Translation into English of the interview with the Lebanese anthropologist and communist leader Leila Ghanem, originally conducted by Nines Maestro and published in the magazine Con-Ciencia de Clase (issue 1, winter, 2024).
1. Why did Hamas’ military operation on October 7th shock the Middle East and the world? What is the historical impact of that event on resistance movements in the Middle East?
There is no doubt that for the Palestinian people, and indeed for the Arab people, the “Al-Aqsa Flood” of October 7 was a military operation of mythical proportions; in any case, unprecedented since the occupation of Palestine in 1948, a kind of legendary epic in the eyes of the Arab peoples. Some writers go back to Homer to evoke the image of the Iliad, a heroic legend “in which the weak manages to defeat their colonizer in an unimaginable balance of forces”. In just two hours, the greatest power in the Middle East, the fifth largest army in the world, suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of a modest commando unit called “Zero Distance” (to highlight the confrontation of the body against the tank), formed by a hundred men modestly armed, but endowed with heroic courage. Twenty settlements liberated, military bases occupied – one of which is the IDF headquarters in the south – as well as a high-tech military observatory responsible for controlling the border, the 545th research unit and the 414th intelligence unit neutralized and two generals captured. The Zionist-Western legend of the invincibility of the Zionist state crumbled. In a matter of hours, Gaza became Hanoi. Let us remember the famous phrase of General Giap [Vietnamese revolutionary] during a visit to Algiers in December 1970: ”The colonialists are bad students of history.”
Imagine the earthquake that shook the entire system of the Western Empire at the sudden defeat of its right-hand man, in whom it has invested billions of dollars for almost a century. The same power to which the Empire had entrusted the function of being an imperial bridgehead to control strategic sea routes, vital resources such as oil, gas and uranium, and to constitute the key piece to consolidate its domination and destabilize the enemies of the Empire, introducing class relations to the benefit of the oppressors. Israel was at the heart of this capitalist system that had to keep the countries of the South dependent; for this, the Palestinian people had to become a precursor scenario, a model of persecution. To achieve this, it was necessary to dispossess them, dehumanize them, keep them blocked, massacre their historical leaders. This required a specific status for its puppets, and political, institutional, financial and media protection.
The immediate alarm that shook all the leaders of the capitalist world on October 8, who flocked en masse to Tel Aviv, is irrefutable proof of the Western world’s investment in this State constituted outside the law, outside all rights and humanitarian norms. Rights and norms created by the West itself.
October 7 was a defeat for the imperialist West. Now there is a before and an after of October 7.
2. Is Hamas a terrorist organization?
Let’s start by pointing out that, apart from the US and the EU, no other country in the world accuses Hamas of terrorism.
If we look at history, the term “terrorist” has not always been pejorative. Revolutionaries used “terror” against class enemies. It was during the French Revolution that the term “terrorist” was first used by Gracchus Babeuf when speaking of the “terrorist patriots of the second year of the Republic”. For Marxism, the Terror was not a political end at all, but a tool, the instrument of a policy, and it must be judged in relation to the objectives of this policy. This raises two different questions: first, the question of the legitimacy of the political ends; second, the adequacy of the means. Condemning the Terror as a metaphysical “system” conceals the interest in delegitimizing the political objectives that it set.
Let us take the example of the Commune of Pays, the culmination of the French Civil War. After its defeat, they were described, to quote only Le Figaro , the organ of the Versailles reaction, as “terrorists of the Hotel de Ville (of the City Hall)” or “terrorists of March 18” or “the terrorist Commune”. The Terror was defended or fought according to the objectives pursued by the different social classes and political factions and which each considered legitimate.
In a letter to his mother, Friedrich Engels explained: “The few hostages who were shot in the Prussian style, the few palaces that were burned in the Prussian style, are much talked about, because everything else is a lie; but no one talks about the 40,000 men, women and children whom the Versaillese massacred with machine guns after they were disarmed.” We could say that this description by Engels refers to the events in Gaza. We could think that he describes how the Western media have disproportionately valued (and continue to do so) the impact of the Hamas attack on October 7, and the genocide that followed with the bloody revenge of the IDF army supported by the US Delta Force and its three aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. Those who have spoken of the Hiroshima of Gaza do not distance themselves from the figure of 70,000 victims that fell in Japan in August 1945. In Gaza, the number of civilians killed amounts to 50,000. The imperialist-colonial States have routinely denounced the terrorism of the struggles of the peoples subjected to their domination and have treated their combatants as terrorists. Let us remember once again that various terrorist organizations, in the pillory throughout history, became legitimate interlocutors; this was the case of the Viet Cong, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), the African National Congress (ANC) and many other organizations classified at the time as “terrorists”, such as the PLO and the PFLP in Palestine.
