First, we find it necessary to establish that the wave of revolutionary action in support of Palestine, and the delivery of Palestine to the forefront of the global anti-imperialist movement, is a result of the brave sacrifice by the Palestinian people on October 7th, 2023.
With this article, we articulate five direct lessons for the student movement and broader mass movement in amerika, bestowed on us through the militancy and struggle represented by Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
1. Escalation is the path to change
Palestinians affirmed during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood a universal truth that “political power grows from the barrel of a gun”.1 The resistance affirmed that it is through revolutionary violence that the walls of occupation can be smashed.
The essence of the flood was a channeling of the collective spirit of resistance of the Palestinian masses, an escalation from the 75+ years of breaking down walls. Towards the student movement, the collective spirit of our resistance towards the imperialist beast has formed cracks in the base of its ivory tower
The state of the movement in this country is far from the organization and militancy exhibited by the Palestinian resistance, however, we have gotten a small taste of this truth. The uprisings of the student intifada and various actions in defiance of America’s commitment to zionism and genocide were suppressed by violence. Organization and militancy demonstrated in a small number of cases that reactionary forces of police and administration can be expelled and defeated. Escalating and multiplying the militancy we saw during the student intifada and elsewhere is the only path forward, and the only one that leads us towards wielding substantial leverage on behalf of Palestine.
We must assess the failure of the student intifada, and the broader movement. We must take to heart the call of the students in Gaza to begin “a new revolutionary phase of comprehensive escalation” [2].
Statements from Gazan students require us to reflect on the line between reform and militancy. We have a particular duty, as students in the imperial core, to not bend at the knees of opportunist politicians and movements, and to hold the line on truly revolutionary politics.
2. Our vision must extend beyond what the enemy imposes on us
Palestinians rose up on October 7th partly because they were able to channel their positive collective vision of breaking this siege and freeing Palestine into an act of revolutionary violence. Despite the abhorrent conditions imposed on them by the zionist settler-colony, they were able to maintain and concretize this vision.
We see this influence in media, where publications like the Detroit Free Press echoed the University of Michigan’s emphasis that “none of the people who were arrested were students” at a demonstration in September. Why are they saying this? To enforce a warped view of reality, that there are “good” students and “harmful” non-students who are leading the student movement astray. They need to intensify the effort to put a cleavage in our movement because a unified movement is what they fear the most. They would prefer it if students valued themselves over members of the community, workers, and others, and reproduced this rhetoric in the youth movement.
It is clear that with these efforts from our enemies, we must intensify our struggle against the mindset instilled by the universities. We must go look beyond our lives as students and partake in struggles in our broader communities. The student movement can only be successful should it link and subordinate itself to the broader revolutionary struggle.
The Palestinian revolutionary intellectual Basil Al-Araj’s correct analysis demonstrates that opportunism, bourgeois influence (in our case, this is mediated by the university administration), and capitulation work to “reproduce what preceded [the status quo] in new forms and with younger faces” [3]. In the same way that Basil and the Palestinian resistance fought this reformist line in Palestine, so too must we in the student movement.
This point includes rejecting the active attempt to co-opt our movement. The effort to channel the collective rage of the pro-Palestinian movement into meager handouts from the University administration, or a vote on a meaningless ballot is something we must stand up against. It is no coincidence that some University administrations have begun adopting vague “pro-Palestinian” sentiments, they know it is a way to subdue a movement that threatens their power.
The Al-Aqsa Flood put forward the powerful lesson that we as revolutionaries must conceive of a vision for what a better society looks like, and draw from this vision to fight towards achieving it.
3. The revolutionary cause is a self-sacrificing and optimistic one
The mindset of the imperialists could not comprehend why Palestinians would take such a drastic risk to achieve even the slightest victory for their people. That is why in order to fulfill the warped view of reality the imperialists have, they created false narratives that the Palestinian resistance was motivated by murderous tendencies or some genocidal intention. The self-sacrificing attitude of the Palestinian resistance is intrinsically linked to the belief that sacrifice is for the purpose of a larger goal, a parcel of a larger movement towards change.
