Ghassan Kanafani: A Legacy of Giving and Resistance

[Pictured: A Palestinian girl passes by a mural of Ghassan Kanafani in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, West Bank, May 12, 2018. (Credit: Anne Paq/Activestills)]

By Mohamad Kadan

"In truth, the only way out of this murky spiral is to believe that giving is acceptable, only for civilized humans... and that taking is undesirable... that living is about offering oneself, with no expectation of return... I am trying now to reach this belief in one way or another, or life becomes, without this belief, something absolutely unbearable..." [1]

— Ghassan Kanafani

I decided to write a text about Ghassan Kanafani to learn about one of his human characteristics: not just being a writer, an intellectual, a thinker, or a revolutionary. Recently, I have delved into the writings of several people who knew Kanafani, and they all agreed that he gave his life for Palestine through continuous giving, not only in the literary field but also by using his literature to provide us with the value of perseverance and endurance. The above quote is from Kanafani’s diary on January 4, 1960, written in haste, but as he describes it, it is as necessary as life. The question I pose in this text is: How does Kanafani want us to know him? What signs did he leave, from his comrades, newspapers, archives, letters, studies, stories, novels, and plays?

In 1952, Kanafani received approval to be appointed as a teacher at the UNRWA schools. His brother, Adnan Kanafani, tells us how Kanafani became a model teacher, spreading enthusiasm and overcoming oppression and defeat inside Palestinian camps. There, he met Mahmoud Falahah, an Arabic language teacher, who attended one of Kanafani’s classes due to his admiration for Kanafani’s exceptional ability to awaken the students’ potential [2].

Kanafani wrote a short story titled "A New Sun," published in the Lebanese literary magazine Al-Adab, the magazine most associated with Kanafani’s legacy. In it, he tells us in his extraordinary language about the decision to leave Damascus for Kuwait, through a letter to his friend Mustafa, who was studying in Sacramento: "The Kuwaiti Ministry of Education signed a contract with you last year, excluding me entirely. While I was going through a period of deep hardship, you occasionally sent me small sums, which you now want to be considered a debt, perhaps out of fear that I might feel diminished. Yet you knew very well my family’s circumstances: that my modest salary from the UNRWA schools was barely enough to support my elderly mother, my brother’s widow, and her four children." He then tells us about Israel's attack on Gaza, his follow-up on it, and whether it affected his daily routine, asking what he could do when they bombard "our Gaza" with fire and bombs. His decision to leave Damascus and teach refugee children made him regretful, directly affecting his writing and the question of giving—how, where, and why. He answered this in his short life by saying that we can give to Palestine from every position, region, and space. In late 1955, he traveled to Kuwait after accepting a job as a teacher in drawing and sports, where he felt an intense sense of loneliness and pain [3].

Kanafani did not flatter people "right and left." On the contrary, you might sometimes consider him self-absorbed, not caring about others' feelings and thoughts, as Fadl al-Naqeeb told us. Kanafani had many layers and was a flexible person. You had to wait and be patient to see him, observe him, and focus on his movements, writing, words, and conversations. Al-Naqeeb adds that he and his "Literature and Life" friends realized Kanafani’s value. Al-Naqeeb went on to study in the United States and received a copy of the story "The Cat" from his first collection, Death of Bed No. 12, which was published in 1957. He greatly admired it, and while exchanging letters, Kanafani told him that only a few had admired this story. As a result, Al-Naqeeb translated it and presented it in one of the English literature courses, where the professor allowed him to read it to the entire class. After the publication of Men in the Sun, Ghassan Kanafani asked al-Naqeeb to write a critical article about the novel. After publishing the masterpiece “Men in the Sun,” Kanafani asked al-Naqeeb to write a critical article about the story. Al-Naqeeb apologized, explaining that he could not fully grasp the essence of the novel, as the gap between reality and fiction was too narrow: “He told me how they had to move from their old home there, and the emotional sadness that accompanied this process, and how they found the letters F.K. engraved on the walls. His father’s name was Faiz Kanafani.” Al-Naqeeb felt that the story Kanafani wrote reflected his past, and that whatever he could write would not do it justice [4].

Kanafani’s wife, Anna Kanafani, also wrote about their first meeting in Beirut in 1961. She had said that she did not understand what had happened with the Palestinians and wanted to visit the camps. He yelled at her, "Do you think our people are animals in a zoo?" He told her that no one would take her there unless she understood the political background, and he explained the history of the Palestinian cause. Two weeks later, Kanafani told her, "Why don’t you stay longer?" She indeed stayed, worked at a kindergarten, was deeply influenced by his ideas, got to know his family, and they married. She recalls his ability to give even under the most challenging conditions, especially in 1967. His mother passed away a week before the June defeat in Damascus, and he was focused on standing strong beside his father and family. Upon returning to Beirut, she saw him for the first time breaking down in tears—was it because of the defeat, or for his mother? This was followed by the death of his friend, the novelist Samira Azzam from Acre, for whom he wrote a eulogy titled "The Promise," to inspire hope for his eternal city, Akka [5].

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Ghassan Kanafani gave a lot through his teaching career, literary work, criticism, political thought, and revolutionary activity. As we have seen, Kanafani’s fundamental role was in his relationship with his community, building and strengthening abilities, and providing opportunities. Mahmoud Darwish wrote in a eulogy titled "A Gazelle Foretelling an Earthquake": "My friend Ghassan! How many friends have I said goodbye to, but never bid farewell to a phase of my life, except in your final goodbye? The last thing I expected from nightmares was to announce your previous declaration about my existence ten years ago. I was born before that, but you announced my birth. I didn’t tell you: Thank you, I thought life was longer." Here, we see Kanafani’s generosity—he gave birth to resistance poets, directly contributing to creating a concept, practice, and framework for resistance art. Darwish and his companions, such as Samih al-Qasim, Hanna Abu Hanna, Rashid Hussein, Jamal Qawwar, and Hanna Ibrahim, poets from the occupied land in 1948, became part of the Arab intellectual and cultural scene after Kanafani’s writings. Their celebration was "stunningly embarrassing," as Darwish said about the neglect and denial before their birth announcement [6].

Generosity is a defining trait in Kanafani’s biography, and his ability to care for others matured through his relationship with his father, the lawyer and activist from the 1930s, whose legal work was connected to the oppressed and deprived. Anna quotes Kanafani as saying: "When I grow up, I want to be like my father, and I will fight to return to Palestine: my father's homeland, the land that he and Umm S’ad (أم سعد) told me so much about." "My father was a good man. He would buy me anything I wanted, and I still love him, even though he passed away." Kanafani’s concern with class struggle is related to his childhood, and its collapse before his eyes [7].

Kanfani: The Revolutionary

Kanfani's legacy is about his generosity in recruiting and attracting people to the revolution, as he was interested in the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Through poetry and culture, he also covered struggles, dispossession, and their organization. He did publish part of the memorandum of Arab citizens of Israel sent by the Al Ard movement, as Sabri Jiryis was their leader. I interviewed him, talking about his time under military rule, his struggles, and how he got involved with the Al-Ard movement. Later in 1970, he left and joined the PLO in Beirut through Fatah. Toward the end of the interview, I asked if he had ever met Kanafani. He said he did, and a few times, they spoke and had conversations.

He came to me with anger in his face and said, “Someone like you should be with us—the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” I told him, “My brother Ghassan, you’re thinking differently—big ideas, heavy theory, complex stuff. I’m a simple man. Fatah fits me better. It’s not left, not right—it sits in the middle, and that works for me.” I told him, “My comrade Ghassan, I can’t be part of the PFLP. I’m not in tune with the group. I can’t speak about the proletariat, class struggle, or internationalism. I respect Che Guevara and Castro, but I don’t think that model works for us here in Palestine.” Then I shared a story with him—about when I first arrived in Beirut. Naji Alloush, the Arab thinker, handed me his book and asked for my thoughts. Two days later, he returned and said, “Well, what do you think of discussions on the Palestinian Revolution?” I told him, “You made a grave mistake—like many Palestinian leftists—when you wrote that if there had been a Palestinian Lenin, none of this would have happened. That’s a flawed idea to open a book with. [8]

This story tells us about Kanfani's ambition and organization and how he always aims to recruit people for the organization and the revolution. Sabri Jiryis chose another path in the PLO, but they stayed in contact.

It seems that Kanafani regretted his time in Kuwait—or at least, did not find it fulfilling. He once told director Qasim Hawal not to go to the Gulf, especially not to Abu Dhabi, but to settle instead in Beirut. He told him, quite literally: “We just came out of Jordan and founded a magazine. Come with us—starve when we starve, feast when we feast.” This was shortly after the PLO departed from Amman, and it reflected Kanafani’s deep spirit of mobilization and commitment to collective national work. Hawal was one of Kanafani’s comrades from the late 1960s, during the final years of his life and his political engagement with Al-Hadaf magazine. Their meeting in Beirut wasn’t planned—it was one of those fateful encounters. Years later, during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut, Hawal directed a film adaptation of Kanafani’s most famous novella, Return to Haifa. It became the first feature film based on a Palestinian revolutionary novel. Even earlier, after Kanafani’s assassination, Hawal directed a short film titled The Word and the Rifle, which is a tribute to his life and legacy. [9]

Kanafani was a leading political thinker and an active educator of the Palestinian revolution. The 2024 publication Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings offers a glimpse into the depth of his political analysis—limited to what has been translated into English. In Arabic, his output was far more expansive. He wrote prolifically on socialism, revolutionary theory, the Palestinian cause, and anti-imperialist struggles across the region. His writings were rigorous, his arguments tightly constructed, and his intellectual influence extended far beyond Palestine. As Sabri Jiryis once remarked, Kanafani was doing the heavy thinking. One of the most formative moments in his political life came in 1970, during the Jordanian regime’s campaign—coordinated with other Arab governments—to crush the Palestinian revolutionary movement, its groups, and guerrilla forces. This period sharpened Kanafani’s political praxis and deepened his theoretical commitments [10]. 

Kanafani gave an important lecture at the Beirut conference in March 1968, during a crucial transition in PLO leadership, as armed guerrilla groups were emerging as the dominant force, especially in the wake of the Battle of Karameh against a Zionist invasion in Jordan, by February 3, 1969, Yasser Arafat assumed the presidency of the Executive Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization, at a meeting of the Palestinian National Council held in Cairo. His voice, theoretical framing, and revolutionary thought shaped these changes and fueled the people's will to overcome the 1967 Naksa [11].

His central thesis was to frame the failures of the Arab world and to answer the pressing question: why did Palestinian Arabs lose again in 1967? He introduced the concept of the “language of the blind,” which he defined as: “In the past ten years, what we might call a blind language has emerged in the region. And there is nothing more commonly used in our daily lives today than this blind language. Words have come to mean nothing unless framed vaguely, offering no protection or precision. Every writer now has their private dictionary, using words based on their understanding—an understanding that is not commonly agreed upon. As a result, the words mean nothing.” Kanafani shows how Arab discourse—on democracy, revolution, and change—became saturated with vague language, which paralyzed the power of the people. It silenced youth and barred them from offering new paths to liberation. He emphasized: “The problem was not that we did not know, but that we did not allow those who did know to speak or to act.” From this, he proposed a return to the idea of the party as an organization of the modern world. This reflects Antonio Gramsci’s notion of the “new prince” in Machiavelli’s terms: the party as the structure capable of organizing, mobilizing, and recruiting the revolutionary spirit of youth [12].

