Thanos Chatziangelou ‘The Palestinian Resistance as a Reference Point for the Declaration of the Anti-Imperialist Civil War’

“A sacrifice today for tomorrow

the numbers suck their blood

Good morning, you’ll say good morning to me again on Saturday.

wrapped in a shroud.”

The Zionist atrocity of the Israeli occupation forces and the Western allies is growing day by day.

Invoking the provocative narrative of the rules of war, they baptize entire migrant camps, hospitals, churches, playgrounds and entire urban centres as Hamas bases and operational centres in order to legitimize the exemplary massacre of the Palestinian resistance for communication purposes. Israel’s war crimes are officially underwritten by the North Atlantic Alliance, with bilateral military support and the legitimisation of Israeli interventions by Western media propaganda. The Western narrative cuts off the practical popular resistance of dozens of Palestinian organizations from the Palestinian right to self-determination and independence, wanting to criminalize and drown in blood any attempt at liberation defined by the popular base, moving outside and against the imperialist Western centers.

Combatant comrades,

Since the dawn of Saturday 7 October and the realisation of Operation “Al Aqsa Storm” on the Israeli military bases outside the Gaza Strip, we have witnessed a historic breakthrough. Decades of armed popular resistance by Palestinian fighters is verging on an impending victory for the twin goals of liberation and self-determination. A victory of the armed struggle against Zionism and imperialism. It is our responsibility, our duty, but above all our political choice whether to be spectators of these events or to make a decisive contribution as a real and existing part of the internationalist front in defence of the liberation struggle everywhere.

This juncture can and must become the contemporary reference point for the combative construction of the international anti-imperialist front, constituted by revolutionary initiatives that will speak with action – will speak the language of fire. It is today that the strategic experience of the internationalist comrades and the experiences of those who wrote history in blood and gunpowder must become a common ground and source of inspiration for the necessary revolutionary initiatives.

Israel is slaughtering the Palestinian Resistance with the signature of NATO, this is the content and focus of our struggle. In the face of this treaty, it is revolutionarily fruitful to build a political and military alliance on the basis of actions, where strategic convergences are not bound by the need for tautological association. Today, the practical revolutionary solidarity that will contribute decisively to the victory of the armed Palestinian resistance is expressed on 2 strategic axes:

– The construction of the international anti-imperialist front, a political, social and strategic necessity for the waging of the anti-imperialist civil war in the western metropolitan centres.

The organization of a real humanitarian aid, which will break the military blockade of the Gaza Strip, defined by and for the needs of the people’s own will for freedom.

Crear dos, tres, muchos Palestine, es la consigna! The declaration of anti-imperialist civil war on Western interests is the return of violence to the womb of imperialism, the Western metropolitan centres – where it is born and nourished politically and militarily.

The declaration of anti-imperialist civil war in the western centres is transmuted through organised urban guerrilla warfare. This is the political task of those who support in practice the popular right of independence. This is our place in the history and present of resistance.

The real solidarity with the Palestinian resistance is the practical polemics of Zionism and imperialism in every geographical point of reference and expression, the shifting of the conflict to the strategic core of Western domination. To support the Resistance is to participate actively and militarily in the deepening of the rift of social peace in the West. Only the anti-imperialist civil war, with the expression of the urban guerrilla in the Western metropolises, will justify the arms of the Palestinian Resistance.

The real solidarity with the guerrilla will for collective liberation is the attack on the Western centres of power and Israeli investments. The attack on the NATO bases and western human resources that contribute to the immediate launching of the “peacekeeping” bombing of the Gaza Strip. The attack on the war industry that fuels imperialist militarism. The attack on the political and economic centres of consultation that set the political agenda for the massacre of the Palestinians. The attack on the purveyors of Western propaganda that launder Israel’s war crimes behind the narrative of the right to self-defence. We support the struggle of our brothers and sisters in Palestine and on the affiliated fronts of Syria and Iran when we stand by their side with acts of war, diverting the conflict to an international scale. We support their struggle against Zionism and imperialism when we fight, in the territories where we live and struggle, against the representative existence of Israel and NATO.

The decades-long military blockade of the Gaza Strip from basic goods and resources puts the Palestinians at war on two fronts: the military war against the services of Zionism and imperialism, and the daily war for survival and livelihood. Western proclamations to provide humanitarian aid to civilians and a ceasefire for a hostage exchange only serve the communicative purpose of polarising the division of the Palestinian people into criminal rebels and civilian housewives who extend a helping hand to the West. Humanitarian contributions and peace missions from the same centres that have been feeding the blockade and massacre of Palestinians for years are evidence of a provocative attempt to remove the stigma of war crimes from the civilised footprint of the West.

Mavi Marmara case – 2010

Those who today shed crocodile tears for the war dead are the same people who, 13 years ago, were responsible for the massacre (and its cover-up) of the Multinational Freedom Flotilla. In May 2010, an internationalist initiative of thousands of activists for the Palestinian Right to Resistance assembled a fleet of 8 ships to suspend the blockade of the Gaza Strip, carrying 700 militants and 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid. On 31 May, 80 km outside Gaza, Israeli special forces stormed the ships. The resistance of the militants on the Mavi Marmara boat leads the snipers to execute 10 activists, while the number of wounded from the operation is over 60. A few years later, International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda closes the investigation into possible war crimes, arguing that the criteria of large-scale deaths, premeditated plan or Israeli policy were not met. The alignment of the West with Israel’s needs is even evidenced in the fact that European allies, such as Cyprus, refused to supply and allow the Freedom Flotilla to disembark, feeding the blockade of Palestinians at the mercy of Zionist and imperialist agencies.

Today, initiatives such as that of the Multinational Freedom Flotilla are as necessary and timely as ever. For they show in practice that in the Gaza Strip the local expression of the international anti-imperialist war is raging. Because they show that only the multi-ethnic constitution of the popular base can nourish the just struggle for self-determination and freedom. Because they show the real face and intentions of tyranny in the face of unconstrained support for the rights of the Palestinian people. Because they show by deeds, not words, that the armed right of a people is and must remain the preserve of all.

The mouths that today speak of Freedom and Independence have a responsibility to arm themselves with an iron will and a subversive will. The armed Palestinian Resistance is the generalized task and cause of every revolutionary. Today, when capitalist alienation and individualization are perpetuating the social inertia of civil disobedience and rebellion, the Palestinian Resistance must be a shining beacon of universal human dignity and revolutionary will. By declaring anti-imperialist civil war in the western metropolitan centres, we become an active part of a political history that is being actively transformed in a warlike way for the benefit of the people’s interests. By declaring the anti-imperialist civil war, we defend with deafening acts those who arm their human dignity, those who are imprisoned in the hellholes of the secret services of Zionism, those whose blood flows in the rivers of Intifada. The brothers of the Resistance are miles away, the enemy is in front of us. Let us speak with action.

For the building of the anti-imperialist civil war in the western metropolises.

For the Revolution first and always.

The peoples triumph with gun in hand.

Thanos Chatziangelou, captured member of the Anarchist Action Organization

C’ Wing, Larissa Prison

24/11/2023