroting of a Biblical claim to this land. No one is denying the Jewish people’s claim to that land. The issue is their quest for an ethnostate, not their presence on the land. When supporters of Israel challenge you with the classic question—“Do you think Israel has a right to exist?”—well, why can’t they exist there, living alongside the Palestinian people (or, as they like to call them, Arabs), as they did many decades prior?

The fact that Israeli people who declare themselves Zionists insist on having an ethnostate on land where others already live tells you this is about dominance, economy, and power—not a yearning for the land they once inhabited.

Our part in all this.

The last sixteen months have been a gift for us, a litmus test that Palestine has given us all. We were granted a rare opportunity to see how the people around us; friends, family, strangers, and even celebrities we once admired—think. Celebrities whose lives we no longer envy or strive for. We realized the world is divided into those who can empathize with others and see them as human beings, regardless of cultural differences, and those who simply cannot understand or support anyone rallying for the Palestinian people because they do not see the other as equally worthy.

This truth came from the most unexpected places, from people we would least expect to exhibit this sense of supremacy. I saw it in friends who have very little, yet feel as though their birthplace in the West grants them moral superiority. That realization has been the hardest pill to swallow for many of us.

We must confront ourselves, our part in this, and our privileges, even those we aren’t fully aware of—when discussing the people of Palestine and especially their resistance.

Aaron Maté on Judge Napolitano raised some imperative points:

“Hamas is a resistance force fighting the occupation and people in the West judging Yahya Sinwar; I think the most important thing is—we’re responsible for our own actions, our own violence, and that in our case means being involved in one of the world's longest-running military occupation, an occupation that Hamas was founded to resist and it's our obligation to end that occupation. Whatever you think about Hamas, that’s what they were doing—their goal was Palestinian liberation.”

This part is crucial:

“There were elements of Hamas, including sometimes Sinwar if you pay attention to what he said, who were willing to accept a major Palestinian compromise of a state just within 22% of historic Palestine in the West Bank and in Gaza, which happens to be the international consensus. It’s Israel which is so extreme that it refused to even accept a Palestinian compromise, which basically put Hamas in the position where something like October 7th could happen—concluding that there was no hope at all for negotiations with Israel, and Netanhayu was openly vowing that there would never be a Palestinian State.

Netanyahu thought he could use Hamas toward that goal by splitting the West Bank from Gaza and propping up Hamas and making it sort of the symbol of the Palestinian struggle, therefore making it off limits to the rest of the world.

That's why October 7th happened, and it didn't have to be this way if Israel had seriously engaged with not just the global consensus all the Arab states have offered. If Israel supported this, even members of Hamas including Ismail Haniyeh supported a Palestinian state, if Israel had engaged with that and negotiated seriously for a Palestinian State, October 7th likely never would have happened.”

The Interview.

Francesca Borri from La Reppublica did a rare interview with Yahya Sinwar that I find fascinating. There is no better material to read to fully understand the nuances of the Palestinian people and their resistance. The face-off between her Western mindset and his exhausting sarcasm and self-deprecation traits only possessed by those who have endured the toughest lives—plays out like theater. If you have time, please look into the parts I highlighted as the most poignant. His answers are a fascinating read:

Francesca: 80 percent of the Gaza population depends on aid. And 50 percent is food insecure—50 percent is hungry. According to the UN, Gaza will soon be unfit to live in. Yet still in recent years, Hamas has found resources to dig its tunnels.

Yayha: “And luckily. Otherwise, we would all be dead. The way you see it, it's the way the Zionist propaganda tells it. The siege didn't come after the tunnels; it wasn't a reaction to tunnels. It's the other way round. There was a siege and a humanitarian crisis, and to survive we had no other option than digging tunnels. There were times when even milk was banned.”

F: You know what I mean. Don't you think you bear some responsibility?

Y: “Responsibility is on the besieger, not on the besieged. My responsibility is to work with whoever can help us to end this deadly and unjust siege, and I am thinking especially on the international community.”

F: So why you don't buy milk, rather than guns?

Y: "If we hadn't bought guns, we wouldn't be alive by now. We've bought it, don't worry. We've bought milk, and much else: food, medicine. We are 2 million. Do you have any idea what does it mean to get food and medicine for 2 million people? Tunnels are used only minimally for resistance—and because otherwise you may not die of hunger, but you would die of airstrikes. And Hamas pays for resistance out of its own pocket, not with public funds. Out of its own pocket."

F: So Hamas has been doing well in government.

Y: “What do you think, that being in power in Gaza is like being in power in Paris?”

F: And so, Hamas is now apparently thinking of a ceasefire. Negotiators are working around the clock. What do you mean by "ceasefire"?

