by the Editorial Board
The moral, political, and military victory represented by the blow struck against Zionism and its master US imperialism on October 7, 2023 still shines bright as it marks one year. In October of last year, the big talking heads of imperialism spewed vows of hatred and lies, proclaiming against the will of the world’s people that they would “destroy Hamas,” and a year later this wretched vow rings hollow and the vultures have abandoned such talk. The glorious and courageous resistance of the Palestinians still inspire people of conscience to rise up in condemnation of genocide, occupation, and the big beast on clay feet, US imperialism.
The Democratic Party has been frantically trying to figure out how to avoid a real blow in the elections from those who have stood up against their constant increases of arms to Israel. It is a mafia in crisis, one that sweats and paces around the little corner in which it now finds itself. As the oppressor Zionist entity pivots to full scale butchery of the Lebanese people and we hear the same old bile about “destroying Hezbollah”, the Democrat Mafia and the Zionists have a lot of worrying to do; their shared project is in real danger. Their hopes that the students going back to class and the voters returning to their stable and forgetting about the bloody Middle East are proving as empty as their preposterous slogans of “destroying Hamas” or “disarming Hezbollah.”
Instead of drowning the resistance in a sea of blood, resistance forces have only multiplied over the last year. Ansarallah, the anti-imperialist force operating out of Yemen, has answered with ballistic missiles, drones, and a successful maritime blockade. Special Forces of the Israeli state have been routed on the ground in Lebanon—Hezbollah guerrillas responded to the invasion, resulting in 8 elite Israeli troops killed and another 80 injured on the first day of the invasion, with more on the following days. Iran has dispatched hundreds of missiles directly into the heart of the occupation, targeting military bases and intelligence gathering sites. There is nowhere in the world without demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Last year, Israel sought to normalize its image and to isolate Palestine from the world, and the opposite has transpired.
The main contradiction in the world today is between the nations oppressed by imperialism and imperialism (mainly US imperialism, as the world’s greatest oppressor), and this contradiction interacts with others: the contradiction between the imperialists themselves, the contradiction between the working class and the capitalist class, and the contradiction between socialism and capitalism—which currently exists only in theory as there is no socialist country today. The one-year mark of the glorious deed known as al-Aqsa Flood, called by the imperialists and their press “the October 7th attacks,” prove a very important fact, that the main forces of liberation locked in armed struggle against imperialism create favorable conditions for revolution within the imperialist countries themselves. Today the consciousness among the US workers and students is still relatively low, but a generation is being trained in anti-imperialist struggles who owe their awakenings to the Flood.
There are two basic perspectives: those who stand with the imperialists and their lackeys, and those who stand with the anti-imperialist armed resistance. The centrist position, which condemns “both sides” in their own way, provides cover for the openly pro-imperialist, pro-Zionist position by negating the one way in which liberation is achieved—through the barrel of the gun. This liberal bourgeois perspective concludes that an unprincipled peace must be imposed upon the people of the region. They condemn the vulgar, open butchery in form, but seek compromise to preserve the root of it. They find commonality with revisionism and rightism around the world and prefer a pessimistic and negative view of the situation, focusing on death tolls while denying or downplaying the armed struggle. If a reader were to only trust such sources they would sink into cynicism and be convinced that the giant mechanisms of imperialism are quite unassailable, lapping up the tasteless gruel foisted on the world by Israel and the United States, a myth eviscerated by al-Aqsa Flood.
In the days leading up to the glorious anniversary of al-Aqsa Flood, the armed resistance in Palestine continues with the armed support from other resistance forces in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. Add to this the hundreds of missiles fired directly at Israel on October 1 by Iran and others who have been drawn by their own interests into the anti-imperialist struggle. These events only confirm that the Flood was a political, moral, and military victory which will be inscribed on the people’s banners forever.
Understanding al-Aqsa Flood One Year Later
The lessons are too many to list and will continue making themselves apparent for years to come. For the Communists in formation in the United States, the first and foremost lesson is that of leadership and forces. The principle is this: mass support and accumulation cannot be separated at all from intensification. Every upheaval and revolution confirms this; the Flood confirms it magnificently.