This term was intended and is intended to depoliticize their struggle, presented as a confrontation between Good and Evil. Every time the Palestinians rebel, the West – so quick to glorify the resistance of the Ukrainians – invokes terrorism. It did so during the first Intifada in 1987 and the second in 2000, during the armed actions in the West Bank or the mobilizations for Jerusalem, during the confrontations in Gaza, besieged since 2007 and which has suffered six wars in 17 years.
The question of Israel’s legitimacy to defend itself and disarm Hamas remains to be addressed. Some Zionist media outlets even invoke Thomas Hobbes and his perception of what he called the ruling classes’ possession of the “monopoly of legitimate physical force”. This ignores the fact that this legitimacy cannot be applied to a settler state, a legitimacy contested in the first place by the Palestinians, by the peoples of the countries surrounding it that have been attacked (Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis, Iranians, etc.) and by all those who consider it a settler state. Before the deception of the Oslo “Peace Accords”, most countries in the world did not recognize Israel. Its legitimacy is based on a United Nations decision, while Israel has systematically rejected all decisions relating to the Palestinian people (resolutions 242, 323 and 194 on the right of return of the Palestinians to their country).
3. Can you briefly explain the political content of the Axis of Resistance, who its members are and what place Palestine occupies?
There are two different axes, which overlap, but which do not have a common direction. There is the axis of the States: Iran, Syria [until the fall of Al Assad last December], Yemen, Lebanon (south [due to the presence of Hezbollah]); and the axis of the resistance movements, which are anti-imperialist political-military groups of diverse allegiances ranging from disinherited Shiism to Marxism. All of them, including Hamas, raise the anti-colonial question, and some advocate social justice in their program. They are essentially made up of Hezbollah (Lebanon), Islamic Jihad (Palestine), Ansar Allah (Yemen [the so-called Houthis]), Al-Hashd Al-Sha’abi (Popular Mobilization Forces, Iraq); and we can add to this bloc the PFLP (Palestine), the Saraya (special unit of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon) and other communist organizations, such as the Lebanese Communist Party, which has just called for mobilization of its militants and is training in Hezbollah bases. There is significant coordination between these political-military groups, which act under the slogan “Unity of Paths”, a form that guarantees the relative independence of each organization, in particular those based in Palestine, such as Hamas. However, it should be noted that coordination with Hamas is more or less distant, essentially for ideological reasons – Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood, a conservative Sunni Islamic group – but also for political differences, Hamas’ alliance with Qatar and Turkey, which has affected its relations with Syria. In 2014 Hamas had to abandon the Yarmouk camp, in Syria. However, it is important to note that Hamas has a different structure from that of the Islamic mercenary organizations created by the CIA, such as Al-Qaeda or Al-Nusra or the Islamic State, whose sole objective is to destroy the structures of Arab States and combat their anti-imperialist resistance.
Hamas is a Palestinian movement rooted in the working classes of Gaza, the West Bank and the Palestinian camps in Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan. Hamas was democratically elected in elections supervised by the United Nations in 2007, and since then Gaza has been blockaded not only by Israel, but also by Europe and the US. It is not Islam that bothers the imperialists, who have historically known how to use fascist Islam perfectly. They confront Hamas because the organization refuses to lay down its arms until it liberates Palestine and rejects the so-called peace treaties, such as those of Camp David or Oslo, which have only served to usurp 78% of historical Palestine prior to the Nakba of 1984. Hamas currently receives training and weapons from the anti-imperialist Resistance Axis and not from its ideological friends in Istanbul or Qatar. This explains the differences within Hamas between two branches: the military branch, Al-Qassam, and the political branch, whose leader lives in Qatar and not in Gaza. It should also be noted that the liberation of Palestine is at the heart of the program of this Resistance Bloc, as is ending US interference in the Middle East.
Despite these differences, the ongoing battle for Gaza has required the unity of all the aforementioned components and perfect military coordination. Their ingenuity and bravery will go down in history.
4. Is the demonstration of the military vulnerability of the Zionist State, by the Palestinian Resistance, comparable to the victory of the Resistance in Lebanon in 2006?
