The Art of Turning the Language of Resistance into Meaningless Slop
There are many people new to the Free Palestine movement these last couple weeks. Welcome aboard!
I want to take this opportunity to have a no-nonsense, on-the-level chat that will challenge you to grow and help you deconstruct Israel’s and America’s overwhelming propaganda machine—a machine that works hard to make sure you only hear Israel’s side of the story. I’ll be writing about the co-optation of the language of resistance and revolution, and how this language is reduced to buzzwords, which are then used to coerce their voter base towards right-wing solutions for revolutionary struggles in order to maintain their power.
For the last two years, I have been attending an activists’ Book Club that focuses exclusively on books about the history of Palestine and Israel’s imperialism and apartheid. (Reading recs will be listed below in case you want to dive deeper on your own time.)
Recently, Book Club read Ghassan Kanafani’s Selected Political Writings edited by Louis Brehony and Tahrir Hamdi. Kanafani was a Palestinian fiction author who joined the PSLF (a militant group created to resist Israel’s ethnic cleansing) and wrote a lot of essays for them, for which he was assassinated in his 30s by Israel.
At the Book Club meeting, there was a lot of discussion about his lecture “Thoughts on Change and the ‘Blind Language,’” in which he explains the importance of defining terms within the resistance movement and strictly sticking to those definitions. Language is, after all, a powerful tool that can be weaponized in the wrong hands.
Part of the oppressor’s handbook is taking revolutionary terms, watering them down into some pretty buzzwords, and thus defanging the resistance movement with what Kanafani calls ‘Blind Language’ – that is, language without purpose, without a solid focus, vague, shallow, and abstract, meant to distract or scare people away from the term’s true, disruptive meaning (for example, the way “anarchy” has been twisted to mean “chaos” when its actual etymological definition is “without hierarchy/rulers”).
In other words, words have power! And Blind Language is the act of taking pretty revolutionary words and stripping them of said power by not backing them up with any meaningful change.
Someone in Book Club brought up an important point about a common resistance refrain: “Free Palestine.”
More people than ever are saying “Free Palestine” – but are we all on the same page? What does a Free Palestine look like? No doubt, it looks different depending on the individual’s political framework. A Free Palestine to an anti-colonial leftist looks different than that of a liberal or a conservative or an independent, or a citizen versus a politician, etc.
It’s crucial, when defining what a Free Palestine should look like, that we adopt and honor the vision of those directly involved with the Free Palestine movement: the resistance fighters. The oppressed. The ones living that reality. It is not up to us non-Palestinians—especially not Palestine’s oppressors, the U.S. and Israeli governments—to determine what a Free Palestine is.
The recent co-optation of the phrase “Free Palestine” by Western government leaders is deliberate and insidious. Democrats in particular want to make you, the average news-consumer, believe they have Palestine’s best interests at heart. Though it seems wise and kind on the surface, it is a paternal, racist, anti-Arab position that frames Westerners as “smarter” and “more civilized” than Arabs. It is also a position founded in Islamophobia and Orientalism. As long as Western leaders claim that a “Free Palestine” looks like a “two state solution,” with a demilitarized “Palestinian State” that will exist under the jurisdiction of a U.S./Israel-backed puppet government, the phrase is nothing more than a PR stunt.
When a Democrat politician says “Free Palestine,” it is meant to pacify and lure those who don’t fully understand resistance movements back into the fold of the status quo.
Unfortunately, a lot of newcomers are falling for this lip-service and spreading it far and wide.
This Book Club discussion also got me thinking of another definition that has been co-opted by the oppressor: terrorism.
Okay, pause.
If you’re a liberal, brace yourself. Your cognitive dissonance will tell you that a lot of the things I’m about to say are “wrong” or “extremist” or “ignorant.”
I thought the same in the past, but then I studied the reality and history of those living on the ground in Palestine. I am only sharing what I have learned from two full years spent reading the words of Palestinians themselves, as well as the words of resistance historians and organizers involved in other liberatory and/or anti-colonial movements throughout history.
All I ask is that you take a few deep breaths and read on before you get all up-in-arms and reactionary.
And keep it in the back of your mind that the West once called Nelson Mandela a terrorist too, before apartheid South Africa fell.
Palestinian History 101:
Long story short:
Even for decades before its establishment as a state in 1948, and even before both World Wars, Zionism – the idea that there should be an ethno-state exclusively for Jewish people – was founded by thinkers such as Theodore Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky.
