https://newsocialist.org.uk/gaza-is-free-and-does-not-bargain/

The statements of the Resistance groups are a valuable source of knowledge about what's happening in Palestine. So why aren’t British journalists paying attention?

The Israeli idea is that the real problem does not lie with the official Palestinian leadership; it is the Palestinian community which rejects the Israeli maximalist solution and expresses its readiness to oppose it, supplying an endless flow of fighters to the resistance organisations and rendering every possibility of agreement with the Palestinian negotiators impossible to implement.

Walid Daqqah

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

Calgacus, quoted in Tacitus.

On December 30th, an ‘Israeli’ soldier being held by the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) was killed following a failed rescue attempt. In an official statement, the group described the “many human losses” they inflicted, and how “dragging behind the tails of disappointment and defeat…the zionist enemy in its stupidity and arrogance, targeted that location with its air force to cover the retreat of its defeated soldiers which led to the killing of the prisoner”. The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades have also reported that they are in possession of IOF laptops and a set of flash drives, which were seized “during the heroic Al-Aqsa Flood battle” and through which they have “obtained… valuable and precious information, military plans, and private data… [from which] our fighters are now benefitting.”

On January 4th, US and “coalition” forces, quite possibly including Britain, assassinated Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces commander Taleb Al-Saedi in Karbala. The Popular Mobilisation Forces are part of the Iraqi Armed Forces and were cohered predominantly to fight ISIS. The PMF’s role as part of the Iraqi state, albeit with considerable autonomy, gives their position a contradictory character with regard to the US and Britain. They are among the most effective forces fighting ISIS, but, at the same time, elements of the PMF are designated by the US as terrorist groups. On the most basic level, the irony of assassinating a commander in a serious anti-ISIS military force, when fighting ISIS is the justification for the ongoing US and British presence, should be obvious. On top of this, the assassination of a figure who is, essentially, a senior commander in the Iraqi Army is a grotesque violation of sovereignty. In response to the assassination, the Iraqi government have opened talks aiming to set a timetable for the total withdrawal of US and coalition forces. The US has not accepted this demand, though it seems possible that their military presence will be reduced.

The wider context for the assassination of Al-Saedi is the extent of Iraqi solidarity with Palestine.

‘Israel’ cannot be abstracted from world imperialism under the hegemony of the US, and the other side of this, of course, is that regional conflicts cannot be abstracted from the question of Palestine.
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Both these stories matter a great deal, but I have seen no mention of them in the official press. Moreover, they have barely been mentioned in more critical outlets, or even on British pro-Palestinian social media. Only after the Iraqi Resistance killed three US soldiers on January 28th, “with the explicit purpose of stopping the zionist genocide on Gaza”, and the US immediately ordered reprisal strikes, did Western media begin to pay attention to the extent of Resistance attacks in Iraq and Syria—mostly by reporting on US Defence Department press conferences. One such report, in the Guardian, tells us that “[US Defence Secretary Lloyd] Austin acknowledged that there had been 160 strikes on US bases in Syria and Iraq since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October,” but offers little more explanation of the situation, and no broader contextualisation. In April, following Iran’s response to the ‘Israeli’ attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the Guardian published a just-about-adequate piece aiming to contextualise ‘Israel’-Iran relations, which stated that, “after years in which both sides operated within the framework of a largely undeclared set of ‘rules’, Israel… bulldozed through every red line”. However, the analysis entirely ignored the existing role of the US in Iraq and Syria. The US appears only as a benign and fully external agent—but nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is, ‘Israel’ cannot be abstracted from world imperialism under the hegemony of the US, and the other side of this, of course, is that regional conflicts cannot be abstracted from the question of Palestine. The US is aiming to suppress—on behalf of ‘Israel’, but ultimately to secure its own hegemony—solidarity action with Palestine across the Arab nation.

Discovering this information has required no specialist journalistic skills, let alone any particular excellence as a journalist (or, come to that financial resources and time). I do not speak Arabic (or Hebrew, or Farsi), and nor do I have any Palestinian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Iranian or Yemeni contacts on the ground. All that is needed to access this information is a mobile phone, a degree of curiosity, and a belief that Palestinians (and people across the Arab world) are fully human, possessing the capacity not only to suffer intolerable situations, but, crucially, to resist them. It was this that led me to the Telegram channel Resistance News Network, which publishes statements in English from the various Palestinian Resistance groups, as well as other groups engaged in armed resistance in solidarity with (or as part of) the Palestinian struggle, including the Iraqi Resistance, Hezbollah, and Ansar Allah. There is no technical reason why any British journalist should be unable to do this. And yet…

