From October 7, 2023 to October 7, 2024 is not a year that the general public considers it, nor is it 365 days on the calendar. It is a year of writing history, and what history? It is the history of resistance, and a year of flying the flag in its four colors in all the squares, the most beautiful and magnificent of which are the squares of the ancient universities in the world, and the streets that still speak the language of justice, peace, and human brotherhood in the East and the West.
It is the year the spotted keffiyeh appears on the necks of young men and women of all religions, races and cultures in the four corners of the world, and the name Palestine is heard associated with the word “Freedom.”
From October 7, 2023 to October 7, 2024, the project of surrender to Israeli barbarism declined, and the train of normalization with it stopped. The prestige of deterrence with which the Zionist project governed the official Arab mind and brought together the diaspora of frightened Jews who had nothing in common with them declined, and Israel exposed its barbarism and racism before world public opinion.
The only “democratic” country in the jungle of Arab tyranny has become accused of genocide against the Palestinians and their children, and the leaders of the usurping entity are on arrest lists at the airports of many countries that still give some weight to international law.
This setback for the Zionist project is only the beginning, and whoever lives will tell how and when the countdown to the Israeli presence on the land of peace began. This existence that arose against nature, against international law, against history, and soon it will become against reality as well.
The Zionist project will dissolve not from the strength of the resistance weapons nor from the abandonment of it by the European and American West, but rather it will dissolve from within as a result of the collective sense of fear, rejection, and insecurity.
Who among the Israelis would accept to live in Palestine at a heavy psychological cost, while having the option of living safely in Europe, America, Canada, and Australia? This is the invisible effect of the Al-Aqsa flood, which is not visible to the eye that is not trained to monitor profound transformations in the structure of societies, nations, and international relations.
Who among the Israelis would accept to live in Palestine at a heavy psychological cost, while having the option of living safely in Europe, America, Canada and Australia?
The idea of establishing a special state for the Jews was born in the mind of Zionist theorist Theodor Herzl while covering the trial of a Jewish officer named Alfred Dreyfus in France. Herzl, considered one of the founders of the Zionist movement, covered the Dreyfus trial. A journalist at the time, he attended the trial in 1894 and bore witness to the injustices suffered by Alfred Dreyfus, the French Jewish officer who was falsely accused of treason and sentenced to imprisonment and exile, before the sentence was revised with the intervention of Émile Zola and other intellectuals. Here Herzl had the idea of establishing a safe homeland for Jews outside Europe, which was then rife with anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews simply because they were Jews.
Therefore, when the foundations of establishing a safe homeland for the Jews in Palestine fall, the Zionist project will collapse in the long term. We will be faced with two possibilities: either the establishment of one state for the two peoples: Palestinian and Israeli, and the coexistence of the three religions: Islam, Judaism and Christianity, on one land and within the confines of a democratic state, or we will witness a reverse migration of Jews towards their original homes, which have largely gotten rid of the scourge of anti-Semitism. We may also witness a civil war within a hybrid entity founded on myths and on the crime of expelling another people to replace them.
From October 7, 2023 to October 7, 2024, a new dictionary appeared in and around the Blessed Land. The Al-Aqsa flood appeared, where the genius of martyrdom and resistance broke the law of Israeli and American military superiority, and demonstrated the solidity of the metal within which the Palestinian was formed, clinging to the land, honor, identity, and right that does not fade away.
The genius of the tunnels appeared, which stunned the Israeli occupation and embraced the Palestinian dream at a time when the Dahir and the Nusayr were proud. The invention of unity in the arenas and support of the oppressed appeared, until missiles from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Gaza became a constant visit to the perforated dome of Israel, declaring politically before militarily that Netanyahu and his gang are a cancerous body that has no place on the map of the region, and that the resistance does not abide by the low ceiling of the regimes. Arab and Islamic countries that stood by and watched the genocide of the Palestinians.
