On this day two years ago, the Palestinian National Resistance carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, one of the largest and most comprehensive counteroffensives of the 21st century. In a carefully planned out, completely secret, and airtight operation, Palestinian militants followed a barrage of thousands of rockets with an armed incursion, breaking the prison walls used to blockade the Gaza strip. Reminiscent of the 1987 Qibya operation, the militants paraglided into Zionist-held territory, reclaiming for the first time in decades land that was formerly “Israeli,” for Palestine. Subsequent images surfaced of Zionist barricades being broken, Palestinians bulldozing borders and biking into their land of which they had been violently suppressed from stepping foot on for decades.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood took place at a unique time, when global imperialist collusion facilitated through regional powers such as Qatar and Turkey were pressuring the Palestinian National Liberation Movement into disarmament, hoping to “peacefully” resolve the Palestinian national question through capitulation. The Operation crushed any illusions the imperialists had of seeking to quell Palestinian National Resistance. From the Nabi Musa uprising of 1920 culminating in the great revolt of 1936 against British imperialism, to the two glorious intifada’s whose righteous anger was in response to capitulationist betrayals in 1988 and 1993 respectively, the Palestinian people have served as a shining example of the necessity to fight for liberation until the very end. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood also represents a great blow to imperialism, highlighting the place of Palestine as a storm center for anti-imperialist struggle around the world.
As a result of the Operation, the Zionist entity retaliated with a nearly immediate policy of intensified genocide on the Gaza strip. In the course of the entity’s barbaric onslaught, the Palestinian people have shouldered a great burden in enduring daily bombardment, murder, and famine. This represents a general law of revolutionary struggle, in which the oppressed masses will be subjected to intense repression should they dare to rebel in any form. The steadfastness of the Palestinian people in the face of one of the most horrific genocides in history is a lesson we must internalize. Despite all forms of horror they have been subjected to, they have continued to grasp that only through revolutionary struggle can their shackles be broken.
We are inside of the belly of the beast—the imperialist empire that funds, arms, and legitimizes the genocide in Gaza. U.S. imperialism sustains the Zionist entity’s occupation of Palestine and the broader machinery of global imperialist oppression. In the face of this, the bravery of the Palestinian National Resistance reveals the enduring capacity of the oppressed and working people to fight back, even under the most brutal conditions. We must all stand fast in our solidarity with the Palestinian people, and our solidarity must be more than symbolic. We must root our Palestine solidarity work within the struggles faced by the oppressed masses on our campuses, workplaces, and neighborhoods where the same systems of exploitation, policing, and surveillance uphold imperial violence abroad. Connecting the fight for Palestinian liberation to our work mobilizing, politicizing, and organizing the masses here in the U.S. is a strategic necessity for an anti-imperialist and working-class revolutionary movement.
LONG LIVE THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE!
LONG LIVE THE MILITANT STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION!
DOWN WITH U.S. IMPERIALISM!
Signed,
People’s Defense Committee
Revolutionary Student Union
The Crusader
New Labor Organizing Committee
The Masses 