“He who does not own has made a promise to he who does not deserve. Then both, he who does not own and he who does not deserve were able, through force and deceit, to usurp the right of the legitimate owner and take away from him what he owned and deserved.” - Jamal Abdel Nasser
The 6th of October is arguably Arabs’ last geopolitical feat that is imprinted in the region’s collective memory because it exemplifies what anti-imperialist unity looks like when confronting Zionism in the region. Five decades after the victorious 6th of October War of 1973 that regained Sinai and expelled the Zionists from Egypt, on the 7th of October in 2023 a special military operation, called Al-Aqsa Flood, was carried out by Palestinian fighters from various political backgrounds (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other resistance groups) that broke out of the open-air prison of Gaza (densely populated, highly surveilled, and heavily sanctioned strip) and claimed various territories where the Zionists have erected their settlements.
Mainstream Western media failed at nuancing and historicizing the Zionist regime. First, they decried this operation and called it a violent terrorist attack, and the Prime Minister of the Zionists equated it with the 9/11 of 2001, pinning all the blame on Hamas and Islam. The media neglects that there are numerous resistance factions across Palestine (including in Gaza), but it is an easier lie to spread that all these militants are Islamist fundamentalists. Second, they obfuscate the violence that was inflicted on the Palestinian people in order to create the Zionist entity and its apartheid regime. Palestinians are oppressed. In order to be oppressed, violence has to be expressed. The oppressed would not be so had there been no violence inflicted upon them. Therefore, violence did not start on the 7th of October, it started in the 1948’s Nakba (the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their lands).
The response of the genocidal Zionists and their supporters
Across the collective West, as the October 7th events unfolded, every head of state and those in notable positions regurgitated the apartheid apologist talking point that the Zionist entity “has the right to defend itself”. These mouthpieces of apartheid gave the green light for the Zionists to carpet bomb Gaza, killing civilians, with a death toll of more than 2,700. Further, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented that white phosphorus has been used, leading to fatal burns, loss of breath, and biological consequences that we will see for generations to come. The US being the Zionists’ strongest ally with more than $3 billion in aid given annually, sent two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean to aid in the bombing of civilians in Gaza. NATO vowed to defend the Zionists and the Secretary General Stoltenberg said that the Zionist entity “does not stand alone”.
The Zionist entity declared a state of war on the people of Gaza (2 million people, housed in 360 square kilometers) and they have explicitly stated their genocidal intent. The Zionist Defense Ministry explicitly stated his entity’s determination on committing genocide against the people of Gaza: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.” The Zionists’ objective is to clear out northern Gaza for a potential ground invasion. This is a textbook case of genocide and a war crime. When Russia was targeting militarized civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen said a year ago that “Russia’s attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes. Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity and heating with winter coming — these are acts of pure terror”. Yet, a year later, she went to the Zionist entity and vowed to support the genocidal attack on Gaza.
The events are still unfolding. More than one million people are fleeing to southern Gaza after Zionist airplanes dropped pamphlets threatening to wipe out the northern part. It has been documented that aircraft killed at least 70 civilians fleeing southwards in the designated “safe corridors”, and that a hospital was targeted massacring more than 500 civilians. As people flee southwards, Palestinians are adamant that they will not flee their home country, and they will not allow for another Nakba to take place.
What is to be done? Anti-reactionism, anti-Zionism, and anti-imperialism!
"Were there not an Israel, the US would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region" – Joe Biden
There is a lot of confusion amongst bewildered people of the Global South in how to understand the construction and the existence of the Zionist entity. While acknowledging the holocaust, denouncing Nazism, and respecting the freedom of the Jewish people to practice their religion safely without any persecution is a must, to establish a Zionist entity with its current imperialistic characteristics is an existential threat not only to neighboring countries but also to the world. Mao Zedong astutely articulated this in 1965, "Imperialism is afraid of China and of the Arabs. Israel and Formosa [Taiwan] are bases of imperialism in Asia. You are the front gate of the great continent, and we are the rear. Their goal is the same. . . Asia is the biggest continent in the world, and the West wants to continue exploiting it. The West does not like us, and we must understand this fact. The Arab battle against the West is the battle against Israel. So boycott Europe and America, 0 Arabs!”. An even clearer historical juncture that shows how Zionism as the facade of imperialism in the region is when France, Britain and the Zionists attacked Egypt in 1956 when the latter nationalized the Suez Canal, depriving the imperialists from usurping rent and granting Egyptians the control of their land and resources. These historical articulations should ground the understanding of how imperialism enables and emboldens the existence of the Zionist entity.
