Palestine & Lebanon – One year later

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By Terri Kay

Note: This address was delivered during a public forum organized by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI) commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood. Terri Kay is an anti-zionist Jew and a member of PAL-Awda NY/NJ.

There’s a significant interview published by Mondoweiss yesterday with Mousa Abu Marzouk:  A Time of Painful Birth and Major Transformation. Abu Marzouk was deputy chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from1997 to 2013, until succeeded by the Honorable Ismail Haniyeh, recently assassinated by the zionist entity in Iran. Abu Marzouk said the objective of the October 7th Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was to confront the zionist entity’s Gaza Division, which had been stationed around the perimeter of the Gaza Strip, imposing a strict siege since 2007. And he details the goals of the October 7th Al-Aqsa Flood as follows:

1. Establishing an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
2. Protecting Jerusalem and its holy sites from being Judaized or destroyed.
3. Liberating our prisoners from Israeli occupation prisons.
4. Breaking the siege on Gaza.
5. Ensuring that our people live freely and with dignity, determining their own future through elections in which they can choose their leadership and destiny.

Marzouk also listed a couple of objectives they have achieved as follows:

1. The Palestinian cause returned to the forefront, and the entire world became aware of our cause and our rightful demands for a state, freedom, and a future.
2. The whole world came to realize the true nature of Israel—its barbarism and its goal to exterminate Palestinian people—and its aggressive ambitions. This led to resolutions from the United Nations General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court, along with global condemnation against Israel.

He also said that

“Israel can no longer claim that it protects the region and the Gulf against Iran, and thus all efforts to integrate it into the region have failed as a result of this operation.”

We can see the zionist project’s desperate attempts to reclaim that title with its assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political bureau of Hamas, who the zionists murdered audaciously in Tehran, the capital of Iran on July 31st. By murdering the person leading ceasefire negotiations, the zionist entity has made clear that its only goal is extending its barbaric rule and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by exterminating Palestinians from their indigenous homeland. Just as they used the Oslo accords to only further the zionist colonial project.

And just hours before that, Netanyahu ordered the assassination of Fuad Shukr, a senior military leader of Lebanon’s Islamic Resistance, who was central to the struggle to drive U.S., French and zionist occupation forces out of Lebanon after the 1982 invasion and the Sabra and Shatila massacre. He was murdered in Beirut for his solidarity with Palestine and the heroic effort to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza. US Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin’s immediate response was to defend the zionist entity following the assassination. He stated that Washington will help “isr@el” if it faced reprisals following the assassinations.

When Mondoweiss asked Abu Marzouk if his predictions on October 7th differed from what happened in the subsequent months, his most significant response was

“I did not expect the U.S. to be so brutal in supplying Israel with the lethal weapons that kill in this manner and to protect them in all international forums. While I know American society well, politicians are something else entirely.”

Marzouk later tells Mondoweiss “You must understand that U.S. policy is responsible for all this in the Middle East. It adopts Israeli policies, even if they contradict the American administration’s directions. It supplies them with all types of weapons and protects them in the UN and other international forums.

“The countries in the region are divided into two categories: one possesses wealth and money, but that money is kept in American banks, allowing the U.S. to control these countries. The second group depends on international aid, which is also controlled by the U.S. Hence, the response of the region’s governments aligns with the U.S. will.

“Additionally, other countries in the world do not want to confront the U.S. As for Europe, it is complicit with the U.S. in all these crimes. The countries outside of U.S. influence, such as Russia, China, South Africa, and Iran, have performed well on the international and legal levels. We are grateful to these countries, and the Palestinian people appreciate their efforts and thank them for their positions.”

In his closing, Abu Marouk offers:

“To the free people supporting the liberation of Palestine, the Palestinian people are watching your actions, and we see that you pose a real threat to the occupation. Continue your struggle, continue exposing the occupation, highlighting its crimes, and putting pressure on it and its supporters. Make them outcasts wherever they go, and sever the ties between your governments and the Israeli government. Ensure that your activism becomes more effective because the children of Palestine need your action.”

I want to speak about Lebanon, about the unwavering and heroic support for Palestine provided by Hezbollah. They consistently said that they would halt the attacks on the zionist occupation when the occupation agreed to a ceasefire. But the hateful and vicious zionist entity instead used this to mount horrific attacks against the Lebanese people, first with their pager bombs and then continuing with bunker busting bombs in major residential areas of Beirut, the Beqaa Valley, the airport and the major roads to Syria, where many were fleeing to.

The assassination of the leader and hero of the Resistance, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, and the heroic commanders who were martyred at his side, was a huge blow. But the Lebanese resistance forces have been proving the depth and heart of their strength, continuing to defend Lebanon, holding back the threatened ground invasion, and today in a Unity of the Fields coordinated attack Tel Aviv was targeted four separate times, once from Gaza, twice from Yemen, and once from Lebanon.

In the words of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah:

“There is a misconception prevalent in the Arab world regarding ‘Israel’-US relations. We keep repeating this lie about the zionist lobby – that the Jews rule America and are the real decision makers, and so on. No. America itself is the decision maker. In America, you have the major corporations, you have a trinity of the oil companies, the weapons industry, and the so-called ‘Christian-Zionism.’ The decision-making is in the hands of this alliance. ‘Israel’ used to be a tool at the hands of the British, and now it is a tool in the hands of America.”

The cause of the Resistance, the cause Sayyed Hassan fought for, the cause of liberation is the cause of all humanity. We all must continue his fight.