Abu Ali Mustafa, the military leader in the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine], said he first came to know of Ghassan through the “Mulhaq Falstin” Supplement of Al-Muharrir newspaper, which reached them in Jenin, in the West Bank, through smuggling. He met him for the first time after the launch of the Palestinian armed struggle following the defeat of 1967. He said:

"In that period, 1967 had arrived, and I met Ghassan face to face for the first time during his first visit to the military bases in the Jordan Valley. He asked me a lot about the interior [Palestinian territories] and the beginnings of the armed struggle... He asked me about the people and the geography and took notes. He asked me what was right and wrong in those beginnings. He asked me about the resources we started with, the organization, the popular mood... about the scenes." [13]

There, in the Jordan Valley, an ethnic cleansing campaign is now underway. Ghassan then told him about his study of the 1936 revolt, comparing it to the Palestine Liberation Organization-led revolution. This time, he said, the people are dispersed and displaced, the land is occupied, and on top of that, the Arab states are conspiring against the revolution—a radical difference. Kanafani was always deeply invested in the question of liberation. He understood how difficult that task was, especially under the conditions we continue to face. But his life—his ideas, his relationships, his roles—offers ways to think about persistence, about resisting through every act and position one takes. In my piece, I wanted to show how the lesser-known, often overlooked fragments of his life reveal so much about what it means to live as a Palestinian and a revolutionary.

Bibilography

[1] Romman Cultural Magazine. Ghassan Kanafani’s Diaries... (1959-1965) (1/2). Link here https://rommanmag.com/archives/18633

[2] Kanafani, Adnan. Ghassan Kanafani: Folded Pages. Kuwait: Nashri Electronic Publishing House, 2003. eBook. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12378936

[3] Ghassan Kanafani. “Shams Jadida [A New Sun].” Al-Adab, no. 2 (February 1, 1957).  https://archive.alsharekh.org/Articles/255/18587/420406

[4] Al-Naqeeb, Fadl. Hakadha Tantahi al-Qisas... Hakadha Tabdaʾ [Thus Stories End... Thus They Begin. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Abhath al-ʿArabiyya, 1983.

[5] Kanafani, Anni. "Interview with Anni Kanafani: I Imagine Ghassan Sitting with Us." Interview by Ayham al-Sahli and Taghrid Abdelal. Institute for Palestine Studies, Arts & Culture Blog, July 20, 2022. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1652961 & "Ghassan Kanafani fi Dhikrahu al-‘Ishrīn" [Ghassan Kanafani on His Twentieth Memorial]. Al-Ādāb, no. 7–8 (July 1, 1992).

[6] Darwish, Mahmoud. A Gazelle Heralding an Earthquake: In Memory of the Martyr Ghassan Kanafani. Register of the Immortals, Vol. 2, Central Media Office of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, pp. 200–205. https://palestine-memory.org/ & Kanafani, Ghassan. “al-Adab al-Filastini al-Muqawim taḥta al-Iḥtilāl 1948–1968” Palestinian Resistance Literature under Occupation, 1948–1968. Cyprus: Rimal Publications, 2015. (Published Originally in 1968)

[7] Interview with Anni Kanafani In"Ghassan Kanafani fi Dhikrahu al-‘Ishrīn" [Ghassan Kanafani on His Twentieth Memorial]. Al-Ādāb, no. 7–8 (July 1, 1992).

[8] Sabri Jiryis - Fassuta. Interview Conducted by the Author on 18 April 2025, through Zoom.

[9] Bdeir, Ahmad Naim. “Qasem Hawal Tells Al-Hadaf: ‘This Is How I Lived with Ghassan Kanafani and Knew Him!’” Al-Hadaf, July 8, 2025, link here

[10] Kanafani, Ghassan. Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings. Edited by Louis Brehony and Tahrir Hamdi. Paperback ed. October 20, 2024. 

[11]  “An Important Document: From the Thought of Ghassan Kanafani – Reflections on Change and the ‘Language of the Blind’.” Originally presented at the “Beirut Seminar” in March 1968. Published in Al-Hadaf Magazine, Special Issue on the 16th Anniversary of His Martyrdom, July 1988.

[12] Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Translated by Quintin Hoare. New York: International Publishers, 1971. "The Modern Prince."

[13] Al-Hadaf Magazine, Year 1, Issue No. 1320, July 2001. https://fada.birzeit.edu/handle/20.500.11889/6552

The South Caucasus After the Dance

By Ibrahim Can Eraslan

There is an ongoing debate among internet users from the South Caucasus nations about the origin of the Sabre Dance, one of the most iconic sequences in Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian’s 1941 Gayane Ballet. Some argue that it reflects Armenian motifs, given that Khachaturian was ethnically Armenian. Others insist that no such Armenian dance tradition exists. It is indeed true that Khachaturian was Armenian, born and raised in Tbilisi—now the capital of Georgia—and later educated in Moscow[1]. Thus, he was a Soviet artist, and if the Sabre Dance signifies anything, it is the fraternity of the peoples of the Caucasus. This explains why so many see themselves reflected in it.

However, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this region—where peoples and cultures were historically intertwined—plunged into bloody instability. The same nations that once danced together in Gayane turned on one another. As in many other post-Soviet countries, imperialism rapidly asserted itself in the region, bringing with it various propaganda apparatuses, mafia-capitalist networks, and fierce competition over natural resources.

While regional nations still maintain deep ties with Russia—including widespread Russian-language fluency—these historical connections do little to simplify the present complexities. The most recent episode in this unfolding situation began with a police operation in Yekaterinburg, targeting a group connected to the Azerbaijani diaspora, known as the Seferov brothers. According to Russian authorities, they were operating as a criminal organization. Over the years, multiple incidents—including murders and illegal alcohol sales—had occurred around their restaurant.[2]

Following this, Azerbaijan conducted its own raid on the Baku office of Sputnik, the Russian state media outlet, based on similar allegations.[3] It is important to note that, much like in Yekaterinburg, none of the Azerbaijani charges were based on newly discovered evidence. This clearly suggests that the operations are political in nature. While some argue over the technicalities—such as the fact that the individuals arrested in Russia are Russian citizens and therefore the issue is not international—such legalistic distractions obscure the political character of the events. In summary: Russia claims it is cracking down on organized crime, while Azerbaijan accuses Russia of targeting its nationals.

Notably, one of the first leaders to contact Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev after the incident was Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. This raises questions about the evolution of recent tensions.[4]

However, relationships weren’t always bad. When Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Azerbaijan, he stayed at Aliyev’s residence.[5] This gesture carried many meanings—trust, fraternity, continuity. After all, Ilham Aliyev's father, Heydar Aliyev, was appointed Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers in 1982, rising to become the Soviet Union’s “third man.” The last decade has seen significant shifts in the South Caucasus. Though this article does not focus on Georgia or Armenia, recent developments—European Union-aligned protests in Georgia (which some describe as a “color revolution”), Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan’s visit to Turkey, internal disputes involving the Armenian Church, and now the Azerbaijan–Russia confrontation—all reflect a pattern.

The real rupture in Azerbaijan–Russia relations likely occurred in 2024, when a plane traveling from Baku to Grozny was reportedly downed, with suspicions pointing to Russia. Since then, Azerbaijan has awaited an apology, and subsequently shut down the Russian cultural centers known as Russkiy Dom—key institutions in countries where Russian embassies operate.[6]

During the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russia refrained from providing direct military aid to Armenia, a move interpreted by some as tacit approval of Azerbaijan’s military operations. It was also seen as a response to Pashinyan’s pro-Western orientation. Armenia, in turn, suspended its membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).[7] While Azerbaijan may have viewed these developments favorably, it is significant that Putin hosted both Pashinyan and Aliyev after the first war—and that these meetings were held in Russian, underscoring Moscow’s symbolic role.

However, a new phase began when Azerbaijan started receiving support from Turkey and Israel. Since then, Putin has not hosted any more trilateral meetings. Russia increasingly found itself sidelined. Pashinyan’s Western alignment strained relations with Moscow, while Aliyev—buoyed by military victory—deepened ties with Turkey and Israel, effectively replacing Russia's role in the region. After the full retaking of Karabakh, the presence of Russian peacekeepers lost its rationale.

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Where is Azerbaijan turning its gaze?

The fact that Azerbaijani fuel is transported to Israel via Turkey helps clarify matters[8]. The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline also offers a potential alternative to Russian energy routes. The European Union's renewed interest in Central Asia is not coincidental—it is directly tied to its broader strategy of sidelining Russia in all strategic domains. And we must remember: the ultimate target of this project is China.

The political landscape of post-Soviet countries often takes shape around being “pro-Russia” or “anti-Russia.” This has been evident in Moldova, Central Asia, Georgia, and Armenia. In Armenia, recent events include not only Pashinyan’s confrontation with the church but also the arrest of Karapetyan—one of the country's wealthiest figures, a Russian citizen, and someone outside the traditional ecclesiastical elite. But Azerbaijan does not fit into this binary pattern. There is no pro-Russian opposition figure or faction that can be mobilized internally. This is due to both Azerbaijan’s internal political dynamics and its external alliances.

Power in Azerbaijan is not easily challenged. Ilham Aliyev is not only the son of Heydar Aliyev but also the victor of the Karabakh War, with no significant rival in sight. Thus, while it is reasonable to speak of coup plots by pro-Russian forces in Armenia or pro-European uprisings in Georgia, such frameworks do not apply to Azerbaijan. As a result, Russia has turned to one of the few tools available in its arsenal: intervening in criminal networks and informal economic circuits linked to Azerbaijani actors within its borders. This is where the heart of the story lies.

Has the encirclement of Russia in the South Caucasus begun?

The region is a crucial corridor for energy transit and holds potential as a logistical hub via the Black Sea in the Belt and Road Initiative. After the Soviet collapse, the region roughly split into two camps: Turkey–Azerbaijan and Iran–Armenia. But the 2008 Georgia crisis, NATO’s Black Sea partnership with Georgia, and the color revolution that brought Pashinyan to power have complicated this landscape.

Azerbaijan, for a long time, resisted being drawn into this encirclement. The main reason was persistent Western pressure over the Karabakh issue.

What changed this equation?

The logic is simple. For decades, European development depended on three key factors: cheap energy from Russia, market access to China, and surplus labor from war-torn Yugoslavia and peripheral regions like Turkey. After Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, Europe’s industrial sector has suffered from energy shortages. Meanwhile, the Chinese market is no longer as accessible—Chinese goods are more affordable and digitally advanced than their European counterparts. While some have proposed a new India–Europe trade corridor, when it comes to energy, the South Caucasus presents itself as a viable alternative.

It must be emphasized: Azerbaijanis and Turks speak mutually intelligible Turkic languages and belong to the same ethno-linguistic family. This makes their cooperation natural. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s public appeal to the people of Iran, and the presence of 30 million Azerbaijanis in Iran*[9], also deserve attention in this context. Pashinyan’s visit to Turkey should be interpreted in this light—and we must not forget that Turkey possesses NATO’s second-largest army after the United States.

Thus, Azerbaijan occupies a position that somewhat diverges from the typical post-Soviet portrait. Its potential role in transporting Central Asian energy to Europe, its ability to leverage ties with NATO-member Turkey, its relevance to Iran due to its large Azerbaijani population, and its energy relations with Israel all place Azerbaijan in a key position—perhaps even a decisive one.

Today’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. The Gayane Ballet is no longer performed. Once, this dance embodied the harmony of fraternal Caucasian peoples. But now, the dancing has stopped, and only the sabres remain.

The essential question is this: will those sabres be turned against imperialism, or will they become instruments of a new imperialist project to expand markets and exploit labor?