With this ideology in hand, right-wing, European terrorist groups invaded Palestine and began abusing, displacing, torturing, raping, and slaughtering Palestinians in order to seize the land and resources for themselves. These groups claimed their goal and God-given right was to establish the Zionist Jewish ethno-state (though really it was established to give the Western states a militaristic, imperialistic foothold in West Asia and North Africa). They were well-supported and funded by Western superpowers who could kill two birds with one stone: send those “pesky Jews” off to another land (yes, Zionism is an anti-semitic ideology), and set up a military stronghold for further exploitation of the Middle East. Britain, the U.S., and the Zionists worked together for years to destabilize the region and perform a slow genocide, until they seized enough land and resources to establish the Israeli state.
Those Zionist terrorist leaders then went on to form Israel’s government and military (the IDF, or Israeli Defense Force, commonly called by resisters “the IOF,” or Israeli Occupational Force because they are not defending anything—rather, they are illegally occupying Palestine).
And so their terrorism continues unchallenged to this day. Israel never acknowledges this history of terrorism and land theft, and instead they push the narrative that the land is their birthright and, actually, there is such a thing as “liberal” Zionism (i.e. that if Palestinians would just stop resisting and let Israel have all the land, everyone could live in “peace”).
Israel’s so-called journalism is called “Hasbara,” and is, without mincing words, right-wing terrorist propaganda.
Several times throughout history, Palestinians’ countless peaceful attempts to protest Israel’s terrorism were met with violence and murder of protesters by Israel. And so, Palestinians have formed militant resistance groups to defend themselves.
Time to bring up Mandela again, who once wrote:
“The lesson I took away from the campaign [to end apartheid in South Africa] was that in the end, we had no alternative to armed and violent resistance. Over and over again, we had used all the nonviolent weapons in our arsenal — speeches, deputations, threats, marches, strikes, stay-aways, voluntary imprisonment — all to no avail, for whatever we did was met by an iron hand. A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.”
Since Oct. 7, Israeli and Western media outlets relentlessly push the narrative that “Arab/Muslim savages” are the “terrorists,” while blatantly sweeping their own history of violent, terroristic, imperialistic, colonialistic actions against peaceful protest under the rug. They conveniently leave out a crucial part of the definition of “terrorism”: that terrorism is not merely the emotional state of being afraid or terrified; it is a power dynamic, most often that of a government forcing its vision over civilians through violent and oppressive means.
The Israeli government’s clearly-stated goal, throughout its history, has been the ethnic cleansing, colonization, and land theft of West Asia/North Africa in order to create a “Greater Israel” – which inherently means terrorizing indigenous civilians who already live in those places. That is, by definition, terrorism.
Those indigenous peoples, fighting back against their oppressors, are not committing “terrorism,” even when they resort to armed resistance. They are resisting it. The violence of the oppressed against their oppressor is never terrorism. It is not the same as the violence of the oppressors, and is, in fact, legally justified.
Thus, Israeli and Western superpowers have intentionally clouded the definition of “terrorism” in order to justify their illegal occupation of that region and convince you that they are actually the good guys.
But the truth is actually quite simple: Gaza has long been called an “open-air concentration camp” by human rights experts. Even before Oct. 7, Israel has controlled how much water, food, electricity, medicine, and other resources are allowed into Gaza at any given time. Israel gets to decide who is and is not allowed to enter or leave the region. It is quite literally walled-in, and Israeli checkpoints are scattered throughout to arbitrarily stall movement from one city to the next. There is no airport. There is no Palestinian military. Though political parties exist, Israel is the only political entity with real power and control of the area—because it is an occupation, an apartheid.
Israel is a terrorist apartheid ethno-state. Period. It’s really not that complicated.
This brings me to…
Hamas and Militant Resistance:
We do not condemn kids for standing up to their bullies. We do not condemn people who stand their ground when someone tries to invade their home. We do not condemn the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. We do not condemn slave revolts.
But we are pressured to condemn Hamas. Because Israel, the oppressor, has control of the narrative within our mainstream news and they are determined to deflect rightful accusations of terrorism and genocide onto their victims.
Never mind that Israel has been ethnically cleansing Palestine since before Hamas was founded. Never mind that Palestine is not allowed to have a military. Never mind that their elected officials have no say over how many vital resources are allowed into Gaza. Never mind that resistance fighters are forced to fight back against the wealthiest nuclear superpower in the world and its allies with makeshift weapons and guerrilla tactics.
AIPAC-funded media is begging you to ignore these drastic power imbalances and call the resistance “terrorism” instead.
(Reminder: Nelson Mandela.)
We can argue back and forth all day whether Hamas’ Oct. 7th attempt to break free of the concentration camp that is Gaza was strategically right or wrong, or whether they committed any war crimes in their attempts to resist—but the bottom line is, they are a resistance group. Not terrorists. Even the UN does not label them terrorists, and international law itself says that oppressed, occupied peoples have the inherent right to resist their oppression and occupation.