The Al-Aqsa flood announced the birth of a new regional, political, military and strategic actor called the Resistance Project, supported by the Arab and Islamic street with all its factions, affiliations and political and ideological expressions that differ in everything except Palestine. Palestine today is the truest and strongest synonym for the value of freedom, the root of humanity.
From October 7, 2023 to October 7, 2024, thousands of children were killed, injured, orphaned, carried in white shrouds to small graves, or remained under the destruction that spread across Gaza from one end to the other. More than 42 thousand resistance men and women were martyred, led by the symbols of this epic march: Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah, and their brothers who gave the spirit and provided the lesson that heroism is still an exchangeable currency in the Arab desert.
Resistance is not speeches, theories, antics, pictures, and videos for local consumption. Rather, it is before and after the nobility of blood spilled on the altar of sacrifice, and blood is always stronger, louder, more influential, and more present. The world does not listen to the oppressed, who are silent, submissive, and subject to humiliation. Rather, it listens to the oppressed who resist, sacrifice, and shed blood for their cause. For these sakes, the free people of the world are listening today, and for these sakes international public opinion is beginning to review its papers, plans and positions. This, for me, is a long-term cultivation that will bear fruit in the coming years.
Whoever endures for a year on a battlefield of unequal strength can endure for years, and whoever gives blood and great and great sacrifices, there will no longer be anything to be feared before him or behind him.
From October 7, 2023 to October 7, 2024, European and American hypocrisy appeared in its ugliest forms diplomatically, politically, militarily, and in the media, as a shady narrative spread that saw what happened in Gaza on October 7 as if nothing had happened before it.
No occupation outside international law and UN resolutions for more than seventy years? Or a devastating and deadly siege of all aspects of life in Gaza, whose area does not exceed 360 square kilometers? Are there prisons crowded with prisoners who die in installments behind bars? No harassment and insults at the crossings every day? And there is no international and Arab silence on the Palestinian right, which is being eroded at every moment under the blows of the extreme religious right, which is planting settlements in what remains of Palestinian lands, and daily assaulting the holy places of Muslims and Christians without shame or fear of accountability or punishment?
This is what the Secretary-General of the United Nations was alerted to, when he said: “October 7 has something before it,” and this led him to undermine the Zionist propaganda and defamation machine spread throughout the world.
Double standards are not new to the major powers in the world, but it is surprising that the elites of the European and American West stand with a butcher like Netanyahu, who leads a government of religious and racist fanaticism that has killed more than 14,000 children in Gaza alone, violates international humanitarian law daily, and drops bombs weighing thousands of kilograms. From the air on residential neighborhoods in central Beirut in order to target one person. The West supports Israel at a time when the International Court of Justice accepts charging it with the most dangerous crime on earth (genocide).
And all of this is happening directly in front of the new and old media, in sound and image. This is unprecedented, and it does not question the commitment of these governments to the democratic values on which they were elected, but rather it questions Western values in their foundations, starting points, and the extent of their application to all human beings.
A year unlike any other, in which thirsty souls were satisfied for freedom, justice, fairness, and true international peace, not the Roman peace imposed by force of arms. A year in which free voices emerged with a human and moral depth unparalleled in the East and West. They did not fear the blame of a blamer, nor unjust weapons, nor a media biased towards those with power, influence, and money in the word of truth.
Armies know how wars start, but neither military nor civilians know how wars end. War is a phenomenon that expands and contracts and creates for itself an uncontrolled internal dynamic. Therefore, the most difficult and dangerous thing for the Palestinians, the Lebanese, and all the resistance has passed, despite its heavy costs.
Whoever endures for a year on a battlefield of unequal strength can endure for years, and whoever gives great and great blood and sacrifices will no longer have anything to fear before him or behind him. It is now the turn of Israel, which lost this year what it cannot regain: (prestige, deterrence power, sense of security, integration project in the region, international reputation).
Victory in battle was often a trap that led to defeat in war, and defeat in battle was often an opportunity to win war.
The opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera Network.