Guerrilla History - Desperation & Defiance: "Israel"'s Assassinations of Haniyeh & Shukr, & the Resolve of the Axis of Resistance w/ al-Fida'i Media & Matteo Capasso

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

In this critical Dispatch episode of Guerrilla History, we are joined by Abdullah Shehadeh from al-Feda'i Media (formerly known as al-Falastineyeh) and Matteo Capasso (whom you will remember from our episode on the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) to discuss the assassinations by the Zionist entity of Ismail Haniyeh (political leader of Hamas) and Fuad Shukr (military commander of Hezbollah), as well as what we might expect from the Axis of Resistance going forward.  This is a very timely discussion, and one which we hope helps you analyze the situation as it continues to unfold. References made in the episode were to the documentary Defiance, Sarah Jilani's book Subjectivity and Decolonization in the Post-Independence Novel and Film, and the Middle East Critique video lecture series hosted by Matteo.  Click on the hyperlinks to check them out! al-Fida'i Media is an independent, viewer supported media network amplifying Palestinian voices for resistance, liberation, and return to a free Palestine.  Be sure to check out their work on their website alfidai.org, and follow them on social media, where their handle on Twitter and Instagram is @fidaimedia Matteo Capasso is the editor of the invaluable journal Middle East Critique (on twitter @MidEastCritique), and his work pertains to political economy and international relations.  He is a Marie Curie Fellow between the University of Venice and Columbia University.  In addition to picking up his book, you can follow him on twitter @capassomat. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember Den Ben-Brew? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. And welcome to Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Hakimaki, joined as usual by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada.

Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, Henry. It's great to be with you. Yeah, it's nice to see you too, and we have another change of scenery for you. You're back in Canada now. Yeah, sadly, sabbatical is over and it's back to real life, but it's nice to be, it's nice to be home. Yes, I can imagine. It's, it's been a while since we recorded, but I'm really happy to see you again. Listeners, before I introduce the guest and the topic of discussion today, I'd like to remind you that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to Patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history.

And you can also keep up to date with everything that Adnan and I are doing individually, as well as what the show is putting out collectively by following us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-S-Pod. And I should probably throw in, as I do periodically, that we are on Instagram as well, at Gorilla-U-U-U-S-R-R-I-L-L-A- underscore history. Also, before I introduce the guests and the topic today, I just also want to mention two upcoming episodes that we have coming out.

That way, you have the ability to prep if you want to read the material or watch the material. That way you're ready for those discussions. They've been recorded for a little bit, but we're pushing off the release of those two episodes because this episode will be more breaking news and more timely to come out first. So we've shifted the order a bit. So the two episodes that we have coming out, one is on the documentary Defiance. Adnan, that was a episode that you hosted by yourself.

Perhaps you can say 10 and 15 words about the documentary to encourage people to watch it in advance of the release of that next week. It's a three-part documentary set in late, well, in the 70s and early 80s, Britain of forces, particularly South Asian community fighting against racism and the rise of the far right in Britain with a lot of interviews from activists during the time. Definitely worth checking out. Very gripping, very powerful and an important history. Yeah. So as the listeners probably heard, this is also related to some of the episodes that we've, that we've had in the past. We had Hakim Adi talking about black communities within Britain. And they're

Resistance, as well as Preeti Dillon, pretty Dylan, talking about her book on mostly, it was black and brown communities within Britain and a large focus on South Asian communities there as well. And so this documentary, which you interviewed the documentarian, Roger Stinn, fits well within that theme. So listeners, if you haven't checked out those other episodes in advance, you can also listen to those to help prep as well as watching Defiance. And then after that, we have an episode coming out with the scholar Sarah Jalani on her book,

Subjectivity and Decolonization in the Post-Independence novel and film. That was a great conversation. And I'm really looking forward to you hearing that where it focuses on novels and film in post-independence Africa and South Asia. And again, the representations of subjectivity and decolonization in those media. I will have both Defiance and Sarah's book linked in the show notes. So if you want to check those out in advance of those episodes coming out so that you can more deeply engage with that material. You can just go to the show notes and click on those links.

With that housekeeping out of the way, I can turn to our guests now. We are joined by Abdullah Shihadeh from the Al-Fadai media network, which is formerly known. And most of you would probably know it as Al-Fal-Sah. Thank you, Abdullah. It's nice to have you on the show. Thank you so much for having me on. Honestly, a privilege and an honor. I've been a huge fan of Rev. Left and guerrilla history since like 2019, 2020. The work you guys do is very inspiring. And it's just really cool to have a chance to be on here. Absolutely. It's a pleasure to have you on. And I will have you introduce what your media network is in just a second for the listeners who are not familiar with it. But I also want to let the listeners know that the subject that we're going to be talking about, Today is the assassination of Ismail Hanea, and we will also be joined by Matteo Capasso. A bit later, he wasn't able to make it at the beginning of this recording, but he will also be present within this episode.

So stay tuned for Matteo coming on to also give his thoughts on the assassination. So, Abdullah, before we talk about the assassination, can you talk a little bit about Al-Sadai Media Network? And as I said, more listeners would be familiar with it as Al-Falastinia, because the rebrand is taking place just one day in advance of the episode being released. Yeah, absolutely. So AFMN kind of generally is meant to be a media network that specifically tries to elevate the political consciousness of the diaspora and its allies. Most Palestinians don't live within Palestine. The diaspora is actually larger.

We're about 5 million folks, as opposed to 4.5 million or so within Palestine proper. So for us, I know me growing up personally as an era, as a Muslim in the United States and post-911 New Jersey, nonetheless, I always really like yearned for some kind of progressive media outlet, some kind of progressive magazine, anything that I could get my hands on that would help me kind of deal with my identity as an Arab who was in the diaspora, who wasn't in his home country, and had to kind of deal with the racism and just like the struggles of being, you know, half American, half Arab in a sense. And for us, we see currently the Arab diaspora as in a moment of very important organizing the focus that has been shown by the select new generation of folks has been unbelievable and very inspiring.

However, we do think that there is just a lack of political, like, cohesion or specifically when it comes to people's political thought, there is a lack of cogency that we have been really trying to help with by specific. disseminating the lessons of martyrs and revolutionaries from Palestine. We hope to study these different folks and apply the lessons to the struggle abroad in any way that we can. Yeah, revolutionary action for us is inseparable from revolutionary theory. And the aim for AFMN kind of generally is just to serve as a resource for the political development of the diaspora and its allies for the Palestine movement. Yeah, that's kind of just AFMN generally what we do and what we hope to achieve. That's fabulous. And we want to commend you and the whole network for all the important media and political work you've been doing. And we wish the al-Fidda'i

media network, as it will now be called, all future success. Obviously, we're here today because this has been a pretty incredibly important and momentous period in the history of the resistance with the assassination of Ismail Haniyah in Tehran. Before we get into the specifics of what happened and the significance and importance of Ismail Hania and all of the dimensions of talking about what's going to happen and analyzing the event, I think it's important to remind people that these kinds of assassinations have a long history in Zionist and Israeli. you know, in the Zionist and Israeli movement, even before the founding of the state of Israel,

this has been a technique used by Zionists in their ongoing genocidal settler colonial project. I'd rather you could talk a little bit more about this practice of assassination and how the Palestinian resistance movements have suffered this and dealt with it. you know, in the past before we come to the, you know, present circumstance. Absolutely, yeah. I want to say that in the current situation that we're in, Hamas is considered a newer resistance movement, only having really been founded in 1987, yeah. And as you said, the political assassination as a method of dealing with the Palestinian question

has been a common theme for Zionists. And with Hamas being a younger organization, they have hindsight. They're lucky enough to be able to look back and see how political assassinations have affected different organizations and seen kind of the fallout. Generally, when it comes to political assassinations

of this type, there have been orgs or factions within orgs historically that have honestly collapsed due to the way of having their most experienced members in their cadre be killed. An example of this, funny enough, within Feth, would be the student brigade. They were a, like,

Marxist kind of Maoist group that existed, I think, in the early 2000s, and all of the folks who led that faction ended up getting assassinated it, and they just kind of, like, stopped really existing after that point in time. However, with Hamas, specifically,

when it comes to political assassinations, you know, the founder of Hamas, Ahmad Yassin was assassinated in 2004, after he left the Fezre prayer. And also he was wheelchair-bound and they literally just took a helicopter and they shot him down after praying Fezre.

And shortly after that, they had him succeeded by someone named Rondisi who, I think he was assassinated within a couple months. So it was back-to-back assassinations of two of the founders essentially of Hamas. So the amount of experience and know-how and connections

that were lost in that and those two folks being martyred can't be understated. At the same time, though, these were the folks who essentially were predecessors to Isman Hanayah's position as head of the political bureau and head of the political side of Hamaswar generally. And we're lucky enough now to see October 7th has happened. And we are in for the first time ever a situation where the Palestinian factions are unified. They're well-armed and they're focused in a way that we just haven't seen historically. And this is coming off of and dealing with over the past 20 years, right?

But you've seen the founder of how much was killed in 2004. So over the past 20 years, these high profile assassinations have been, I think they've been dealing with. And there's only been a ramp up of capability, a focus, of power for the resistance. Yeah, thank you for that helpful background. I'm also thinking of the assassination Khaled Mashal, you know, that was another one. So it's been like a practice very frequently, you know, but also even in the present context, it seems that Israel's approach, the Israel's military approach is kill a lot of civilians through bombardment and indiscriminate kinds of genocidal war crimes on the one hand. And also trying to pick off leadership, as you pointed out, this is something that goes back a long way.

What it hasn't really proved itself capable of doing after 10 months of invasion in Gaza is really defeat Palestinian resistance forces. And you were pointing out that there are some kind of conditions that demonstrate that it has manned. managed to adapt and deal with the killing of leaders. But one thing I wanted to emphasize and see your thoughts on this, and something I heard on electronic intifada's discussion recently, where they were speaking with Ilan Pape, the Israeli historian, about the kind of deeper history of these assassinations. He pointed out that in some ways it relies upon this whole strategy,

How it relies upon some very racist and orientalist presumptions about, you know, organized Western oriented societies, you know, and leadership versus, you know, eastern societies where it's very authoritarian. The authority of the leader is so important in the way that they imagine and that individuals can't make their own decisions because they are not like a modern progressive. you know, people. And so they think that, well, by targeting the leader, you take out the head and the rest of the body just will be incapable of acting and responding. And despite the fact that they've tried this tactic so many times, and as you pointed out, it has had no consequential effect on the modern movement, particularly of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, they've managed to adapt, adapt. to this. It also relies, however, on this kind of orientalist bigotry that thinks that this is the most effective way. But I would say that I think in part it is a way of trying to show and portray some kind of success militarily that is not being achieved in on the ground fight against the

resistance forces who seem to be able to reform, keep their lines. communication, maintain resistance. And so it's a kind of like a, you know, a cheap way to try and show some sort of military success when they can't actually fundamentally change the military conditions in their combat with the resistance. And if that's why, you know, maybe there's a lot of news about this, partly because for the Israelis, they can't show many successes militarily. And this is one way for their own public and for themselves to delude themselves and convince themselves that they are somehow making making progress in combating Palestinian resistance. I think you're absolutely right when it comes to this being kind of like a symbolic victory

for the occupation. AFMN has covered a martyr known as Besse de al-Arage. He is commonly known as the Educated Martyr. He was a PFLP adjacent Marxist-Lennonist who wrote a text, I have found my answers. So best of the Autos the Educated Martyr, Marxist, adjacent, PFLP-Ajacent

activist wrote this book called I Have Found My Answers, and he finished this book when he was, like, in his home being seached by the Zionist occupier, and he set aside like a few rules for us to consider when we are

talking about and encouraged it into Gaza in a war in this way. And one of them he does discuss is that there is a tendency for the Zionist occupier to broadcast images, for example, prisoners, civilians, and also specifically to try and assassinate folks that are high up in the resistance with the goal of essentially playing the psychological warfare and causing panic and disunity and a lack of cohesion. However, he points out that the resistance and its formations, this is directly quoting from him, are not centralized but horizontal and widespread. And the assassination attempts their goal is to influence the resistance to support base and the families of the resistance fighters, as they're the only ones who can affect the men of the resistance. So I think it's important to point out that, yeah, this strategy has not been useful in the past.