Without the historical context preceding Oct. 7, Palestinian resistance may look to you like terrorism. After all, your beloved leaders and favorite news anchors have told you it’s terrorism! But once you understand the region’s history, there is no denying that Israel, through groups like AIPAC and CUFI, has seized control of the narrative and turned everything upside-down. “We’re the heroes, they’re the terrorists. Just please ignore the fact that we came from Europe to claim false indigeneity and steal their land (long before the Holocaust). And please ignore the fact that our government and military are literally founded by actual terrorist groups like the Irgun. And please ignore the fact that we hide behind our religion to convince you we’re the actual victims.”
Empires like Israel and the U.S. want to maintain a monopoly on violence; according to themselves, they are allowed to kill, rape, torture, bomb, destroy, etc. as they see fit, but God forbid the people they abuse fight back. It’s actually the guerrilla fighters trying to protect their families and land are the real villains!
It is what settlers said about “primitive” Native Americans when they invaded Turtle Island, what the English said about the “uncivilized” Irish when they colonized Ireland, what Europe said about “savage” Africa during the slave trade (and continue to say to this day).
The same playbook over, and over, and over again.
But the accusation of terrorism (like all other accusations oppressors make) is a projection. The invaders, the colonizers, are the terrorists by definition, but they have co-opted that term to silence liberation movements, the same way Dems are working overtime now to co-opt “Free Palestine.” Just as Kanafani wrote in his essay on Blind Language, it is crucial to remain clear-eyed and strict in our definitions of revolutionary terms and phrases, or else those in power will wield them as weapons against liberation.
Right now, Dems are co-opting the phrase “Free Palestine” in order to convince you that their desired “two state solution” is the only path forward. However, we should not be listening to the ones aiding and abetting genocide of the Palestinians when it comes to what is to be done about Palestine.
The ones we should be listening to are the oppressed—and the majority of Palestinian resistance fighters, historians, and revolutionaries agree that a two state solution is not viable. It is merely a way for Israel and the West to maintain power over the region, and demanding Palestinians to coexist with the state that explicitly demands its right to expand endlessly and has been committing a Holocaust against them is inhumane anyway.
Like, hello? Imagine asking Jews to live in a state next-door to Nazis after the Holocaust. You think the Nazis would have been content with their slice of the pie and suddenly changed their minds? That they would have left the Jews in peace?
Of fucking course not. They spent years justifying genocide. Peace was not in their vocabulary, and it is not in Israel’s either.
Instead, resistance fighters and experts alike agree that dissolving the apartheid state of Israel (which is illegal and does not, actually, have a right to exist) and the creation of a single Palestinian, egalitarian state is the only viable and just solution.
And so, if you are new to the movement, please drop the urge to say “Free Israel from Netanyahu and Free Palestine from Hamas.” Netanyahu is not the problem, he is a symptom (just as Trump is not the problem, but a symptom, in America); a Zionist, apartheid ethno-state founded by imperialist terrorists is the problem. And Hamas are not terrorists; they are the only group fighting to protect their people from oppression and genocide, and as Israel wipes whole families off the earth, their support both on the ground and abroad is growing.
Any resistance, including militant resistance, against an oppressive force is not only legally justified, but it is moral. There is nuance everywhere, yes, but resistance against oppression by any means necessary is something that is internationally, explicitly recognized as “black and white.” It is an inalienable human right to resist your oppressor.
An Exercise in Empathy:
Someone once said to me about taking a stance on Palestine, “Both sides are at fault. Who are you to decide whose lives are more valuable?”
The thing is, I didn’t decide that.
Israel and its Western superpower allies made that decision for us all, like it or not, and their verdict is that Palestinians’ lives are less valuable than Israelis’ lives. You, subconsciously or not, made that choice by repeating this seemingly-neutral Hasbara talking point that “both sides are at fault,” even though only one side has been committing genocide for nearly a century.
(This is where that Desmond Tutu quote everyone loves to share about “staying neutral in the face of oppression” comes into play.)
Those in power intentionally do not tell you the full history of Israel and the Zionist movement so that, rather than recognizing the injustice, you only get the oppressor’s side of the story.
Of course an abuser will not let you learn their victim’s point of view. Because they know that the second you listen to their victims, the Palestinians, you will truly never unsee the reality. That curtain, once pulled back, is not just pulled back forever, but ripped fully off its rings and shredded to pieces.
I’m just going to leave a quote from Rachel Corrie here to get your critical thinking gears turning. To nurture your empathy.
Corrie was a 23 year old American woman who traveled with other activists to Palestine in 2003, to peacefully protest Israel’s land theft and ethnic cleansing. When she stood, yelling into a blow-horn and wearing a bright orange safety vest, in front of some Israeli soldiers in a bulldozer who were attempting to destroy a Palestinian home, the soldiers ran over her, breaking her spine and murdering her. The soldiers claimed they “didn’t see her” and no one was ever held accountable.