This scrupulous ignorance largely extends even to pro-Palestinian journalists and outlets. Has Owen Jones ever drawn on Resistance News Network? Has Novara? Even Declassified, who have otherwise exposed important elements of the situation, such as the involvement of British planes in the genocide (via Cyprus), have ignored it. The dominant tendency on the British left has thus far been to focus on the figure of the Palestinian as perpetual victim, following a line of argument most powerfully articulated in Judith Butler’s Frames of War,
which tends to stress the equal “grievability” of Palestinian life. In the third part of this series, I will emphasise the task of acknowledging that resistant capacity as part of Palestinian humanity. Even Electronic Intifada,

despite far more clearly advocating the right of Palestinians to armed resistance, and resistance in the concrete rather than merely in the abstract, very rarely draws on the statements of the Resistance groups.

To pose the question of why journalists in Britain have assiduously ignored Resistance News Network as a potential source may seem naïve; in fact, it opens up a further set of important questions.

Framing the analysis

December 30th is not the only time the IOF has killed hostages since the beginning of Al-Aqsa Flood. Indeed, it continues to do so. On the very obvious level, this gives the lie to a central ideological justification for the genocidal attack on Gaza. We can see by its actions that ‘Israel’ is indifferent to the fate of the hostages, whose rescue is meant to justify the very actions that are killing them. As Hamas have asserted, “Netanyahu’s decision to invade Rafah means that he and his army made a decision to kill the prisoners”. Almost all the ‘Israeli’ hostages who have returned home returned not as a result of the actions of the IOF, but through negotiations and the brief truce in late November 2023. The one “successful” IOF mission to date—the Nuseirat massacre—saw 4 hostages retrieved. At least 274 Palestinians were killed. What should be clear is that there is a possibility of a negotiated settlement that brings the hostages home, but ‘Israel’ — and the USA, given its involvement in the massacre — prefer genocide. Indeed, they prefer genocide including at the possible cost of the lives of hostages: the DFLP have hinted that hostages may have been killed in the Nuseirat massacre, along with the many others killed by ‘Israel’, both on and since October 7th. What happened on December 30th, however, had distinctive elements, which further undermine official narratives.

The revelation, in mid-December, that ‘Israeli’ forces had killed three of their own citizens, who had escaped captivity in Gaza and were waving a white flag, was extensively discussed, and had political impacts within ‘Israel’. More critical voices pointed out that the IOF killing unarmed people in Gaza who were waving white flags was suggestive of extensive killings of surrendering Palestinians. This, of course, never registered within the official discourses. The important thing, implicitly, was not that the victims were waving a white flag, but that they were ‘Israeli’. Within ‘Israel’ and the imperial core there has been significantly less concern about the number of captives killed in the ‘normal course’ of ‘Israel’’s genocidal bombing of Gaza, whose impacts are intensified by the destruction of Palestinian medical infrastructure.

More recently, on May 7th, Hamas announced the death of the hostage Judith Weinstein, who died “due to severe injuries she sustained along with another prisoner after the bombing of their site of detention a month ago”. As with so many others who have died in Gaza, what killed Weinstein was not only the bombs but, as the statement noted, “the lack of intensive medical care…because of the enemy’s destruction of hospitals in the Gaza Strip”. On May 11th, the Al-Qassam Brigades announced the death of Nadav Popplewell, again killed following a bombing, but predominantly due to the impossibility of medical treatment for his injuries. Strikingly, Popplewell was a British citizen, yet it took until ‘Israel’ reported his death for it to be acknowledged in Britain, and by ‘Israel’s’ destruction of medical infrastructure – again, a destruction materially supported by Britain. Popplewell wouldn’t have died if ‘Israel’ wasn’t committed to genocide. Now, as ‘Israel’ uses famine as a—probably the—central weapon, it is possible that those hostages who have so far survived will starve. The conditions of the ‘Israeli’ hostages are the conditions of the ordinary Palestinian in Gaza. It is also worth emphasising here that the Resistance has every interest in keeping as many hostages alive as possible, whereas ‘Israel’, aside from pressure from the hostage families, has very little.

Hostages, moreover, were killed by ‘Israel’ on October 7th itself. This has been discussed not only on social media and in critical outlets but also in Haaretz. Haaretz has raised the question of whether this involved the ‘Hannibal Directive’, which makes the rescue of ‘Israeli’ soldiers, and perhaps civilians (there is an ambiguity here) an absolute priority, even if it is likely that the attempt will lead to their deaths. Other commentators have presented ‘Hannibal’ as something much stronger; a protocol which, when invoked, “prefer[s] that the soldier be killed than taken alive.”

