Solidarity with Palestine: Know Your Enemy

Citizens of the imperial core must know the enemy of the global south. We must know their enemy, so we can know ours. For Additional reading: A Strategy for Liberation by the PFLP (linked in essay).

It has now been over 100 days since Israel began its bombardment attacking Palestinian people. According to the recent death toll, over 25,000 people have died, and thousands are missing as a result of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). As citizens living in the imperial core, we must stand against the violence the United States and other Western powers push forward. How can we be in solidarity with Palestinians if we do not know their enemy? Now more than ever, it is essential for us, in the belly of the beast, to know and recognize who the enemy is to ensure we are fighting on all fronts utilizing multiple forms of strategy. 

Palestinians' first task is survival; their fight for self-determination depends on their ability to survive. Here in the imperial core, we are indoctrinated with the idea that if we want change, we must ask nicely, we cannot anger our oppressors or make them uncomfortable, and we cannot engage in a struggle because that is not "respectable." All of this is an attempt to de-radicalize and de-revolutionize us. Oppressed people will engage in various forms of resistance and tactical strategies. Tactics and strategies that you may not agree with or like. Frankly, westerners' critique of the tactics and strategy of oppressed people in the global south does not matter. If we want to be in solidarity with Palestinians, we must know and recognize that they cannot achieve liberation without getting the boot of Israel off their neck. There are many resistance groups in Palestine right now, and we should support them all in their efforts. Resistance groups are working together to achieve liberation for their people. 

One organization in Palestine fighting for their liberation is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is a revolutionary socialist group with a Marxist-Lennist framework founded in 1967. In 1969, the PFLP published A Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine; on page 27, the organization lays out the importance of knowing your enemy because "Without a clear definition of the enemy, a clear view of the battle becomes impossible." The first battle Palestinians face in their fight for liberation is against Israel, which is a political, military, and economic power. The state of Israel weaponizes its millions of settlers to defend the colonization and racist apartheid system. 

Through propaganda, Israel has positioned itself as the safe haven for Jewish people, "waging a life-and-death battle and that consequently it has no alternative but to defend itself until its last breath." Settlers of Israel are required to join the occupational forces via conscription. Mandatory conscription allows Israel to train and quickly mobilize their population to engage in settler violence at will, giving them a tactical advantage over Palestinian resistance groups and people. This advantage does not mean Palestinians are destined to lose and should never be thought of that way. The tactical advantage requires creative and strategic planning to confront such power. 

However, Israel is not the only enemy Palestinian people must confront and battle.

"It would be a gross error to confine our view of the enemy to Israel alone, for then we should be like one who imagines that he is in conflict with one man, only to find himself face to face with ten men for whom he is not prepared."

Israel, as a political, military, and economic force, does not work alone. The settler-state is part of the much larger world Zionist movement. As the PFLP states, "Zionism as a racial, religious movement is trying to organize and recruit fourteen million Jews in all parts of the world to support Israel, protect its aggressive existence, and consolidate and expand this existence," a system that requires for Jewish people around the world to feel threatened to bolster the need for their ethnostate as a means of 'protection.' The PFLP goes further with outlining their enemy, "... when we say that our enemy is Israel plus the Zionist movement we do not add to our enemy a mere string of words but a material force of a certain size which we must take into account in making our calculations for the battle." Zionism should not solely be seen as an ideology or propaganda because it has a real material impact on the lives of Palestinians. Zionism not only provides Israel with propaganda but also people (settlers), money, alliances, and, as a result, arms because of its influence. More settlers mean more people in the IOF, means more partnerships with capitalist and Western countries, and means more money and weapons for the ethnostate. 

Israel and Zionism do not work alone and emerged within the context of a larger European colonial apparatus. Theodor Herzl is considered the father of Zionism and was born and raised in the former empire of Austria. Antisemitism was prolific in Europe during his lifetime; because of this, Herzl dreamed of a "homeland" for Jewish people. Zionism is a reactionary ideology built on wanting to escape violence and, at the same time, wanting to enact violence on others to create the supposed homeland. The homeland cannot exist on its own; it requires the people already on the land to be removed. 

We in the imperial core must understand the implications of reactionary ideas, even if under the guise of 'needing protection.’ Our position in the imperial core means the protection we may seek will be at the expense of others, particularly those in the global south. During his lifetime, the Austrian-Hungary empire was one of Europe's largest and most powerful and benefited from the greater colonial actions of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. At the time of the conception of Zionism, Herzl was part of a wider European society that saw settler-colonialism as their given right to take land, determine who was a citizen, and the extraction of resources. This system, particularly extracting resources, is another enemy Palestinians must battle. 

World imperialism is fought and defended by those with capitalist interests. To go further, "These interests consist in robbing the riches of the underdeveloped countries by purchasing them at the lowest prices and then processing these riches and reselling them at the highest prices in the markets of the same countries. By this operation, the imperialists accumulate immense profits, enabling them to increase their capital at the expense of the people's poverty, deprivation, and wretchedness." The Middle East is known for its resources, to be exact, its oil. As a strategic force, Israel is positioned in the region to protect Western capitalist interests, being the quasi-lap dog, ready to bite at the behest of its owners (the West) when its resources (access to oil) is threatened, "... support of Israel and the maintenance of its existence are fundamental matters for the interest of the world imperialism."

Israel, the world Zionist movement, and imperialism have a vested interest in ensuring the defeat of Palestinian resistance and the greater liberation of the Middle East. Once again, the PFLP stresses that they are not merely adding words to their assessment of the "enemy" but are talking about its material impact on people's lives. Through imperialism, Israel is given more arms, money, and support from global powers. This support means "Phantom jets, atomic bomb secrets…" such things that have a greater and wider impact than Palestine or the Middle East, but global security. Palestinians are facing "millions upon millions of West German marks and American dollars are converted into concrete force which increases Israel's strength and should therefore be taken into account in our calculations for the battle." 

Now, their last enemy is Arab capitalism. However, they do not draw a major distinction between Arab capitalism and world capitalism and further explain how it cannot hold independent political positions. The PFLP does not shy away from being direct either, "The millionaires of the Arab world, including merchants, bankers, feudal lords, owners of large estates, kings, emirs, and sheiks, have in fact acquired their millions by virtue of their cooperation with world capitalism." This is a tough reality to face because it means they cannot allow their shared Arab identity to stop them from destroying the imperial influences in the region, "... Arab reaction cannot but be on the side of its own interest, the continuation of which depends on the persistence of imperialism, and consequently cannot side with the masses." This reality may even be tough to understand in the imperial core. 

"These Arab reactionary forces–particularly the intelligent ones may outwardly support superficial national movements with the object of using them to settle, to their own advantage, some of their side conflicts with Israel or with world imperialism movement which aims at uprooting colonialism from our soil and building an independent economy which will serve the interest of the masses instead of going into the pockets of the few representing these reactionary forces."

The truth is there may be people in positions of power who look like us, and although they may support ideals of representation, that does not mean they support our liberation. We must be prepared to defeat their reactionary forces when the time comes. As they end their essay, the organization remains steadfast, "... our strongest enemy, the real and main enemy, is world imperialism, that Arab reaction is but one of its offshoots, and that Israel's power lies in its being one of the bases of world imperialism…" Palestine cannot win without a clear view of the enemy and all parties involved in their oppression. Their enemies are bound together and work in conjunction, not separately. As people in the imperial core, we must understand their enemy, and do more than be in solidarity, we must be their comrades in this struggle.