Honouring the Sacrifice of Martyrs
We have witnessed a year of brutality at the hands of the IDF. The Zionist state has rendered all of Gaza unlivable. A quarter of all structures have been destroyed including over 200,000 homes and critical infrastructure. All of the hospitals, schools and universities and courts have been left in ruins. While the Gaza Health Ministry conservatively estimates around 40,000 people killed as a direct result of Israeli bombardment, the Lancet published a paper arguing that due to the impact of Israeli military destroying all systems of life in Gaza, the more accurate number of casualties is likely closer to 200,000. This is 10% Gaza’s total population.
The carnage, unfortunately, does not end there. The state of Israel has expanded the war beyond Gaza, and has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank. It has bombed and is now pursuing a ground invasion of Lebanon, killing at least 2,000 of our brothers and sisters as well. The only push back the state of Israel has received during this campaign of terror has not been from the Capitalist countries who declared themselves champions of human rights and international law, or from a myriad of Arab and Muslim countries that neighbor the state of Israel. Rather, it has been from the local resistance groups.
The necessity of resisting the Israeli aggression is clear, as is the nobility, courage and sacrifice that is required to undertake such a task when doing so puts you in the crosshairs of the global Capitalist war machine. But is the existence of these resistance groups a sufficient response to Israeli brutality? Should we pin our hopes on them, especially given the Zionists ability to successfully strike at the very leadership of these groups with relative ease? And should we rely on these groups to liberate the Holy Land? .
Understanding Power
In order to understand if the resistance can be relied upon to sufficiently deter and defeat the Zionists, it is crucial to understand what the enemy is. The state of Israel is a sovereign state, with an economy, systems of government and services, and a well-equipped army. Its economy is well connected to the global markets, and it can finance its domestic and military ambitions through those.
More importantly to all of this, the state of Israel is a crucial part of the global Capitalist system, as it allows the Capitalist powers, to maintain their control over the Middle East. By making itself useful to the Capitalist system, it enjoys a vast amount of financial, political and diplomatic support across the capitalist nations, most notably the United States. This is a fact well-noted by President Joe Biden, who once stated that if there weren’t an Israel, the US would have to “invent one” to protect their interests in the region. It was reiterated by presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. (RFK) who referred to Israel as America’s “aircraft carrier in the Middle East”.
Understanding this basic fact, that the enemy is a full state with a professional and well-funded military that has the support of the biggest powers in the world, it becomes apparent that any resistance to the state of Israel cannot run on volunteers and donations. One cannot take on the Zionist project with the resources of a masjid youth group! This means that the resistance movements that currently exist have to ally themselves with some state. Whether it be Iran, Qatar, Syria, Russia or China, they need to rely on some power structure to fund and equip their resistance. And this is where they run into a very real problem: what is the cost of this alliance?
Understanding Liberation
The resistance groups have to rely on a state in order to effectively conduct their operations. But a group that relies on a state for its funding, training and arms is controlled by that state. Its scope, purpose and mission is controlled by what this state will allow. So, are the states that ally with Palestinian resistance committed to liberating Palestine.
Answering this question will require us to understand what liberation means to begin with. Liberation does not simply mean freedom, rather it is freeing yourself from something. What are we liberating ourselves from when we resist Zionism?
What we are liberating ourselves from is not just a particular group of violent settlers, rather we are liberating ourselves from the global capitalist order that created the Zionist state and continues to fund and arm it. This is because the state of Israel, from its inception, has been a project of the Capitalist elite who were intent on colonizing the lands of the Muslims. After defeating the Ottoman Khilafah and dividing the Muslim world into useless nation-states, they created the Zionist entity to maintain a dedicated foothold in the region. It is essential to understand this link between Zionism and the global Capitalist order because it allows us to understand the true scope of the problem. The global powers that allowed for the creation of the Zionist entity also created a global economy that was built on plundering the resources of poorer countries for their benefit. They championed the liberal democratic institutions like Parliaments and courts. They created the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. They formulated the principles of what they call international law and decided who it would apply to and who it would not be applied to. We are not just liberating Palestine from racist settlers in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv; but from a global system of law, commerce and organized violence.
Compromised Resistance
This returns us to the central question, are the states funding and effectively controlling the anti-Zionist resistance committed to the downfall of the current world order?
