Palestinians should enjoy the same rights and standards as the rest of humanity. This statement seems self-evident, but many who would proclaim to believe in just that, in reality, do not actually support this notion. The Palestinian people refuse to remain as victims, and the only way for them to achieve justice is through armed struggle.

In the West, the Hamas-led operation of October 7 has been presented as an act of unjustified terroristic violence, one that happened in a complete vacuum. The shock of what occurred had even put many well-meaning people who have campaigned for Palestinian rights into a trance, one where they allow the event to be analyzed as a stand-alone atrocity and something to be condemned. Others have scrambled to condemn the Palestinian Resistance for its actions on that day, while concocting a narrative to try and work to maintain the popular idea of Palestinians, that they are the eternal victim, one that should always be treated as a victim and remain as such. This idea, while it may come from well-intentioned people in the West, is inherently racist, patronizing, and fits into a Western-savior complex.

The Palestinian people have the right, given 75 years of massacres, ethnic cleansing, land theft, torture, and abuse, to fight their occupier through any means necessary. Although an argument can be made to justify this notion, using international law, I will argue this through common sense and an appeal to the humanity of all people.

Throughout history, oppressed groups, whether suffering under settler colonialism, systems of enslavement, apartheid, or colonial domination, have used armed struggle as a strategy to free themselves and restore their human dignity. Often, after failing to make an impact with non-violent strategies, such as boycotts, general strikes, and appeals to the goodwill of their oppressors, violence becomes the natural tool of the oppressed. 

Western media pundits pose the question of a need for a Palestinian Nelson Mandela. Although this question is often asked in bad faith, it is a great place to begin explaining the predicament of Palestine. Just like in South Africa, Palestine is under a system of apartheid, a form of injustice that the African National Congress (ANC) fought against using various forms of struggle, including armed resistance. Nelson Mandela, who is widely praised across the Western world today, was considered for some time a "terrorist" in most Western capitals. Why was Mandela considered as such? Because the ANC, of which he was an active member, used armed struggle and killed South African Whites who were indeed unarmed. In fact, when Mandela was arrested by the apartheid authorities, he had just arrived back in his homeland after traveling to receive military training.

Despite it being a somewhat hidden event, the Haitian revolution, which led to the abolishment of slavery on the island nation, was not free of violence and indiscriminate killings. In fact, when the French deposed and arrested the Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture in 1802, the revolutionary stated the following, "In overthrowing me you have cut down in Saint-Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty; it will spring up again from the roots, for they are numerous and they are deep." Less than two years later, Jean-Jacques Dessalines had taken over the revolution and signed a decree for all whites to be put to death; this was only months after Dessalines had declared Haiti an independent nation on January 1, 1804. Although there were moments when peace prevailed and the Haitian people, who had revolted violently to end slavery, spared the lives of non-combatant whites, there were also times of great bloodshed.

In the case of the Algerian struggle for independence, it is also true that the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) used violent tactics that directly targeted the European settlers, who were known as the Pieds-noirs. Thousands of settlers were killed in a variety of attacks, leading to around 1 million of these Europeans fleeing the country, following the war of independence. Although tactics like shooting at settlers in their privileged communities and planting bombs in packed areas are objectively unpleasant, they were not committed without reason and in a vacuum.

The immense suffering of the Algerian people had pushed them toward the only options that were available to free themselves of French occupation. 

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Violent Resistance in Palestine

To go through the entire historical record at this point would be too steep of a task for a singular article, however, we need to understand the historical legitimacy of the armed struggle against the Zionist entity.

Dating back to the days of the British Mandate in Palestine, the only times that the Palestinian people were able to sway the UK toward granting them any favorable solutions was through violent uprisings. The British Mandate authority encouraged Jewish settler immigration from Europe, and the leadership in London was clearly committed to upholding the promise that was issued, through the Balfour Declaration of 1917, to create a so-called "Jewish State" on the land of Palestine. It was therefore necessary for the Palestinians to organize, educate, and push for strike action that would pressure the Mandate authorities into adopting a more favorable position to their plight. In the end, the violent uprising of 1929, and later the Arab Revolt of 1936-9, proved enough for the British to cede ground on their previously held solutions for the Zionist-Palestinian struggle.