It's clear that Netanyahu and the Israeli government currently is buckling under the contradictions that they're seeing in their sense. society and that this is meant to be a way to kind of get back some unity, especially as we've seen very recently, you know, the contradictions of, for example, the torture camp, I think it's called Sedetaman, excuse me, if that pronunciation is wrong, where essentially a military riot took place because of the fact that there was a group of Israeli soldiers who were caught committing sexual violence and consistent abuse towards Gaza prisoners. Another contradiction that's happening right now that's really affecting the Israeli occupation is the Haifa port for the first time ever has gone bankrupt due to the pressure that Yemen has put on through the Red Sea blockade.

We've also been seeing these 100,000 person protests where Israelis are hitting our going to the streets and demanding a change of government, new elections, and also to the drafting of Orthodox Jews into the IDF for the first time, which is a huge step away from what is considered normal. normal, you know, Orthodox Jews in Israel don't have to do their conscription because usually they go to Yshiva and they get taught the law, rabbinical law, and they become rabbis, and that's kind of their service for the nation of Israel. However, now we see there's a lack of manpower, a lack of morale, a lack of unity in general that's causing the Israeli occupation to make some rash decisions just to specifically garner support and not kind of lose the support of the masses

right now for their government that they have currently. Before we get into talking about the assassination of Henea more specifically in terms of what actually happened, I think that it would be useful for us to talk about who Henea was. I'm sure that most of our listeners are familiar with the name at the very least, but perhaps don't know more about him or his role in Hamas. So I think that taking a moment here to kind of lay out his background, his role within Hamas prior to October 7th and his role within Hamas with regard to the ceasefire process would be pretty useful right now in order to understand why this assassination, there's a lot of contradictions in place with this assassination. So obviously

he has a very high role in Hamas and we understand what Israel is. doing with regard to trying to crush Hamas right now. But on the other hand, as I just mentioned, and I'll have you explain a bit more, Haneo was essentially the lead negotiator for a potential ceasefire. And we have allies of Israel like the United States who are talking up the potentiality of a ceasefire imminently, while both Hamas and Israel are indicating, you know, it's probably not as close as you're hearing from the United States. But the United States was indicating that it was close. And then all of a sudden, the so-called state of Israel assassinates the person who is negotiating a ceasefire with them. I had just seen a quote from the Prime Minister of Qatar,

and it's worth noting that Hanea was based in Qatar, although he was assassinated in Iran. The Prime Minister of Qatar said, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinations the negotiator on the other side, which I think really just nails the entire dynamic here of you're claiming that you're trying to seek some sort of ceasefire. You know, Netanyahu isn't saying that, but at least some within the Zionist entity are stating that a ceasefire is something that should be worked towards, and then they just go ahead and assassinate the lead negotiator of that. So I guess a few questions here.

Can you talk a little bit about who Henea was, his role within Hamas prior to October 7th, and then also his role in the negotiation process, and then how that kind of all comes together with the assassination and held the assassination affects potential developments in the near future. Absolutely. Personally, I think that for one to understand like who Ismail Hanaya was, you very simply have to delve into the history of Hamas as you kind of can't separate the two. So I'm going to tell you just a little bit about his life in relation to the founding of

the organization. Ismail Hanaya was born on January 29th, 1960. in the El Shati refugee camp of, at the time, Egyptian administered Gaza. His family is historically from Ascalon, which is actually one of the settlements in the Gaza envelope, which was attacked by the resistance on October 7th. According to an interview of Isban Hanayah talking about his early life, his father was the head of a Sufi order, interestingly enough. I know Adon studies religion, and I also have a degree in religion,

and I started religion in mysticism in school, so I found that really interesting. But yeah, he was raised. in a very religious household, often visited by clerics and sheikhs. And Henea ended up attending the Islamic University of Gaza, where he studied Arabic literature in 1983. And he joined a group known as the Islamic student block, which is often discussed as a proto-Hamas, and I'll get into a little bit more of how that kind of flesh together. So he graduated to 1987, which is the first year of the, which is the year that the first Intifada began, is what I was trying to say. And keep in mind, at this point, he is 25 years old. So first intifada happened. Also, nothing to consider

when the first intifada happened, it was a very spontaneous moment in Palestinian history. It was in response to the killing of Palestinian workers by Israelis due to a car accident. That's just like the sweet and short of it. It's not more complicated than that. That's kind of how this moment kicks off. At this point in 1987, there is no Hamas. However, there is the Muslim brother of it in Gaza. And they are. the parent organization that Hamas kind of built its way out of. So when the Intifada rang out, the elders in the Brotherhood specifically wanted to see where things were going to go. They didn't want to commit to taking any action or calling a jihad, for example, or really hitting the streets

in an intense way on the off chance that, you know, this petered out in a few days and all of a sudden Israel comes trying to arrest those who are involved in organizing resistance. So when the In the taffata rang out, the elders said that we should wait and see where it goes. However, folks like Ismail Hanayah and the Islamic Student Block, they were ready to go. They had, of course, suffered under years of oppression, and they were energized as youth, and they wanted to hit the streets. So to deal with this, the elder and founder of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, got the elders and youth to agree to a plan. They would create a separate underground organization on the off chance of the taffata backfires and Israeli authorities for trying to arrest those involved.

the Brotherhood could essentially refuse any involvement and say, oh, those folks that you're looking for are from a different organization, and this organization ended up becoming named Hamas, which is an acronym for Haraka al-Makoma, Islamaya, which means essentially Islamic resistance movement. And what I think is beautiful, too, about the term Hamas itself is that in Arabic, it means like zeal or passion. So it's just like a really beautiful way for the whole, like, kind of like naming of that to come together. Regardless, so Heneya and. and other students from the Islamic student block join Hamas in its brand new formation in 1988. And over the course of the next few years, he is detained three times.

First time he's detained, he gets let out pretty quickly after. Second time he's detained, he's in prison for six months. And the third time he's detained, he is arrested and put in prison for three years. And within a year of Hamas's founding, it rockets into the forefront of God's and resistance as a leading resistance movement. Um, so this is kind of, you know, where he cut his teeth. He is essentially like one of the founders of Hamas in the sense that he is one of the folks who was in student activism and institute leadership from very early age. And he was taking direct wisdom and direct guidance from the elders of the movement at this time, which were the Muslim Brotherhood. So fast forward to 1997. Um, no, I really apologize. That's not right. Um, after he was arrested for three years, after the sentence, he gets deported. to Lebanon, southern Lebanon, with three senior Hamas members. And he stayed there for a year before the 1993 Oslo Accord allowed him to go back to Gaza, where that he then became the dean of the Islamic University that he was student of.

Now we fast forward to 1997. Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas, gets released from prison. And when he gets back to Gaza, he appoints Hanaya, who right now is in a civilian role, right, as the dean of the Islamic University of Gaza, he appoints Hanaya to lead his office almost as like a personal secretary. carrier personal assistant. And, you know, Adnan, you probably know, you know, how, like, Sufi orders go and, like, the nature of having this, like, spiritual leader who you have, like, a contract with or, like, a close relationship with and the cultivation of that relationship. So Hanay's prominence in Hamas grows tremendously after this point in time as he, you know,

becomes very, very close to the spiritual founder and main person, essentially, of Hamas, the number one person, Ahmed Yassine. Eventually, through working with Ahmed Yassine in his office, he gets appointed to be the representative for Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which we can see as the beginning of his role as elite political figure in the movement and kind of like an elder going from that transition of being, you know, youth to elder in a sense. Fast forward to 2003, Hanaya and Yassine, who were often together, barely survive in Israeli assassination attempt in specifically Jaya Hussain's house. Six months. later, that's when Shihisin was gunned down by an Israeli helicopter, ever leaving

Fezsche prayer, and a successor is named, and this person, Rontisi is his name, was killed almost immediately, as we talked about earlier. And this leads to Hamas' practice nowadays of keeping the number one person of Hamas, their name is secret. So in 2004, after Runtisi is killed, there is a need for leadership that is not just, you know, this person is the leader, and he's the one that we're following and he kind of makes the decisions. They begin a more collective style of leadership to kind of disperse roles

and make it a little bit harder to just take out one person and so that Israel can't really throw a wrench into how things are run quite as easily. And that's when he takes on a bigger role. In 2006, Henea leads Hamas to a very surprising victory in the Palestinian legislative elections.

Following this, he gets appointed as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, which a lot of folks don't even really realize that Hamas first was supposed to be who was in charge. There were tensions with Thetha, of course, and this led to the dissolution of the Heneya-led PA, and of course the Civil War in 2006. And even though the government was dissolved, the Legislative Council, Palestinian Legislative Council, recognized Henea as the prime minister of the PA until 2014. Once civil war happens, Hamas gets pushed into Gaza, and he becomes de facto political

leader of Gaza until 2014, where he finishes out his term. And he is succeeded by Fedid, Michelle, who you were talking about earlier, who actually just got appointed again right now to lead Hamas politically after Henné is a martyrdom. So Michel takes over for a couple years, and then Hene returns to political leadership in 2017 as head of the political bureau of Hamas. He served in this position until he was martyred the other night. So that is kind of who Henea was, how he got involved in Hamas, his background as like an organizer, as an activist, and like kind of, yeah, just the flavor of the brand or style of Henea leading into getting involved in leadership. You also asked about where this is going. I also don't mind giving you a moment.

Yeah, go for it. Just one second before you get to that. Ironically, about 30 minutes before we started this recording, I had gotten a text message from my friend Ali Kadri, who of course has been a. a guest on the show a couple of times and we have plans on bringing Ali back on again. He had sent me a very, very small snippet about Hanea and the toll his family has played. And I think that now would be an appropriate time for that. I looked where this came from. I had seen Vijay Prashad had also posted this on Twitter.

And of course, Vijay has also been a guest on the show several times. But I don't know if Vijay was the one who originally wrote it or not. So just bear in mind the sinners that I had just gotten this. And I don't know who to give the accurate attribution to, but the two that I had seen, I had been sent it by Ali and I had seen it on a Twitter from Vijay. So could be either of them, could be somebody else.

I apologize for not having the full information. But Ali sent this extermination stories. Ismail Hanea, 1962 to 2024, was born in Al-Shati, Gaza. His family had to flee the Israel. Israeli extermination forces in 1948 from all much, today's Ashkelon. The military action that led to their expulsion was called Operation Yoav. One soldier in that project, Michael Galant, named his son, born in 1958, Yoav. The son of the IDF soldier, Yoav Galan, authorized the murder of the son of the refugees, Ismail Hanea.