The December 30th incident is distinct from these cases. It features another hostage killed by a bomb. However, the December 30th death not occur in the ‘normal course’ of the genocide, but with at least some degree of targeting and intentionality. Following the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades’ description, what happened seems to have been a mixture of arrogance, carelessness and the indifference to killing the captive that even the ‘softer’ version of the Hannibal Directive entails. Within a context of possible further exchanges, and the high value put on an ‘Israeli’ soldier within those negotiations, there is a clear motivation, from the perspective of the ‘Israeli’ state, for the logic of “better killed than taken alive”. This renders futile any hopes that any more than a handful of the hostages may be rescued by military means. Even if a version of ‘Hannibal’ is not operative, the Resistance are competent fighters. Rescuing a hostage, even once they have been located, is difficult and dangerous. This seems worth reporting on.

There is another unacknowledged aspect of this episode: the involvement of the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, both in the initial phase of Al-Aqsa Flood, and in the holding of captives. A general framing of the situation as “the Israel-Hamas war” has had a set of ideological effects. Occasionally, particularly as a logistical question around prisoner exchanges, the role of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has been acknowledged, but the involvement of a broad range of Resistance groups with a wide range of political positions has been almost entirely ignored, and those few times it has been acknowledged, the discursive impact has been contained, this tells us a great deal about the processes of ideological structuring.

This has clear legal effects, given that Hamas and PIJ are proscribed by the British Government, while other Resistance groups are not. To fully equate the Resistance with Hamas (or Hamas and PIJ) presents the possibility of rendering any support for the Palestinian Resistance criminal (despite the right to resist being enshrined in international law), as it can be presented as support for a proscribed group. Prosecutions and convictions rest on this equation, and on the assumption that the ‘reasonable’ person is wildly uninformed. A stronger public grasp of the situation would dramatically undermine this.

The effects of this conflation can be seen in the peculiar features of the judgement in the case of the three people convicted but conditionally discharged for wearing paraglider stickers. On the one hand, the three were convicted under the Terrorism Act for “arous[ing] reasonable suspicion that they were supporters of a banned organisation”. On the other, the judge acknowledged that “there’s no evidence that any of these defendants are supporters of Hamas, or were seeking to show support for them.” Indeed, it subsequently emerged that one of the convicted was a refugee from Gaza, who feared for her safety due to her family members’ criticisms of Hamas. The necessary, legally-posited ‘reasonable person’ is presumed to equate the Palestinian Resistance in its entirety with Hamas—and the ideological effects of inculcated public ignorance determine what is ‘reasonable’—but the judge implicitly admits that the defendants could have been supporting the Resistance without supporting Hamas. In this light, one might wonder what role the insistence by certain ‘left media’ figures that the defendants’ “childish indecency” was “the opposite of expressing solidarity with Palestinians” have to play in in constituting what is presumed ‘reasonable’. I have argued before, in the case of Just Stop Oil, that this sort of behaviour is equivalent to scabbing, contributing, as Hall and his Policing the Crisis co-authors conceptualised it, to a “stiffening of judicial attitudes towards crime, violence and sentencing policies”. This question has acquired new significance through Mohammed El-Kurd’s statement on Bastani’s behaviour, and the bad faith responses that have suggested El Kurd’s claim around Bastani’s “collaboration” was an accusation that he had directly contacted the police. It seems clear, though, that collaboration can also be ideological, can also involve this sort of decisive contribution to stiffening judicial attitudes.

As can be seen, even a brief consideration of December 30th uncovers much that is (or ought to be) worthy of investigation. With Iraq, we are presented with a serious democratic question, since it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Britain was involved in the assassination of Al-Saedi. Ultimately, though, all we can offer are vague statements like “not beyond the bounds of possibility”—because nobody has bothered to investigate what actually happened. Regardless, British forces are definitely active in Iraq. Both the assassination and any involvement in US efforts against the Iraqi resistance dramatically exceeds anything which has been discussed, let alone agreed, by Parliament (what has been agreed was to fight ISIS, not to fight the enemies of ISIS). Moreover, the continuation of imperialist violence on Iraq, and the cheerful violation of its sovereignty (including a refusal to withdraw when asked), twenty years on from the beginning of the second war on Iraq, ought to be a concern, to say the very least. Again, you would think our intrepid journalists might consider this worthy of their attention.