Notes

[1] https://www.therightnotes.org/aram-khachaturian.html

[2] https://mash.ru/news/207599/

[3] https://report.az/hadise/din-in-sputnik-azerbaycan-agentliyinin-ofisinde-emeliyyatdan-fotoreportaj/

[4] https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/prezident-ukrayini-proviv-rozmovu-z-prezidentom-azerbajdzhan-98773

[5] https://president.az/en/articles/view/66701

[6] https://azerbaijan.rs.gov.ru/news/priostanovleno-2/

[7] https://www.specialeurasia.com/2025/03/10/armenia-csto-analysis/

[8] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/azerbaijan-maintains-oil-sales-israel-despite-turkish-backlash-says-report

[9] I used an Azerbaijani source because I couldn't find a complete bibliography. In other words, whether it is a completely accurate number or not can be compared within the framework of different sources, but here, Azerbaijan's claim will be important within the scope of various future claims. As a result, Azerbaijan may enter into a process based on its own claim.

The Nakba Never Ended

[Pictured: A mural by Emmalene Blake in Dublin expresses solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza [Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters]

By Eyad Alkurabi

Last month, as the state of Israel continued to starve and exterminate the people of the Gaza strip, massacre Palestinians in the west bank, and gaslight and delegitimize Palestinians in the diaspora and our friends and allies worldwide, Palestinians marked the 77th commemoration of the Nakba – our catastrophe, the founding of Zionist state. But the Nakba has never ended. In fact, it has been ongoing.

It has been 77 years of ongoing agony. With every step we take, Palestinians remind ourselves that we stand on the shoulders of giants. In my own family, we have been freedom fighters on both sides since the 1920’s – because our people’s catastrophe did not begin in 1948, it began decades before with the arrival of Zionism, bringing many massacres even before the time we commemorate as Nakba.  Beginning in the 1920’s entire villages were ethnically cleansed, sometimes entire family lines wiped out. The Zionist settlers and militias did to us exactly what had once been done to indigenous Americans. Untold thousands were killed between the 1920’s and the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were ultimately and forcibly expelled from their lands. Today, we carry our parents’ and grandparents’ keys, and we carry their hopes that the next generation can one day return home.  Until then, we as their descendants must continue showing up for our people wherever we are and whoever we are, no matter how high the personal cost or how difficult the work may be for us.

Every Palestinian family has its stories. On my mother’s side, they tell of sheltering a family of Jewish Holocaust refugees who eventually intermarried with our family. And when the Nakba came, those Holocaust survivors had to flee again to Syria, where many of our family then died in the Syrian civil war. One of my father’s earliest memories is from the age of four, when he was playing on the floor of his home while his mother made rice pudding. When a bomb suddenly landed next door, he fell into the pot of rice pudding and scalded his arms.

And our Nakba, our mass catastrophe that we were forced to swallow, reared its ugly head again in 2023. But it never actually ended, because Israel is addicted to killing Palestinians. Every year, they need a refill on the script — a refill that is perpetually funded by the United States of America with seemingly no limits. We need to take the corrupt doctor’s license away and achieve an arms embargo now!

I hope you will educate yourselves about places like Al-Tira ’Haifa and Dar Yasin to better understand how the genocide of our people began. I ask you to visit the website Palestine Remembered where Nakba survivors document the stories of their lands, their homes, and their families.

Palestinians are so often asked to condemn violence and terrorism, perhaps because we are assumed to be violent and terroristic people. So, I also hope that you will also ask yourself what you would do in our shoes?

What would you do if your entire family had been killed by the time you were 18 years old?

What would you do if you’d been blockaded your entire life?

What would you do if you were just a fisherman trying to catch something to eat only to be shot at for fishing? Or if the only food you could get had to be approved, had to be allowed in, had to be given to you by the calorie?

What if you had no clean water for yourself or your family, and it was deemed illegal for you to even collect rainwater from your own rooftop?

If your political leaders, even the most peaceful among them, were in constant danger of being imprisoned, often with no charges, for years on end? And what would you do if every form of peaceful resistance that you tried was met with violent suppression?

The best time to get involved in the struggle for Palestinian liberation was before October 7th. But the second best time is now. We hope you will join us by showing up and getting involved in the Palestinian Rights Committee and/or the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and by educating yourself about the facts of our struggle so that you can educate others.

Being a Neurodivergent Palestinian Gay man is a journey. However, through the amazing sumud and love of my communities, we are steadfast and pushing through. Although we carry our own individual trauma and our collective trauma, we as Palestinians and our friends love each other so much that we carry on and through.

If you wish to push for change, I ask that you consider the following steps:

• Persuade your local city and county to have binding BDS resolutions.

• Encourage your representative in congress to demand that AIPAC gets audited and gets labeled as a foreign entity.

• Demand an end to the siege, genocide, and blockade.

• Demand an immediate release of all Palestinian hostages, which are in the thousands.

• Write letters to editors to combat propaganda and provide a differing viewpoint.

• Bring up the Palestinian struggle and story at the kitchen table! Talk to your friends and loved ones.

• Get involved, protest, agitate, educate, and organize

We have the ability to make an impact — big and small and in between. Let’s utilize our abilities and, since we are in the belly of the beast, let’s get together and bring more peace and justice on this earth. 

No boots on the ground, no bombs in the air, US out of everywhere.

The Sordid History of US Intervention in Iran

[Pictured: Protesters hold a portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the 1979 revolution.]

By Joyce Chediac

Republished from Liberation News.

Washington just staged an unsuccessful attempt at regime change in Iran. The U.S. continues to call out the Islamic Republic as “dangerous” and “repressive.” What would the U.S. want for Iran? For 26 years the U.S. actually ruled that country. An examination of the period reveals what the U.S.  might really wish today for the Iranian people.

Iran is a formidable country. With 92 million people, it has the largest population in West Asia. Iran has 10% of the world’s oil reserves and 15% of its gas reserves, the third and second largest world reserves respectively. It has many key minerals and great tracts of arable land. It borders eight countries, and has coastlines on two key waterways. Its territorial waters extend 12 miles into the 21-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategic waterways in the world, where a fifth of the world’s ships carrying oil and natural gas pass through.

Iran was long regarded by the Western colonial powers not as a country with people who have rights and needs, but as a prize to be snatched. For decades it was dominated by Britain, and its oil syphoned off by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later BP), leaving the people of Iran in poverty and underdevelopment.

The CIA’s very first coup was in Iran

After fighting themselves to exhaustion in World War II, the European colonial powers were much weakened, providing a space for many in the Global South to assert independence. Iran was one of these countries.

 In 1951 Iran’s Parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry controlled by Britain and elected the leading proponent of nationalization, Mohammed Mossadegh, as Prime Minister.  The nationalization was very popular. It reflected the population’s widespread dissatisfaction with foreign exploitation and desire for greater sovereignty.

Other forces were at work, however. With the European colonialist regimes weakened, the U.S. emerged as the strongest imperialist power after World War II, hungry to assert itself as the new world colonizer. 

To aid in this effort the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was formed  in 1947 to function outside the law and exempt from congressional oversight. In 1953 the covert agency cut its teeth by overthrowing the Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadegh and seizing the nationalized Iranian oil.

 The CIA actually bragged that the coup was “an American project from beginning to end.”  It was first of many CIA coups, launching what Washinton rulers and their Wall Street backers named “The American Century.”  

The New York Times wrote its colonialist view of the coup on Aug. 6, 1954:

“Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism. It is perhaps too much to hope that Iran’s experience will prevent the rise of Mossadeghs in other countries, but that experience may at least strengthen the hands of more reasonable and more far-seeing leaders.”

The “more reasonable and more far-seeing leader” that Washington chose to replace Mossadegh was Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a Swiss-educated aristocrat. Pahlavi was installed as an absolute monarch, the Shah of Iran.

To keep their new client in power the U.S. then financed, formed and trained SAVAK, the notorious and deadly secret police, to destroy the significant opposition to the coup.

Five CIA officers, including specialists in covert operations, intelligence analysis, and counterintelligence, “trained virtually all of the first generation of SAVAK personnel,” according to the Iran Encyclopedia. The trainers included Major General Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, whose son, Norman Schwartzkopf Jr.,  was to lead the murderous the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Operation Desert Storm, in 1991.

SAVAK was given the power to make arbitrary arrests, detain indefinitely without charges and to extract confessions through torture.  It decimated  an entire generation of militants, revolutionaries and progressives.

Mosaddegh’s group, the National Front, was outlawed and most of its leaders arrested. The Tudah (Masses) Party, Iran’s communist party, was virtually destroyed. Over 4000 members were arrested, at least 14 killed by torture and over 200 sentenced to life imprisonment.

But the U.S. was doing fine. With Iran’s oil controlled by a consortium of Western companies, American firms gained considerable control over Iranian oil production. U.S. companies took  around 40% of the profits. Politically, Iran acted as an important counterweight to the Soviet Union, which it bordered.

The Nixon Doctrine, announced in 1969, called for Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia to be the guardians of Washington’s interests in the Middle East at a time when the U.S. military was bogged down in a losing war in Vietnam. 

U.S. aid to Israel soared to billions of dollars annually. The Pentagon built Iran’s military into one of the largest in the world, growing Iran’s defense budget some 800% over four to five years.  By 1977 it was ranked fifth globally.  Its job was to be Washington’s policemen in the Persian Gulf.

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Economic development lines pockets of rich, hurts the workers

The Shah’s 1963 “White Revolution,” a plan for economic development much acclaimed in the U.S. at the time, would be called pure neoliberalism today. 

The economy grew significantly during these years primarily due to oil proceeds that were finally coming into the country’s economy. Prior to the nationalization of oil, the British gave Iran virtually nothing for the oil they were plundering. The CIA coup of 1953 violently defeated the movement for the nationalization of oil. But the new arrangement under the US-installed system did give Iran approximately half of the oil proceeds, a concession in hopes of preventing future anti-imperialist mass movements.

Economic development was uneven as projects prioritized what brought profits to foreign companies, not to mention the huge military spending that syphoned much of the oil profits right back to the US and its defense contractors.

Some 85% of the of wealth that remained in the country went to a small elite. The majority of the population remained untouched. In the poorest areas in the southeast, where by UN data 55% of the population lived below the poverty line, Iranians were dying of hunger.

Rapid militarization and foreign economic penetration brought inflation which decreased the purchasing power of the poor. Many small farmers unable to make a living migrated into the cities and joined the ranks of the unemployed there where rapid urbanization had created housing shortages and poor living conditions.

The Shah’s secret alliance with Israel

Israeli Foreign Ministry documents declassified in recent years reveal that Israel had extensive and exceptional relations with the Shah’s regime. The documents reveal that on Feb. 23, 1966, Mordechai Gazit, Director of the the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Department wrote, “Iran-Israel relations are a kind of unwritten secret alliance that gives Israel a range of advantages in the fields of the economy, security, the Middle East and anti-Nasserism.”

Over the years Israel purchased a significant part of, and sometimes all, of its oil from the Shah’s regime, while Iran used Israel as a middleman to sell its oil to third countries.

There was much military cooperation. Israel had close ties to SAVAK.  While Iran never officially recognized Israel, the Shah had secret representation in Tel Aviv since 1961, while Israel had permanent representation in Tehran which, at one point, was an embassy with military attachés. In 1967 the Iranian prime minister asked the Israeli military attache to train  the head of his bodyguards. Iranian police received training in operating communications equipment at Motorola in Israel. Between 1968 and 1972 Iran bought some $63 million in military equipment from Israel.        

The Shah throws ‘the most expensive party in modern history’ while Iranians starve

Instead of using Iran’s petrodollars to address poverty and inequality, the Shah threw for himself what was then called “the most expensive party in modern history.”