This is the part of the ugly story of Palestine. The Henea family has paid a heavy price during the war. In October, 14 members of his family were killed by the Israelis, including Ismail Hanea's brother and nephew. A month later, in November, the Israelis killed his granddaughter, Rawa Hanea, in Gaza City, and then his grandson, Jamal Muhammad Hanea. In April this year, Israel killed three of his sons, Amir, Muhammad, and Hazam, as well as three grandchildren, Mona, Amal, Khalid, and Razan. In July, the Israelis killed his 80-year-old sister Zah and her family.

The total number of Henea family members killed. by Israel since October 2023, now numbers over 100. So as we're going to talk about the assassination of Ismail Hanea himself and going forward, the likely impacts of this, it's just worth remembering that he himself was not the only subject of assassination by the so-called state of Israel. Basically, they're trying to wipe out his entire family. And there is many stories coming out from Palestine with similar figures of a family's losing scores, if not hundreds of family members as a result of in some cases

indiscriminate bombing and in some cases like here, very discriminant bombing. So I just wanted to read that out to give a little bit more context with regard to the toll that the family has paid as well and the fact that this isn't just an isolated incident, but this is part of a wider extermination campaign being led by the Zionist entity. So I'm going to turn it back over to you, Abdullah. Yeah, the most recent assassination of his family that happened during Aide, funny enough, they were visiting family, I forget in what part of Gaza. And he was in Doha, Qatar, dealing with the negotiations. And they did get him on camera, like when they told him that, you know, the news of his family and his toddler or grandchildren being assassinated in this way.

and his response was the blood of my children is not more valuable than the blood of the people of Palestine and all of the martyrs in Gaza are my children and you know in this very poetic way after he was assassinated his son put out a statement as well and essentially just echo the sentiment where it's at the blood of my father is not any more important in the blood of the rest of the martyrs of Palestine and in a sense all of those elders who have you know been tortured who have lost their lives in this aggression and they are a family for me as well. But yeah, I think that context is essential, especially when you're considering, like, he was one of the lead negotiators.

So for him to be, like, lead negotiating, and then for you to kill his family is wild. It's a very insane way of going about a good faith process, quote unquote. Well, I mean, you know, of course it's also you kill the lead negotiator. What is that? I mean, we would have had to come to talk about what are some of the implications, but since you, you know, raised the way in which it undermines good faith negotiations to have killed a family of the lead negotiator, Israel's assassination of the lead negotiator, I mean, also says something pretty decisive about, you know, whether there are good faith negotiations at all. that obviously is not the, you know, not the case in, in this context. And I also just wanted to correct, I meant to say, attempted assassination of Khaled Mashal, you know, before these many

cases. But yeah, but please tell us a little bit more about what you see the directions going forward as you were about, about to before our interruptions and interventions. They're all good. Absolutely. Well, first off, I want to point out the Hanaya is known as one of the more pragmatic, one of the more moderate, specifically voices in Hamas leadership, which also kind of goes to show, like, why his assassination means the negotiations where, like, you know, he is in Jaisen war, for example, who has, is known as one of these more like hardline conservative folk who want a more intense and more aggressive war waged against Israel that has a lot less talking involved. So for them to assassinate, again,

like a lead negotiator who is the most moderate and the most pragmatic. of the folks who are involved in negotiation, it paints a picture. Now where this is going to go more generally. So I don't like to predict the future, especially when you consider how there hasn't been a single expectation during this operation for set for the resistance, that hasn't been blown out of the water. Whether it be I'm hitting Tel Aviv recently or April 14th in Iran striking Tel Aviv again

with drones or for example, like the usage of like commandos to actually enter 48 and attempt to take hostage just like every single aspect of what we thought was possible was dwarf the comparison to what's been done. There are three general lines of thinking right now that folks are discussing in journalistic circles that I respect since the assassination, starting with the most optimistic, I guess. Some folks are saying that this might lead to a ceasefire in an interesting way, which is that, you know, as you've talked about, there has. not been any strategic goals of the IDF that have been accomplished in Gaza. And those goals,

specifically, for example, were like taking, destroying missile, launching capabilities of the resistance, which has not been done. Specifically, the eradication of the 24 battalions of Hamas, which has not been done. And specifically, there have been reports recently coming out from Hamas saying that their membership has only increased, which makes sense. There's also, just to insert myself for a moment, there has been some polling that has been done, which, you know, the accuracy and veracity of the polling can be obviously questioned because of the difficulties of polling at a time such as now in Gaza, but from what I have seen all of the polling that has been done, not only in Gaza, but in all of the regions of Palestine, is that there's been a dramatic increase in support for Hamas. and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since October 7th. It's unlike anything we've ever seen. Yeah, a lot of people in the West have been making these assumptions that, you know,

looking at this, this fearful and genocidal retribution from the Zionist entity would dissuade people from having support for these more militant organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, seeing the result of the retribution. But actually, it's the complete opposite, which I think. a lot of people who have been following the Palestinian resistance for years, as I know all of us have, it's not as much of a surprise for us that seeing this actual armed resistance taking place and having some success, as you pointed out, more than anybody would have thought would be possible, actually drives a dramatic increase in support. And as I said, the polling,

you know, you can doubt the veracity of the polling, but the specific numbers, might be doubted, but the trend is almost certainly what we would have expected. So as you mentioned, you know, there is this up swell of support for Hamas and Palestinian Islam jihad in particular at this time. And on that, and on that, actually, I mean, I did hear one whole again with all the caveats about how accurate these are that when asked to choose who they would support as a leader, you know, of a Palestinian, you know, state or of the Palestinian authority. And so on. I mean, it was something like 70% for Hania over Abbas, you know, so it's showed and demonstrated that active resistance is actually, you know, going to make, you know, leadership and movements

popular because that's what's called for in this time, you know, and all those attempts, you know, to portray him and the rest of the Hamas leadership, living it up in Qatar, which was an attempt to kind of try and divide, you know, the political from the military and to undermine the capacity of the political leadership to be truly representative on some level of, you know, Palestinian experience, given what people were suffering in both the West Bank and Gaza has just been completely undermined by, you know, the statements that you just were telling us about Abdullah, about how, you know, this leadership doesn't see itself as separate from its people and doesn't privilege their status and position and the risks that need to be taken and the sacrifices that must be made for the Palestinian cause of liberation. So all of that kind of discussion I remember in the first few months, when there were actually negotiations, attempts to undermine those negotiations by portraying and presenting the political leadership is somehow, you know,

benefiting and living an easy life. I mean, you know, this is all collapsed and Palestinian people recognize and they see it materially that, you know, this leadership is willing to pay the price for their, you know, position and for their stance. But we've derailed you from your two other lines of your direction because you're always bringing up such interesting and important context and points. But let's get back to that or anything you want to say on what we've been discussing. But of course, we do want to hear what are those two other directions that you see coming out of this. Brofass, just on what you said about them being like a part of, you know, the Ghazan people and all. I think that's something that's very exciting

about this specific moment of history for us is that we are seeing a vanguard of specifically refugees leading the Palestinian resistance. And It's actually a few points. One point is this, is that polling for support when it comes to the parties or the factions or armed resistance or peace in Palestine is in general very much, it swings a lot depending on how optimistic the peace process is in whatever state. So whenever the peace process, for example, 2008 Obama gets elected, there is a lot of hope and optimism for the peace process. The support for armed resistance would drop down into like the teens. That doesn't mean that folks in Palestine and that Arabs more generally or Muslims were generally are not pro armed resistance. But during those periods of time where there seems to be a push

towards a peaceful route, there then becomes this kind of feeling of like, well, all right, this is the best thing we have. I no longer in this moment in time support armed resistance because it seems like we're going to get a state and this is better than nothing. And then as soon as optimism goes away, for example, 2021, Sheikh Jadrara happens and there is no real peace process happening at any real capacity, you'll see polls swing 40, 50 points towards armed resistance being the favorable method of dealing with the Israeli occupation. So that's one thing I would like to point out regarding polling, because I have seen some folks on the left kind of misunderstand polling that comes out of Palestine and like, say, for example, that Hamas supports this two-state solution due to

like 2017 thing that they put out. However, it's just a slight misunderstanding of the context. Well, that is the point is that it is part of a political process. It's a political conflict. And, you know, it's not some adivistic, you know, being wedded to, you know, violence. This is the language of the occupier, the colonizers is the idea that, well, the native, the indigenous, they, you know, there's no rational, you know, mode of engaging with them. They are simply committed to barbaric violence. And obviously that is so far from the truth, as you just pointed out, it swings because. people are making political calculations about the possibility of achieving their national aspirations for liberation. So resistance, when it's appropriate, gains support. And in the middle of a genocidal assault, resistance is going to be valorized and supported. When there is actual negotiations taking place, people are going to support some kind of whoever seems capable of leading, you know, in negotiations to achieve a political solution. So I think that's a very important point that you mentioned. And you couldn't have said it better non-genuinely. Yeah. So getting

back to just like the three general directions that I have been seeing this going. As I was saying, first one, a ceasefire. That's the most optimistic. Trin of thought is that, you know, this might be a way for Israel and Yahoo to safe face before committing to a ceasefire. They haven't done any of their strategic goals like we were talking about before. And the contradictions of Israeli society that we also discussed earlier, you know, like economy is in the shit. the drafting of Orthodox Jews, et cetera, else, that puts them in a situation where Netanyahu's cabinet is facing instability

and the possibility of dissolution. And if that happens, that Aniahu then has to face corruption charges, which will put him in prison. And as a prime minister of Israel, specifically, even if he were, for example, to go through the whole process and get convicted as Prime Minister of Israel

of corruption charges, he could then appeal as Prime Minister of Israel. That's like a special privilege that he has. And that would then delay the process another three to five years. So as long as he's prime minister, he knows that he can get out of any convictions. So he, for himself personally, outside of even his political career, he needs to stay in power. So that is the more optimistic kind of route. People are talking that there might be a ceasefire for those reasons. Then what I think is more realistic is an Iranian measured strike.

I also want to say, too, that like with the attacking of Iraq, of Qatheb, Hezbollah and Iraq, Hezbollah in the Jaya neighborhood of southern Beirut and the violation of Iranian sovereignty by assassinating Hanayah, whatever response that's going to happen is going to be even more co-coordinated than April 14th was. Yeah. So when it comes to the Iranian measure strike, also too, a common thing that they do is by they paralyze the Zionist entity and its economy by essentially giving these threats of we have something planned, it's going to happen soon, and you guys are going to regret it. And for example, we saw April 14th when that happened in response to Israel striking

the Iranian consulate in Syria, and they let them wait for like 10 days before they did anything. And the whole time that was happening, there was movement, for example, of ground troops away from Gaza towards the northern border out of fear of Hezbollah entering. There was, you know, the Iron Dome was at a time. highest sensitivity ratings, which leads to more and more misfires and more wasted, specifically iron dome receptors for like $50,000 a pop. Yeah. So the psychological warfare aspect of this cannot be understated. So if, for example, it's been, it's today is August 1st. It's been

literally a day since Henea has been assassinated. We haven't seen a response yet, but that doesn't mean that this is not part essentially of the response already. Also, the IRGC did put out a statement this morning discussing the usage of special forces. Um, we haven't. We, which shows us like that retaliation is a very open and good question right now for the resistance axis and it could take on a missile strike or it could take on a drone strike or it could take on a like ground operation of some sort. Of course, this is all speculation, but this is the most likely reality what's going to happen is that Iran and the resistance axis doesn't want a full out war and they're going to do some kind of measure response the same way they did on April 14th

where they can respond and then kind of put the issue to bed and say, you know, you've been deterred and we no longer are going to engage in this open way. Yes. And then lastly, of course, there is the pessimistic situation, which I don't think we're at this point yet, at least I would like to think not, but, you know, of a more open and regional war. The West Asian region in general is vital for global trade.