Any British involvement in US efforts against the Iraqi resistance dramatically exceeds anything which has been discussed, let alone agreed, by Parliament.
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Ignoring both US and probable British action against Palestine solidarity in Iraq, moreover, gives a false picture of the extent of regional resistance and solidarity with Palestine, and obscures the wider anti-imperialist questions involved, which extend far beyond some notional “Israel-Hamas War”. Any discussion of regional solidarity has been limited to Yemen and the actions against shipping in the Red Sea, and to Hezbollah – with the extent of Hezbollah’s actions and their effects considerably understated. The conflict is already regional because the Arab world is traversed by and determined by US imperialism (and the struggle against it) – this is as true today as it was in 1969, when the PFLP’s Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine emphasised both world imperialism across the Arab world and the “organic unity” of world imperialism and ‘Israel’ as the enemy of Palestinian struggle. Given this, one would note the absolute gall of Anthony Blinken attacking Ansar Allah for “expand[ing]” the conflict.

Though the extent of Resistance attacks in Iraq and Syria is sometimes acknowledged (if only in passing) by the British media, ignoring the statements of Resistance groups, and with that the reality encompassed in them, obfuscates the situation. The frame of analysis is “Iranian proxies”, rather than groups acting in solidarity with Palestine against the organic unity of world imperialism under US hegemony and ‘Israel’. What is ignored is any wider context, including the presence of extensive US military bases in Syria and Iraq, which is taken so much for granted that the insult to national sovereignty does not even register. Once that disappears, so too does the basis for the Iraqi and Syrian resistance to those violations of sovereignty, as well as the development of pan-Arabist, Islamic and anti-imperialist political-strategic conceptions by Resistance movements across the Arab world, within which solidarity with Palestine plays a central role. Absent all this, we end up with a narrative that suggests US troops in Syria and Iraq were just there, simply minding their own business, until they were inexplicably attacked. The explanatory frame for this is almost entirely the malignancy of Iran, with great stress on their supply of weapons as the singular cause, rather than one action within a whole web of struggles and contradictions.

This form then justifies further violation of Iraqi and Syrian sovereignty in the name of attacking “Iran-backed targets”, which includes elements of the official Iraqi armed forces (the Popular Mobilisation Forces). These attacks, moreover, are, at the very least, being taken advantage of by ISIS, who are simultaneously targeting the Popular Mobilisation Forces and other anti-ISIS forces. Whether one agrees or not with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that ISIS is the “creation” of the US, or with the Syrian Ministry of Defence that US forces are directly and consciously “involved and allied with this organisation”, it ought to be clear that the US, alongside Britain, is effectively a “sponsor” of ISIS at this point. The question of whether it is actively co-ordinating action with ISIS is irrelevant when ISIS is taking such advantage, and in such a predictable way, of US violations of Iraqi and Syrian sovereignty.

Since the April 1st ‘Israeli’ attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the question of Iran and the wider region has, at least, become more acknowledged as significant. Moreover, there have been contestations around not only interpretations, but around what counts as a relevant fact. The operation of April 13th was described by the Revolutionary Guards as a “large-scale military operation against targets inside the occupied territories” undertaken “in response to the numerous crimes of the zionist regime, including the attack on the consular section of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Damascus.” The operation was welcomed by the Resistance groups, with Hamas stressing that it was part of “the natural right of countries and peoples of the region to defend themselves in the face of zionist aggressions”, and linking it to Al-Aqsa Flood. The PFLP said that “the Iranian response to the zionist entity is a pivotal event that will establish new rules of engagement in the region”, and pointed out that “the rush of the American administration and its partners in Britain, France, Germany, and some of their Arab tails [i.e. Jordan]
in the region to use all their defensive weapons to try to protect the zionist entity from the Iranian missiles and drones confirms the involvement of these parties in the zionist crimes in the region, especially in Gaza.” Within the British media, ignoring the attack on the Damascus embassy, let alone the other “numerous crimes”, allowed the operation to be presented as an act of unprovoked malice, caused by the inherent evil of the Islamic Republic. However, this deliberate obfuscation was not universally accepted, even within the most mainstream media. Notably, Kay Burley asked a flailing David Cameron how Britain would respond “if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates”. Nevertheless, most reporting and political statements concerning the Iranian operation tended to ignore the attack to which the operation was responding.

All of the above offers a fairly direct example of the ways in which an attempt (which, in this case, doesn’t seem to have been terribly successful) is made to produce ideological effects by excluding certain details from a causal train. Absent the proximal cause of the April 13th operation (the embassy attack), the intention is for people to attribute it to an irrational Iranian desire for violence, and particularly, violence against ‘Israel’. However, even if (as with Kay Burley) a pertinent fact is added to the chain of causation to show that ‘Israel’ ‘started it’, the explanatory framework remains limited, because there is no mention of the wider context. Once that context is considered, we are no longer dealing with a simple chain of causation, but a complicated situation structured by US imperialism. This becomes particularly significant in the attempts to analyse the (by no means entirely incorrect) idea that ‘Israel’, losing in Gaza, is attempting to spark a wider regional conflict that would, it is claimed, draw in the US on ‘Israel’s’ side. What this misses, of course, is that the US is already involved, both through its structuring hegemonic role in world imperialism, through its direct involvement from Iraq to Syria to Jordan to the Red Sea, and to its material support of ‘Israel’. The US is by no means a bystander here. This does not mean that ‘Israel’ is not aiming to spark a more intense regional conflict — and the desire to avoid giving a pretext for this is clear in Iran’s measured response — but such a conflict would not be a rupture from things as they are, but an intensification, a bringing-into-the-open of processes that had previously been obscured. Moreover, it is not clear that even greater US involvement would guarantee an ‘Israeli’ victory in Gaza.