Y: "I mean a ceasefire. Quiet. The end of the siege."

F: Quiet for quiet.

Y: “No, wait. Quiet for quiet, and the end of the siege. A siege is not quiet. Because if the ceasefire means that we don't get bombed, but still we have no water, no electricity, nothing, then we are still under siege—it makes no sense. Because the siege is a type of war, it's just war through other means. And it's also a crime under international law. There's no ceasefire under siege.”

F: OK, but maybe it's just a trick to reorganize yourself. And in six months, you'd go back to war. Why should the Israelis trust you?

Y: “First of all, I never went to war—war came to me. And my question, in all truth, is the opposite. Why should I trust them? They left Gaza in 2005, and they simply reshaped the occupation. They were inside, now they block borders.”

F: You have an iconic weapon: rockets. Quite makeshift rockets, actually, which are usually stopped by the Iron Dome, and to which Israel replies with its much more powerful missiles. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Have the rockets been useful?

Y: “Let's be clear: having an armed resistance is our right, under international law. But we don't only have rockets. We have been using a variety of means of resistance. Always. Such a question, honestly, is more for you than for me—for all you journalists. We make the headlines only with blood. And not only here. No blood, no news. But the problem is not our resistance, it is their occupation. With no occupation, we wouldn't have rockets. We wouldn't have stones, Molotov cocktails, nothing. We would all have a normal life.”

F: But do you think they have fulfilled their purpose?

Y: “Certainly not. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. But so, what about the occupation? What was its purpose? Raising killers? Have you watched the video where a soldier shoots at us as if we were bowling pins? And he laughs, laughs. The Jewish people were people like Freud, Einstein, Kafka. Experts of maths and philosophy. Now they are experts of drones, of extrajudicial executions.”

F: You now have a new iconic weapon: arson kites. They are driving Israel crazy, because they elude the Iron Dome, nor can they be shot down one by one.

Y: “Kites are not a weapon. At most, they set on fire some stubble. An extinguisher, and it's over. They are not a weapon, they are a message. Because they are just twine and paper and an oil-soaked rug, while each battery of the Iron Dome costs $100 million. Those kites say: you are immensely more powerful. But you will never win. Really. Never.”

F: The blockade is in place because Hamas is viewed as an anti-systemic movement, an unconstitutional movement so to say. That doesn't abide to the rules of the game.

Y: “Which game? The occupation?”

F: Yet when most of my readers think of Hamas, they don't think of charities. They rather think of the second intifada and suicide attacks. To Israelis, you are a terrorist.

Y: “And that's what they are for me—in light of their crimes against us."

F: A perfect start for a ceasefire.

Y: “And what should I say? We hit civilians? They hit civilians. They suffered? We suffered. Tell me about any of their dead, and I will tell you of one of our dead. Of ten of our dead. And so? That's why you are here? You are here to talk of the dead, or to avoid new casualties? But most of all, you. Do you think you are innocent, only because you are Italian—neither Arab nor Jewish? How easy it is for you to come from far away and feel wise and fair. We all have blood on our hands. You too. Where were you during these 11 years of siege? And during these 50 years of occupation? Where were you?”

Before you go.

I want you to marinate on my Case for the Resistance by having all the information I could possibly give you when thinking or talking about the injustices in Gaza. In order to do that, before October 7th and everything you’ve witnessed since, before your friends or colleagues try to sway you with statements like "but they won the land in the fair war of ‘67"—know the history, understand the context, and know what preceded the last sixteen months you’ve witnessed:

Haifa Massacre 1937, Jerusalem Massacre 1937, Haifa Massacre 1938, Balad al-Sheikh Massacre 1939, Haifa Massacre 1939, Haifa Massacre 1947, Abbasiya Massacre 1947, Al-Khisas Massacre 1947, Bab al-Amud Massacre 1947, Jerusalem Massacre 1947, Sheikh Bureik Massacre 1947, Jaffa Massacre 1948, Deir Yassin Massacre 1948, Tantura Massacre 1948, Qibya Massacre 1953, Khan Yunis Massacre 1956, Jerusalem Massacre 1967, Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982, Al-Aqsa Massacre 1990, Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994, Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002, Gaza Massacre 2008-09, Gaza Massacre 2012, Gaza Massacre 2014, Gaza Massacre 2018-19, Gaza Massacre 2021, and Gaza Genocide 2023-24-25.

But, it’s complicated.

I have no better closer than Ta-Nehisi Coates. When he was told that the conflict in Palestine was “complicated”, he called that word “horseshit.”

“Complicated was how people had described slavery and then segregation.”

“It’s complicated when you want to take something from somebody.”