Palestine is all of us

Ever since the Oct. 7 events at the Supernova rave festival on an illegal Israeli settlement, just over three miles from Gaza, the corporate media has labeled this latest phase of the heroic Intifada (uprising) as a war just between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement.  

This is a myth meant to disarm activists and confuse the masses, especially in the U.S. While Hamas has played a leading role in the armed resistance against the terrorist Zionist state, this movement has consistently made clear that, in essence, the struggle is between Israel and Palestine. Hamas and other liberation forces have never distanced themselves from the masses, and the besieged Palestinian masses have never distanced themselves from the Intifada.  

Consider the fact that according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, as of Nov. 19 over 12,400 Palestinians have been killed, many of them children. In both Gaza and the West Bank, Israel has declared war on the entire Palestinian population.

It bears repeating that this is a racist genocidal war. Demonizing Hamas is just an excuse and distraction for this ongoing ethnic cleansing, in some ways similar to what the Koreans and the Vietnamese faced during their struggles for liberation against U.S. militarism.

Hamas considers every one of its fighters, along with every adult and child — including the premature babies who died at the hands of the Israeli occupying forces — a martyr. Being Palestinian means that since birth, the Israeli state has viewed every Palestinian, even children, as a threat to its existence.  

The Palestinian people have given their lives to the just cause of liberating themselves, their stolen land and exploited labor from 75 years of white supremacist, settler colonialism backed by the high-tech weaponry of imperialism, especially from the U.S. 

Hamas and its allies – the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and others – understand the strategic role that the world movement plays in supporting their resistance on the ground in all its forms.  

These movements frequently make appeals for millions of people — in the developing countries and imperialist centers — to stay in the streets, to carry out direct actions, to boycott, divest and sanction Israel and to shut down schools and workplaces in order to put pressure on their own governments to end complicity with Zionist apartheid.   

Liberation fighters in neighboring Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen are also targeting Israeli forces on their borders along with bases of the U.S. military, which has no right to be on their soil or in their waters.    

The Palestinian resistance, in whatever form, deserves and needs our steadfast solidarity to not only eventually abolish the heinous Zionist state, which never had the right to seize Palestinian lands, but to take a gigantic step forward in eradicating imperialism worldwide. Imperialism is the enemy of every worker of every nationality, religion, gender, gender expression, sexuality, disability and social status.  

The Palestinian people are now on the front lines of the battle for national liberation and worker emancipation worldwide, and we must continue to struggle shoulder to shoulder with them. Palestine is all of us.  

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!