There are undoubtedly similarities, because in both cases it is a question of poorly equipped commandos facing a regular army equipped with significant resources. The accounts of the battle that reach us every day from Gaza show that the strength of the fighters’ determination is decisive for the outcome.
When Gazans refer to their fighters as “samurai” or talk about “Zero Distance,” they want to show the enormous value of “a fighter facing a tank.” In 2006, on the plain of Khiam, when Hezbollah fighters captured 40 Mer-Kaba tanks without destroying them, they used the same tactic. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah [Hezbollah leader assassinated by Israel in 2024] said then to encourage his men: “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web.” In Mao’s words: “imperialism is a paper tiger.”
The IDF’s defeat was so bitter that since 2006 Israel, which has fought six destructive wars in 25 years, no longer dares to venture into Lebanon [until September of last year].
Today, in Gaza, their terrible and cowardly revenge against civilians, especially women and children, does not play in their favor. In military terms, the powerfully armed Israeli-American forces, the IDF and Delta, have not been able, in 50 days [today, 1 year and 4 months] of fierce war, to crush the fire of the fighters, to stop Hamas, or to capture any of its fighters. The resistance of Gaza, its people and its fighters, is reviving the Battle of Stalingrad.
5. IS THERE ANY REAL BASIS FOR THE OPINION THAT THE ZIONIST GOVERNMENT KNEW ABOUT THE PALESTINIAN ATTACK OF OCTOBER 7 AND ALLOWED IT TO TRIGGER THE MASSACRE?
Quite the opposite. As we have pointed out before, Israel was shocked in a scandalous way. The commando came to occupy the offices of the General Directorate, presented as a jewel of technology. The attack exposed the structural errors of the fifth most powerful army in the world; it showed the destabilization of an army that began to shoot at everything that moved, including its own citizens. These facts were revealed both by the members of the Palestinian commando, and by the Israeli press, which cited witnesses. Nasrallah also alluded in his speech to the bewilderment of the Israeli army, which fired at Israeli civilians.
6. What are the main plans of Zionist imperialism that have been shattered due to the Palestinian attack?
Hamas has not yet revealed the two fundamental reasons for its intervention: the choice of date and place of the operation. But it is worth making some analyses to characterize the situation:
– The vital need to break the blockade, after the tunnels on the Egyptian side were closed in joint Israeli-Egyptian operations in 2019 that suffocated Gaza.
– The desire to stop the ethnic cleansing that has been taking place in the West Bank since 2020 and that has affected 1,600 young people [currently, many more], especially in Jenin, Nablus, Jerusalem and Hawara, where in 2023 there was a pogrom [by Zionist settlers against Palestinians].
– The desire to save Al-Aqsa, a Muslim shrine and symbol of the capital of Palestine, which Netanyahu has decided to confiscate and open to the Western Wall. Attacks on Friday prayers have become systematic.
– End the rapprochement process between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which included the construction, already begun, of the Ben Gurion Canal I between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which should end in Gaza.
– Israel’s intention to seize Gaza’s offshore gas fields.
– Israel’s repeated statements about the need to halve the population of Gaza and send the other half to Sinai, as well as sending Hamas fighters to Guantanamo and political leaders to Qatar.
7. Why is the two-state solution, Israeli and Palestinian, unacceptable to the various currents of the Palestinian Resistance and why do they qualify this proposal as collaboration with the enemy?
If we want to summarize the history of the occupation of Palestine in a few dates, we can say that Palestine was occupied in three phases: the Nakba of 1948, the Naksa or defeat of 1967 and the Oslo Accords of 1993. As Elias Sambar, head of the Palestinian delegation responsible for the peace negotiations, recognizes, the so-called peace agreements (sic.), which have lasted for 32 years, have only served to reduce Palestine. Today, only 6% of the original Palestine remains.
Moreover, one of the reasons for the “popularity” of Hamas, democratically elected in 2007 under the auspices of an international UN observer mission, is that Gazans, against all odds, chose the party, not because of its “Islamic doctrine”, but because the organization refuses to lay down its arms and negotiate a surrender agreement. A stance that has cost the lives of a dozen of its historical leaders, including the founder, Sheikh Yassin, who was brutally murdered. Since then, Israel has subjected Gaza to a blockade as collective punishment. A total blockade that has lasted 17 years, which has turned Gaza into an open-air prison before becoming an open-air cemetery.
