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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/palestines-resistance-has-already-won-gaza/41456">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Palestine's resistance has already won in Gaza</h1>
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<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/susan-abulhawa">susan abulhawa</a></span> -
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">22 November 2023</span></span> </p>
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<p>The people of Gaza are displaying great dignity despite the extreme brutality to which they are being subjected. </p><small>
<span>DPA via ZUMA Press</span></small>
<p>No matter the outcome of Israel’s genocidal invasion of Gaza, the Palestinian resistance fighters have already won.</p>
<p>They were victorious from that first day when they executed a
successful military raid of Israeli targets. It was a devastating blow
to Israel’s very presence in the world, which depends heavily on
military prestige and ability to strike terror in the indigenous
Palestinian population and surrounding Arab neighbors.</p>
<p>Hamas specifically targeted the heavily fortified colonies Israel has
been installing and expanding for decades around all Palestinian
centers of life. Like all Zionist colonies, those surrounding Gaza were
built on the ancestral villages of Palestinians who remain refugees to
this day.</p>
<p>Israel imports foreign Jews from around the world and incentivizes
them to live on the frontlines as human shields against Palestinian
aspirations for freedom and return to their homes in Palestine. For many
of the fighters who resisted their tormentors, 7 October was the first
time they had been able to breach the open air prison of Gaza and see
their ancestral lands, which they had previously only known in the
stories passed down to them.</p>
<p>From that fateful day, the resistance demonstrated to their people
and to the world that the notion of Israel’s invincibility is, and
always was, a sham – a classic paper tiger.</p>
<p>The popular Arabic term for <em>al-jaysh al-lathi la yuqhar</em> – the army that cannot be defeated – turned out to be a myth of biblical proportions. A small guerilla force with <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jon-elmer/how-gaza-made-weapons-are-impacting-battle-against-israeli-armored-vehicles">homemade rockets</a>
and light arms managed to disable Israel’s surveillance towers and
evade Israel’s celebrated intelligence apparatus for hours, as various
wings of Palestinian resistance ferried Israelis back to Gaza to use in
bargaining for the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners,
including many who have languished for years without charge or trial.</p>
<h2>Fabrications</h2>
<p>Israel tried desperately to control the narrative in a series of
fabrications that immediately unraveled, one after the other in such
ways that turned Israel’s storied propaganda apparatus into the laughing
stock of the century. Sensational lies about rape and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/biden-lied-about-seeing-photos-beheaded-israeli-children">beheaded babies</a> were quietly <a href="https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1711802752869740715">retracted</a> despite being uncritically parroted by mainstream western media.</p>
<p>Forty dead babies were <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/18/video-what-happened-october-7/">downgraded</a> to one. The initial claim of 1,400 Israelis killed was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-revises-death-toll-oct-7-hamas-attack-around-1200-2023-11-10/">reduced</a> to 1,200, followed by video footage showing that many of those, including <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-helicopter-shot-civilians-7-october-rave-police-find">rave goers</a>, were actually <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/shoot-everything-how-israeli-pilots-killed-their-own-civilians">killed</a> and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-admits-burning-hundreds-people-7-october">burned</a> by Israel’s US-supplied Apaches firing on the crowds and fleeing Hamas fighters carrying captives.</p>
<p>Israel tried to present sloppy “evidence” that al-Shifa hospital in
Gaza City was used by Hamas fighters. Social media users promptly poked
massive holes in the official narrative, forcing the Israeli military to
delete the videos and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-fails-show-evidence-hamas-command-center-al-shifa-hospital">replace them</a> with even more foolish doctoring.</p>
<p>It was the stuff for memes and wild fodder for comedians.</p>
<p>But the most important revelation gifted to the world by Palestinian
resistance is Israel’s staggering moral bankruptcy and Western hypocrisy
cheering it on. Unimaginable cruelty, mercilessness and wanton violence
has been on display, not only from Israel’s political and military
institutions, but from their nation on the whole.</p>
<p>Ordinary citizens continue to post videos mocking the ineffable
suffering of Palestinians who are being murdered in the most gruesome