While scores of people in the Global South and the West went out and protested the genocide, we must diagnose the key contradictions that enable and prolong settler colonialism by foregrounding three key conceptions:
- Anti-Reactionism: It has become common knowledge that the US has more than 800 military bases across the globe, with an annual military budget over $810 billion. A number of these bases are housed in reactionary Arab states. It is farcical that Arab regimes are speaking against the genocide while American planes are flying from these countries’ bases to aid the Zionists in their crimes. These reactionary regimes are protected by the US in the case of a people’s revolt as Vijay Prashad noted. In simpler words, there can be no support for the Palestinian cause of liberation without the removal of US bases in the region.
As for the reactionary Arab states that have normalized relations following the so-called Abraham Accords, they have benefited from the Zionist entity in how to spy and oppress the masses. The Zionist NSO Group, with its Pegasus spyware, has been used in Morocco to spy on the people of Western Sahara; the spyware was also used in the assassination of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. By using Palestine as a human laboratory, the Zionist entity is exporting its oppressive technology to reactionary friendly regimes in order to aid them in staying in power.
- Anti-Zionism: The struggle for African liberation is tied to the liberation of the Palestinian people, as Cabral orated. The Zionist entity is racist in how it treats Black people in the occupied territories but also abroad. The Zionist police force, for example, is training American police officers on how to impose systems of militarized control upon Black communities through their GILEE (Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange) program, where the graduates are practicing in Georgia’s Cop City what the Zionists have taught them. The history of the Zionist entity in Africa shows that it sided with the oppressors during the apartheid regimes of South Africa and Namibia, and they aided a secessionist movement that wanted to balkanize the African continent into weaker/smaller states, like they did with the Biafra region in Nigeria. The Zionists are not friends of the African people, and progressives must stand against their intended observer status in the African Union. It is imperative to stand against Zionist policies in Palestine and abroad.
- Anti-Imperialism: The expansion of US-led militarism and capital should be central to any analysis of this geopolitical juncture, beyond identitarian formulations that complicate understanding of the material contradictions. Take Lindsey Graham, who in siding with the Zionist regime in its pogrom against Muslims, stated that, ”We are in a religious war… do whatever you have to do. Level the place!”. It is ironic that this very senator is supporting the genocide of Muslims in Palestine, yet he is against the alleged genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China. If we center imperialism, we can clearly see how Islam is always weaponized in service of imperialism, either to dismantle non-aligned states – such as Yugoslavia with the KLA; in Libya with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group; in Afghanistan with the Taliban; in Syria where Jake Sullivan stated to Hillary Clinton that “Al-Qaeda is on our side”; now in China – or to legitimize US imperialistic and militaristic expansion by claiming War on Terror.
In simpler terms, one cannot be in support of Palestine while being supportive of NATO, of the US, of the Zionists bombing of Syria and Iran, and of normalizing relations with the Zionist entity. Centering Palestine gives clarity as to why the West is adamant in destroying the axis of resistance: Syria, Lebanon (and by extension, Hezbollah), and Iran.
A need for a people’s response
Given Arab regimes’ reactionary and performative stance on the ongoing genocide, it is up to the masses in the region and across the globe to target US-Zionist interests in whatever way they can. Revolutionary Arab leaders in the 1970s blocked oil exports through OPEC; Arab laborers in the 60s boycotted French, West German, and American ships from unloading their goods. It is through these lessons we must learn how to act progressively:
- A people’s sanctions (sanctions from below): as I have shown above, the Zionist entity has infiltrated global politics and markets, and it is upon progressive anti-imperialist to map their products and services and strategically boycott them, joining the Boycott, Sanction, and Divest campaign. This includes boycotting interlinked products (e.g., Amazon and Google), which the Zionist entity relies on for clouding services in order to conduct its militarized and commodified surveillance of Palestinians. Amazon and Google have provided Project Nimbus with the needed technology for the Zionist regime to conduct its apartheid practices. It is a necessity to map similar products and boycott them.
- People in the imperialist core: Hassan Harb provocatively asks, “Has the Western left, despite all its opposition, ever managed to prevent a US or NATO-led bombing in the region?” Clearly, the answer is no. Given the existent “rules-based world order” and how it is greenlighting genocide, the masses of the imperialist core ought to fight alongside the Global South for creating an alternative world order that is more equitable and more just; to side with the Global South’s objective of liberation is not done through symbolic gestures, they must be accompanied by class suicide.
As we witness the genocide of the Palestinians, we are reminded of the Somali dictum, “dhiiga kuma dhaqaqo? [does not your blood move?]”. I ask you, dear readers: Does not your blood move? If so, then act!
Essam Elkorghli is a Libyan PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He researches Libya’s modern political history and contemporary imperialism in education. He is a labor organizer with the Graduate Employees’ Organization, assistant editor for Middle East Critique Journal, and a member of the Global Pan African Movement.
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