Within anti-imperialist analyses of the present moment, there are two major aspects: one that focuses on the many hopeful developments we’re seeing right now, and one that focuses on the overwhelmingly sad realities we’re also witnessing. It’s true that the globe is going in a direction of multipolarity, equity, and international cooperation, where countries mutually build towards human progress. This week’s BRICS summit will accelerate that shift, with Russia planning to introduce a new blockchain currency that’s going to further weaken the dollar. China, Russia, Iran, and a growing number of other countries are constructing a beautiful future, one that will be free from the dictates of monopoly capital. None of this means, though, that the genocides which imperialism is carrying out will be undone.
These genocides are accelerating, with Gaza, Lebanon, and the other most vulnerable places being subjected to a new version of the violence that’s been perpetrated against peoples like the Armenians. We’re seeing the Zionist entity repeat the same process that took the lives of 1.5 million Armenians when the Ottoman empire unleashed its wrath over a hundred years ago. And because the genocidal states of today have modern technology, they can murder all the more efficiently. The suffering and loss of life that we’ve already seen is incomprehensible; almost half a year ago, honest observers could already argue that 200,000 Gazans had been exterminated, and there’s no telling how big the number is now. It largely depends on how many of the people with injuries and diseases will perish from not having access to healthcare, because there are just four functioning hospitals left in Gaza; the Zionists have made sure to destroy or sabotage all the others.
Faced with this reality, all we can do from a strategic perspective is be vigilant for the next opportunities to get justice. With each new moment, we need to keep close watch on where the strategic balance is, making sure we don’t neglect any openings for weakening the imperial beast. That’s the lesson I take from this genocide: we must constantly work to keep our strategic posture correct, because that’s what keeps the anti-imperialist struggle on the path towards rectifying this gargantuan injustice. These assaults on Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon show the violent character of the enemy we’re facing; if we act complacent, and believe the momentum of history alone can bring us victory, then this enemy can keep the murder going indefinitely.
Those who are fighting the Zionist entity understand this. When Russia began its denazification effort in Ukraine, the leaders of the Palestinian resistance took note, and adjusted their posture accordingly. Hamas political bureau member Abu Marzouk said about Russia’s military operation: “One lesson of the Russian-Ukrainian war is that the era of US unipolar domination has ended. The US was not in a position to declare war on Russia; those who cannot declare war will not set the international agenda. From here we can begin to talk about the future of the Zionist entity.” Then next year, Hamas carried out the Al Aqsa Flood operation, demonstrating the boldness that the resistance now felt was appropriate; Russia had shown that the imperialists are now in a more vulnerable place than they used to be, and that the empire’s enemies have numerous new strategic openings. Around the globe, armed struggle has become an expedient tactic in many more places than it once was.
The situation was not always conducive to the kind of fight that Hamas and its coalition are now waging. Half a century ago, when the Palestinian Liberation Organization was wed to a mindset of armed struggle, it became apparent that the conditions demanded another method of resistance. A big moment of clarity on this was the PLO’s defeat in Lebanon in 1982, but the failures of its strategy were already on display; at that stage of the struggle, making armed action the central focus had the effect of strengthening Zionism.
As was observed by the anti-imperialist thinker Eqbal Ahmad, by embracing this strategic posture the PLO was fortifying the enemy’s commitment towards crushing Palestine; which could only bring Palestine further from victory at a time when Zionism was still on the ascendancy, and Palestine’s biggest allies (namely the USSR) were in decline. During this era, the Intifada was able to advance the struggle much better than the PLO, because it employed a practice that could expand Palestine’s global support; namely peaceful rebellions that exposed the Zionist entity’s inherently violent nature, and demonstrated Palestine’s role as a victim of colonization.
Then the anti-imperialist camp gained much more strength, worldwide consciousness about Palestine massively grew, and the Palestinians tried peaceful protests again. The outcome made the world’s stomach sick: the IDF shot journalists, shot children, and shot disabled people, all in response to a nonviolent march for gaining the right to return. This happened in 2018, but these are the kinds of images that stick with people forever. When Russia revealed how weak the U.S. empire had become, the resistance knew it had a real chance of launching an armed struggle that actually brought an end to “Israel.” Through the Great Return March, it was confirmed that peaceful tactics alone weren’t enough; from that point on, the resistance was looking for a sign that armed action would produce a beneficial outcome, and Russia provided that sign.
Al Aqsa Flood was a strategic gamble; part of why Hamas did it was because Gaza had come to be considered unlivable for several years earlier, and there would need to be some sort of upset in order to avoid a future of unending mass torture. Hamas succeeded at creating such an upset, because the new conditions made armed action useful in a way that it hadn’t used to be. Now “Israeli” society is in the process of collapse, Zionism is on track to lose its demographic dominance as “Israelis” flee, and the creation of a Palestinian state is inevitable given the direction of global sentiments.
According to Ahmad’s analysis, it was always plausible that a moment like this one would come. Arun Kundnani summarizes the parts of Ahmad’s theories that are compatible with armed struggle, explaining how he only really opposed arms when arms get in the way of better tactics:
Ahmad thought there are circumstances in which armed struggle is necessary. What matters is that it is carried out within a broader framework of revolutionary politics, so that it is not indiscriminate in choosing its victims and aims at broadening political support rather than alienating potential allies. Movements that ground their struggles in a particular territory and seek the revolutionary mobilisation of the peoples who live there tend to be ‘sociologically and psychologically selective’ in their use of violence, he pointed out…Effective resistance, he believed, requires a flexible approach in which multiple military and political tactics are combined, depending on the adversary’s position and the broader political context, rather than seeing violence and non-violence as absolute and mutually exclusive strategies in themselves. In this sense, Ahmad’s analysis of political violence had a different basis from recent left-wing condemnations of Hamas’ violence on straightforward moral grounds.
The Palestinian resistance, the broader Axis of Resistance, and Washington’s Eurasian geopolitical challengers have increasingly been orienting themselves around the battlefield. The states which seek economic independence have come to the same strategic mindset that stateless anti-colonial resistors have; the mindset where no tactic can be wholly discarded, and there are moments when armed action is required. There’s no question that a new world is coming, and that the economic shift away from unipolarity will become complete. The empire is committing multiple genocides as I write this, though, which means we can’t be passive. We need to account for the violent nature of the enemy we face, or this enemy will manage to take many more lives than it could otherwise.
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