In 1971 he flew in 18 tons of food prepared by the French restaurant Maxims to celebrate what he called the 2,500 anniversary of his dynasty, and to celebrate himself. For days he entertained 60 kings, queens and heads of state at luxury tents in the desert at the ancient ruins of Persepolis. This waste of resources while people were hungry became a symbol of his total detachment from his people and a rallying cry for a need for major change.

Meanwhile, the Shah’s regime grew even more repressive. After 1972 those committing alleged political crimes were tried before secret military tribunals, without witnesses or defense lawyers, and with guilt determined solely based on SAVAK’s evidence.

There was no such thing as freedom of speech or association. The press was strictly censored, with the Shah decreeing that every newspaper with a circulation of less than 3,000 and periodicals with a circulation of less than 5,000 be shut down. From 1975 to 1978, political activity was restricted to participation in the Rastakhiz Party, the Shan’s party, membership in which was mandatory for everyone.

Trade unions were outlawed and workers who protested for better conditions could be imprisoned or killed. Academic freedom was  restricted and students and university teachers were subjected to surveillance by SAVAK.

‘A history of torture which is beyond belief’

Human rights groups charged Iran with having the worst record of political repression in the world.  Amnesty International reported in 1975 that Iran had “the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief.”

A 1976 New York Times article said, “There are 100,000 political prisoners and there have been 300 official executions in the last three years in Iran, according to figures of Amnesty International, Le Monde, and other European newspapers, and the international Federation of Human Rights.”

By the late 1970s the anger of the people of Iran at their U.S. imperialist exploiters and their repressive puppet Shah was at a boiling point. People look to those who were  the most militant and intransigent against U.S. imperialism for leadership. They turned to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shia cleric exiled by the Shah in 1964. For years he had been recording on cassette tapes fiery messages excoriating U.S. imperialism and calling for the arrest and trial of the Shah.  These tapes were circulated throughout Iran. At one point,  90,000 mosques were duplicating and distributing them.

Anti-government demonstrations began in October 1977. Protests even reached the U.S., as Iranian students at U.S. universities lost no opportunity to confront visiting Iranian officials and members of the Shah’s family with picket lines and chants of “The Shah is a U.S. puppet, down with the Shah!

The movement brought together a wide array of groups, including radical clerics, left activists, people from various social groups, including clergy, intellectuals, and merchants, ethnic minorities and millions of workers. Economic demands were made, though the protests also raised the political demands of an end to martial law and the release of political prisoners.

In 1978 the revolution grew into a broad-based uprising that paralyzed the country. Labor strikes began with oil workers in five cities taking to the streets. They spread everywhere until they immobilized the economy. Giant demonstrations took place in every city.

Troops on rooftops opened fire on the crowds, committing many massacres. But the killings only further infuriated the population. Some actually came to protests wearing white Islamic burial shrouds in defiance of the troops and signaling that they were willing to die to liberate their country.

By the end of the year the hated Shah was a prisoner in his own palace, backed only by his generals and the hated SAVAK. On Jan. 16, 1979, the U.S  quickly whisked him out of the country.

After 14 years of exile, Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran on Feb. 1, 1979 to jubilant supporters. A referendum on creating an Islamic Republic was held on March 30 and 31, 1979 and overwhelmingly approved. Khomeini became the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

‘We used to run this country … Now we don’t even run our own embassy’

Days after Khomeini returned, and after a demonstration briefly attacked  the U.S. embassy in Tehran,  an American diplomat  preparing to leave bitterly commented, “We used to run this country…Now we don’t even run our own embassy.”  His astonishment was typical of flabbergasted U.S. officials.

Never concerned about the plight of the Iranian people, the Shah’s U.S. backers were oblivious to the significant internal struggle taking place. Only a year before the Shah had to run from the country he was praised by then-President Jimmy Carter in a New Year’s Eve toast that called Iran “an island of stability in a turbulent corner of the world.”

A New York Times article of March 11, 1979  expressed the astonishment of the political establishment here and their total underestimation of the Iranian people:

 “How could Iran, with its oil and its strategic situation between the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf, between Europe and the Middle East, fall under the sway of a holy man out of the mists of the 13th century? How could the shah, a monarch who commanded more tanks than the British Army, more helicopters than the United States First Cavalry in Vietnam, be pressured so neatly out of power?”

Iranian Revolution changed West Asia

The Iranian Revolution was a game-changer. Its demonstration of the power of mass uprisings to overthrow colonial regimes inspired oppressed people in the Muslim world and throughout the Global South.

It not only kicked the U.S. out, it also changed the geopolitical landscape and power balance in West Asia. For 46 years now, despite severe economic sanctions imposed by Washington and the whole imperialist camp, the Iranian people still assert their right to self-determination and are aiding others in the region to do so as well.  

To this day, where the people of the world see the Iranian Revolution as a taking back of natural resources and a restoration of rights and dignity, the U.S. government just sees the loss of a very strategic and lucrative asset. This is why regime change has been the State Department’s goal in Iran ever since 1979.

On the Limits of Legalism Against Empire

By Ibrahim Can Eraslan

It is well known that imperialism has long maintained an aggressive stance toward Iran. This includes periodic attacks on Iranian territories, the assassination of personnel, economic sanctions, and even the use of propaganda tools aimed at regime change. The reasons behind these actions by imperialist powers are beyond the scope of this article, but it is evident that the ultimate target is China. On the other hand, Iran also holds significant importance for Russia. The Caucasus region, after all, is crucial to Russia’s security interests.

In order to achieve all these objectives, imperialism carries out its dirty work through Israel — as even German Chancellor Merz has stated — and the West responds to this with so-called “respect.”[1] Israel is able to carry out these actions in front of the entire world. All of this is framed by the West as a kind of civilizational war against Arabs or Muslims, with Israel cast as the protagonist.

What makes this possible is, of course, the fact that Israel is not merely a nation-state acting on its own. It is an indispensable tool of imperialism in the region. Moreover, the global reach of Zionist media propaganda and the immense financial support it receives from the West (which Trump himself actually criticized during his election campaign) provide Israel both the courage and the means to construct its own narrative.

In other words, Israel is acting with a specific mission. It serves as a battering ram for Western imperialism in the region, aiming at the destruction of anti-imperialist forces and the redrawing of borders. In this context, the increasingly aggressive stance toward Pakistan also gains significance, and it is meaningful to highlight the close ties between India and Israel. After all, without such a comprehensive campaign, halting China's economic rise becomes an extremely difficult scenario for Western imperialists. The elimination of anti-imperialist forces in the region simultaneously opens up new centers of exploitation for the West. This is why the targeting of China and Israel's role as the battering ram gains strategic importance for imperialism.

Thus, Israel’s assignment here goes beyond the ontological foundations of the Zionist narrative. Israel’s history —and its deep entanglement with imperialist powers — reveals that the matter at hand is not one of religion or culture, but fundamentally a class struggle. Accordingly, the stance of international legal mechanisms toward Israel should also be interpreted through the lens of class struggle, and the hypocrisy of international law must be understood in this context as well.

In its recent conflicts with Iran, it is clear that Israel is the aggressor. From the perspective of international law, this is not a disputable claim. Moreover, within the last six months, Israel has launched attacks on Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria — and in three of these cases, it continues to maintain a de facto occupation. What is being done in Gaza and the West Bank is evident to all.

So then, why do the United Nations and its conventions not apply equally to all states? Why is there discrimination?

Undoubtedly, the concept of “humanity” as referred to in United Nations rhetoric is a costly one. In a world dominated by capitalism, this means that, whether under the label of “humanitarian intervention/aid” or “the fight against international terrorism,” imperialism can intervene in any conflict, rebellion, or — as in the case of Iran — against an official government, using any method it chooses. Or, as recalled from the Iraq invasion, it’s not merely about seeking authorization from the UN, but about CIA agents obtaining “diplomatic or other official identities”.[2]

Of course, the principles laid out in various international legal texts regarding human rights or the use of force by states may initially create a positive impression for many. However, as I mentioned above, these are concepts lacking in substance and are costly within the capitalist system. The universalization of these costly concepts is problematic precisely because of their Western origin. In capitalism, if you invest in something, you expect to profit from it. Therefore, investment in “humanity” is only measured in terms of its profitability. In this sense, a set of principles that emerged in a particular historical context and in response to specific social developments — and that bear the cultural and political imprint of that environment — being declared valid for all humanity is ethically questionable from many angles.

Imperialism reveals itself even within the principles of international law, as international law is fundamentally shaped by the logic of unipolarity.

From this, it can be said that Israel and the unipolar essence of international law are mutually compatible. It follows logically that international law would not punish a “child” born from its own core — or if it does, the punishment would still serve to protect that same core.

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However, a core issue here is that Israel’s actions cannot be justified even within the narrative of capitalist legality. Israel’s defense relies on the doctrine of “preemptive self-defense,” or in other words, “preventive attack.” To understand what these terms mean, one must examine Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which regulates the right to self-defense. Article 51 is the exception to the prohibition on the use of force as established in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.

So, what is preemptive self-defense?

In short, preemptive self-defense is an expanded interpretation of the traditional right to self-defense. Let us take a look at Article 51 of the Charter:

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”[3]

It can thus be seen that this right is not one that entirely sidelines the United Nations or turns warfare into a fundamental exception to general international legal norms. Rather, it is a provision intended to address potential defense gaps in situations where the UN is unable to intervene immediately.

Of course, the use of force in self-defense is a legitimate right. However, as the term “self-defense” itself implies, this right must first be triggered — it must be born out of a concrete threat. The primary condition for the emergence of this right is that an armed attack must be directed against the state. In other words, Israel cannot invoke the right of self-defense based on a mere suspicion of nuclear weapons and the hysteria that “Iran might use them” — especially when the only nuclear arsenal in the region belongs to them.

It is also important to emphasize that Iran is a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), whereas Israel is not. Israel is estimated to possess between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads.[4] If there is no attack to be defended against, then there is also nothing to defend, meaning that in such circumstances, “preemptive self-defense” does not fall within the scope of Article 51.

Of course, since the term “armed attack” does not have a universally accepted definition, this issue remains open to debate. However, the relevant provision in the UN General Assembly’s Resolution A/3314 of 14 December 1974, titled “Definition of Aggression”, is as follows:

“Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations, as set out in this Definition.’’[5]

Therefore, as can be seen, this is not a general right but an exceptional one. Iran is also not acting in violation of the relevant regulations and resolutions. In other words, this exceptional right does not grant states the authority to strike others simply because of hostile relations; it is merely a provision designed to address a potential gap in defense.

One might argue, as part of Israel’s defense, that Iran supports terrorist attacks against Israel. However, in this regard, the Nicaragua Case offers a clarifying precedent. In its judgment, the International Court of Justice ruled that a state’s support for armed groups operating in another state does not amount to an armed attack and therefore is not equivalent to one.

“The Court has already indicated (paragraph 238) its conclusion that the conduct of the United States towards Nicaragua cannot be justified by the right of collective self defence in response to an alleged armed attack on one or other of Nicaragua's neighbours. So far as regards the allegations of supply of arms by Nicaragua to the armed opposition in El Salvador, the Court has indicated that while the concept of an armed attack includes the despatch by one State of armed bands into the territory of another State, the supply of arms and other support to such bands cannot be equated with armed attack.’’[6]

It is clear that this situation has not been considered equivalent to an armed attack. In fact, it would be more appropriate for Iran — rather than Israel — to invoke such a defense.