This is inherently optimistic. Understanding that our movement doesn’t stop with death, but keeps producing life. The struggle lives on in the hearts of the people and as ideas. As Palestinian revolutionary Sanaa Salameh beautifully put it, “We do not fear this [israel] country, as we produce life, while they produce death” [4].
In the student movement, this is an attitude we must pay particularly close attention to. By no means are our sacrifices at the level of the Palestinian people, but we can still learn something important. For example, with the influence of the university and schools, it is easy to default to the pressure that our role is just to complete our studies with the hopes of securing a job. This is a deterrence to the type of work that needs to be done. Why risk arrest if it’ll threaten one’s prospects of getting into graduate school? The answer lies once again in what the Al-Aqsa flood represented. This risk is bearable because we are fighting for others, who will carry on with our ideas. These risks are necessary because it is only by daring to win that the masses have achieved anything in history.
We reject the tendency in the pro-Palestinian movement to avoid risks, to be overly pessimistic, and to cower in the face of repression. Assurance of victory should not be a prerequisite to struggle. Our enemy is stronger than us, but the Al-Aqsa Flood taught us that the myth of their infallibility can be shattered.
We must adopt the attitude of the self-sacrificing and brave Palestinian resistance if we want to achieve anything tangible here. We need to understand that their sacrifice finds its origins in a profound optimism and love for their people, for the cause. We must understand that this attitude should serve in the words of Catalina Adrianzén, Peruvian revolutionary, “as a starting point for a social change, it should be the stimulus for youth to struggle to build an egalitarian world without oppression or injustice” [5].
4. Strategy is necessary to continue escalating
Taking up the historic call of the Palestinian resistance, a small portion of activists in America began escalating and unleashing the combative spirit of people rightfully enraged with their government’s support for genocide. In opposition to this, a large portion of the so-called “Pro-Palestine” movement was and is stuck in a cycle of repeating the same tactics, strangling the potential for escalation and militancy, and not working to reach the broadest strata of the masses.
We owe the Palestinians with providing a resurgence to an anti-imperialist movement in this country, but it is up to us to develop it towards truly revolutionary means. We put forward the correct conception that escalation and organization form a contradiction. What does this mean? It means that escalation is only possible through mass work, outreach and sometimes grueling efforts to mobilize masses of people, and that escalation in turn develops those who have been organized and brings us closer to the goal of stopping this country’s support for genocide. In essence, what needs to happen is a strengthening of the movement in both quality and quantity, without neglecting one over the other.
5. We must draw a line of demarcation
What is a line of demarcation? It is making it clear who are our (potential) allies, and who are our enemies. A figurative line that distinguishes us from those who oppose us. It is taking action against our enemies and taking action to build and care for our movement.
This distinction is far from being clearly made in our movement. The student intifada was met with a wave of capitulation, that is student movements giving in to their administration for less favorable demands. Hence, work needs to be done to delineate who our enemies are. Should the relationship between pro-Palestinian students and administrations who support genocide be one where we can freely dialogue and try to negotiate, or should it be one where we build enough power and escalate to the point where it is impossible for the administration to ignore our demands?
Operation Al-Aqsa flood makes this answer clear to us. Decades of negotiations, peace talks, normalization, and even elections were ineffectual in the face of what proved more successful in shattering the illusions of the zionist entity – escalation, militancy, and revolutionary violence. How does this translate to the student movement? It tells us that we must rely on our own power and develop this power, rather than begging for scraps from our enemies (the administration, the ruling class).
Students in the Pro-Palestinian movement, do not let the sacrifice of the Palestinian people be in vain. The obligation of every revolutionary is to cut off the head of the snake, the cause of the misery of a majority of the people worldwide, to bring down the imperialist system from within. This is a historic task, and will require much more mobilization, politicization, and organization. Students, we must struggle to look beyond the outlook instilled in us by the university, we must dedicate ourselves to partaking in struggles beyond the campus walls. We must build towards the capacity to flood the halls of the university, breaking down its walls and building something truly for the people.
FLOOD THE CAMPUS
BREAK DOWN THE UNIVERSITY WALLS
THE STUDENT INTIFADA LIVES
Originally published in Frontlines
1. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch05.htm
4. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/05/25/sana-daqqah-we-are-on-the-side-of-humanity/