In what follows, I will explore a range of statements that have circulated through Resistance News Network, and which have largely or entirely been ignored by the British press—even when, as we have seen, these statements concern matters that ought to be of importance to the British public. The analysis will be derived, as far as is possible, from the arguments and positions of the Resistance groups, and from Walid Daqqah, the PFLP militant and “great thinker and writer”, who was martyred in an ‘Israeli’ jail on April 7th. Palestinians do not only suffer. They resist, and in resisting they think. Maybe there can be suffering without thought, but there cannot be resistance. Equally, without resistance, there can be no political thought that is worth anything. Whilst, in Daqqah, this thought is the thought of a remarkable individual, the thought is, at its basis, collectively developed and collectively put to use.

Palestinians do not only suffer. They resist, and in resisting they think. Maybe there can be suffering without thought, but there cannot be resistance. Equally, without resistance, there can be no political thought that is worth anything.
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The second piece in this series will ask why the so-called mainstream media ignores the statements of the Resistance groups, and suggest that this seemingly naïve question can tell us something significant about the functioning of contemporary ideology. Finally, part three will analyse the British left’s refusal to engage with these statements and the collective thought contained within them.

‘Israel’ is losing.

‘Israel’ is losing.

It is committing genocide, yes, but it is losing. The ground invasion has been a disaster, in strategic terms: casualties incurred, failure to rescue hostages or to diminish the Palestinian Resistance, and the IOF’s clear inability to control Gaza. All it has left is destruction. The horrors ‘Israel’ has inflicted are only explicable once this background of defeat is understood. Fundamentally, genocide is the result of the fact ‘Israel’ is losing.

‘Israel’ is losing and the Resistance is winning. Crucially this means that ‘Israel’ cannot control Gaza, and cannot significantly degrade the capacity of the Resistance to act. This does not mean, however, that ‘Israel’ lacks the military and technological capability to hold particular places for enough time to commit genocidal acts, or that the Resistance has the capacity to prevent it from happening. The mass graves in Al-Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital testify to this. It also, demonstrably, does not mean ‘Israel’ is unable to displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

This genocide is a response to the continued capacities of the Palestinian people to resist; indeed, to the continued existence of Palestinians as a people. This element needs to be understood in the context of the Walid Daqqah argument (from his 2010 essay ‘Consciousness Moulded or the Re-identification of Torture’) that forms the epigraph to this piece. Daqqah’s martyrdom in an ‘Israeli’ prison was extensively marked by the Resistance groups, not only the PFLP, but also Hamas, PIJ, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades: Youth of Revenge and Liberation, but his work remains barely published in English,

despite its astonishing mixture of the literary — it is moving and psychologically acute — and theoretical innovation and rigour. It is also, of course, steadfast and politically militant, but these are not virtues that the publishing of the imperial core even pretends to recognise as desirable. In Daqqah’s argument, the ‘Israeli’ target is always the Palestinian community and its capacity to resist and prevent a settlement being enforced on them, even if elements of the leadership or “negotiators” want it. The last nine months have shown that the fact the Palestinian people are the problem for ‘Israel’ means genocide was (and is) always a possible part of its repertoire.

In 1971, Ghassan Kanafani argued in the NLR that the PFLP’s campaign of hijackings had shown that the Palestinian people were not “paralysed”, not merely “heroic” in their bearing of an intolerable situation. The Resistance had shown the Palestinian people to exist as a decisive factor in the situation, rendering it impossible for ‘Israel’, Britain, the US, or the various reactionary Arab states “to dictate to our people”. What we see today is a similar (or greater) resistant capacity against paralysis, and against being dictated to. To deny the successes of the Resistance aims to make it seem as if dictating is possible. It aims to undermine Palestinian morale and the morale of those who are with Palestine, particularly in the imperial core.

Central to Daqqah’s argument was the observation that ‘Israel’ aimed at “politicide”: “degradation without annihilation”, particularly in the shattering of collective values and a capacity to resist.