Therefore, putting aside the vast ocean of doctrinal debates and legal terminology, the truth is that imperialist powers are able to cast aside the very laws they wrote, the international legal principles and norms they themselves defined, whenever it suits them. This same defense once appeared in the form of the Bush Doctrine, and we all know the consequences. In short, the concept of preemptive self-defense can be described as a notion fabricated by imperialism to override its own legal order.

The concept is better understood not by looking at processes through the lens of law, but by looking at the law through the lens of political processes. For example, Trump once threatened to intervene in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) under the pretext of preemptive self-defense.[7] But perhaps, unlike Iran, maybe the reason such an intervention was never carried out against DPRK is that DPRK actually possess nuclear weapons…

Finally, what I want to emphasize is this: attempting to challenge imperialism through existing legal norms is a well-intentioned effort, but believing that international legal mechanisms can take real and concrete steps against imperialism is, frankly, naïve. What South Africa has done should be applauded by all of humanity, and such examples must be multiplied. Only then can international law shed its one-sided character and begin to embody a multipolar structure — and once again, in today’s conditions, international law can only gain real applicability through a stance taken against imperialism.

Notes

[1]  Germany's Merz says Israel doing 'dirty work for us' in Iran – DW – 06/18/2025

[2] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/022399ritter-book.html

[3] https://legal.un.org/repertory/art51.shtml

[4] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-leaked-emails-colin-powell-says-israel-has-200-nukes/

[5] A/RES/29/3314 - Definition of Aggression - UN Documents: Gathering a body of global agreements

[6] Nicaragua v. United States of America, ICJ Decision of 27 June 1986 p.12

[7] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/9/19/trump-threatens-to-destroy-north-korea-if-necessary

Why is Imperialism So Easy to Love?

[Pictured: The Israeli and U.S. flags are projected on the walls of Jerusalem's Old City in celebration of the two countries’ close ties on Feb. 11, 2020. Photo credit: AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images]

By Yalda Slivo

Western imperial culture has always had the remarkable ability to romanticize and justify its violence as a form of virtue, where occupation becomes self-defense, former U.S. presidents become pop culture icons, and Israeli settlers are mythologized as liberators.

It would be easy to frame this as propaganda and move on, but the dialectic between representation, culture, and politics has enabled imperialism to suppress, or even prevent, the development of a coherent material critique within dominant Western liberal discourse – in many ways erasing its own violence. This happens when different political actors adapt their language and behaviour to align with the hegemonic cultural norms of the West, sometimes even abandoning their anti-imperialist or anti-colonial principles in the process.

The palestinian marxist, Ghassan Kanafani, was among the first to formulate the idea how the Zionist entity enforced its occupation via Zionist literature and culture in his 1967 text, On Zionist Literature. He laid out a detailed description of how Zionism worked culturally in order to justify its occupation via “Jewish heroes,” using literature as a way of mythologizing and constructing heroic settlers that served colonial expansion - but also enforcing the Hebrew language by institutionalizing it as an artificial way of kickstarting an oppressive culture, playing a huge role in the occupation of Palestine.

One of the questions Kanafani asked early in his text is, “Why does the Western reader accept the same racist and fascist positions in Zionist novels that are deemed to be contemptible when taken by non-Jews?” – to which his answer can be somewhat summarized by him paraphrasing historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who thought that the autonomy of the Jewish population in the form of a state would have to come at the expense of the West and not the Arabs, something for which he was laughed at.

Kanafani pointed to this as an example of Zionist propaganda having succeeded, with the ever-recurring argument that Hitler’s massacres were a good enough reason to build a fascist state in the already otherized Middle East. Toynbee, according to Kanafani, was met with “cries of laughter,” as Toynbee himself put it. This wasn’t just because the idea sounded absurd, even though it came from a place of sympathy and understanding. It was because, by 1961, the West had already entrenched itself in the logic of justifying political Zionism as a response to Hitler’s massacres and European antisemitism.

As influential as Edward Said was in providing the framework of Orientalism, Kanafani’s detailed analysis must be recognized as historically significant in its own right – particularly for how it exposed the cultural logic underpinning Zionist colonialism. Zionism had to be approved by Westerners through an adaptation of its colonial language, way of life and production of culture. However, this isn’t just history. Kanafani’s analysis of the ideological alliance between Israel and the United States is just as relevant today – if not more blatant. Since the genocide began in October 2023, the U.S. has used its veto power at the UN five times to block demands for an immediate ceasefire, even in the face of massacres in places like Rafah. The repetition of this pattern even after the deaths of thousands of civilians, reveals how deeply entrenched this alliance is. When Kanafani described it in the 1960s, it still operated through quiet complicity; today it’s an open diplomatic position. How many times have we heard that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” as if the genocide in Gaza were an act of self-defense?

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Meanwhile, violent settlers continue to rampage across the West Bank with direct support from the Israeli state – a concrete example of Kanafani’s core point: the occupation is not only military – It is ideological, normalized and protected by political silence.

This is how Israel’s genocide is allowed to continue without consequence, under the cover of narratives we’ve heard throughout the Gaza onslaught: that “Israel is defending the West,” that “if Israel falls, the West falls,” that this is really “a war between civilizations.” These aren’t just fringe statements, they’re structural expressions of a deeply rooted worldview. When Israeli president Isaac Herzog claimed in December 2023 that “the war in Gaza is about saving Western civilization,” and Dutch politician Geert Wilders declared in the Israeli parliament that “if Israel falls, the West falls,” they weren’t just posturing, they were articulating a normalized and rarely questioned narrative in which Israel functions as an extension of the West. A narrative used again and again to justify brutal repression.

This oppressive nature of Western culture seems to have no effect on its population engaging with it in terms of producing material and valuable criticisms on a mass scale. A few examples of this are how U.S. presidents who have committed countless war crimes and acted against international law seem to have little to no negative moral effect or bearing on the reproduction of Western culture at all. Instead, former U.S. presidents like George W. Bush and Barack Obama are thrown into the limelight and become pop culture icons. Now, is there something inherently rotten embedded within Western culture? Why are people, artists, and other cultural practitioners within the West so openly embracing figures that are viewed as war criminals in the Middle East by their equivalents? There seems to be a resemblance in the way Zionist literature glorified its “heroic settlers” and how the U.S. glorifies war criminals like Bush and Obama. These questions tie into my next example, which will veer off into realpolitik, ideology, and culture, further dialectically complicating the issue.

This logic of cultural adaptation to Western norms is not limited to Zionism. Historically, anti-imperialist movements have, at times, engaged with Western powers in ways that blur the line between resistance and accommodation. One of the most striking examples of this can be seen in the actions of Mao Zedong during the Sino-Soviet split. Despite having built a revolutionary ideology grounded in anti-colonial struggle and a fierce critique of Western bourgeois culture, Mao chose in 1971 to meet secretly with Henry Kissinger – one of the chief architects of U.S. imperialism.

Mao had up until that point organized the masses and developed a type of Marxism-Leninism that was deeply anti-imperialist and anti-colonial in its nature, ending what was known as the “century of humiliation” – specifically caused by the imperialists. He had earlier in his revolutionary days pointed to Western culture and bourgeois liberalism as something not only inherently rotten and parasitical but also inherently tied to imperialism, which was one of many reasons why China was filled with drug and opioid addicts.

Within Marxist tradition, the idea of how the superstructure works in practice had been further developed by communists like Antonio Gramsci, and before that, Karl Marx himself mentioned it in his critique of political economy. Mao himself viewed bourgeois ideology as a tool for imperialism, and Western culture therefore aimed to uphold capitalist hegemony – thus being oppressive and exploitative in its very nature and tied to capitalism. He would later in his life even kickstart the Cultural Revolution to finally phase out what he considered the Western bourgeois elements in the superstructure that had begun embedding and developing within Chinese society, making it revisionist, as he put it.

However, only one year after the first Kissinger visit, president Richard Nixon also visited China, which would later give the country a stronger international position until this day. The public at the time had little to no knowledge of the first meeting, and by the time the second meeting took place, the Chinese government had already embedded Kissinger in the Chinese public's eyes. This seems to have worked since from that point onward, Kissinger was widely regarded as a “friend of China” and continually traveled there right up until his death. So, in the same way as in Western societies, Chinese society seemed to have little to no problem from the bottom up with figures like Kissinger and Nixon.

It is worth mentioning that Kissinger made some concessions in this relationship with Communist China, in his true realpolitik nature - in order to isolate the USSR. This strategy seems to have worked, as the USSR would later collapse, further fueling Western imperial arrogance and enabling the rapid imposition of a neoliberal world order not only economically and militarily but also culturally.

Seeing how the West is willing to resort to what Kanafani referred to as “racist and fascist positions” whenever it seems fit, it’s no surprise that a culture built on justifying violence can compel even its former opponents to abandon anti-imperial commitments in favour of realpolitik. Kanafani noted that Zionist propaganda succeeded in embedding its logic in the Western reader’s mind, overriding even the simplest and most humane alternatives, a point echoed by Toynbee and dismissed with laughter.

This is not surprising for a civilization that didn’t need to look elsewhere to learn how to dominate, exploit or annihilate because it developed those capacities internally and enshrined them in its cultural identity. Mao’s shift toward diplomatic engagement with Kissinger wasn’t just geopolitical manoeuvring – it was a reflection of how deeply Western cultural hegemony operates, even among those who once opposed it. By legitimizing figures like Kissinger, China mirrored the same logic that allowed Zionist literature to mythologize settlers or American culture to sanitize war criminals like Bush and Obama.

In each case, whether it’s the glorification of Israeli settlers, the sanitization of U.S. war criminals or the rehabilitation of imperial figures like Kissinger – the same logic prevails: imperial violence becomes morally defensible, at times desirable, when embedded in the cultural forms of power. Through Kanafani’s critique of Zionist literature, Mao’s strategic shift toward the U.S. and the West’s mythologizing of its own brutality, we see how imperialism is not only exercised through tanks and treaties, but through stories, symbols and selective memory.

Imperial violence is not simply justified. It is aestheticized, ritualized and loved. And that love is reproduced. If imperialism has become easy to love, then the real question is: are we willing to unlearn it?

Debunking the "Tiananmen Square Massacre"

By Matthew John

Every June in the United States we are subjected to a barrage of anti-China propaganda from major media outlets and prominent political pundits (on top of the regularly-scheduled China bashing). The story has changed over the years and decades, but the original went something like this: On June 4, 1989, after weeks of student-led demonstrations, a gang of ruthless, authoritarian People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers entered Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and conducted a brutal, cold-blooded massacre of unarmed, peaceful “pro-democracy” protesters, resulting in hundreds - maybe thousands - of gruesome deaths. This vicious slaughter of innocent civilians illustrates just how much those filthy commies hate freedom and democracy, and the measures they are willing to take to prevent these superior ideals from taking root in their hellish, dystopian society. 

Despite being completely fictional, this popular narrative remains useful to the Western capitalist class as a method of demonizing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its ongoing socialist development in the midst of Washington’s new Cold War. Recognizing this geopolitical reality, I sought to play my part in dismantling what is undoubtedly one of the most cherished anti-communist atrocity fabrications in the Western world. I hoped my contribution would become one of the last nails in this counterfeit chronicle’s coffin. After some rudimentary research, I felt compelled to survey my Instagram followers - an online community of about 65,000 users - by posing a simple question:

Do you believe there was a massacre (i.e. mass, indiscriminate murder of unarmed, peaceful protesters) by Chinese soldiers in early June, 1989 in Tiananmen Square (Beijing)?