ways – their bodies shredded, burned, or buried alive in their bombed
homes. Israelis dance and celebrate in their street, calling for total
genocide of Palestinians, and for the expansion of their Zionist colony
on stolen land.</p>
<p>They are so drunk on their power and the satisfaction of at least 20,000 <a href="https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1727246954298814694">murdered Palestinians</a> in the span of six weeks that they cannot understand how their bloodlust shocks the conscience.</p>
<h2>Bravery</h2>
<p>Israel began threatening a land invasion almost immediately after 7
October. But it kept delaying, even after the US came to its rescue with
two <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/14/middleeast/us-aircraft-carrier-eisenhower-israel-gaza-intl-hnk-ml/index.html">aircraft carriers</a> and America’s most sophisticated <a href="https://time.com/6332014/middle-east-nuclear-submarine/">nuclear submarine</a> to the Mediterranean (along with bombs and other weaponry, plus billions of US tax-funded financial aid).</p>
<p>Each attempt to roll into Gaza was met with fierce Palestinian
resistance, causing Israel to retreat several times. When Israel finally
began rolling into Gaza, the Palestinian resistance pummeled its
troops.</p>
<p>Hamas’s military wing the Qassam Brigades, along with other
resistance formations, continue to post daily video proof of their
operations. They’re resisting unspeakable carnage from the greatest
military powers the world has ever known.</p>
<p>The prisoner exchange agreement is happening precisely on the terms
Hamas set from the beginning. It said no captives would be released
without release of Palestinian political prisoners.</p>
<p>Fifty Israeli women and children are now being <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/22/israel-hamas-deal-which-captives-palestinian-prisoners-could-be-freed">exchanged</a> for 150 Palestinian women and children who have languished in Israeli jails since long before 7 October.</p>
<p>The bravery of Palestine’s resistance fighters is the stuff of
legends. With light armament, men in knock-off Adidas track suits and
flip flops are successfully blowing up one Israeli tank after another
and taking more and more prisoners, outsmarting the most celebrated
Israeli and American military minds.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, social media giants, which are heavily influenced by Zionist agendas, have <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CznvgxDIdyK/">banned</a> users from posting these videos, as they clearly prove the gross underreporting of Israeli military losses.</p>
<p>But that matters little now. There is nothing Israel can do to stem the tide of its losses.</p>
<p>It is not merely the material losses of life or economic devastation,
nor the massive loss of confidence and credibility in the world.
Rather, the Israelis lost their humanity.</p>
<p>What remains before the world’s eye is the soulless shell of a
grotesque killing machine that can apparently do nothing but murder,
destroy and terrorize wholesale.</p>
<p>Israel has decimated Gaza. It has bombed roads, homes, buildings,
bakeries, malls, shops, water installations, universities, hospitals and
institutions into above-ground graveyards of irretrievable bodies,
memories, dreams, and potentials we will never know.</p>
<p>The sheer barbarity of killing more than 20,000 people and maiming
tens of thousands more in the span of several weeks is impossible to
comprehend. It is painful to imagine the terror and trauma that Israel
has unleashed on 2.3 million human beings with nowhere to escape,
particularly as Israel cut off water, food, fuel and medical supplies.</p>
<p>There are credible <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/17/fears-grow-people-are-dehydrating-to-death-in-gaza-as-clean-water-runs-out">fears</a> of deaths from starvation and dehydration, with more surely to come.</p>
<p>The price Palestinians are forced to pay is unfathomable, and it is
being borne with an equally incomprehensible steadfastness, deep faith,
dignity and humility that should make the world weep with shame.</p>
<p>Because of them and the brave Palestinian resistance, the world will
never be the same again. The Qassam Brigades launched a battle for the
liberation of our homeland, and in doing so, they are awakening and
freeing us all.</p>
<p>No matter how many more people Israel slaughters or how much it
steals or bombs, there is no denying its defeat. Israel cannot continue
to live by its sword.</p>
<p>Either Israel renounces its supremacist exclusionary Zionist ideology
and integrates into Palestinian society and the region as equals rather
than lords, or it will face a far greater, more determined and
uncompromising resistance that will eventually destroy it completely as
it has tried to destroy us.</p>
<p>We will never forget.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://susanabulhawa.com/about/">susan abulhawa</a> is a writer and activist. She is a founder and director of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival.</em></p>
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