Al-Aqsa Flood—both the events of October 7th, and the subsequent inability of ‘Israel’ to subdue the Resistance—shows the failure of “politicide”. The Palestinian people exist as a political factor, as a people, with collective values. They cannot, as Kanafani argued, be “dictated to” by imperialism. The existence of resistance has been proved in practice. What is left when degradation has not worked? Annihilation, genocide. The physical destruction of a people, when its political incapacitation has been demonstrated to be impossible.

Al-Aqsa Flood shows the failure of politicide. The Palestinian people exist as a political factor, as a people, with collective values. They cannot, as Kanafani argued, be “dictated to” by imperialism.
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Throughout ‘Consciousness Moulded…’, Daqqah develops a particular notion of “shock” or “shattering” as the basis for the politicidal remoulding of consciousness. This shock is attempted by a diverse set of practices, that “appear…chaotic, confused and contradictory”, but which, as an ensemble, aim at politicide.
Moreover, for Daqqah (who spent the last 38 years of his life in ‘Israeli’ detention), these are the techniques of prison, including a “postmodern” form of torture, whereby “the target is no longer the body of the prisoner, the torture is no longer material; it is the spirit, the mind, which is disfigured.”

The prison is the privileged site for these techniques, but they extend far beyond it, across Palestine. What we are witnessing now results from the failure of consciousness moulding or politicide: a return to the primacy (for they never disappeared entirely) of practices that do target the body, that do aim at annihilation.

“Consciousness Moulded…”, alongside the other work collected in the Pluto collection Threat: Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel, helps establish the absolute centrality of the prisoner question, not only for the Resistance, but for Palestinian society more broadly. At the heart of Daqqah’s Foucauldian analysis is the notion of the smaller and bigger prison:

if the segregated areas Israel demarcated for Palestinians in the occupied territories are akin to bigger prisons, and its practices towards Palestinians in the smaller prisons are a continuation of its policy in the larger ones, then it is useful to first apply theoretical tools to study the smaller prisons.

Note the plural here, particularly when it comes to the bigger prisons of the occupied territories: the space is fragmented and disunified by ‘Israeli’ techniques, and is unified by Palestinian resistance. The continuity of the two spaces, with the smaller an intensification and a simplification of conditions in the bigger, renders both more legible for analysis. It also presents a similar continuity of prisoner resistance with resistance in the bigger prisons. As Daqqah puts it, the prisoners are one of the “central forces” representing Palestinian collective values. Their experience is an intensification of the Palestinian experience. They are “the front line of the struggle”.

The priority of the prisoner question has played a determining role in Al-Aqsa Flood, with one major aim being the capturing of hostages in order, through exchanges, to secure the release of prisoners—including the terminally ill Daqqah. Al-Aqsa Flood, moreover, was in its very form the self-liberation of prisoners from the “open air prison“ (David Cameron, 2010), or indeed, open air concentration camp, of Gaza. It was perhaps the greatest prison break in history.

The prisoner question has acquired even more intensity since October 7th, not least due to the shifts in the ‘Israeli’ regime away from the postmodern torture described by Daqqah towards the all too material targeting of the body. Both Resistance News itself, and, of course, the Prisoners channel, including Daqqah himself, within ‘Israel’ since October 7th.

Many more prisoners will die in ‘Israel’s’ jails. Daqqah was denied necessary treatment by ‘Israel’, which at the very least hastened his death. The medical torture of prisoners has long been a significant issue for the Resistance groups, and to the sixteen who have been martyred in the ‘Israeli’ jails, it is necessary to add those, like Farouq Al-Khatib martyred as a result of medical torture. On May 13th, the Prisoners channel published a letter from the dying Mustasim Raddad. “The only word I receive from the jailers,” he wrote, “is, ‘You are dead, dead here.’ Our suffering as sick prisoners in the prisons is unimaginable. We die daily, confined in cells, besieged by hunger, thirst, oppression, abuse, torture, and deprived of the minimum standards of healthcare.” This martyrdom operates in tandem with the martyrdom through field executions
of those captured in Gaza. Palestinians captured in Gaza have also faced torture and martyrdom in ‘Israeli’ military jails, including but not limited to Sde Teman.

CNN has recently published an expose of Sde Teman based on the testimony of ‘Israeli’ whistleblowers. On the one hand, this work is useful, provided it is not treated as an aberration. On the other, the epistemological questions are revealing. In order for the ‘truth’ of the horror of Sde Teman to be verified, ‘Israeli’ whistleblowers are required. The publicly available statements of Palestinian prisoner groups are considered insufficient, not only to verify the truth of what has happened, but even to initiate any sort of journalistic investigation into what might have happened. Indeed, attention to RNN could have led to a much earlier ‘scoop’, but the structuring logic of journalism prevents that.