The last time I checked this post, 821 people had participated, with 15 percent responding, “Yes,” and the remaining 85 percent responding, “No.” My page is very obviously communist in its political orientation, and I have posted about this topic several times before, in addition to my consistent efforts to debunk anti-communist propaganda more broadly. For several years, the bulk of my content has been unequivocally Marxist-Leninist in character and there has been an open effort to defend socialist countries (past and present) from what I see as unfair or disingenuous bourgeois criticism. Nevertheless, more than 120 respondents still expressed a belief in the conventional Western narrative (the “Tiananmen Square massacre”). Maybe I had not purged enough liberals. 

I further articulated the motivations behind this inquiry to my sizable leftist audience:

I've been reading mainstream summaries of the violence that broke out in the final days of the student protest movement and the myth of the Tiananmen Square massacre has largely already been debunked. But it's this weird Orwellian situation where, aside from a few Western journalists like Jay Mathews and Richard Roth, many mainstream sources just act like this whole "massacre" narrative never happened. Roth and Mathews have openly and explicitly acknowledged that there wasn't a massacre and that, as reporters, they have a responsibility to correct the record, as they themselves were complicit in spreading the initial lies. But other mainstream Western sources simply discuss the violence occurring in Beijing between rioters and soldiers, often correctly noting that protesters started the violence and even killed soldiers before the soldiers fought back. 

There is definitely a wide range of terms, phrases, etc. that these sources use, and the massacre narrative is sometimes still heavily implied (some, like the History Channel, continue to unequivocally state that a massacre occurred in the square). Strangely, if you read the relevant Wikipedia entry, for instance, they never even imply there was a massacre in the square, and are clear that the "protesters" (rioters) initiated the deadly violence in Beijing (none of which occurred in Tiananmen Square itself). Even the Victims of Communism website is nuanced and vague regarding this topic. What's interesting is that, from what I can tell, these sources themselves have largely abandoned the massacre narrative, while the general public continues to cling to the myth.

Indeed, I felt as though the “massacre” narrative itself had been massacred and left for dead. I momentarily gaslit myself, wondering if the myth I so diligently sought to debunk had been discarded and forgotten long ago. Let me break this down in more detail so you can see what I mean. As mentioned above, a number of mainstream Western commentators have openly rejected the “massacre” narrative, including Nicholas Kristof, Jay Mathews, Richard Roth, Graham Earnshaw, Eugenio Bregolt, Gregory Clark, and James Miles. Mathews covered the 1989 Tiananmen protests as Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post. In 1998, nearly a decade after the events in question, the seasoned reporter published a controversial piece in the Columbia Journalism Review entitled, “The Myth of Tiananmen.” In it, Mathews laments the fact that “many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night,” referring to June 4, 1989. After recounting several examples of prominent American newspapers embracing and proliferating the Tiananmen Square “massacre” narrative, Mathews explains, “The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.”

The reporter then traces the myth to its likely origins and recalls an immediate but ineffective rebuttal:

Probably the most widely disseminated account appeared first in the Hong Kong press: a Qinghua University student described machine guns mowing down students in front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes in the middle of the square. [...] Times reporter Nicholas Kristof challenged the report the next day, in an article that ran on the bottom of an inside page; the myth lived on. 

Matthews even acknowledged his own complicity in spreading the famous falsehood:

It is hard to find a journalist who has not contributed to the misimpression. Rereading my own stories published after Tiananmen, I found several references to the “Tiananmen massacre.” At the time, I considered this space-saving shorthand.

This admission was comparable to that of BBC reporter James Miles, who “admitted that he had ‘conveyed the wrong impression’ and that ‘there was no massacre [in] Tiananmen Square. Protesters who were still in the square when the army reached it were allowed to leave after negotiations with martial law troops.’”

About a decade after the publication of the aforementioned piece by Jay Mathews, a CBS reporter named Richard Roth published a similar article, which was even more bluntly headlined, “There Was No ‘Tiananmen Square Massacre.’” Like Mathews, Roth reported on the 1989 student protests from Beijing, where he was at one point detained by Chinese authorities. Roth described what he saw while being transported through the Square in a military vehicle:

Dawn was just breaking. There were hundreds of troops in the square, many sitting cross-legged on the pavement in long curving ranks, some cleaning up debris. There were some tanks and armored personnel carriers. But we saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a “massacre” had recently occurred in that place. 

The reporter also echoed a sentiment I expressed toward the beginning of this piece; a substantial change in tone over the years can be observed from mainstream Western sources who seemed to gradually adjust the language they used to describe this history, possibly best illustrated by the shift in terminology from “massacre” to “crackdown.” 

Shortly before the Roth piece, former Australian government official Gregory Clark published an op-ed in the Japan Times entitled, “The Birth of a Massacre Myth.” Clark brings up the aforementioned Jay Mathews piece, as well as three additional individuals I want to focus on briefly: Graham Ernshaw, Hou Dejian, and Eugenio Bregolat. Bregolat was Spanish ambassador who was in Beijing during the 1989 protests. Clark recalls an important point made by Bregolat, in which the ambassador observed that “Spain’s TVE channel had a television crew in the square at the time, and if there had been a massacre, they would have been the first to see it and record it.” (I often ponder this aspect of the Tiananmen discourse - the complete lack of video or photographic documentation of this supposed “massacre” juxtaposed with the widespread, faith-based belief in a ghastly, yet unfounded story.) The two other prominent individuals Clark mentions, Reuters reporter Graham Ernshaw and protester Hou Dejian, were both in the Square when it was cleared and neither witnessed any violence conducted by soldiers, much less an epic, cold-blooded massacre of civilians.

In addition to these prominent, mainstream Western sources sporadically surfacing to acknowledge that there was indeed no massacre in Tiananmen Square, we also have corroboration in the form of leaked cables from the U.S. embassy in Beijing relaying an account from Chilean diplomat Carlos Gallo:

[GALLO] WATCHED THE MILITARY ENTER THE SQUARE AND DID NOT OBSERVE ANY MASS FIRING OF WEAPONS INTO THE CROWDS, ALTHOUGH SPORADIC GUNFIRE WAS HEARD.  HE SAID THAT MOST OF THE TROOPS WHICH ENTERED THE SQUARE WERE ACTUALLY ARMED ONLY WITH ANTI-RIOT GEAR--TRUNCHEONS AND WOODEN CLUBS; THEY WERE BACKED UP BY ARMED SOLDIERS.  AS THE MILITARY CONSOLIDATED ITS CONTROL OF THE SQUARE'S PERIMETER, STUDENTS AND CIVILIANS GATHERED AROUND THE MONUMENT TO THE PEOPLE'S HEROES.  GALLO SAID WOUNDED, INCLUDING SOME SOLDIERS, CONTINUED TO BE BROUGHT TO THE RED CROSS STATION. 

Now that the “Tiananmen Square massacre” narrative has been sufficiently debunked, an elephant remains in the room: the deadly violence that did occur in Beijing, serving as the final chapter of the 1989 student protests. As political commentator and socialist organizer Brian Becker wrote in 2014, “What happened in China, what took the lives of government opponents and of soldiers on June 4, was not a massacre of peaceful students but a battle between PLA soldiers and armed detachments from the so-called pro-democracy movement.”

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The reality on the ground, as Mick Kelly wrote, was that “[t]here was in fact a rebellion, which was counter-revolutionary in nature, that was eventually put down by military force.” This violent chaos included urban warfare between PLA soldiers and rioters who had commandeered military vehicles, stolen rifles, and armed themselves with Molotov cocktails and an assortment of other armaments. At the time, the Washington Post recounted that “[o]n one avenue in western Beijing, demonstrators torched an entire military convoy of more than 100 trucks and armored vehicles.” 

Protesters killed and injured soldiers, who were often unarmed, in brutal ways, including beating them or burning them to death, and sometimes even stripping them and stringing up their lynched, charred corpses for all to see. Westerners are often surprised to learn that about two dozen soldiers and police officers (possibly more) died in these clashes. When the dust had settled, the death toll was likely around 300, which is certainly tragic and horrific, but far less jarring than the sensationally inflated Western estimates in the thousands.

After becoming acquainted with the true history of Tiananmen, it is useful to examine mainstream Western summaries of the events in question. Let’s start with Amnesty International’s “What is the Tiananmen Crackdown?”:

On 4 June 1989, Chinese troops opened fire on students and workers who had been peacefully protesting for political reforms in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Hundreds – possibly thousands – of people were killed, including children and older persons. Tens of thousands more were arrested across China in the suppression that followed. 

This summary, despite falsely referring to the protests as “peaceful,” does make a concerted effort to not directly place the violence in the Square (although an average Western reader would likely miss this distinction and assume the excerpt is bolstering the conventional narrative). The students and workers had been protesting in and around the Square. They weren’t necessarily there when the crackdown occurred. But as I mentioned earlier, there is no “we need to be extra clear and correct some widespread misconceptions” moment. It’s all very calculated and intentionally deceptive. The same is true of this summary from the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Historian:

On the night of June 3 and 4, the People’s Liberation Army stormed the Square with tanks, crushing the protests with terrible human costs. Estimates of the numbers killed vary. The Chinese Government has asserted that injuries exceeded 3,000 and that over 200 individuals, including 36 university students, were killed that night. Western sources, however, are skeptical of the official Chinese report and most frequently cite the toll as hundreds or even thousands killed.

The above excerpt is a masterclass in implying something without actually stating it, leaving plenty of room for plausible deniability. What unequivocally occurred within the Square, according to this summary, was that the PLA “stormed” it “with tanks.” When the army “crush[ed] the protests with terrible human costs,” was that also in the Square? And is “terrible human costs” referring to deaths? Why not just say “deaths”? Why put that in a separate sentence? Why not just say the soldiers stormed the square and killed a bunch of people? And regarding this next sentence about those who were killed, are we still talking about something that occurred in the Square? This is unclear, as these elements of the story are separated by punctuation and veiled in vagueness. As I have alluded to, it is intentionally unclear. 

A clear picture of what happened is not painted, because overtly admitting their cherished “Tiananmen Square massacre” narrative turned out to be fictional would be profoundly embarrassing, damaging their credibility and weakening their anti-China narrative in the process. Instead, these bourgeois sources opt to incrementally chip away at the false “massacre” story with caveats and crafty language, leaving curious communist commentators like myself confused - wondering if said narrative even existed in the first place. Even the neo-fascist Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has abandoned the traditional “massacre” narrative:

In the spring of 1989, Tiananmen Square in Beijing was the epicenter of massive pro-democracy demonstrations that spread to over 100 Chinese cities and involved over 100 million people. Unprecedented in scale in a communist country, these demonstrations brought keenly felt self-confidence, strength, and hope to the participants and the society at large. To hold on to its dictatorship, the Chinese Communist Party mobilized the military as well as the full force of the party and state machinery to crush the demonstrations on June 3-4, 1989. The CCP claimed that about 300 people were killed. Estimates by NGOs, news media, and foreign intelligence agencies range from 2,000 to 10,000 killed. 

The History Channel is the only mainstream Western source I could find that apparently didn’t get the memo, as they continue claiming government forces indiscriminately fired on crowds in the Square and continue employing the outdated and inaccurate term “Tiananmen Square massacre”:   

On June 4, 1989, […] Chinese troops and security police stormed through Tiananmen Square, firing indiscriminately into the crowds of protesters. Turmoil ensued, as tens of thousands of the young students tried to escape the rampaging Chinese forces. Other protesters fought back, stoning the attacking troops and overturning and setting fire to military vehicles. [...] In the United States, editorialists and members of Congress denounced the Tiananmen Square massacre and pressed for President George Bush to punish the Chinese government. A little more than three weeks later, the U.S. Congress voted to impose economic sanctions against the People’s Republic of China in response to the brutal violation of human rights.