Hamas was not the only organization to reject the Oslo Accords, known as the Shameful Accords. All other Palestinian organizations rejected them, including factions of Fatah (such as Fatah-Revolutionary Council), as well as most PLO leaders, and figures close to Arafat such as Mahmoud Darwish, who wrote Arafat’s speeches, or Edward Said. The sleeper state, or shell state presided over by Mahmoud Abbas, is primarily a security state intended to protect Israel.
The two-state solution is nothing more than a decoy that has allowed Israel to dispossess the Palestinians, accelerating the construction of hundreds of settlements and systematic ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. This year, before October 7 [2023], 266 young Palestinians were massacred in their homes in front of their families, in a preventive operation, since by the IDF’s decision “these young people were potential terrorists.”
In fact, long before October 7, 2023, Israel had never hidden its intention to “halve, that is, annihilate, one million human beings – the number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”, provoking a “new Nakba” and, therefore, exodus and genocide. What we are currently seeing in Gaza is part of a long and bloody ordeal for the Gazan people: in 2006, 400 martyrs; in 2008-2009, 1,300 martyrs; in 2012, 160 martyrs; in 2014, 2,100 martyrs; in 2021, almost 300 martyrs; and in the spring of 2023, several dozen.
Of course, the Oslo “peace” was made under the auspices of the US, which wanted to protect its son and give him international recognition. Oslo granted Israel the recognition of all Asian countries, including China, Latin American countries and 52 African countries.
According to Ilan Pappé, the so-called peace also gave the colonial state “total absolution for all crimes committed against the Palestinian people since 1948”.
8. What has definitely changed since October 7th in the region?
It is difficult to assess the full significance of the event, which will depend on the outcome of the war, but what is certain is that the equation on which the balance between the arrogant imperialist West and the countries of the South rests has been upset.
The fact that Israel has razed northern Gaza and killed 30,000 civilians [currently, more than 55,000 – at least], 70% women and children, and forced a million and a half to flee, does not mean that Israel has won. After 50 days of attacks [more than a year, today], its objectives have not been met.
It is also true that the de-Westernization of the world has accelerated in the countries of the South. The barbaric West has been unmasked before the people. It has meant the end of the illusions about Europe as a model of democracy or sanctuary of human rights and its true face has been exposed all over the world. The Western leaders are being identified as war criminals.
As for the position of the BRICS, it is a total disappointment for the Arab world and especially for the resistance movements. The BRICS have shown themselves to be an exclusively economic alliance, which only looks after its own interests. It is very far from the spirit of Non-Alignment or Bandung. They have an interest in the US sinking in the Middle East and hope to benefit from it.
9. How important is international solidarity in the countries that are at the heart of imperialism today?
The massive demonstrations in all the major cities of the world are testimony to a revolt against the crimes of Israel and its protectors committed to the military actions of the United States; a revolt against the hypocrisy of the West that has moved heaven and earth against Putin to a point that borders on anti-Russian racism, while here it remains silent against these sordid crimes.
While the United States is considered the main defender of Israel, it is interesting to note that student demonstrations in support of the Palestinian people in the United States show a heterogeneous mix of Arabs, descendants of American slaves and grandchildren of Latin American emigrants. The oppression suffered by the Palestinian people is echoed by both the countries of the South and a significant part of the citizens of the countries of the North, who remember the oppression suffered during centuries of colonization and domination, including humiliation and cruelty, inflicted by their ancestors. Israel thus appears as the last of the “white” countries that oppresses a people of the South. And the dispossessed, poor and terrorized Palestinian becomes a class symbol.
Reading the protesters’ banners, one gets the impression that the “Israeli exception”, granted by the West in the name of the victims of the Holocaust, and which minimizes the suffering and cruelty suffered by other peoples of the world, will soon come to an end. International solidarity is fueled by the resistance and sacrifice of a martyred people who are suffering three wars at the same time: the terrible total blockade, the genocide and the exodus. This evening, a representative of the PFLP declared that “our people refuse to leave, they have learned since the first Nakba that if they leave their homeland they will never return; so their only option is ‘win or die'”. Remaining in their homeland is already a victory.
Personally, I am convinced that the battle of Gaza is the battle of all of us, like the Spanish Civil War, the Beirut War of 1982, or the Lebanon War of 2006. The words of Miguel Urbano still resonate in my head when he came to greet the resistance: “where imperialism concentrates its military, political, economic and media forces, whoever confronts it does so in the name of all of humanity.” The fall of Gaza will be the fall of all of us in the face of capitalist barbarity. The merit of this solidarity is to have pointed the finger at our class enemy.