War with Iran would cause severe disruptions, and it would be super volatile and unpredictable. It could last a very long time. And also, too, the West is already preoccupied with a proxy war on Ukraine. The U.S. was looking already to disengage from Ukraine and to focus their efforts on containing China. However, there is no doubt that if Israel is threatened seriously, that the U.S. will do whatever it needs to defend it. So if a regional war starts, it will pull Western powers into the region with boots on the ground and with warships and et cetera else. Yeah, also to the axis of resistance as of now is just like it represents regional unity in a way that has not been done.

seen since like pan-Arabism, which was like a very big golden age for, for like recent Arab nationalism or Muslim sentiments. And just in general, since the Iranian Revolution has happened in 1979, there has never been a moment where Iran has to look to start a war. They have always looked to stabilize their environment in order to cultivate the access of resistance. And they do this by specifically establishing deterrence. But the question, of course, is how far can you take deterrence up the ladder of escalation until you are simply forced to just openly fight back? So that is specifically like the three the three ways that I could see this going in. I'll hop in here.

And before I get to the next point, I just want to appreciate Adnan. Every time Adnan becomes France Fanon on the show, I am very appreciative. And in his last commentary, he was very, very much directly drawing from Fanon. So that was, as always, Adnan, highly appreciated. But to turn back to the actual conversation at hand,

we've been mentioning Iran recently and I just want to underscore what actually happened here so we've been talking about Iran not only because they're a member of the accesses resistance and kind of the biggest and strongest member of the access of resistance but also the fact that this assassination took place in Iran so Hania was of course in Iran in order to I don't want to say celebrate

but in order to be present for the inauguration of the new president of Iran and that is where the assassination took place. Hania is typically based in Qatar, in Doha, and had only been in Iran for about a day, if I remember correctly, the assassination took place at about two in the morning. And so the fact that this assassination took place in Iran also has some role in terms of how Iran is going to be,

or how Iran is going to feel it needs to respond. So as we mentioned, We're recording this very early on August 1st, and so there has not been a response as of yet, but the response is likely to be coming, and it seems, at least the rumblings are, that the members of the Axis of Resistance are coming together in order to discuss a kind of joint response with one another. And I am sure that in addition to, of course, the rest of the leadership of Hamas wanting to take a very firm response as a result of the assassination of their kind of political leader,

Iran is also going to feel the need to respond in a very firm way as a result of this assassination taking place on their territory. It presents a very real problem, though, in that this is basically the first thing that the new president is going to have to deal with. You know, the inauguration is taking place at the same time that they're going to have to respond to this assassination that took place on their land. So, Abdullah, I want to turn to you and see if you have, any thoughts as to the impact of the fact that this assassination took place in Iran and how

that perhaps will affect the response that Ben takes place with regard to how Iran is going to feel the need to respond in a particularly strong way. I know that you just laid out some various ways that response could take place. I'm not asking you to reiterate that answer once again, but just the fact that it took place in Iran, I think, does throw some interesting nuance into the way that we can expect a response to take place. You know, I hadn't even thought about the fact that you're right that this is going to be I really don't know how to say his last name. I don't want to butcher it.

But the new president of Iran is going to be the first thing he deals with. I haven't thought about that in that way. And part of also to why Haneo was there was because, you know, the new president of Iran, he is the reformist candidate. he's essentially the left-wing faction of Iranian politics, and that faction specifically is more interested in working out, for example, a nuclear deal with the West, more... Sorry, just one interjection. When you say left-wing, you're talking about acceptable Iranian politics.

He is certainly not left-wing by, you know, a fuller picture of, like, political dynamics, but within the context of what is permissible to be elected within Iran, he would be the more liberal side of things. Yes. Yes, absolutely. That's what I meant. Thank you for making it clear. Of course. Just for, you know, context for listeners, you know, because they may not be aware of how the elections take place of the president, but they have to be vetted by the, um, by the, yeah, the Supreme leader and also the, um, it's not the guardian council. What council is it that also has to sign off on the fed federation council? It's one of the councils in Iran. Is it the guardian council? Uh, but they also have to sign off on it. And so, you know,

candidates that are outside of the acceptable bounds of Iranian politics under the Islamic Republic are just not allowed to run whatsoever. So when you say the left wing, it's the left wing of that narrow, you know, absolutely. Yeah, the left wing of mainstream Iranian politics. That is what that is what the current presence is coming out of. And again, that left wing of current Iranian politics, they're more amicable with the West, more amicable to negotiations and specifically non-military-based methods of interacting with the West lift sanctions, for example. So for them to specifically assassinate someone in the first days, essentially, of his presidency, kind of forego's possibility now of having a relationship with the new president

that might have been a little bit more amicable or friendly. I wouldn't say friendly. There's not going to be a friendly relationship, but a more workable relationship, which again goes to just a point, Like, they are really shutting down any possible direction for talking. I also, you know, on the France, if not on front, I do want to point out that, like, part of the strategy of the resistance access is understanding that the colonizer lives and exploits and exists off of the colonized. The reason why Israelis are allowed to live a nice life with their European lawns and their European trees. is because they are able to specifically exploit Gaza, for example, for its fresh water and take that water and then put it into the settlements. They want a first-world existence on the backs of that third-world population

that they are exploiting and using as labor. And, you know, yeah, for the colonizer to exist, they very simply, the dialectic between the colonized and the colonizer is that of exploitation. And, you know, for the colonizer to exist or has to be colonized, The relationship is one of interdependence, as well as antagonism. And by proxy, the goal of the resistance is to make life in Palestine unlivable for the settler population. They have no interest in living in a war zone long term. By now, the goal was to have an Israel that was stable and economically integrated into the Middle East and peaceful and not be dealing with wars and having to commit genocides to maintain stability and to maintain control of the area.

So this is also part of why a full-on regional war isn't really wanted by the resistance axis. The goal isn't a full frontal conventional war that leads to the dissolution of the Israeli state. The goal is something similar to example, what happened in Algeria, where there was a protracted urban guerrilla warfare campaign against the French settler population that led to them after 132 years of occupation, deciding that it wasn't worth it anymore and getting up and leaving, you know? Yeah, so I just also want that to be in the minds of folks who are, you know, looking at Iran to respond. Iran is not going to respond in a way that is going to destroy the possibility of this long-term goal and long-term understanding that very simply like colonial settlers. Colonial settlers societies are not stable projects. They are ones of specifically deep rationality and deep contradictions and a very volatile natures. And how are you going to have a country or a nation that is specifically built on the violence and the eradication of the other? of the indigenous population that you also specifically rely on for labor that you specifically rely on for all these different things within your society, right? For example, too, like the October 7th operation happened partly due to the fact that there was intelligence being given to Hamas and to

other resistance factions through Gaza workers who would go to the kapitzes that are on the border on the Gaza envelope and work there as essentially low-wage labor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just on this kind of question of Iran, I mean, I think, you know, it does raise some big questions about security in Iran that will, I think, compel, as you're pointing out, some kind of response. And, you know, with the assassination of the previous president, Ibrahim Raisi, and then also, you know, in Tehran had. this assassination. I mean, I think there are firstly a lot of questions about what exactly happened. I don't know if you've been following and reading some of the, you know, there has been like a shrouding of mystery a little bit surrounding exactly how it went down, which is interesting and different, I feel like. That's right. I mean, usually you get some sense, well, you know,

of like, you know, there was either a missile firing or in this case the helicopter crash and there's a question still about, well, how was it disabled and how was it brought down and so on. Again, here, this is a little bit shrouded in mystery exactly what happened. But there clearly, you know, is going to have to be some kind of accounting in, you know, Iranian circles thinking about how to maintain, you know, security. While, you know, the perspective that we've been talking about in Palestinian resistance, and also you would say the same for Hezbollah has not been to aggrandize leadership, you know, above. the cadres in terms of the movement, the resistance, in the sense that, like, the loss of a leader is not something that's going to be, you know, fatal to the movement. It's fatal to the leader, but not to the, to the movement. You know, there is some concern about protecting, you know, key figures who are, who are leading the resistance. So that's something that's going to have to be, I think, dealt with. And how will they respond?

I think is going to be conditioned partly also by trying to address these kinds of questions. But what we've seen is that resistance movements in the Middle East, whether, you know, from whatever faction or component of the axis of resistance has typically not ever adopted the same kind of tactic of assassination of political, you know, or military leaders that Israel and the Zionist movement have adopted. So it'll be interesting to see how do they respond, you know, in this, in this, context. Yeah, I think specifically with Iran, too, just like being a state actor, like, so example, historically the PFLP, which is, you know, an on-state actor, has had assassinations be part of their political program, specifically in 2001 after the assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa,

who was the founder of the military wing of the PFLP. They responded by assassinating the Israeli Minister of Tourism. He specifically was just very intense on he supported population transfers, destruction of PA, taking over the right to vote of Palestinian citizens of the 48 that refused to serve in the IDF. So like an eye for an eye in a sense is not an unprecedented tactic for the resistance, but specifically just with Iran being a state and having to protect borders and having these more nuanced relationships when it comes to diplomacy, it is a little bit harder for

to just do this like tit for tat like you assassinate someone we assassinate someone back um i also want to say when when had custom solomani was uh assassinated by trump in 2016 era um they vowed revenge and it didn't net an immediate response um i think the most immediate response that that could be a reasonable a reasonable magnitude would be october 7th uh in a sense that the revenge that was taken uh for custom so many was a lot more of a long-term planning of you know an operation that completely shook design to sensitivity to its core um and that's also part of why i really want to stress for folks who are listening don't look at the next few weeks as the end-all be-all of what's going to happen if if nothing for quote-unquote nothing happens that is that seems to be of the same magnitude of

what Israel has done right now to the resistance axis, be rest assured that in a year, in two years, and five years, there will be a response that will serve the purpose and will get us closer to a liberated Palestine. It's worth mentioning just before I bring in our other guests that, you know, the long game can be played. It's not like the next two weeks is the end of history. As long as a Zionist entity is in existence, there is an opportunity for response and an opportunity for continued resistance against the existence of the Zionist entity. So, you know, to not totalize the next couple of weeks or the next month in terms of what can be done, as long as there is an existence of a Zionist entity, there is an opportunity for response.

And so just, you know, keep in mind that there is a long game that can be played. And I do see a lot of people very critical of some members of the access of resistance, particularly Iran, for not responding with the full capability that they have. have at one moment. So, you know, there is a long game that can be played. I'm going to bring in our other guests now. We are joined by our friend, Comrade Professor Mateo Capasso, who of course is editor of Middle East Partique, author of Everyday Politics of Libyan Arab Gemahiriyah, and also a former guest of guerrilla history. We have plans on bringing you again back in the very near future, Mateo, but we wanted to bring you in for today. It's nice to have you back on the show.

Hi, comrades. I, thanks for having me. Absolutely. I would like to turn to you. So we've been talking about the assassination of Israel Hania, and we just turned the topic towards potential response of the axis of resistance, which is actually one of the main reasons why I wanted to have you here. In my humble opinion, you're one of the leading analysts of the axis of resistance that we have out there. I know that you're a very humble person and wouldn't claim that yourself, but I will. And so I'd like to bring you in on this discussion of the access of resistance and potential. responses that we may see in the near future, in the longer future, and how the last question that I asked before you came in, how the fact that this assassination of Hanyat place in Iran may affect potential response? Yeah. It's, I mean, we're definitely leaving some historic moments since October 7th. The fact that, you know, one of the people that is, you know, is, you know, is as a burden, as, how do you say, scaring the heaviest weight of history for such a long decade in that region. You know, imagine to be, that faith, basically, has put on the Palestinians, the burden of imperialism directly on their lives.