The “massacre” fantasy - a harrowing tale of bloodthirsty PLA soldiers indiscriminately mowing down unarmed, peaceful protestors in Tiananmen Square with machine gun fire - isn’t the only aspect of this history the West gets wrong. I recently spoke with Qiao Collective member Sun Feiyang, whose father attended some of the 1989 protests in China, about the complexities and contradictions of this tumultuous period (listen to our discussion here). In 2019, Feiyang wrote about the nature of the Tiananmen protests, including many unsavory details that are seldom discussed in the West. For instance, student protest leaders often exhibited an elitist contempt for workers, cordoning off protest areas so no one else could join. Student leader Wang Dan explained this sentiment concisely when he said, “The movement is not ready for worker participation because democracy must first be absorbed by the students and intellectuals before they can spread it to others."

Another protest leader, Chai Ling, yearned for a massacre of protesters by government forces: 

The students keep asking, “What should we do next? What can we accomplish?” I feel so sad, because how can I tell them that what we are actually hoping for is bloodshed, for the moment when the government has no choice but to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes. Only then will they really be united. But how can I explain any of this to my fellow students?

When asked if she would remain in the Square, the self-described “chief commander” replied:

No, I won’t. Because my situation is different. My name is on the government’s hit list. I’m not going to let myself be destroyed by this government. I want to live.

Liu Xiaobo, who was considered a more “moderate” protest leader, believed China needed “300 years of colonialism” and later supported George W. Bush’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Tiananmen protests also had roots in anti-Black racism and were supported by the CIA, who smuggled activists out of China through what Newsweek described as “an underground railroad run by an odd alliance of human-rights advocates, Western diplomats, businessmen, professional smugglers and the kings of the Hong Kong underworld.” 

Indeed, the Western capitalist orientation of the student protest leadership, including its desire for violent regime change, was on full display. As Becker noted, “The protest leaders erected a huge statue that resembled the United States’ Statue of Liberty in the middle of Tiananmen Square. They were signaling to the entire world that their political sympathies were with the capitalist countries and the United States in particular. They proclaimed that they would continue the protests until the government was ousted.” The lesser-known, elucidating details of this history could continue for pages, but I feel as though they are beyond the scope of this article. In lieu of a substantial tangent within this text, I’d recommend exploring Qiao Collective’s Tiananmen Protests Reading List.

Conclusion

The “Tiananmen Square massacre” narrative is, in a sense, a classic example of anti-communist propaganda. It includes elaborate fabrication, exaggeration, omission, and double standards. It is repeated over and over again by solemn official sources to inspire an emotional and visceral reaction and thus shape the perspectives of millions. Important details are intentionally excluded, essentially erasing the political and historical context in order to bolster the Western bourgeois narrative revolving around the ostensibly “pro-democracy” nature of the protests. And what makes this particular atrocity myth even more persistent is the bitterness and resentment the Western capitalist class harbors towards China’s socialist project as it continues to advance, having defeated this aforementioned attempted counterrevolution 36 years ago.

In another sense, this famous fairy tale is unique. Unlike other anti-communist fables such as the “Holodomor” or the “Uyghur genocide,” both of which are fallacious yet persistent, the story of the blood-drenched Beijing square has been quietly abandoned by the Western press and its bourgeois backers. The original cartoonish sensationalism has been replaced with a measured, meticulously crafted rewrite that includes the same themes and accusations (authoritarianism, opposition to “democracy,” the crushing of dissent, state repression and brutality, etc.). Even after removing the central element (the fictional June 4th massacre), the narrative itself miraculously remains intact. China, we are told, is a totalitarian police state that viciously destroys the will of the people, regardless of whether its government committed unprovoked mass murder or defeated a violent, U.S.-backed, pro-capitalist rebellion.  

Whether it’s called a “massacre” or a “crackdown,” this conventional Western narrative is part of a larger effort to demonize the PRC and its overwhelmingly successful socialist path. However, the seemingly endless negative portrayals of China’s central government we are spoon-fed in the West are completely at odds with a simple truth: The vast majority of Chinese citizens actually support their government (approval ratings were even as high as 95.5 percent in a 2016 Harvard survey). This is because, throughout its history - from the record-breaking life expectancy increases under Mao, to the complete eradication of extreme poverty (accounting for 70 percent of global poverty reduction), to the unprecedented war against COVID-19, to the highly advanced public transportation system, to the crackdown on billionaires - the PRC’s communist government actually has served the interests of its citizens and continues to do so. And it is for this reason that I feel compelled to give Chinese voices the last word on this matter:

The trope of Chinese ignorance to the history of June 4th poses Westerners as the true keepers of Chinese history and the necessary deliverers of the Chinese people from communist authoritarianism. The pervasiveness of this chauvinistic mentality is apparent in the convergence between the neoconservative right and the anti-communist left in proclaiming platitudes of “solidarity with the Chinese people” against their government.

[…] 

Contrary to these infantilizing beliefs, many Chinese people—old and young—remember 1989. But the violence of June 4th is held in quiet remembrance in the Chinese psyche not as a desperate yearning for Western intervention or regime change, but as a tragic consequence of the contradictions of the reform and opening era, the legacies of the Cultural Revolution, and an overdetermined geopolitical context in which the U.S. bloc sought to exploit any and all opportunities to foreclose the persistence of actually-existing socialism. Lost in the West’s manipulative commemoration of the Tiananmen protests is the fact that two things exist at once: many Chinese people harbor pain and trauma over the bloodshed and remain supportive of the Communist Party of China and committed to China’s socialist modernization.

What Correctly Defines Pan-Africanism in 2025 and Beyond

By Ahjamu Umi

Republished from Hood Communist.

Since its initial organizational expression in 1900, the phrase Pan-Africanism has been expressed in many different forms. For some, its current meaning is defined as unity between all people of African descent across the world. For others, Pan-Africanism is an ideology defined by nebulous elements of the type of unity previously described. For still many others, Pan-Africanism is represented by social media famous individuals who claim Pan-Africanism as a set of beliefs without any clear defining criteria.

For those of us who identify Pan-Africanism not as an ideology, but as an objective, we define Pan-Africanism as the total liberation and unification of Africa under a continental wide scientific socialist government. This is the framework for revolutionary Pan-Africanists who endorse the concepts of Pan-Africanism laid out by the ideas of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, and others. The reasons we humbly, yet firmly, advance one unified socialist Africa as really the only serious definition of Pan-Africanism are connected to dialectical and historical materialism. By dialectical and historical materialism we mean the historical components that define matter and the conflictual elements that transform that matter. In other words, the history of a thing and the forces that have come to shape that thing’s characteristics over time.

For example, for African people (“All people of African descent are African and belong to the African nation”—Kwame Nkrumah—“Class Struggle in Africa), the reason we live on three continents and the Caribbean in large numbers in 2025 is not the result of higher desire on our part to see the world. It’s not because God placed people who look like us in every corner of the planet. The only reason is because colonialism and slavery exploited Africa’s human and material resources to build up the wealth of the Western capitalist world. As a result of this irrefutable reality, it makes zero sense in 2025 for African people to imitate the logic of other people in defining ourselves based solely upon where we are born.

This approach is illogical because African people were kidnapped from Africa and spread across the world. Even the Africans who left Africa on their own to live in the Western industrialized countries, did so only because colonialism made the resources they seek unavailable in Africa. Consequently, an African in Brazil can and does have biological relatives in the Dominican Republic, Canada, Portugal, the U.S., etc. These people will most likely never meet and even if they came across each other, they probably could not communicate due to language barriers, but none of this changes the cold stark reality that they could easily be related. So, it makes no sense for Africans to accept colonial borders to define ourselves i.e., “I’m Jamaican and have no connection to Black people in the U.S., etc.”

Secondly, and more important, wherever African people are in 2025, we are at the bottom of that society. The reasons for this are not that there is something wrong with African people or that we don’t work hard enough and don’t have ambition. Anyone who has arisen at 5am on any day in Africa knows those conceptions of African people are bogus. Any bus depot at that time of morning shows thousands of people up, hustling, struggling to begin the day trying to earn resources for their families. The real reason we are on the bottom everywhere is because the capitalist system was built on exploiting our human and material resources. As a result, capitalism today cannot function without that exploitation. In other words, in order for DeBeers Diamonds to remain the largest diamond producer on earth, African people in Zimbabwe, the Congo, Azania (South Africa), etc., must continue to be viciously exploited to produce the diamonds. Its this system that has made the zionist state of Israel one of the world’s main diamond polishing economies despite the fact diamond mines don’t exist in occupied Palestine (Israel). Apple, Motorola, Samsung, Hershey, Godiva, Nestle, etc., all rely on similar exploitative systems that steal African resources and labor to continue to produce riches for those multinational corporations while the masses of African people die young from black lung, mining these resources, often by hand.

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Meanwhile, since the wealth of capitalism is dependent upon this system of exploitation to continue uninterrupted, the mechanisms of the capitalist system have to ensure that African people are prohibited from waking up to this reality. Thus, the maintenance of systems of oppression to keep the foot of the system firmly placed on the necks of African people everywhere. Whether its police, social services, etc., this is true. This exploitation marks the origin of the problem, and therefore, logically, it is also where the solution must be addressed. In other words, while we can recognize that the consequences of this exploitation have global dimensions, we cannot expect the problem to be resolved solely through actions taken outside of Africa, such as in the U.S. or elsewhere.

All of the above explains why one unified socialist Africa has to be the only real definition for Pan-Africanism. Capitalism, as the driving force behind the exploitation of Africa and the global African diaspora, cannot serve as the solution to the suffering it has created. Instead, Africa’s vast resources—including its 600 million hectares of arable land, its immense mineral wealth, and the collective potential of its people—must be reorganized into ways to eradicate poverty and disease, including

Ways to educate all who need education to increase the skills to solve these problems. And, in accomplishing all of this, our pride as African people based upon our abilities to govern our own lives, coupled with the necessity for others to respect us for the same, eliminates the constant disrespect—internal and external—which defines African existence today.

This Pan-Africanist reality will eliminate the scores of African people who are ashamed of their African identity overnight. Now, what we will see is those same people clamoring to instantly become a part of the blossoming African nation.

Revolutionary Pan-Africanism cannot be mistaken in 2025 as a pipe dream or simply the hopes of Africans everywhere. Building capacity for this reality is the actual on the ground work that many genuinely revolutionary Pan-Africanist organizations are engaging in on a daily basis. The work to forge that collective unity based upon the principles cited by people like Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara, Robert Sobukwe, Lumumba, Marcus Garvey, Amy/Amy Jacques Garvey, Carmen Peirera, etc. Principles of humanism, collectivism, and egalitarianism.,the Revolutionary African Personality articulated by Nkrumah, the understanding of how to build political party structures as documented by Ture,the understanding of the role of culture in guiding our actions as expressed by Cabral, etc., and many of these types of cultural and principle approaches to building society have been seen in recent times through the work of the former Libyan Jamihiriya and what’s currently happening in the Sahel region. These efforts will only increase and become even more mass in character.

We challenge a single person to express why revolutionary Pan-Africanism is not what’s needed for African people. Not just as one of many ideas, but as the single objective that would address all of our collective problems. Hearing and seeing no one who can refute that statement, the next step is how we collectively increase African consciousness around the necessity to contribute to on the ground Pan-African work. The first step is getting people to see the importance of getting involved in organized struggle. The second step is ensuring that those organizations have institutionalized, consistent, ideological training as a priority.

To seriously embark upon this work brings no individual recognition. It brings no prestige. It requires a clear focus and a commitment to detail, but what it will produce is an ever increasing capacity that will one day manifest itself in the type of revolutionary Pan-Africanism described here that will fulfill the aspirations of African people everywhere while placing us in the position to contribute to all peace and justice pursuing struggles across the planet earth.