The shift away from postmodern torture towards direct attacks on the bodies of the prisoners is part of the wider ‘Israeli’ shift from attempted (but failed) politicide to genocide, from degradation to annihilation. There is, therefore, perhaps a split in ‘Israel’, and in imperialism more broadly. The right want genocide for the sake of genocide, or for the sake of revenge. The ‘left’ of imperialism want genocide too, not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end, a means to politicide when the previous practices of shock or shattering have, because of the capacity of the Palestinian people to resist, failed to work. Crucially, the Resistance groups, especially the PFLP, insist that these splits within imperialism are merely disagreements over tactics:

the current American administration and successive administrations are principal partners in the aggression against our people throughout the history of their liberation struggle. What appears to be disputes between the American administration and the zionist entity is fundamentally a tactical disagreement in means, not a strategic one in objectives.

What Al-Aqsa Flood seems to have demonstrated to ‘Israel’ is that a far greater shock is required if they are to achieve their goals. The aim, therefore, is a genocidal shock so terrible that the Palestinian people no longer exist as a political factor.

However, this shock has not been inflicted yet. This can be seen, firstly, in the question of the number of ‘Israeli’ military casualties, a number that is quite clearly suppressed. The other side of this, of course, is that the Resistance groups—including but not only Hamas—retain a significant capacity to fight. ‘Israel’ most recently reports 319 IOF deaths in Gaza This is far, far lower than what is reported by the Resistance groups. It is difficult to get a complete figure, because what one encounters is a stream of reports from various groups detailing ambushes and other successful attacks, pretty much daily, with, in most cases, a few IOF soldiers killed. Impressionistically, the statements on Resistance News suggest that the National Resistance Brigades alone (perhaps the sixth, seventh or eighth largest armed group) have inflicted dozens and dozens and perhaps over a hundred deaths.

One may be sceptical of the figures for IOF deaths provided by the Resistance groups. If there is an ideological dimension to claiming successes, then they have an interest in overstating. Sometimes, in an absolutely desperate situation, it could be the case that the effect on morale of telling lies and claiming easy victories is worth it. (Were the PFLP hijackings, in some ways, an example of this – and with positive ideological effects?) It is in ‘Israel’’s interest to understate the number of IOF deaths; it is in the Resistance’s to overstate. However, there are good reasons to trust the Resistance more, beyond partiality—and I am, of course, partial on this.

It is striking that when ‘Israel’ has to admit to suffering casualties, they often prefer to attribute these to the IOF’s ineptitude rather than the military skill of the Resistance, whether this is in friendly fire casualties or Looney Tunes-esque accidents. From “the most moral army in the world” to the most clownish. I think it’s necessary to be fairly sceptical of this refusal to credit the Resistance, but it does seem likely that friendly fire casualties are relatively high, and this suggests an occupation force that is not only trigger happy but panicked. This level of panic is not compatible with the level of reported IOF casualties. The same kind of panic would be true when it comes to the killings of the escaped captives who were waving white flags. Moreover, a far higher rate of military casualties would be more compatible than the reported rate with the Givati Brigade commander who died of a heart attack, horrified by the number of deaths of soldiers under his command. As the PFLP put it, this “reflects the reality in the Gaza Strip and what the occupation soldiers are subjected to.” The point, ultimately—and it is one that is consistently effaced by both hack and critical journalists—is that the attack on Gaza is going badly from ‘Israel’’s perspective. Grasping this makes aspects of the situation, including those mentioned above, far more intelligible.

The aim of ‘Israel’ is to make genocide matter against the national liberation struggle by ravaging, slaughtering, usurping, by making a desert in an attempt to force a peace without justice. Famine is now the central weapon.
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If ‘Israel’ is losing while practicing genocide, then genocide and the Palestinian national liberation struggle are distinct, representing two processes that, while not precisely parallel, have no necessary relation. Indeed, it might be said that the aim of ‘Israel’ is to make genocide matter against the national liberation struggle, to bring the two processes together, by ravaging, slaughtering, usurping, by making a desert in an attempt to force a peace without justice. Famine is now the central weapon not only in the genocide itself, but in the attempt to have genocide deliver political-military consequences where conventional warfare has failed. Hamas have noted that the ‘Israeli’ assault on the Rafah crossing has the explicit intent of deepening the famine. Similarly, the National Emergency Committee in Rafah has stated that “the closure and occupation of crossings and the control over them portends the death of hundreds of thousands of citizens due to the cutting off of supply lines and lifelines to the Gaza Strip.” The Palestinian Resistance’s capacity to stop genocide is very low. It has almost no air defences – PIJ, in particular, seem to have developed a degree of proficiency in shooting down drones, including quadrocopters, but that is it. The Resistance cannot open the crossings, or cause aid to be delivered. It can, through guerrilla attacks, defend territory and harass the IOF, both of which can restrict an element of genocidal capacity. In short, though the Resistance has the capacity to prevent the total control of all of Gaza, ‘Israel’ has the capacity to control parts of its territory for a time. What the Resistance can do is to inhibit the desired connection between genocide and ‘Israel’s’ hoped-for political-military consequences. This offers a sliver of hope: if the Resistance can continue to interrupt to smooth operations of the genocide machine, might ‘Israel’ come to realise it cannot hope to win? Might it be possible for the resistance to put an end to the genocide, not through capitulation, as ‘Israel’ hopes, but through steadfastness? This would have meaningful political consequences for the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, the example offered by the Palestinian struggle continues to inspire solidarity, including from Yemen and the people of Jordan, that exerts material pressure on ‘Israel’.
‘Israel’ is not only losing in Gaza

