One Year after the Al-Aqsa flood
October 7 marks the first anniversary of the historic Al-Aqsa flood when the Palestinian armed resistance broke through Zionist defences and inflicted heavy damage on its military camps bordering Gaza as well as on the settler colonies that were situated there. Most importantly, this assault smashed the Zionist state’s arrogance, claim of invincibility and of superior security.
A retributive attack by the Zionist state was certainly expected. It decided to use that to totally wipe out Palestinian presence in Gaza by killing them in the thousands or expelling them. So, what followed was the most horrific, murderous attack on civilians, hospitals, media persons, even denying food and medicine to the Palestinians. Going by retrieved bodies, the total death toll reported by the Gaza health authorities comes to nearly 42,000, out of which nearly 20,000 are children.
But, according to a study carried out by Lancet, which is a renowned international medical journal, the total death toll would actually come to nearly 200,000. This was a report published in July 2024. They had arrived at this figure by calculating the number of people who could possibly have been buried alive in the debris left after bombing attacks, as well as deaths caused by the lack of medicines, food and unhealthy conditions due to the Zionist attack. Apart from this, nearly 100,000 have been severely wounded.
The declared aim of the Zionists was to destroy the Palestinian armed resistance, more particularly the main organisation Hamas and rescue the hostages taken by the Palestinian armed resistance when they launched their assault on October 7. What is the net outcome after one year of this horrific war? Just the day before October 7th, 30 rockets were launched from the northern end of Gaza into Zionist occupied Palestine, known as Israel. Remember, this northern region of Gaza is an area that has been repeatedly attacked by the Zionists from the air and ground from the very beginning. Again and again, they have forced the people residing in those areas to move out. Now, once again, they have launched a ground attack. And it is in the midst of this that you had those 30 rockets launched from this very area. This is the actual ground situation.
In the opinion of an ex-commander of the Zionist Army’s Gaza division, the ‘Israelis’ have lost the war. He points out that the Palestinian armed resistance is back again within 15 minutes of the ‘Israeli’ Army leaving any area that they seized and controlled. In other words, the control of the Zionists exists only so long as their army is present there. As soon as it withdraws, the Palestinian resistance is back in control. 15 minutes. not one day or even half a day. That shows that they were very much there. They are there among the people. All this displacement, this forced evacuations, all those things have simply failed to eliminate this armed resistance.
We know that a few months earlier, when there was a lot of discussion about a possible ceasefire, the spokesperson of the Zionist Army himself had clearly stated that the Hamas cannot be defeated. That this could not be a strategic aim of the war. Because it is an idea and you cannot defeat ideas. So what exactly was he meaning by that? He was pointing to this very fact that I just mentioned. That the Hamas is there, and the other armed resistance groups are there, among the people. They are embedded among the people.
They are part of the people. They are not an external force that has been positioned there. Therefore, so long as that idea of national liberation is alive and pulsing, no amount of military force can eradicate it. That is exactly what we are seeing here. It is a confirmation of what Mao had pointed out long ago. It is the people who make history. He had also pointed out, I will read that quote, “A weak nation can defeat a strong, a small nation can defeat a big. The people of a small country can certainly defeat aggression by a big country, if only they dare to rise in struggle, dare to take up arms and grasp in their own hands the destiny of their country. This is a law of history.” The Palestinian people have dared to do that and they are pushing ahead.
Of course, it is true that they are far from defeating the Zionists militarily. But they have delivered a very heavy political defeat. A political defeat of such an extent, I mean so powerful, that today the Zionist state stands isolated at the world level despite the backing of US imperialism and its allies. Despite this backing that it is getting, the support it is getting from the powerful media controlled by these imperialist countries, which are openly lying, covering up the harsh facts, refusing to even acknowledge the murder of nearly 20,000 children in Gaza by Zionist bombing. Despite all this sort of support, apart from the weapons, the money they get, they stand isolated. West Asia is never going to be the same again. Not just West Asia, the whole world. Because the oppressed peoples of the world have witnessed the heroic assault and the continuous armed resistance being put up by the Palestinian national liberation forces. They are seeing what is possible. Or rather, we should say that the world peoples have been reminded once again of what is possible if they dare to take their destiny in their own hands.