Israelis have photographed themselves celebrating and mocking her death by making Rachel Corrie pancakes.
This quote is from a message she wrote home shortly before her murder:
“If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience, that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all the greenhouses that we had been cultivating for however long, and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive with 149 other people for several hours—do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained? I think about this especially when I see orchards and greenhouses and fruit trees destroyed—just years of care and cultivation. I think about you and how long it takes to make things grow and what a labor of love it is. I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could. I think Uncle Craig would. I think probably Grandma would. I think I would.”
Corrie also named Israel’s actions “genocide” long before October 7, 2023. You can read her emails, essays, and poetry in Let Me Stand Alone, a collection of her journals, poetry, and emails published posthumously by her parents.
More Debunked Hasbara Talking Points:
This essay is starting to get long-winded, so this last section will be a quick list of bulletpoints of other false propaganda that Western media outlets have pushed/continue to push about Israel and Palestine. Please take the time to research them and their debunking yourself:
Israel is David and the Arab countries around it are Goliath, so if it doesn’t preemptively attack these Arab countries, Israel will be destroyed.
The IDF is the most moral military in the world.
Israel has a right to exist.
It’s a complicated religious conflict./That’s just how things are in the Middle East and it has nothing to do with America.
Hamas started it on October 7, 2023.
Hamas systemically raped women on October 7, 2023, and beheaded 40 babies.
Hamas killed 1200+ civilians on October 7, 2023 (specifically look up the Hannibal Directive).
Hamas are stealing aid meant for starving Palestinians.
Palestinians aren’t actually starving because the adults are all fat, they’re just intentionally keeping food from their kids for pity.
If Hamas release the hostages, all this will end.
Jewish people are indigenous to this land, even European ones.
When Zionists first came to Palestine, there was no one living there and the land was just a desert that Israelis helped to bloom.
Palestinians are misogynist/homophobic and kill women/anyone who is LGBTQIA2S+.
Israel is not an apartheid state and Palestinian citizens who live in Israel have equal rights as non-Palestinian Israelis./Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East (spoiler alert: it’s not a democracy).
Israel was created in response to the Holocaust.
Muslims and Jews have never lived in peace in that region.
Hamas killed the twin Bibas babies and their mother.
Criticizing Israel is anti-semitic.
Wrap-Up and Further Reading:
With all this in mind, I want to drive my two main points home:
(1) A good rule of thumb, when it comes to Western imperialist mainstream media, is that every accusation is a confession.
Israel accused Hamas of beheading babies or burning them alive in ovens, which was debunked, but they have since murdered thousands of Palestinian babies with bombs that have literally burned them alive and torn them limb from limb. Israel falsely accused Hamas of raping countless women on Oct. 7, but Israelis recently protested for the IDF’s “right to rape” after soldiers were caught sodomizing a Palestinian they held hostage, and there is a long history of Palestinian hostages – men, women, children – accusing Israeli guards of rape or even being raped to death. Israel claims Hamas will not agree to a ceasefire, but Israel is the one who consistently refuses to agree to ceasefire terms and violated the ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon – on hundreds of counts – in early 2025. Israel accuse Hamas of using “human shields,” but the IDF literally straps Palestinians to their tanks to scare resistance fighters from fighting back.
In general, it’s just good practice to remain skeptical of 100% of Western media’s reporting on international, geopolitical matters – especially when they report on our perceived enemies such as Iran, China, and yes, even Russia and North Korea.
And finally, (2) your lived, privileged reality here in the West is far different than the lived reality of those living in the countries that the West actively terrorizes and exploits. If you take anything away from this essay, let it be that it is not our right to condemn how the oppressed choose to resist their oppressors.
If you are reading this essay, no doubt you try your best daily to resist Trump. If his goons came to violently arrest you and you fought back with violence, wouldn’t it break your soul to hear people around the world calling you a “terrorist” for trying to protect yourself?
Yeah. I thought so.
What is your right (and duty), when you hear words like “terrorism” being thrown around in mainstream media, whether it is CNN or FOX or even NPR, is to research the conflict for yourself beyond the limits of Western news media, assess the power dynamics to determine who is the true terroristic oppressor, and stand on the side of justice.
It’s okay to say, “I don’t know enough about this issue yet to form an opinion, but I will try to learn.” Just don’t let propaganda do the thinking for you. Don’t let the propagandists tell you what revolution should look like.
Anyway, here are the recommended readings:
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Perfect Victims: And The Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine by Nada Elia
Orientalism by Edward Said
Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings edited by Louis Brehony and Tahrir Hamdi
Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie by Rachel Corrie
Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics by Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick
The Destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth by Andreas Malm
The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology Of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Khalidi
Palestine Hijacked: How Zionism Forged an Apartheid State from River to Sea by Thomas Suárez