Despite the British having inflicted a brutal defeat against the Palestinian Resistance by the end of the Arab Revolt, the White Paper of 1939 was issued, a document that pledged to limit the number of Jewish settlers to Palestine, along with reneging on the idea of partitioning the land or creating an exclusively "Jewish State" in all of Palestine. This document is what inspired Zionist terrorists to begin committing attacks against civilian targets affiliated with the UK, which again swayed Britain's stance on the future of Palestine.

After 78% of historic Palestine was occupied and what was left of the Arab Resistance was defeated in 1948, the Palestinian cause was in a state of disarray, before it was re-ignited through the Battle of Karameh in 1968. This battle was technically a military defeat for both the Palestinian resistance parties - most prominently Fatah - and the Jordanian army that had joined the fight, yet it inflicted damage on the Israelis in a way that no one could have believed would be possible. Throughout history, the Palestinian Resistance, whether it be the Arab Nationalist Movement, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), or others, has all been labeled "terrorist" by the Israelis and their Western backers. The above-mentioned groups are all secular nationalist, or Marxist groups, while the Palestinian Islamic resistance groups didn’t become a major factor until the 1990s.

When Egypt gained back the Sinai Peninsula from the Israeli entity, it only did so following the October War of 1973. When South Lebanon was liberated from Zionist occupation in 2000, this was because of the Lebanese Resistance’s decades-long armed struggle. Even when the Gaza disengagement occurred in 2005, this was because the Palestinian Resistance was relentless in its attacks on soldiers and settlers, making the Zionist entity fed up. The Israeli entity has never given back land out of the good of their hearts, never made an agreement that hasn’t been driven by violence, and always worked in their best interests to manage that violence. There is no reasoning for this racist settler-colonial apartheid entity. 

The people of Gaza rose non-violently in 2018-19 in what was known as the Great March of Return, where hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians protested for their rights under international law; their right to return and to the end of the illegal siege. The answer from the Israeli army was to slaughter 310 innocent people, while the Western leadership claimed that the Zionists were "defending themselves".

On the question of violence: Everyone is a supporter of violence, even the most devout preacher of non-violence and pacifism will make exceptions. If you disagree, imagine the following scenario: An Al-Qaeda suicide bomber is preparing to detonate himself in a packed crowd of innocent civilians. There is a police officer with a gun who can shoot the would-be attacker in the head and save hundreds of lives, is the officer justified in using a firearm? 

Another thought experiment is this: If you see a man beating a woman profusely, is it justified to hit him in response? And if the woman who is being battered fights back and severely hurts her attacker, is she without justification?

The above-noted questions will demonstrate that the majority of people do support some form of violence but only in limited and defensive manners. When we observe the plight of the Palestinians, why is it that they overwhelmingly support armed struggle against their occupier? Is it because they are savages who love blood and violence, or is it because they see armed struggle as a legitimate form of self-defense and a tool with which they can restore their dignity and attain freedom? Any fair-minded person who takes the time to study the struggle would conclude the latter.

Palestinians should not be obligated to sit down and take their suffering so that they can be viewed as victims. This may make some Westerners more comfortable with supporting their plight but will ultimately lead to their complete elimination as a people. The Zionist entity is predicated on Jewish supremacy and creating a "state" that only serves Jews, meaning that the ethnic cleansing and/or genocide of Palestinians is an inevitable by-product of their ideology as a regime. Unless you are a Palestinian that is suffering under the Apartheid regime, you are not in the position to lecture them on how they fight back against their oppressor. Like all oppressed peoples, the Palestinians will use all means necessary to achieve the right to live in dignity and to be free. You are not obligated to agree with every tactic, but there is no moral equivalence that can be drawn between the reactionary violence of the oppressed and the violence of the oppressor.