And on October 7th, finally, they show this bravery and determined, not finally, I mean, a renewed sense of, of determination to act against the occupation, against the oppression. We're definitely living in historic moments. Now, what happened in the past few days, I think on the one end is a reminder of the scale of this struggle, in the sense that they are facing, and we are facing, in solidarity with them in different ways in this struggle, the weight of imperialism. They have the capabilities to strike. they have the technology

they know when and how to strike and we need to be we need to be ready also to witness those moments because they know what they're doing they have been in power for such a long time

they have a cumulative weight of history being there and controlling and clubbering people so these are major assassinations that have been taking place at the same time history is changing as we know as historical materialists and this means

that the weight of this assassination is not the same one of the ones that would take place in the 1980s or in the 1970s where even the movements I think Adnan and both of Bal were talking about this right when I came in

about the fact that there is these movements now are much more organic they don't focus they don't personify the leadership they don't personify history we're not looking at Tarafat anymore we're looking at you know

at a movement that is organically connected not just to Palestine, but to the region. And this is something that is major. Now, the question about the response, to go into the response, I don't know if you guys, Congress, have already talked about this, and sorry if I am going to repeat in that case, but I think we have to go back to the two strategies that developed from the very start after October 7th, which is the Israeli science strategy. to restore deterrents immediately.

I am going to kill. As much as I need to kill, I will genocide them, I will clobber them. I don't care what I need to do, but I need to restore these deterrence right away. Because that's the core, the nature of October 7th, is to flip the picture. The deterrence, Israel is not strong as it used to be. We can attack them. The most technological, the most advanced army has been literally flipped. and all its values have been exposed now with much more bluntly for a larger part of the world.

Obviously, there was already a part of the world that exactly knew what this entity incarnates. So what we're seeing on the one hand is this idea that we've always been acting with impunity. We are going to restore our deterrence. We're going to be as violence as we need to be. And then you have the other strategy, which is so because, you can't maintain an ideological weight of history, which is, you know, based on racial racial supremacy, genocidal values, and so on and so forth, which is what Israel incarnates. In order to maintain that, you need a maximum violence military strategy.

You need to kill. You don't care about the other. Because otherwise, if you have a different strategy, you are tricking them as humans. You can do that. And then you have the axis of resistance strategy, which is a military strategy based on a long-term horizon. It's very different. You're not going to act to restore a deterrence on the moment, you know, on the short term, on the short horizon. You need to act with patience. And this is not just a metaphor here, you know, like the idea of, oh, you know, like patience

means accepting everything that the entity is going to do. No, no, no, no. It means just that you want to create a regional environment where the Zionist entity becomes an unsustainable ally to the reactionary regimes in the region and to its patron, the imperialist patron outside. So on the basis of this, the response that the access is going to have

will continue to fall into this community. history of operations that have been doing. As Abdullah was saying, we can't expect now they are going to bomb Tel Aviv. They're going to wipe out Tel Aviv. That's not, that's never, that was never the purpose. It is going to be, it is going to be calculated, it is going to be strategic, but it's also going to be strong. The question is though, how much Israel is going to force and the imperialist them to potentially change that strategy because we know that right now

nobody is putting a red line twist. Nobody. We're living a genocide. I know I just jumped in and I'm really angry also. But we're living a fucking genocide. You know, I saw the picture of, and I'm sorry I'm getting...

It's my little gule yesterday. His head was chopped off. This is fucking crazy. You know, this is not normal. We are leaving a consistent genocide. They show the picture. I saw Al Jazeera Arabic yesterday. And the different ways, the different times it was connected and talking to the camera and the amount of dead people behind it.

It's 10 months now of this, 10 months of covered bodies with cloths, with blankets and so on and so forth. Israel is being allowed to do this. will the axis change their strategy now? I don't think so. I don't think they will. But this continuing escalation might lead also to a change of strategy. That doesn't mean that the strategy will always remain the same. Sorry, guys, I went too long.

No, absolutely. And just staying on the topic of strategy and at risk of repeating myself, although it was from an episode that came out a few weeks ago, an episode that we did with Lal Halili about Red Sea shipping in the Gaza genocide, one of the things that I talked about in there is these different strategies of warfare. There's imperial warfare, and there's various strategies within imperial warfare, but then there's also anti-colonial resistance, and the strategies of these two are not the same. If you look at strategies of imperial entities, colonial entities, there's essentially

in the modern form three modes of warfare. There's this Westphalian war is policy. There's counterinsurgency warfare and then there's genocidal warfare. But as I discussed in that episode, there's a dialectical relationship between counterinsurgency and genocide. If you are operating a counterinsurgency operation against the colonized people, there is going to be elements of genocide within that strategy. And similarly, if you shift the dial towards genocide, you are just ramping up some of the methods of counterinsurgency. There is a relationship between the two and where you fall within the scale, it's a sliding scale with a dial that you turn one way or another, but these two things are related.

Counterinsurgency and genocide are absolutely related when you are an imperial entity imposing force on a colonized people. On the other hand, if you are a colonized people like the Palestinian community is, your methods of resistance are not going to be those same imperial strategies. You don't have the opportunity of using this war as a form of politics. You are a colonized person resisting for your freedom. You don't have the opportunity of counterinsurgency. They are the ones imposing that upon you. You don't have the opportunity to commit genocide.

You are the colonized people in your homeland. And in fact, the ways of resisting, I just sorry, Mateo, one second. Go ahead. No, but the way of resisting is different. There are different methods of resistance. As you mentioned, the intention was never to go in and flatten Tel Aviv. That is not an anti-colonial resistance strategy. That would not yield this type sorts of results that the axis of resistance and the

Palestinian people more specifically would aim for. So it's very important that we separate these strategies of warfare into imperial colonial warfare, which is being perpetuated by the Zionist entity as well as their Western backers, and then anti-colonial resistance. These are not equivalent. There is no equivalence. And they should not be put side by side and say, well, you know, look at the assassinations that are taking place or look at the incursion that's taking place. They're not the same thing.

The fundamental difference is that one is an anti-colonial resistance and the other is a form of imperialist colonial subjugation of people using force and brutality as a method of enforcing that. Mateo, feel free to hop in again. And we'll also bring Abdullah in to give his thoughts on this as well. I'll be very quick on this. It's just that you, you know, as the liberal say, you triggered me in the sense that don't read, don't laugh at now, in the burden, you know, of having to fight, but through violence also to have to create a new system of values. and, you know, Franz Fanon, basically.

This is what I'm talking about here at the end of the day. You know, the burden, but in the sense, the generative power of violence. Because, I mean, we can't be, you know, of the idea. I remember this beautiful book by Los Urdo, which I don't remember, of Domenico Losurdo, which I don't remember if it's been translated in case, Henry, there you go, a project for you, about violence, at the use of violence. throughout history, this idea that there is no peace, there is no non-violent struggle, there is a generative use of violence. We need to be able to explain why violence takes place,

how certain type of violence are justified, and others not. In this case, when we see in the anti-colonial struggle, is not just the need to fight militarily the occupier, but also to create a whole set, a whole wealth of ideas that eventually will come to create the new order. And this is where we go back to, you know, when we saw the release of

the prisoners in Gaza that they were treated, you know, like basically people coming out with dogs, smiling, saying hi to them and goodbye, or the same thing we're seeing with Ansar Allah in Yemen, you know, taking, controlling the boats and treating everybody, the hostages

like in a very, in a very, very gentle manner, even the videos, I don't know if you guys saw the video where one of the, of one member of the crew from the very first boat that was sized by Ansar Allah was shown, was reacting to pictures and videos from what was happening in Gaza. You are, you know, you need to recover your humanity, well at the same time, you need to restore humanity over the colonizers. This is a task that nobody should find itself in that situation

because it means that their life really drips in blood. And so their power drips in blood, the one of the Zionist entity and the imperialist. Sorry, guys. I want to say, just beautifully said, Miteo, your ability to, like, elucidate these concepts are, it's just unbelievably fluid and concise. I really appreciate. appreciate the way you go about. I'm talking about this. I want to hit on two points real quick. You're talking about generative violence. I think you're spot on, you know, Israel's as a

nation building project is not complete. And to build a nation, you need to specifically use violence as a method to like make a monopoly on power. And, you know, Israel in its very existence, like it uses violence to justify its existence, which then specifically begets more violence, which then begets them responding to even more violent way and so forth and so on. Secondly, I want to echo the words of Becer de la Aroche for more time in his rules of guerrilla warfare and how to like weather a Gaza incursion. And if folks are interested in this, they can listen to the Resistance Report, which is our podcast, essentially, episode four on Bezle al-Aaraj.

His very first rule of, you know, whether or Gaza incursion is Palestinian resistance consists of guerrilla formations whose strategies follow the logic of guerrilla warfare. This kind of war is never based on the logic of conventional wars, as Henry was saying. where you defend fixed points and borders. On the contrary, you draw the enemy in ambushes. You do not stick to a fixed position to defend it. Instead, you perform maneuvers, movements, withdrawals, and attacks from the flanks in the rear.

You allow your enemy to move as they wish. They fall into your trap and you strike them. You determine the time and the location of the battle, so never measure it against conventional wars. And, you know, Israel and its propaganda is attempting to appeal to folks and have them understand this as a conventional war, where they say, you know, oh, we're going to go into North Gaza and we're going to clear it out.

And then we're going to go into Central Gaza and then we're going to clear it out. And, you know, just by one step at a time, once we get to the bottom of Gaza, that's it. Hamas is going to be eradicated and then we can just wipe our hands clean and start over with a non-political body that's going to rule Gaza. But for example, like December 5th, 2023, IDF claimed, for example, full operational control of North Gaza, saying that it will not end the ground assault until the strip is fully demilitarized. And then January 1st. So a month later, the IDF says that it has full operational control of South Gaza. And then right after that, Hamas specifically shoots a volley of rockets from North Gaza into Israel again, right?

So this is a really good example of this false understanding of the warfare that is happening and how it's supposed to work from the Israeli side. Yeah, there's excellent remarks and comments from both of you in thinking through this. It touched off a couple of thoughts from my perspective. One, we had been talking a little bit about this discourse about escalation and widening. You know, will this mean that the response of the axis of resistance have to change some of its strategic approach and calculation to really respond to the particular situation as it's developed. This is going to be, I think, a very key and important question. One other component of thinking about situating it geopolitically that I was wondering about is, you know, how much of this is related. Well, and also the context, of course,

again, in framing what we've been saying and talking about, is that these assassinations of political leadership are, you know, in some ways, attempts to distract from or appeal to audiences when there have been very few military and political gains of the stated objectives and the actual military situation on the ground. And as you were just saying, Abdullah, you know, this kind of conventional war approach that Israel has been trying to use to frame its control over Gaza has, of course, been completely unsuitable for these conditions. And this leads to needing to have some kind of high profile assassinations to be able to point to symbolic gains and victories. But of course, it doesn't change anything that's going to happen on the ground in

military terms. It's taking out political leadership that undermines the possibility for negotiations, for ceasefire, for any of these kinds of progress on the political level, which is why I think it's interesting and important perhaps to situate and put the framing and the timing of this into perspective. Why now, there have been other opportunities perhaps to target and perhaps other attempts had been made and we don't know about their earlier failures, but it does seem significant that it was in Tehran and it was. was soon after the Beijing Declaration. And it seems in some ways this is absolutely crucial for torpedoing the preparations that were being made in some sense of Palestinian unity among the 14 factions for the post-abbas period,

which is coming very soon, no matter what this man thinks about trying to hold on to power, like he's going. thinks he's going to live forever or is worried about trying to maintain his network and his patrons and people who, you know, have patronage through him, his clients and so on to maintain their predominant position politically in the corrupt Palestinian authority that he's been controlling and dominating. This is totally under risk by the declaration of Beijing. And there's two, you know, elements of this. One is, of course, that it's creating potential unity and political unity among these Palestinian factions, of which Hamas, of course, was a major leadership component. So by assassinating Ismail Hania, is their attempt to somehow short-circuit this

or undermine this in the calculation of, you know, Israeli authorities to try and fragment and make sure that there isn't a basis for political unity and political, you know, negotiations. If there's a Palestinian unity, then there's impossible for them to say, No, we can only deal with this person or that person that changes the political dynamic and they have to deal with whoever are the representatives of a unified Palestinian national movement for its liberation. And the second thing that seems of value in thinking about this is also trying to roll back Beijing's increasing significance, China's increasing significance and importance in the region,

in brokering peace negotiations like we saw recently. between, you know, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Like we are seeing even, of course, in their interventions from the very beginning, they had, you know, a suggestion of a, I think it was 10 or 12 point plan for, you know, or principles for Ukraine, Russia, resolution. And, you know, what we're seeing is that Beijing has an interest and a stake in peace and security in the world. And this is of course detrimental to the war plans of the imperial, you know, agenda in the region and globally. So I'm wondering if we could, you know, have both of your thoughts about the geostrategic context and dimensions, both internal to the Palestinians through this kind of unity of the factions and what

this does to it. And is it, you know, an attempt and a response to that, which was, you know, something that was brokered or at least announced, you know, July 23rd, very, very recently. And also how the wider geopolitical context is going to be shaped by, for example, Chinese increasing interest. Because when we were talking about the escalation kind of ladder and situation, it's kind of starting to get beyond the control of like the U.S., for example. and it may be somebody like China that is attempting, they might get more involved as a result of this because they need to, you know, take leadership because it's clear that the Israeli, you know, United States is incapable or unwilling to reign in, you know, Israel. It's not imposing any red lines, just as Matteo you were saying, slaughter daily happening in the most brutal and disgusting way for the entire world to see and nothing being done about it. Maybe China is going to see this as an attempt to undermine their efforts and we'll have to redouble its efforts and engagement and involvement in brokering some kind of peace in the region. So I'm just wondering your thoughts about these components in thinking about the assassinations, motivations, and consequences. Okay. Thanks, so. I mean, Adnan, you put a lot of, you gave us a lot of, how do you say, hints and ideas and, and they're all very important. I'm not sure if you talked about this, but I would like to start, I mean, something that I've been thinking about, which is the timing of Netanyan's visit to the US, okay? And I think I'd like to situate this there. Why? Because I think I think there,

Israeli leadership, and I'm not trying to personify now the entire entity to Netanyahu or anything like that, but there is a leadership. There is a government, obviously. And I think what the Israeli government is realizing right now is that there is, it's reading the changing political environment in the U.S. And so the moment Netanyahu goes to the to the U.S. Congress, he knows that he is going to find a weak Democratic Party. and a strong Trump, which is also what is reflecting. I think this is, and I'm willing, you know, to hear your, everyone starts here. So when he goes into the, and gives his speech, the three main points are, you know,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, this is a war against the forces of darkness, and we are the, you know, you know, this is a war that Israel is fighting. You know, we are fighting for each other, basically, here. And the last point is centering Iran in the axis of terror and so on and so forth. If we go back to 2014 when Ukraine started, there was already a division among the U.S. political environment, I think. There was the Democrats who thought who wanted to do Ukraine because they thought Russia was the main enemy. And then you had the Republicans who were much more keen to go and invade Iran, to have another war in the war in the war. the Middle East. If we, I think what Netanyahu has been doing and is, and he's done that very well, which in a way questions the idea he's gone there. There's this idea that, you know,

it's gone to the US. He has been green lighted there. I think the US is in a stage where you cannot green light things anymore. The US is in a state of decline. The US provides the material support, but at the same time, like what it's happening in Ukraine, you have, this decline, is creating a space of autonomy for the most reactionary allies in these different regions. They are vital, these allies for the US, but they do not necessarily follow constantly the directive coming from Washington. Think about sometimes what the Ukraine has done, or the very recent phone call between a Russian general and the US one where he was saying, you know, we've come to discover that the Ukrainians were ripped.

These were the Ukrainian plans. If these are going to happen, there's going to be a major escalation. What I mean is that the Israelis are also exploiting this moment of decline because they embody this moment of decline themselves. And so they're going to try to push harder in this scale, into this equilibrium. Between a bland support for human rights, Kamala Harris, and Total War, Netanyahu is pushing for total war. because he knows what he needs to do

so I think this is I think it's a go ahead and sorry but just sorry Mateo I didn't mean to interrupt but just to add in something that we haven't really talked about yet I was hoping to bring it up now that you're talking about the fact that Israel is

kind of pushing for this almost total war there was a second assassination that we haven't talked about yet we haven't even mentioned that there was a bombing that took place just outside of Beirut and in the suburbs of Beirut to take out one of Hezbollah's

commanders, Fad Shokker. And this is something that goes directly against what the United States has been saying that they were trying to push for it. They have been claiming, the United States has been claiming that there needs to be a complete de-escalation between the so-called state of Israel and Hezbollah, because the tensions in southern Lebanon have only been increasing in recent weeks and, frankly, months. And the United States is claiming that they're trying to push for a de-escalation in southern Lebanon. What do we have?

The first thing that happens after Netanyahu's visit to the United States, Israel assassinates one of the top military leaders of Hezbollah, just outside of Beirut, taking down buildings, killing civilians we're talking about the capital of Lebanon and this is a they have their so-called justifications

for doing so but this is directly against what the United States has been claiming for whereas the United States has not been pushing for I should say

a major de-escalation between Israel and Hamas the United States is basically saying okay Israel you do what you need to do and we'll support you and we'll help defend you and et cetera, et cetera, but in the case of Hezbollah, the United States has been claiming

to be pushing for a complete de-escalation of the situation and calming of it. How does assassinating in a suburb of the capital of the country, one of the commanders of Hezbollah, an entity that is massively popular, particularly in southern Lebanon. It's worth mentioning, and I know that we have an episode on Lebanon with Rania Halleck and Ali Qadri where we talk about the development of Hezbollah and their success in southern Lebanon. But the fact that that assassination also took place within 24 hours of the assassination of Hania, and it was the first thing that happened after Netanyahu's visit to the White House, this also really says something and also is going to influence how the access of resistance responds.

So I know we haven't, we've gone somehow for almost an hour and a half without mentioning this assassination. I think it's time that we bring it up and the implications of this as well. So, Matteo, I know you were just finishing what you were saying. Feel free to also address this and then we can also turn it over to Abdullah to also address the assassination in Beirut. I mean, as we're speaking, I know in an hour and ten minutes, Sayyeda San Nasrallah is about to speak. So we were also going to hear directly from the words of say it, the implications of this assassination is better than I can definitely formulate myself. But in any case, what we're seeing is definitely, it's a, you know, going back to the response that we were talking about before, when Iran responded the first time, I think there was inside that it was, there was a level of coordination in the sense that they, the U.S.

was told we are going to do this. Not all the details, but there was a somewhat, you know, some kind of level of coordination. I think at this moment, this is not there. It's not present. And it was also a very different situation. It was a bombing of a foreign consulate in a foreign country and so on and so forth. In this case, there is Palestinian blood in the streets of Tehran. And this is a direct attack, you know, to Iran to show that they are weak.

They have a weak, you know, they're not, the leadership is weak in the axis, whatever. You know, it's clear what they're trying to do. The attack on Hezbollah, in a way, if you take away the fact that they bombed Beirut, in the laws and the equation of war, Beirut has been violated in the equation between Hezbollah and Israel. But when he comes to assassination, there's always been there. You know, there has always been, there has been Salah al-Hurie, there has been, you know, Abu Mustafa recently.

They have been doing this consistently, and there has been a tit for tat constantly on responding to each other. The problem is that Beirut this time has been violated. Geographically, they have pushed north, and they are not supposed to do this. And adding to, probably, if you were just mentioning this assassination, the context of this is also the bombing of Odeda, seven or eight leaders of Kataya Besbollah in Iran, and the constant bombing of Syria. So, I mean, this time, it's not going to be just Iran.

Iran obviously has a special place because it's not directly involved in the war. It is the one that has the biggest military capabilities. But this time, we're going to witness really a concerted, calculated response by the entire axis. I want to move it to Abdullah, but I'll go back to the China thing later, because I have some thoughts, I think, and I'd like to hear also you that at Nanmoor. On China, real quick, I wanted to say, if you look at their centennial celebration, they did a couple years ago, I think two years ago now, they did say very explicitly, you know, post, you know, Mao and with Deng Xiaoping, like, entering the fold, there has been a focus in China on, like, building internal markets and specifically, you know, focus on stability and just like maintaining China first in a sense. But during their centennial, they did discuss that they wanted to begin brokering and working. on foreign policy and being more of a political force on the international stage.

And as soon as they said that, very soon after Iran and Saudi Arabia struck a deal brokered by Beijing to end the hostilities between the two countries. And then, you know, since then we've seen very consistently that Beijing has been, whether it be the Ukraine war, for example, with, you know, the French president begging Xi Jinping to come and do ceasefire talks and actually lead negotiations that are fruitful, I do think we're going to see Beijing as well as Russia, as well as bricks and that whole, you know, not to get into multipolarity, which we can talk about for the next two hours as well. But I definitely think that is a direction that we're going to be going and more consistently.

And I wouldn't be shocked to see China use this opportunity, specifically the opportunity of the decline of the U.S. As this, you know, launching pad into being a force international politics in a new way. Yeah, that's all I had to say. I've been thinking about the China question a lot, even in relation of Palestine. And when I look back and through research and study, I see, and you guys obviously have done many podcasts on this, both UN and Adnan. And I see that China, at the moment China rises historically, the way I see it is that it creates a space of autonomy, which doesn't necessarily mean that China is going forcefully going to impose its own agenda. on the different countries, social political formations and so on and so forth. But the moment China arises within the unipolar order, it does create a space of autonomy

for countries that try to delink or to develop a political agenda that diverges that wants to delink from US imperialism. Now, the moment China brings all the factions, it's creating a space of autonomy for the Palestinians to basically say, you can come. together. We are offering you a space to create a United Front, which politically mean it's a major move, obviously. But when China does so at the same time, and we've seen this also in the way it's launching its Belt and Road projects in Africa, in Latin America, it's responsibleizing the actors on the other side. In other words, China is not going to decide

and dictate the points of what the United Front is going to look like. It's going to give you an opportunity, You know, it's going to create a space. It's going to open a door for you, but then the Palestinian factions will have to come together and decide whether or not they are capable of maintaining that kind of unity and united front. It's obvious that China has a long history in the creation of the United Front in the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle. So there is a community, you know, history between the China's march out of humiliation

and what the Palestinians are undergoing. At the same time, we've seen this already happening with Russia a few months ago, when the Russians brought the Palestinians' faction together, and then the security forces of the PA went and killed a few, you know, revolutionary youth in Janine. And that was the moment that, boom, the United Front collapsed immediately. That was the day after. So this is, you know, what we're seeing certainly from the side of Israel is that, By killing Ania, you are sending a message, which is ceasefire and negotiations are gone, are out of the table.

That's it. You know, you want that. It's clear. And it's going to gain, the gains of these operations are too long. In the short term, he wants to restore again his deterrence. We are stronger than you. We can hit you any time. You send us the drones that can look at everywhere like the Lebanese did, hood, hood.

Look at us. We can eat you everywhere, even in Tehran. It's clear what the message they're sending. But politically again, where is the political gain of this? In the long term, it's not going to materialize. And this is where Israel is stuck because he's not capable of, he's able to restore something in the short term, but it doesn't have a vision of a long term,

unless it's a complete genocide of Palestine. So what's happening in Gaza is a very intensified microcord. of the collapse of the international order, according to me. Are we going towards the route of violence and total escalation and more and more and more in that direction? It means that then we're going to witness more and more participation of external actors, even in very violent forms. It means that everything that was built until now, any semblance of international order and justice and law is gone. China, I think, is bringing that back on the table, in a way. UN resolutions, United France, is acting as what an hegemon should do,

basically restore a sense of, you know, really, of rules, of law. The US is not doing that, Israel is not doing that. But the more we go towards the route, the more radical is going to be the questioning of the, international order in which we're in. And there is certainly an interest from the Israelis to see that United Front breaking down. Just a small follow-up just to add in a bit. I know that we had an episode about a really great article by Perisero on a polycentric world and talking about the opening up of these other avenues outside of the neoliberal imperial core for dialogue for development and what we're seeing and what you're describing Mateo is much in line with

this analysis that in today's world what we're seeing is that some of these these states that are outside of that neoliberal imperial core are taking a more active role than they had in the recent past in terms of developing dialogue between anti-colonial factions in terms of providing alternative modes of development in terms of opening up economic alternatives. So if we're looking at Iran right now, for example, you know, Iran is under severe sanctions and has been for many years. But there's announcements that are coming out every week. I think the listeners probably all know by now that I live in Russia, that there's developments every week in terms of the ability of trade to take place between increasing trade between Russia and Iran,

but also in terms of ways of circumventing sanctions, in terms of being able to do international transactions, opening other platforms that are outside of the SWIFT system. There was just an announcement within the last week in terms of moving towards the last phase of a SWIFT alternative that is being led by Iran, China, and Russia. These states like Russia and China that you highlight, Mateo, are allowing for this dialogue and this coming together of these various factions that in previous years, you know, up until, you know, maybe four or five years ago when we started to see this increasing development of this more polycentric world based on the analysis of people like Periseros, we wouldn't have had this ability for this United Front to be developed. in a major country like that. We were pretty much relying on, you know,

them taking refuge in Qatar and hoping that there would be some sort of development there. But as we have seen, that that really wasn't a conducive avenue towards actually developing these linkages, both internally in terms of developing linkages between the factions within Palestine, the anti-colonial factions there,

but then also linking it up with some major world powers in order to say, look, we are helping foster these sorts of developments that are against this colonial project. That's not to say that Russia and China are directly contributing to the anti-colonial project, but they are opening avenues that previously had not been there.

So I just wanted to add that in and I also recommend the listeners go back, read the paper that Pereseros wrote. It was in Journal of the Urgarian South, a polycentric world, And also, like I said, we had an episode that came out on that article earlier this year. I want to say maybe around March or perhaps April. So go back in the guerrilla history feed and you'll find that episode.

Abdullah, you looked like you wanted to say something at some point. I've already spoken for like I got on the call at 7 o'clock, Mateo, so they've heard me speak for like an hour and a half. So I want to give you the floor like 90% of the time because I'm sure, you know, what you have to say is more important than what I have to say. but um on like multipolarity i know like personally just like as a more slumness like i really view the lens of understanding like countries and their roles whether they be historically progressive or not as you know the main uh focus of i guess understanding what they're international relations i think when i look at russia and china um i see their role as extremely historically historically progressive specifically in the sense that we are moving for the first time in my lifetime

time, I'm pretty young, but from a unipolar world to a possibility, at least, of a multi-polar world. And by proxy, that nets, you know, more, you know, we're looking at Iran, for example, and sanctions and the effect that it has on that country. We're not even considering the effect, for example, like Venezuela and the sanctions that are happening there. And specifically, the ability for Palestine to be this, like, unifying, rallying moment for all these different countries that have actually existing socialism within them that are being sanctioned and also the possibility of future countries that want to pursue a socialist model for that to be a possibility. There needs to be multilitarities that they can have these different markets to compete in

and have the ability to actually begin doing trade and not just be sanctioned and embargoed into submission. So, yeah, personally, at least I view Russia's role and China's role right now to be a historically progressive one and one that we must support when it comes to the creation of new systems of economy market, et cetera, for sanctioned countries to work their way out of the situation they're in. Just one thought in, you know, following up what Abdullah was saying, which made me think, because, you know, it was describing an historical process here, you know, a continuity of events,

which, which a continuity of events that obviously are in which we are able to, to capture a qualitative change, you know, during that period of time. And so time changes socially in that moment. And I think, since we're talking about assassination here, I think this is an important qualitative change

that we are witnessing in terms of history. The moment we enter multipolarity, it means that we're not looking anymore into a unipolar order. It means also that the way we look at political movements is not going to be anymore through the lens of the individual as we used to do before.

This is why Israeli Zionist strategy back in the days was very successful. They used to kill the leader because history and politics and social political formation under the unipolar moment incarnated the values of capitalism and much more the role of the individual, the personification of history, and so on and so forth. What we are seeing now is the construction of social political formations that are thankfully being able not to rely obsessively on the figure of the leader. This is when we see, you know, even states that are, you know, under attack, often under sanctions and so on and so forth, they hold onto the figure of the leader because it's very important and so on.

But what we're seeing is the creation of movements within the axis, even the fact that we have a regional equation, and this has been missing for so many years in West Asia. The fact that we have a regional equation, which means you can take out as Bollah, because this is going to be Kataya's Besbollah, Ansar al-I, Iran, the Syria of Arab, the, you know, Arab Republic. It's the nature of the social political formation this is changing. And this is where Israel cannot rely anymore so, you know, aggressively on this type of political assassination. You're going to take out a leader? They very much look like what the US was doing in Iraq constantly, you know, with this drones, killing one leader of Al-Qaeda and then another day.

And Al-Qaeda is one of the most reactionary forces. I'm not even trying to make a comparison here in terms of the political and qualitative nature of these movements, but just in terms of the military strategy that is not working anymore in that front. So it is a show of force, but whose political value will not be easily translated into practice, because we're living at a different moment. That doesn't mean that it always remains a challenge for the Axis. Sorry, Adnan.

Oh, no, no, this is perfect because this leads to something I wanted to talk about, which is the other dimensions of the region. We've been talking about the regional components and this escalatory framework among the axis of resistance in dealing with Israel. One other question that I would have for you all is how these most recent developments, and we've been talking principally about the assassination of Ismail Hania,

but of course we have, you know, assassination, Hezbollah commander, Shokubur, in in in in in in in in Beirut and you've all been referencing that this has been a kind of an amazing week you know we have the declaration in Beijing we had Netanyahu's visit in the US we had you know this uh kind of disputed you know attempt to to characterize uh you know the the the deaths of youth in in in uh in Magdal Shams in you know in the in the Julan, you know, in the Golan Heights. And, you know, this has been quite an incredibly significant week in terms of ramping up so many dimensions, you know, of this.

But one component that we haven't really been thinking about when the focus is so much on escalation and the sort of principal actors and what has been happening here is what about the other regional allies, you might say, of the United States, of, you know, basically de facto allies of Israel when it comes to, you know, where their alignments tend, what the consequences of their alignments are, you know, in thinking about the regional dynamics, if there is going to be, you know, wider, more direct military confrontations taking place as a consequence of Israel's actions and attempts to widen the conflict to torpedo of any possibility for political solutions, political negotiations, and so on, which is, I think, what's clearly

behind these recent events and approach that they're taking, you know, how will that affect other regimes in this? And they're given their alignments. I mean, I understand that, you know, Jordan has been playing a very serious role in, you know, attempting to, you know, promote Israel's interests in Israel's security line, what's happening, you know, in Egypt. You know, this is polarizing. The reason why I ask is because I do think that despite the fact that we've had 10 months of genocide, that we are shifting into a phase where these, you can't stay quiet and not be involved now. Like it's achieving such a level where the contradictions of the positions of other Arab and Muslim countries in the region, they're now, I think, going to be in a different

kind of pressure geopolitically to start acting in various ways. And the question is, what are they going to do? Where do they see their interests? And what are the consequences of this widening kind of sense of conflict on other groups, whether it's Turkey, you know, Jordan, Egypt, and so on. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are about the consequences of the dynamic we're seeing accelerating now and polarizing now in this last week with these developments are for other regional actors and players in West Asia. Okay. Again, very important remarks at none because this goes back to what we were talking about. before, which is the strategy of the axis. By making the Zionist entity, an unsustainable ally, you are hoping and creating the material and political conditions for this reactionary

regime to take a position, a much clearer position vis-à-vis what is happening. We've seen Qatar and Egypt immediately responding saying, the assassination of Ania is basically a blow to the ceasefire talks and negotiations. That's it. Saudi Arabia, I don't think, has made any statement that I am aware of. But we weren't as well. I mean, I've seen these things on telegram, so I don't know if this is official. I don't follow the Iranian news so much, but that the Iran has already sent, one of this ambassador of foreign ministry,

sent already messages to Saudi Arabia and Georgia. telling them to expect a response and they expect them to close their airspace and not to be used by the enemy base. The moment you kill a figure of a political group who's not even the most radical figure in that group, you're just making a mistake. There is a logic, obviously, to it. It's not pure madness. It's not irrationality. It's, you know, you're killing it. in Tehran. You're sending a message. You're sending a message also to the fact that we don't

want negotiations. You're sending a message that, you know, we are ready to go for war. You just want to bully them because that's what you do. You bully them and you show we are ready to go for war. Are they really ready to go for war when you look at the numbers and the soldiers that they're lacking? Are they ready to go for war when the U.S. is going in too many theaters of war and they can't really sustain them materially? Not to an extent that they're really, they can keep going, but they need to bully, they need to project to themselves, first and foremost, and to the war, this idea that nobody's going to, you know, nobody's going to tell us what to do. We are Israel. We are central to the American project. We are Zionist,

and we are going to crush all of you. It doesn't matter what, because we've been treating you in this manner for decades. Now, I think there are very important shifts in the region taking place, which again, as Abdelah was talking about, and Andrea as well, in reference to Paraciero's article before agreeing in South, at times they're ambivalent. They're not clear-cut spaces of I call them autonomy. I think he used another word, Andrea, which I don't remember, but no, okay. In a way, what we're seeing is that the creation of different political formations that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, was not possible. The fact that Putin is coming in in the region and he's asking Syria to mediate with Turkey.

The fact that Italy is now recognizing diplomatically Syria. So we are seeing shifts in the region. The possibility now that Syria comes back into the region as a player, as you know, not just Syria, the Syrian Arab Republic under the government of Bashar al-Lasa. This fact is a major preoccupation for the Israeli government. government, obviously. So all this different type of emerging social political formations and agreements in the region are certainly not in the favor of Israel in the long term. You can't, I mean, I don't have to say this to all of you, obviously you know that, but you can't stop

the motor of history. And the Axis has learned this lesson. So they know they can keep dragging Israel into a war. The question is the amount of violence that the Palestinians will have to bear during this time and possibly even other people of the region because Israel is ready to go further. I wanted to jump in there with one thing.

Mateo was talking about just the fact that Israel is posturing as if it's ready for war and of course it has to maintain deterrence. Something I always like to play out when people are feeling or people come to me with the despair of how intense the last almost year

has been as 2006, you know, South Lebanon was occupied from 1982 until 2006 by Israel and there was this indigenous, you know, elite that sold out the country and was working with the Israelis hand in hand

to maintain its occupation. And at this point in time, you know, Hezbollah had about 3,000 fighters and did not have any of the technological capabilities that it has right now. None of these drones, some of these Birken missiles that are like bunker busters and can destroy like large like military bases in Israel. None of this is a possibility. Now, as of 2021, I believe, Hezbollah made it very clear that they have over 100,000 fighters.

So we're talking about a magnitude of, of an increase of capabilities that is unbelievable. So she was like they were able to avidly liberate land. They were able to avidly liberate land. back in 2006, little in 2024, and that was without, for example, too, like the Houthis being in Georgia V Yemen, and, you know, pre the Houthis being in Georgia V Yemen, there was a U.S. back regime, and they had U.S. weapons and U.S. training. And a lot of the folks who are in the current Houthi administration were also folks who were a part of the earlier U.S. back administration that took this training and took these weapons and then moved them forward into the current,

you know, resistance axis. So just from a point of military capability, Israel is at a, is very simply in the worst position that it has been in historically, when you look at the capabilities of who is around them and who is interested in taking them on, if there were to be, for example, a ground war or a larger regional war that were to take place, very simply, the capabilities of the resistance has increased tenfold, and they are more than capable of holding their own.

And it's been said by many Israeli ministers that we very simply are unable right now to do a ground war, against Lebanon in any capacity to do the fact that they are consistently having their military vehicles destroyed. I think it was like 25% or 30% of Israeli vehicles were destroyed by the Ghazan resistance, which is, again, magnitudes weaker than Hezbollah by the beginning of this year, let alone eight months later after them having multiple shipments of weapons, missiles, and vehicles to re-up. We can only imagine the numbers, and that is again by a force that is much weaker than Hezbole's ground force.

Yeah, I just wanted to hop in. I look back at Pereseros's article, and you're right, Mateo, he doesn't use the word autonomy. He focuses on national sovereignty, but he also uses a very interesting phrase that's late in the article that I think that we also might be thinking of talking about the disconnect from the world law of value dominated by imperialism and building a path of auto-centered sovereign and popular development. I think that that might be what you had in your mind as well. And I also remembered that he wasn't using the word autonomy, which is why I had the cogs in my

head were grinding. But I couldn't come up with it. But there it is. None, any other final thoughts? Or should we wrap this up? Well, I mean, I think we've had such a wonderful discussion with two great guests and analysts of the situation, giving us historical perspective, geopolitical analysis. So we're very grateful for this, the opportunity to learn and to think about what's happening, you know, and I think I guess my main, you know, feeling is that what Abdullah said is absolutely correct in terms of the military capabilities and the strength of resistance that is in a different place than, you know, even in 2006, which I remember very vividly. And in fact,

I visited, you know, in the region after the end of the Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon. It was something that was unthinkable at the time, you know, and it's really set a precedent. And of course, the 2006 assault on Gaza that led to, you know, Israeli attempt actually using the opportunity of Hezbollah's responses in solidarity to protect the, the people of Gaza, as an opportunity to try and reoccupy, failed absolutely miserably. And it's been some time since then. Unfortunately, the tragic situation is that the military lessons are not being learned by this Zionist leadership. And in fact, it's part of that dynamic that has led to such an incredibly right-wing fascistic

Zionist leadership. because, you know, the point of sober analysis is gone. This is now clearly becoming, you know, an attempt at using violence in a direct fascistic way simply to maintain Zionist kind of ideology and a sense of identity because on other levels it's, you know, failing. It's much less an attractive project. People are leaving, you know, Israel. they have the opportunity and can get a second passport to, you know, Europe or the United States.

And so what's being left is a kind of hardcore, ideologically committed, very fascistic group that doesn't learn any of these lessons from actual strategy and tactics to change its position and how it's going to integrate into the rest of the region and take options for negotiations, but rather quite the opposite. that they look at the strength of their opposition, the increasing, you know, capacity of the access of resistance simply as a threat and simply as an opportunity to accomplish in a kind of, you know, all-out sort of war, you know, to determine history, you know, through some kind of all-out violent conflict. You know, when you see a faction, you know, that is with lawmakers, you You know, members of the Knesset rioting in order to maintain the right to rape and torture Palestinian political prisoners, you know, you realize that we're not dealing with a group that is functioning on a strategic or tactical, you know, basis. So this is really kind of the problem is that for all of the long-term strategy and positioning that the access of resistance has done to maintain. various kinds of approaches strategically in moving towards changing the conditions is that there may be

no way, it seems, to avoid some kind of all-out, very kind of bloody battle here. I mean, I think that's what Mateo was saying, is that that's the real question, is how much Palestinian blood will have to be sacrificed in this situation. And now it looks like, you know, not just Palestinians, but wider in the region. This is, of course, totally destructive of humanity and life. I mean, why is there no leadership? This is why we have to look at hopeful possibilities of changing geopolitical environments. There may be other responsible actors like, you know, in a multipolar world that is emerging,

who may be able to help foster conditions for a better road out of this situation for humanity, for peace, for justice. And it starts, of course, with the Palestinian national unity, which is why it was recently so important that that was brokered. And that was something that would never happen and was never on the agenda of the imperial forces. They never would create a condition of Palestinian unity of these factions. They've only been playing a game of trying to find proxies, collaborators. That's been the policy and the practice for a generation. And they have not come up with anything new, which is why that whole road is totally bankrupt, and we need new leadership and new participants in helping to promote some kind of peace and unity

that starts with Palestinian unity, a ceasefire, and then rebuilding in this region on a different terms outside of the imperial axis. So that seems, in my conclusion, the final thing we're seeing is that Israel is showing clearly at every stage further and further its unwillingness to be involved in the region as a member of some kind of regional unit. It is only serving empire and it is willing and is showing itself willing to go to the greatest lengths of simple violence and killing to serve the imperial agenda in the region. Well, you know, like none they just see themselves as an extension of colonial europe that's why they don't see themselves as a member of the the community there they are uh absolutely colonizing transplants

from you know colonial europe uh and that's where they see their solidarity they don't see their solidarity in the region that they're located they see their solidarity amongst other colonizers so it or so in his diary even said the goal is to make israel as jewish as English. Correct. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we're wrapping up this conversation. It's about, let's see, Eastern time 9.30, Eastern time on August 1st. We're wrapping up just about a half an hour before Hassan Nasrallah's announcement in terms of Hesbollah's position regarding the assassination of the Hezbollah commander Shukar in Beirut, as well as I'm sure there will also be commentary on Haniyah's assassination as well. So we're going to wrap up here. Just be aware that even though this episode is going to come out just 24 hours after we record this, inevitably there will be some important things that come out in this 24-hour gap

that will not be addressed during this episode. So just bear that in mind. Again, our guests were Abdullah Shahadhi from Al-Fadai Media Network, formerly known as Al-Palestinia, and Comrade Professor. Mateo Capasso. I'm going to turn it to each of you to announce where the list letters can find your work as well as if you have any other short closing remarks. So, Abdullah, I'll start with you. Absolutely. I just want to say thank you so much for the opportunity to come on and talk to you guys.

It was genuinely a privilege and an honor. I feel like I learned so much just from this interaction today and hopefully we can collaborate again in the future. As of now, the best way to find our work is on El Fidei, that's A-L-F-I-D-A-I-R-G. That is our website launching it today, and it will have our biggest works, which is our articles, our videos from our Gaza branch and our Gaza journalist, Bayanabuq Sultan, as well as the Resistance Report, which is kind of our consistent analysis of what's going on geopolitically with the war in Gaza, and also it is meant to specifically be used as kind of like the toolkit for you to consider in your organizing and in your day-to-day kind of interaction with the

Palestine conflict. Thank you again. Absolutely. And we will, of course, have that linked in the show notes. Mateo, my friend, it was nice to see you again. Can you tell the listeners where they can find your work and where they can keep up with you? I would thank you so much to you have another invite me again, guys. And these are hard times for all of us. I just want to say that you can find me. I'm sure either Henry or Adnan is going to tag me on their Twitter account, so you can just follow me there.

And if you have time and you want to know a little bit more about Libya, you can get my book just out of interest. But otherwise, you know, just remind yourself every time you wake up. What is it I'm going to do for Palestine today? That's the most important part, you know. of the equation. Absolutely. And of course, we recommend

picking up Mateo's book Everyday Politics of the Libyan Arab Jemariraya. We have an episode on that book that came out

a couple months ago at this point, but you should go back and listen to that if you haven't yet and Matteo, we plan on bringing you back to talk about

Libya as part of our African Revolutions and Decolonization series, which will be starting rather soon, so listeners stay tuned for that.

Adnan, how can the listeners find you in your other podcast? Oh, Adnan, before I interject, can I say something? Of course. Maybe if there is something you might be interested, is the journal I am editing, which is Middle East Critique.

You know, we try to put article for free. You know, it's an academic journal. It comes with a lot of, like, the multipolar world, with a lot of contradictions. So, but you can follow us online, you know, on that. What's, yeah, MA critique. I mean, HAT MA critique on X. You can find us there.

Sorry, guys. Yes. And we'll have that. linked in the show notes as well. And of course, listeners, if you follow us on Twitter, you'll also see that we retweet Middle East Critique fairly frequently on there. So make sure that you're following that account and keep up to date with the articles that they're putting out. Mattel, you had an excellent, excellent series of video lectures that was hosted by Middle East Critique as well, which I believe is on the Middle East Critique YouTube

channel. So hopefully I remember to link that as well. But many of the guests of that series We're former guests of guerrilla history as well. You're yourself, Karina Mullen, Max Ayo. The list goes on Alicadri. Many of the people who took part in that series of lectures have been on the show. Some of our most popular episodes were hosted, or sorry, had guests that were guests of that lecture series. So if you haven't watched those series of lectures yet that Middle East critique put together, you're really missing out. And we will be sure to link that in the show notes as well.

That way you can catch up on that material. Now, Adnan's great, yeah. You can follow me on Twitter at Adnan, A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. And sometimes I have episodes on another podcast called the M-A-J-L-I-S related to Middle East Islamic World, Muslim diaspora, culture, and so on. You can check that out. And we're doing a few collaborations. We've done some with this podcast, Gorilla History. and we have one planned for the near future regarding a book coming out with the ISCRA books

that will be on hopefully both these platforms. So do keep checking out the Mudge list, even if episodes come out somewhat less regularly than they do here. We still have some things coming up. So that's the MHA LIS on all the usual platforms. Yes, absolutely. Adnan has a lot of excellent episodes on the Mudge list. And we do have a collaboration coming out on a very very. exciting translation of a book that was written by the Iraqi Communist Party in the 1980s

will be coming out via Iskra very soon, and we will have an episode of Gorilla History and the Mudge List on that book very soon. So stay tuned for that, and you can keep update with that book's release on Iskrabooks.org. As for me, listeners, you can follow me on Twitter at Huck 1995. That's H-U-C-1-995. You can also follow Gorilla history on Twitter at Guerrilla underscore pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A- underscore pod, and help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this

by going to Patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's, again, G-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. You know, So, Thank you.