The simple answer is no. Whether it be Iran, Qatar, Syria or other “non-aligned” powers such as Russia and China, each of these states is committed to maintaining the status quo. Their actions make this clear. When the people of Syria rose up against their vicious tyrannical regime, and wanted to replace it with a righteous leadership built upon the values of the people, it was Iran and Russia that aided the regime and crushed the resistance, killing, torturing and gassing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. They used their anti-Zionist resistance group, Hezbollah, to achieve this aim. When the US wanted to invade Iraq, it used its well-equipped airbase in Qatar to bomb and decimate half a million of our brothers and sisters in the region, crippling Iraq’s economy and relative stability in the process.
If the resistance groups are relying on these power structures to achieve success, we have to wonder, what would that success look like. Even if some territorial gains or strategic objectives could be met, how would this ultimately remove the oppression?
Knowing this, for any resistance group to submit itself to the oppressive power structures of today violates the Command of Allah (swt). He (swt) informs us in the Quran:
“O Prophet, fear Allah and do not obey the disbelievers and the hypocrites. Indeed, Allah is ever Knowing and Wise.”
[TMQ 33:1]
Legitimate Resistance
Real, liberating resistance would have to be tied to a purpose that is greater than any gain in territory or temporarily advantageous arrangement. It would have to be tied to a larger political effort to topple the power structures built by the Capitalist world order, and replacing them with the guidance revealed by the Creator to manage our individual and collective affairs. It would be replacing the greedy, self-serving and hollow institutions and internal arrangements created by the Capitalist elite with a social, economic and political system that is built on the Infinite Wisdom and Mercy of Allah (swt). It would be, as the Sahabi Rabi Ibn Amr (ra) said to the Persian general Rustum when he asked why the Muslims chose to fight Persia:
“Allah has sent us forward so that we may liberate, whomsoever He wills, from following men [and lead them] to the obedience of Allah, and pull them out of their narrow world into the broader one, and from under the suppression of [various] religions into the justice of Islam…” [Ibn Kathir, al-Bidāyah wa al-Nihāyah]
It is only when we have a state that is built upon the aqeedah of Islam, that is dedicated to implementing its divine systems, and that is committed to unifying the Muslim lands and resources then and only then we will be able to resist the global Capitalist order that has set up the criminal Zionist entity. Secular nation states that were set up by the colonizers to remain weak, indebted and unstable will not meet this task.
Losing Hope
Seeing the carnage that the state of Israel has wreaked, not only in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, but also on the leadership of resistance groups, it is easy to lose hope. Seeing the immovability of democracies in supporting the state of Israel, even though thousands of their own people have taken to the streets and contacted MPs in the hopes of implementing an arms embargo on the state of Israel, can make us think that there is no escape. Such hopelessness is the desired effect from the Capitalist elites. They want us to feel powerless so that we will compromise with the savage military that has massacred our women and children.
Instead of losing hope, we should use these circumstances to remind ourselves that compromising about the commands of Allah (swt), even for the noble intention of resisting occupation, will only lead to defeat after protracted defeat.
Instead of distracting ourselves by focusing on local MPs who are not allowed to challenge Zionism, or watching resistance videos hoping for some victory to fall from the heavens without sufficient effort on our part, we should commit ourselves to the only thing that can liberate our brothers and sisters and honor the blood of our martyrs: toppling the puppet regimes in the Muslim world and replacing them with a righteous Islamic leadership. It is such a leadership that will cut off the state of Israel from the supplies it desperately needs to sustain its occupation and expansion, currently supplied to it by Turkey, Jordan and the UAE. Such a leadership will open its border to the flow goods, material and weapons into Gaza, unlike Egypt which keeps its border with Gaza closed. These countries lost any excuse for inaction, as they witness how the besieged people of Palestine resisted continuously for a year, despite an estimated 70,000 tons of munitions being dropped on them. This is more than the amount dropped on London (18,300 tons), Hamburg (8,500 tons), and Dresden (3,900 tons) during WWII!
This political goal will be achieved when Allah (swt) sees that we are making a collective intellectual effort to understand and champion the systems of Islam and are calling for their return in the Muslim lands. Then, He will grant us Khilafah upon the method of Prophethood, as explained in the hadith:
“Prophethood will last with you for as long as Allah wants it to last. Then He will end it if He wishes to end it. Then there will be Khilafah according to the method of prophethood, and things will be as Allah wishes them to be. Then He will end it if He wishes to end it. Then there will be a hereditary rule, and things will be as Allah wishes them to be. Then He will end it if He wishes to end it. Then there will be an oppressive rule, and things will be as Allah wishes them to be. Then He will end it if He wishes to end it. Then there will be a Khilafah according to the method of Prophethood.” Then he (saw) fell silent”
May Allah (swt) hasten its return, and make us part of the effort to bring it back. Ameen.