Weekly Editorial
Gaza exists and fights back as a prison where the Palestinian people are corralled and concentrated in great numbers, blocked off from the rest of the world and restricted daily. This is one aspect. There is another aspect: Gaza exists as Palestine as well, a zone in which the resistance rules and opposition to the criminal Zionism unites the broad masses of people, and where resistance fighters swim among them. Both of these aspects determine the character of the collective resistance. Whether it is stones and bottles, improvised explosives, a network of fortifications or tunnels, or para-gliders and motorbikes, the people and the organized resistance use every means to creatively and militarily rebel. So, Gaza exists as Palestine, a prison, and a base area of the resistance.
On October 7th the National Resistance Front of Palestine lead the most dramatic military incursion across the perimeter into the Zionist occupied area controlled by the state of Israel. They prepared for this attack in detail and had every action planned. The prison that is Gaza, is surrounded by a wall, not unlike any other maximum security prison, only it is a prison controlled by the prisoners, who are armed—which is also not unprecedented. Surrounding the prison wall is the Kibbutzim, which are militarized colonies, as well as a network of military bases. These were the targets of the attack and the places where prisoners of war were seized by the National Resistance Front. The prisoners of war were removed into the heart of the base area known as the Gaza strip, and those prisoners of war held by the resistance who have been exchanged so far have reported fair treatment. These facts make al Aqsa Flood a legitimate military attack on a larger hostile force which keeps or has kept the entire population of Gaza along with more than 800,000 Palestinians imprisoned since 1967, many without trial or anything resembling fair treatment. The flood was, is and will be about prisoners.
Once the National Resistance Front of Palestine has taken their prisoners of war back into the area in which they have mass support, military networks, tunnels and weapons, they fight on more favorable footing and maneuver more effectively; they draw the enemy in and surround them, showing as an arrogant delusion the proclaimed goal of imperialism and Zionism to “destroy Hamas.” Anyone closely studying the methods used finds the tactics expressed by Chairman Mao Zedong, and this is a positive development that the tactics and strategy of the world proletarian revolution, those used in peoples war in China, Cambodia, and Vietnam to successfully expel invaders and conquer power, as well as those being used today in Peru, India, the Philippines and Turkey, are being utilized by the national resistance movements against a superior military force. The Palestinian national resistance, like all nationalist struggles against imperialism, forms the base of the world revolution, and there is a dialectical relationship with the socialist revolution which leads. The events in Palestine only confirm the principles of Maoism.
When prisoners fight back, seize control of their prison, and stand firm in their glorious resistance, the old enemy state which dominates and imprisons can only respond with genocidal means. The enemy’s use of genocide does not speak to their strength but to their weakness. The enemy resorts to genocide when it is unable to force the separation between the guerrilla and the masses, when it fears every one of the masses as a “terrorist” or as tomorrow’s terrorist—even if today they are children. The reaction is correct: when the people are tormented and when they are led by an armed resistance force, the children today will be guerrillas tomorrow. The enemy lays awake at night tormented by the nightmares it has created through spilling the peoples blood. The people proudly become imperialism’s nightmare all around the world.
The weakness conveyed by genocide is no less weak even when the genocide has been completed. There is also a precedent for this in the peoples wars. In all peoples wars, but most notably in Peru, the prisoners had taken control of the prison, turned it into a revolutionary base which served the peoples war, and the old state led by Alan Garcia responded in 1986 with genocide. The prisoners comprised of the masses, combatants, and Communists fought back to the last person. There are only two perspectives: that of resistance and that of submission. Those who resist understand the Day of Heroism, June 19, 1986 as a great moral, political, and military victory over the reaction that stands as an example for all. The other perspective, the one that is white and not red, is to only mourn the dead, to see them as victims and not as fighters. This is wrong; while it condemns the enemy actions, it does nothing to stop them.
We hope that the great day of October 7th will enter the annals of the people’s history as a day of glorious resistance in which the contributions made in blood by the Palestinian people will be forever observed and celebrated as a great day of resistance around the world, and this this point of view, support for those who fight to death rather than live as hapless victims is the perspective that triumphs. May al Aqsa Flood arm us all with the spirit to never submit or yield.
Photo: Gaza military parade, 2021, Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua
