How To Not Lose Hope When It Seems Hopeless

If you consume news, especially, the western news, it's easy to lose hope entirely. Atrocity after atrocity, at this point they want us to see. As Colombian President Gustavo Pedro said, “The European Union, the United Kingdom and above all the United States—they all support dropping bombs on people because they want to teach a lesson to the entirety of humanity. They are telling us: look at our military power. What happens to Palestine can happen to any of you if you dare to make changes without our permission.

So much evil, so much evil, so much evil, and they're getting away with it. The evil keeps happening and even accelerating. The ghetto that dared rebel is being exterminated, and now they're massacring Lebanese. The White Empire (all the countries Pedro lists, without the mouthful) wants us to see and see clearly. This is what happens when you rebel. We kill your children, we destroy your hospitals, we uranium the fields. This is what they want the whole world to see—starved, sickened people, genocided every single day—in our phones, in our homes, on TV. This is the public torture and execution of an entire people, entire cities of martyrs marched into the Cable-TV Colosseum, to assert the power of Empire most aggressively.

Whenever I feel hopeless like this, you know what I do? I leave. I leave imperial sources, I leave the English language as much as possible, and I read the Resistance directly. And then I read their higher authority. And the Quran says, clearly, “And do not become faint of heart, nor grieve—you will have the upper hand, if you are believers—if you have suffered a wound, they too have suffered a similar wound. We bring these days to men by turns, so that God may know those who believe, and choose witnesses from among you; and God does not love the unjust” (3:139).

I think of this verse often—“if you have suffered a wound, they too have suffered a similar wound”—because it is true. As much as the Empire likes showing us this bloodletting, they too bleed. While the Resistance names and honors their martyrs, the Empire covers them up most assiduously. Their fighters are not martyrs but morons, suckers dying for a regime that won't even mourn them publicly. It's all covered up by massive wartime censorship, but 'Israel' has already lost control of what was supposed to be an outsourced occupation, and imperial troops are on site trying to salvage the thing. Hamas's founder said 'Israel' would be done by 2027, and I believe it.

What you don't see under wartime censorship is this. This is a collection of Resistance activities for just one day, collected by Ary Jeay. And this is happening every single day.

While the Empire may be winning the genocide, they are losing the war. The people they call terrorists are exclusively focused on military targets, and systematically dismantling the dismantlers. Hezbollah has systematically dismantled air defenses in the north and have gone from shelling border settlements to regularly hitting Jaffa (Haifa) and even Tel Aviv. This wasn't happening a year ago and now it is. Iran has systematically overmatched 'Israeli' air defenses and can now hit them wherever and whenever it wants. Meanwhile Yemen hits them from the south and Iraqis hit them from the east. The White Empire may still have white supremacy, but they've lost both naval and air supremacy, which are far more important.

Yes, the Resistance has lost almost all of its top leadership, has lost at least a tenth of Gaza's population, and its people are suffering terribly. But consider what these acts mean. Assassination and targeting civilians (re: terrorism) are the acts of the weak not the strong. In my country (Sri Lanka), the weaker party (the LTTE) regularly assassinated our leadership and targeted civilians. Why is America proud of behaving like an insurgency with less resources than one of their warships? Terrorism is the violence of the weak, and America is showing the opposite of strength through its massacres. They are showing weakness, and the serious scholars of the Resistance can read them.

The fact is that assassinating Hezbollah's leader (peace be upon him) has not stopped Hezbollah's resistance. Assassinating Hamas's leader (pbuh) has only redoubled their motivation. These are peoples movements, not people, and they are still moving. The losses that White Empire is taking are covered up by the white-out media, but they are real and they are militarily quite serious. The Iron Dome is broken. The Red Sea is lost. These are big historical moments buried in the news cycle. I'll repeat because it never gets said even once. America has lost air and naval supremacy! Yes, they can keep killing civilians, but everywhere they go, they lose against men in the field. Just as the Nazis killed millions after their ambitions were obviously lost in Stalingrad, the people that absorbed the Nazis will kill millions more, but it's a lost cause. Historically speaking, 'Israel' is already history, and America is betwixt the broom and the dustbin.