Hamas leads the struggle against the Zionist occupation of Palestine, against US imperialism in the region, and for the self-determination of the Palestinian people. This fact cannot be denied, and upholding the objective truth cannot be rejected on the basis of their ideology. This confirms the fact that Communists must continue fighting to link the national liberation struggles—which constitute the base force of the world proletarian revolution—with the socialist revolutionary struggles in the imperialist countries. This happens explicitly through promotion of the ideology of the international proletariat and Chairman Mao’s theory of New Democratic revolution. It is inevitable that all revolutionary liberation struggles under non-proletarian leadership will fall under the influence of one imperialist power or superpower. Only proletarian leadership can secure national independence in the strategic sense. Without the Communist Party to answer this question, the immediate task of anti-imperialist national forces—who must be supported—falls to the armed resistance of other classes. The combination of accumulation of forces with the intensification of armed struggle and the constitution or reconstitution of the communist parties must be understood in the present situation, hence the current task to unite under Maoism.
Secondly, the Communists in formation in the US must grasp firmly that the Flood and the ongoing armed resistance by the liberation forces in Palestine—and now Lebanon—confirm in their own ways the universality of People’s Wars. How? What the world has witnessed is that a small force of armed militants based fundamentally on popular support of the masses was able to both deal serious blows and survive the onslaught of a superior armed militarist society with the backing of the sole hegemonic imperialist power, the USA. They were able to launch mobile and guerrilla war from a highly surveilled urban environment, where they maintain and control base areas. Events have confirmed that such actions reveal the durability of the anti-imperialist pro-people forces and the desperation of the craven, bloodthirsty, and decomposing imperialist forces. Exploding pagers, bunker bombs, and the wholesale destruction of cities and civilians are signs of desperation and not military prowess, confidence, or strength; these facts only deepen the moral, political, and military loss of the state of Israel stemming from the Flood. Events confirm that a well-timed blow and the courage to never submit or yield against a greater enemy inspires waves of resistance around the world and even in the imperialist countries themselves, a fact that exacerbates the desperation of the enemy. The armed resistance of the liberation forces in Palestine form part of the world proletarian revolution.
Thirdly, Israel was struggling for legitimacy, and it has never been condemned as much as it is today—today it lacks even the shambles of legitimacy it enjoyed on October 6 of last year. Its process of normalization has been disrupted and will not easily be regained. In the clearest possible manner, the flag of Palestine has been thrust into the hands of people around the world. With the correct revolutionary leadership, these recently activated anti-imperialist forces can be developed into militants with a long term revolutionary perspective, trained by the communists and forged into the best fighters.
Fourthly, US imperialism has become increasingly mired in conflicts around the world, and its planned pivot to outmaneuver and contain Chinese social-imperialism in the East has been delayed. The US has been forced to divert forces from the Pacific to the Mediterranean while it increasingly bolsters military “aid” to its military and industrial outpost Taiwan. Its attempt to win a moral victory against Russian imperialism and its hypocritical fight for “democracy” has also been exposed, as it remains among the only countries in the world openly defending and protecting Israel’s genocide. The economies of a number of imperialist countries and Israel have also suffered due to Ansarallah’s heroic maritime blockade and the successful acts of the resistance that have shattered the Israeli economy.
Finally, serious damage has been done to the electoral farce in the United States, with more and more young people rejecting the lies and pandering of the Democratic Party crooks. The Flood has brought to the world’s attention the monster that the state of Israel has been and will always be as long as it exists, showing it to be anti-people, anti-democratic, and genocidal. The shameless support for this state has brought into clear view for many in the US the real nature of the imperialist ruling class and their representatives in both the major political parties.
Al-Aqsa Flood was not a simple attack on Israel; it was a rallying cry for the people of the world to condemn the oppression of nations by imperialism and its lackeys. It is not enough to take up the Palestinian flag in denunciation of the state of Israel, but to develop this truth in leaps, serving the formation of greater struggles to condemn and destroy imperialism outright the world over. To understand this means to take up the red flag of the international proletariat, which leads the world in ushering imperialism into its grave.
Photo: Representatives of various Palestinian resistance factions meet to strengthen unity around armed struggle for the destruction of Israel and the construction of a Palestinian state.
