Support our “glorious dead;” support Palestinian armed resistance
On the weekend of the 75th Nakba commemoration, I was in Toronto. A rally in support of Palestine was scheduled down the street from my hotel at Yonge and Dundas Square in the afternoon, not far from Trinity Square, where Canadians have erected a memorial commemorating their “glorious dead” of wars past.
At breakfast that morning, I couldn’t miss the CNN screen above the cereal stand silently flashing its ticker tape about the “Deadly clashes ongoing between Israel and Palestinians” and “1 Killed, 5 wounded as rocket hits Israeli Apartment Building.”
Over the heads of the oblivious hotel guests enjoying their breakfast, I fumed under my breath. No “clashes” these. Israeli raids on the besieged Gaza Strip were continuing for the 5th day “leaving at least 33 Palestinians dead, including children, the elderly and members of Palestinian armed resistance groups who responded to the attacks.”
As both Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network and Masar Badil — Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement have made clear, “these attacks are ongoing Zionist war crimes, funded and supported by US and Western imperialism, a key example of the ongoing colonial violence perpetrated against the Palestinian people, as well as the strength and steadfastness of the people and their resistance.”
Israel’s calculation was to conduct a ‘shock and awe’ campaign, slaughtering targeted families and terrorizing the Gaza Strip. But given how the Palestinian armed resistance has mobilized itself forcing Israel to evacuate at least 85 towns around the Strip, including Sderot in western Naqab, Israel’s terror tactics are once again falling on deaf ears.
As a settler-colonial state created by terrorism, including when Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1946 killing more than 90 people, Israel understands best the language of terror. Terrorism is imprinted in its DNA. As is a natural reaction for any usurper, Israel not only metes out terror, it also feels terrorized whether the Palestinian armed resistance is quiet or active.
By never giving up on justice, we Palestinians cast terror in the heart of the enemy even while we are sleeping. In its call to the Palestinian people in the Shatat (diaspora) and the Palestine liberation and solidarity movement, Masar Badil affirmed the role of the Palestinian armed resistance:
“The Palestinian armed resistance are currently engaged in a major battle responding to the crimes of the occupation forces: assassination, siege, colonialism, the attacks on Jerusalem, racism, exploitation, oppression. Palestinians across Palestine, from the river to the sea, are suffering daily from these colonial policies.”
The Palestinian resistance is at the forefront of the battle against imperialism, Zionism and reaction. Glory to our martyred dead.
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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