It is important to understand that America's actions in Palestine (again, 'Israel' is a non-entity) have great genocidal significance but little military significance. The many American wars of terror are based on the theory that you can terrorize people into submission, but outside of America (and maybe nuking Japan), this has never worked. They have just killed millions of people from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan and always lost. They keep distracting their population with a new war but now they're losing on multiple fronts and it's becoming more and more obvious that they're fronting.

So consider the horrific events of today with the distance of history. This is how the Resistance sees it, and I trust them implicitly. See that America is an army that lost to the Taliban in Afghanistan, a navy that lost to Ansarallah in the Red Sea, and an Air Force that has lost to Iran and all and sundry in Palestine. Now they're just a well-financed terrorist organization, trying to scare the whole world into submission. But it doesn't work. It has never worked. And it isn't working. Serious people know that America is a spent farce, engaged in a long retreat from their WWII conquests, furiously throwing proxies and propaganda in front of them to cover it up.

I will close with two points from the pharmacist philosopher, whose seven points I return to again and again when it seems hopeless. He was a historical teacher to me—a terrified tourist—and was martyred for his troubles, peace be upon him. This is what Basil Al-Araj said, as excerpted here:

  1. The Palestinian resistance consists of guerrilla formations whose strategies follow the logic of guerrilla warfare or hybrid warfare, which Arabs and Muslims have become masters of through our experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza. War is never based on the logic of conventional wars and the defense of fixed points and borders; on the contrary, you draw the enemy into an ambush. You do not stick to a fixed position to defend it; instead, you perform maneuvers, movement, withdrawal, and attack from the flanks and the rear. So, never measure it against conventional wars.
  2. The enemy will spread photos and videos of their invasion into Gaza, occupation of residential buildings, or presence in public areas and well-known landmarks. This is part of the psychological warfare in guerrilla wars; you allow your enemy to move as they wish so that they fall into your trap and you strike them. You determine the location and timing of the battle. So, you may see photos from Al-Katiba Square, Al-Saraya, Al-Rimal, or Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, but do not let this weaken your resolve. The battle is judged by its overall results, and this is merely a show.
  3. Never spread the occupation's propaganda, and do not contribute to instilling a sense of defeat. This must be focused on, for soon, we will start talking about a massive invasion in Beit Lahia and Al-Nusseirat, for example. Never spread panic; be supportive of the resistance and do not spread any news broadcast by the occupation (forget about the ethics and impartiality of journalism; just as the zionist journalist is a fighter, so are you).
  4. The enemy may broadcast images of prisoners, most likely civilians, but the goal is to suggest the rapid collapse of the resistance. Do not believe them.
  5. The enemy will carry out tactical, qualitative operations to assassinate some symbols [of resistance], and all of this is part of psychological warfare. Those who have died and those who will die will never affect the resistance's system and cohesion because the structure and formations of the resistance are not centralized but horizontal and widespread. Their goal is to influence the resistance's support base and the families of the resistance fighters, as they are the only ones who can affect the men of the resistance.
  6. Our direct human and material losses will be much greater than the enemy's, which is natural in guerrilla wars that rely on willpower, the human element, and the extent of patience and endurance. We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers.
  7. Today's wars are no longer just wars and clashes between armies but rather are struggles between societies. Let us be like a solid structure and play a game of biting fingers with the enemy, our society against their society.
    Finally, every Palestinian (in the broad sense, meaning anyone who sees Palestine as a part of their struggle, regardless of their secondary identities), every Palestinian is on the front lines of the battle for Palestine, so be careful not to fail in your duty.

So inscribe this on your heart and don't lose heart. People died to bring you this knowledge and many more will die before it becomes understanding. You can surely feel the psychological warfare the Empire is waging against you, to make you think resistance is futile. But if you listen to the Resistance themselves, they don't believe that at all. The least we can do when so many are losing their lives to fight this evil is to not lose heart. Godspeed to the Resistance. And God damn America.