This political defeat is acknowledged by the Zionists themselves. Once again, I will read out a quote which came in a Zionist newspaper. It is from a political commentator, a Zionist political commentator. What he said was this, “October 7th has shattered the Israelis belief that the state will protect them.
Israelis belief that the Israeli state will protect them. That belief has been shattered by October 7th.” He continues, “It has eroded the diaspora Jewry’s assumption of unconditioned acceptance.”
What he means by ‘diaspora Jewry’ are the Jews who are there in America and Europe. Over a long period they have been integrated into those societies but all of a sudden that integration is now getting unravelled. Israel is now clearly identified as a Zionist state by the broad masses of these countries. Not only that, even Jewish rabbi, their priests, have been forced to come out and declare that Judaism is not the same as Zionism. That they are two different things. That is what this political commentator was pointing out.
So that is the real nature of the political defeat suffered by the Zionist state as a result of the Al-Aqsa flood, as well as the resistance that has been put up by the Palestinian national liberation forces over the past one year. And this defeat is not just of the Zionists. It is equally true of the US imperialists and their allies. Their claims of being democracies, their claims about respecting and ensuring the rule of law in international relations, all of this has been blown to pieces. The people of those countries are clearly seeing their duplicity.
Of course, it’s been known in most of the world earlier itself. People of the Third world have known it for long. They have experienced it directly, most of them. So there has been no confusion about the real nature of these imperialist powers. But now we see that even within the imperialist powers, among the broad masses, not just the basic masses, but even among the petty bourgeoisie, the middle classes, a clear awareness, a clear understanding of the duplicity of their governments has emerged. They see how their rulers speak one thing at one time, like for example, on the Ukraine war, and something totally different at another time, as in the case of the Palestinian war.
A good example of this was the recent incident where the Zionist air force bombed out a whole area in order to assassinate the leadership of Hezbollah. Four blocks, it is said, four blocks of Beirut city were destroyed in that bombing. Now, it’s a heavily populated city. One can well imagine the number of casualties, civilian casualties, that would have taken place as a result of this bombing. A few days later, we saw the Iranians retaliate with a ballistic missile attack, including on cities like Tel Aviv. They were targeting the Mossad headquarters. Apparently, it did not strike the headquarters as such. The hit was just adjacent to it. This was reported by the Western imperialist press as an attack on ‘a heavily populated area’. So you have ‘a heavily populated area’ in Tel Aviv, but when it comes to Beirut, it is only Hezbollah!
This sort of duplicity, this blatant lying and all these things are exposing the real nature of the media itself. And we see how critical voices are coming up in Instagram, Facebook and various other social media. This is now becoming so serious, so threatening to the ruling classes of these countries, that some of them, some of their representatives, have started demanding, quite openly, that more severe censorship should be imposed to prevent an opposite narrative from coming up. They are openly saying that they are losing control of the narrative. So that is the political defeat that has been suffered by these imperialist powers.
Apart from that, we have seen that a number of European countries, who were hesitating earlier, have now come out supporting the formation of a Palestinian state, recognizing the Palestinian state and establishing diplomatic relations with it. What is known as the Palestinian state is something that actually has nothing more than the status of a municipality. Yet these diplomatic this type of a Palestinian state. But even then that would be a major development. It would diminish the Zionist role in West Asia. That in turn would lead to more contention among the imperialist powers and more opportunities for the peoples of that region to regroup, for the genuine revolutionary forces to come up and to regain the revolutionary heritage of the peoples of that area. The Palestinians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Syrians, Jordanians, all of them had a revolutionary history. And in fact, it’s a very interesting thing to note, the huge infusion of migrant labour to the Gulf countries, especially from Kerala, was actually an outcome, a by product of a very conscious plan of imperialist forces to push out the left-inclined, socialist-inclined, Palestinian-Egyptian workers from the Gulf countries. Because at that time all these countries of West Asia were heavily influenced by leftist, communist ideas, socialist ideas. So the partial resolution, which is the most likely one in my opinion, would create room for a retrieval of that revolutionary heritage. If the conscious effort is there for the formation of proletarian vanguards, then they would actually be able to lead the masses in realising real liberation, total liberation, not just from national oppression but also from social and economic oppression, class exploitation.
(Transcript of a talk delivered on October 7, 2024, at an online meeting organised by ‘Nazariya’ editorial team to mark the first anniversary of the Al-Aqsa flood. It has been edited for clarity and style.)