Xi Jinping and the Memory of the Soviet Union

[Pictured: Mao and Khrushchev meet in Beijing in 1957 prior to the Sino-Soviet split]

By Nolan Long

In a widely circulated quotation, Chinese President Xi Jinping is supposed to have said that the collapse of the Soviet Union is a “tragedy too painful to look back upon.” While this is most likely an apocryphal quote that began being circulated by Western media in recent years, it is, in fact, consistent with Xi’s actual thinking on the Soviet collapse. Throughout the pages of the Governance of China, President Xi gives continued attention to the history of Sino-Soviet relations and his regret of the Soviet disintegration. In the memory of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China as a whole, it would seem that the period of division between the People’s Republic and the USSR is now seen as a mistake. While Xi has seemingly never spoken publicly about the Sino-Soviet Split, his regret for this era is evidenced by his mourning of the Soviet collapse, his rhetorical focus on periods of alliance between the two countries, and his diplomatic efforts to ensure strong China-Russia ties today. In China’s New Era, the Soviet Union is remembered as an ally, rather than an enemy.

The history of Chinese-Soviet relations is a long one. Ken Hammond’s recent book, China and the World, covers this topic extensively. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the new socialist state developed close ties with the Soviet Union. To this point, Xi Jinping notes, “after the founding of the PRC in 1949, China explored the path of building socialism in sole alliance with the Soviet Union and in semi-seclusion from the rest of the world.”[1] He also noted the theoretical contributions that the Soviet Union made to China’s early experience with socialist governance: “we are always open to useful governance experience from other countries, digesting its essence and employing it for our own use on the basis of our own systems. For example, we learned a lot from the valuable experience of the Soviet Union during the initial period of the PRC in building socialism.”[2]

However, these mutually beneficial relations between the PRC and the USSR did not last long. As early as the late 1950s, cracks in the socialist alliance were forming, only to be exacerbated during the 60s, and sustained throughout the 70s. The origin of the dissolution of the alliance laid primarily in ideological disagreements. Whereas Mao Zedong and the CPC saw the Soviet Union as revisionist (under the leaderships of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev) and later as social imperialist, the Soviets saw the People’s Republic as increasingly erratic, uncontrollable, and ‘adventurist.’ The Split was not purely theoretical, however. It resulted in the withdrawal of Soviet technical professionals in the 1960s and was a contributing factor to China’s war with Vietnam in 1979.

Though incredibly ironic from our modern point of view, the Communist Party of China, during the Sino-Soviet Split, saw the primary contradiction in world politics as Soviet social imperialism. Ken Hammond writes, “up to the end of the 1960s, China’s primary contradiction in the world was the clash between the socialist camp and the imperialists, led by the United States. But now Mao and others felt the Soviet Union was the greater threat to China.”[3] As a result, China undertook a strategic alliance with the United States against the Soviet Union. In retrospect, this alliance, and the Sino-Soviet Split as a whole, was a disaster for the global socialist movement. This is not to say the CPC’s criticism of the Soviet leadership was invalid; the CPSU had indeed become revisionist following the ascendency of Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet leadership practically abandoned Marxism-Leninism through the denigration of Stalin and the veiled attack on Lenin. The criticism of the Communist Party of China was certainly necessary, but the diplomatic Split itself was at least regrettable, if not itself a mistake.

However, as is evidenced in the writings and speeches of General Secretary Xi Jinping, the memory of the Sino-Soviet Split has now soured in the Communist Party of China. Tensions between the two states began settling in the early 1980s, though the collapse of the USSR in 1991 made these efforts to resolve differences irrelevant. The question now at hand is one of historical memory. Do Xi Jinping and the CPC remember the Soviet Union as an ally or an enemy?

President Xi’s words and actions suggest that he regrets the Split between the PRC and the USSR. In 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, Xi honoured the dead of WWII as well as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. He noted not only the great number of Chinese lives lost, but also the tremendous death toll of Soviet fighters, demonstrating his memory of the sacrifice of the Soviet people.[4] Similarly, in a 2013 speech given from Moscow, President Xi told a story of a Soviet air force captain, Gregory Kurishenko, who fought alongside the Chinese against the Japanese imperialists.[5] This story was told to emphasize the historically close ties between the Chinese and Russian people. Clearly, Xi Jinping’s memory of the Soviet people is one of allyship and not of enmity.

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While the quotation at the beginning of this essay is likely apocryphal, President Xi Jinping has assuredly demonstrated remorse over the collapse of the Soviet Union. He notes that the disintegration of the world’s first socialist state marked a period of negative transformation in the socialist movement as a whole; “in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during a period of dramatic change in Eastern Europe, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union collapsed and the Soviet Union disintegrated, dealing a severe blow to world socialism.”[6] While noting the consequences the collapse had on the socialist world as a whole, President Xi still holds that the collapse was the result of ideological revisionism. “One main reason for its failure was that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union became detached from the people and turned into a group of privileged bureaucrats who only served their own interests.”[7] This quotation is not so much a dismissal of the importance of the Soviet Union as much as an apt historical assessment. While critiquing the late USSR’s ideological line, Xi Jinping still does not embody Split-era hostilities to the Soviet Union in his thought.

Lastly, Xi Jinping’s efforts to foster mutually beneficial relations with the Russian Federation demonstrate that historical hostilities do not bear on his thought or actions. Since his tenure as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China began in 2012, Xi has made continual and concerted efforts to establish strong diplomatic ties with Russia, the historical successor to the Soviet Union. While Xi clearly regrets the Soviet collapse, this does not stop him from working with the modern Russian Federation in order to re-establish cooperative ties between the Chinese and Russian peoples. In a 2013 speech given in Moscow, Xi stated, “at present, both China and Russia are at a crucial stage of national renewal, as their relations have entered a new period characterized by provision of vital mutual development opportunities and serving as primary mutual cooperation partners.”[8]

While President Xi Jinping has seemingly never explicitly spoken or written about the Sino-Soviet Split, his work implies a deep regret for this historical period and the blow it dealt to the global socialist movement. As such, Xi’s tenure can be seen as an effort to rectify the historical mistakes made by the Communist Party, while maintaining a firm stance against revisionism. In the memory of Xi Jinping and the CPC as a whole, the Soviet Union is now remembered as an ally and mentor, rather than an adversary.

Notes

[1] Xi Jinping, “A Deeper Understanding of the New Development Concepts,” in The Governance of China, Vol. II (Foreign Languages Press, 2017), 233.

[2] Xi Jinping, “Uphold and Improve the Chinese Socialist System and Modernize State Governance,” in The Governance of China, Vol. III (Foreign Languages Press, 2020), 148.

[3] Ken Hammond, China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future (1804 Books, 2023), 56.

[4] Xi Jinping, “Remember the Past and Our Martyrs, Cherish Peace, and Build a New Future,” in The Governance of China, Vol. II (Foreign Languages Press, 2017), 485.

[5] Xi Jinping, “Follow the Trend of the Times and Promote Global Peace and Development,” in The Governance of China, Vol. I (Foreign Languages Press, 2014), 303.

[6] Xi Jinping, “Be Prepared for the Great Struggle,” in The Governance of China, Vol. IV (Foreign Languages Press, 2022), 93.

[7] Xi Jinping, “Apply the New Development Philosophy in Full,” in The Governance of China, Vol. IV (Foreign Languages Press, 2022), 197.

[8] Xi Jinping, “Follow the Trend of the Times and Promote Global Peace and Development,” 302.

References

Hammond, Ken. China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future. 1804 Books, 2023.

Xi, Jinping. The Governance of China, Vol. I-IV. Foreign Languages Press, 2014-22.

Is the Genocide in Congo Due to Human Hatred or Corporate Profit?

[Pictured: Congolese march near the border with Rwanda in 2023. Credit © Getty Images]

By J.B. Gerald

Rwanda has broken international law with the visible presence of Rwandan troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alongside Rwanda's covert M-23 militia. M-23 is reported to have captured Goma (again) and the civilians are in a state of emergency. This is familiar because M-23 previously took over the city in 2012 but had to withdraw because it wasn't equipped to administer the city of two million. As the M-23 rebels and their allies increase their takeover of the East Congo with reported vows of advancing to the capital of the DRC in a "liberation" of the country, it becomes clear Rwanda has invaded Congo again, possibly for keeps this time to maintain its hold on the East's gold, copper, and coltan mines.

The Congo's government has requested international sanctions against Rwanda. But the international community has allowed an ongoing genocide of the Congolese people for thirty years. The people of the Congo live under a genocide warning.

Paul Kagame began invading the Eastern Congo after he took over Rwanda in 1994. Subsequently, Uganda, which sponsored Kagame's invasion of Rwanda with U.S. funding, and Rwanda have maintained militias in the area. While genocide was brought under control in Rwanda, an insistence on mass killing was carried into the Congo by Kagame's Rwandan troops in pursuit of Hutu refugees who fled there. This also allowed Rwandan forces to protect Tutsi groups settled in the Congo, and access and control a portion of the mining resources.

But the resources belong to the people. As they do in the Sudan and South Sudan. As they do in Gaza and Palestine. All three areas are currently threatened by genocide against the people who have lived there.

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The U.S. Government's official site for the National Library of Medicine notes, “5.4 million people have died in Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998 because of conflict” (Peter Moszynski, Jan. 31, 2008, BMJ). However, since the “First Congo War” in 1996 to the present, the western press notoriously underestimates the death toll at six million civilians.

From the perspective of preventing genocide, the source of the problem rests in both the five lakes region of Africa and the Middle East, with corporate interests using national leaders to effect policy. This facile academic statement of the obvious covers the fact that millions on millions of innocent civilian lives are currently being sacrificed for corporate growth and profit. This is against any sense of ethics, knowledge of right and wrong, law, religious commitments to honour life, or the people's informed consent.

In the DRC, the genocide continues because it is meant to. It works. The mines are working, the resources are taken. The peoples’ deaths are not a corporate concern. The elites are not about to stop it. They are the reason Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in 1961 and the UN's Dag Hammarskjöld was killed. And why the Simba rebellion was crushed. And why Eastern Congo was thrown into the chaos of warring militias.

The Rwandan genocide, which suddenly occurred between tribes living in peace, brought in an Anglo-American-backed Paul Kagame. One could say Rwanda is responsible for the genocide of Congolese except that the benefits have devolved to International corporations, stock markets, manufacturers, and western economies. As with all such imperialist and colonialist dynamics throughout history, Kagame’s Rwandan forces are simply mercenaries for western capitalists.

Unfortunately, this is an all-too familiar history. European and American policies have used Independent Congo (Zaire, DRC) since its colonial bondage as a people enslaved to the uses of Western capital. China is now buying into the land as well, with the purchase of many previously American owned mines. It is unclear how or if this will be much different than the Western playbook. One thing, however, is clear: the genocide continues. With respect for conscience, a portion of UN peacekeepers are in place to lessen the civilian body count. But the guilty parties here are the same who engineered the “Rwanda” genocide, which the UN did not stop, and which served Western corporate expansion.

There is little hope of any justice for the people of the DRC until the ownership and control of the mineral resources in the East are in the hands of a just regulator that assures both the people’s safety and fair payment for their resources. And, any such arrangement, would have to be negotiated and agreed upon with not only strict parameters, but with the approval of the very people who labor in these harsh conditions. In our new multipolar global landscape, this would have to be UN administered to include Russian and China. It is an alternative to an ongoing genocide. Until then, all profits from the genocide should be tracked as evidence for eventual prosecution.