If ‘Israel’ has been almost entirely incapable of imposing its will upon the people of Gaza, it has been similarly ineffective on the northern front, where Hezbollah have been conducting solidarity attacks from southern Lebanon. In Britain and the US, this has been consistently ignored as an aspect of the situation; within ‘Israel’, it has been acknowledged, but downplayed. ‘Israel’ has been forced reluctantly to acknowledge that 81,000 people have been displaced as a result of Hezbollah’s actions; Hezbollah claims the numbers are closer to 230,000. Even if we accept the lower figure, this is the equivalent of about 600,000 people being displaced within Britain. On May 20th, Resistance News reported on “the opening of the first ‘Israeli’ refugee camp” to accommodate the numbers of the displaced. In January, Al-Mayadeen, drawing on ‘Israeli’ news sources, reported that this displacement was having extensive economic impacts, particularly in the agricultural sector, where unharvested crops were left to rot in the ground, at an estimated cost of round $131 million dollars. Little of this has been mentioned in Britain or the US.

Back in February, Hezbollah published a summary of its operations, in which it claimed to have killed or wounded over 2,000 ‘Israelis’, and to have destroyed a great deal of materiel, from military factories to border walls, from to bunkers to radars. Though they are yet to publish an updated summary, regular individual statements illustrate the continuing losses Hezbollah are inflicting upon ‘Israel’. On May 11th, they announced a series of direct hits on a number of newly-installed Iron Dome platforms at the Beit Hillel military base, with some platforms “completely disabled”.

Indeed, so effective have Hezbollah’s solidarity operations been that—according to a Resistance News analysis of an article in Haaretz—“the de facto border of the temporary entity” has been shifted south by at least 15 kilometres. “The Lebanese resistance,” the analysis continues, “has turned the northern settlements into ghost towns due to their uninterrupted targeting since October 8th.” And again, none of this has been reported in British and US media.

Western journalists are so committed to ignoring the claims of the Resistance that they are willing to pass over opportunities for stories that combine what is without doubt the defining issue of our time with other, more voguish journalistic concerns, such as surveillance and new technologies. A curious journalist would not even need to accept such claims at face value in order to do so. Presumably a newspaper of any size could easily verify them, or show them to be untrue.

For example: in late December, Hezbollah issued a statement urging those in the “front villages” of southern Lebanon to “disconnect the private cameras in front of their homes, shops and institutions” because of ‘Israeli’ “hacking… to benefit from the visual material they provide… to target the fighting brothers in resistance.” ‘Israel’ was driven to this, per the statement, owing to Hezbollah’s successful targeting of “most of the surveillance cameras and military gathering equipment of the Israeli enemy.” In addition to the obvious military significance, the ability for the Resistance to target border walls and surveillance technology is also, potentially, a major blow to ‘Israel’’s’ ability to sell its surveillance technology globally. Antony Loewenstein argues that

Israel has developed a world-class weapons industry with equipment conveniently tested on occupied Palestinians, then marketed as “battle-tested”. Cashing in on the IDF brand has successfully led to Israeli security companies being some of the most successful in the world. The Palestine laboratory is a signature Israeli selling point.

We hear a lot, even in critical outlets, about the successful application of repressive ‘Israeli’ technologies. But what happens when surveillance and border technology is battle-tested (and proven inadequate) by Hezbollah, by Palestinians in paragliders, and by the Resistance groups’ defeat of the IOF? Can ‘Israel’ continue to cash in on the IOF brand? These seem questions worth investigating. And yet, again, the entire subject has been comprehensively ignored.
This is an anti-imperialist struggle, traversing not only all of Palestine, but the entire Arab nation. Ctd....