War h'uh, Yeah! What is it good for? Quite a lot, actually. War is of course, not good from Americans, but is quite good against them, indeed, necessary. As the Quran says, “If God did not repel the aggression of some people by means of others, cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques, wherein the name of God is much invoked, would surely be destroyed.” Indeed, see ravaged Palestine, where all those sites of worship were intertwined before the present misery. And see yet the Palestinian Resistance, defiant and undefeated. They have duelled the entire might of White Empire, and made history.

The Duel

Carl von Clausewitz, the old Prussian nerd warrior, said “war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means.” As old Clause said in his definition,

I shall not begin by expounding a pedantic, literary definition of war, but go straight to the heart of the matter, to the duel. War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale. Countless duels go to make up war, but a picture of it as a whole can be formed by imagining a pair of wrestlers. Each tries through physical force to compel the other to do his will; his immediate aim is to throw his opponent in order to make him incapable of further resistance.

War is thus an act of force to compels our enemy to do our will.

It's easy to underestimate how much these baroque asses duelled over everything, like street dogs in wigs, frills, and make-up. War was very much an extension of this attitude, distributed duels between Leviathan princes and their press-ganged appendages. There is no morality within the Clausewitzian concept of war. It's just a bunch of dressed-up dogs duelling it out, asserting dominance by force and pissing on various territories and calling it civilization.

For a picture of this sort of war, see the motion picture Barry Lyndon. Barry's life is entirely Clausewitzian, though he's entirely unaware of it.

Redmond Barry starts duelling, he finds war gruelling, and duelling is his downfall. At each stage of his life—to settle down, to settle debts, to unsettle land, to settle sons—duelling was called for. Duelling was very much the general intercourse of both genteel society and general warfare. Thus to understand these dumbasses, understand the duel. These are the terms that White Empire must be dealt with, and most words are just a distraction.

Savages

In Barry Lyndon, Barry unwittingly reveals the class nature of duelling. When he joins the British army as an enlisted man, he finds himself in another class, but one which still has duels, just with fisticuffs instead of more sophisticated tools. But this does not yet reveal the rules of inter-class class warfare, which are brutal.

Lyndon discovers this when he impersonates a British officer, is found out by a Prussian officer, and finds out how Prussians do. There might be duels within a class, but between classes, it was pure brutality, and in one direction only.

As the narrator said, “The life that the private soldier led was a frightful one. The punishment was incessant and every officer had the right to inflict it. The Gauntlet was the most common penalty for minor offenses. The more serious ones were punishable by mutilation or death.” The class stratification of batterfication is important to understand. Duelling was to resolve disputes within classes, and brutality was to resolves disputes beneath them. Violence might flow in controlled ways within classes (a duel) but it was an untrammeled force flowing down. From gentlemen to grunts to the savages beneath Western Civilization (which is just superior violence) entirely.

Clausewitz was a man of his time and what we'd call racist AF. He said, “Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind,” which is hilarious coming from the most violent tribes of Europe. Clausewitz also said, “If wars between civilized nations are far less cruel and destructive than wars between savages, the reason lies in the social conditions of the states themselves and in their relationships to one another. These are the forces that give rise to war; the same forces circumscribe and moderate it.”

He does have a point there, if misdirected. What Clausewitz is saying is that the application of violence is moderated by the class structure of the state. For people outside the state (ie, savages) there is no moderation at all. Just brute violence from self-styled gentlemen. We can see the nature of this beastliness when Barry, once dressed up as an officer, ends up in the enlisted ranks, to witness a liberal whipping of an enlisted man. What we don't see are the whippings going on in the colonies at the time, which were infinitely worse.

Thus what Tolstoy calls “This wonderful blindness which befalls people of our circle” compels the otherwise erudite Clausewitz to ignorantly say, “If, then, civilized nations do not put their prisoners to death or devastate cities and countries, it is because intelligence plays a larger part in their methods of warfare and has taught them more effective ways of using force than the crude expression of instinct.” At the very time ‘civilized’ nations were devasting entire continents populated by people superior to them in everything but violence. But that was the only intercourse Western Civilization had with the rest of the world. Rape, in other words.

The savages that did fight to defend their land were considered beneath honor, beneath a duel, with the other living relatives the colonizers also wiped out (shout-out whales). Indeed, one of the American complaints about Britain was that the king didn't let them colonize hard enough. As their Declaration says, “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” That was the declaration of the genocide of the Americas, and is still the reason for the genocide of Gaza today. But the savages would like a word. More than a word, in fact. A duel.

The Modern Duel

A gentlemen could challenge a gentleman to a duel, a grunt a grunt, but a lesser could not challenge a better, and certainly not a savage. But that is precisely what Hamas did on October 7th, with the operation Al Aqsa Flood. They attacked 'Israel's' military sites around their concentration camp and took prisoners of war to exchange for their own. They parleyed with the enemy on equal terms, a class violation which infuriated them with its impertinence.

This is what makes the current native rebellion in occupied Palestine different from those in occupied America. The natives are able to reproach White Empire on its own terms, using relatively equivalent (and in some cases superior) technology, and in front of a society that has diversified dramatically. A duel is a fight, really, for honor in front of society, and Hamas et al have shown it, while White Empire (America, 'Israel') same thing, have violated every possibly sanctity. And still had to negotiate with Hamas directly in the end (not quite the end), to add humiliation to their debasement.

The modern Palestinian Resistance, led by Hamas, is both fighting and rewriting history on equal terms with Empire, which rewrites history itself. Savages are not supposed to duel with gentlemen! And yet they are, they are duelling with White Empire, these ‘terrorists’ (new word for savage), and they have shown the world what true honor is. This revolutionary class violation changes the world. At the end of the day, power concedes nothing without a demand, and violence is the only language Westerners understand. And Hamas has spoken it well. Until the very day before the 'ceasefire', Hamas (Al-Qassam Brigades) was lighting 'Israeli' occupiers up, duelling them to the death. As they reported,

Yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, Al-Qassam fighters managed to raid the "Al-Ahoud" military site in the Netzarim axis south of Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, south of Gaza City. Our fighters initiated close combat with enemy soldiers at zero distance, causing a number of them to be killed and wounded. Our fighters targeted two Zionist Merkava tanks with Al-Yassin 105 and Tandem RPG shells. Our fighters attempted to capture one of the enemy soldiers, but the field conditions did not allow it. Our fighters observed the landing of evacuation helicopters, which lasted for more than an hour.

Two years into a brutal starvation siege—with 'Israel' ‘putting their own prisoners to death and devastating entire cities’—Hamas did more than not concede. They were still raiding 'Israeli' sites, duelling them mano a mano in ‘zero distance’ firefights. As much as this is spun as ‘terrorism’ by Western media, who believes that shit anymore? Not even Western citizens. Cowardly words can only cover up so many brave deeds, and such nattering news is blown away by history. As Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya said,

The world stood amazed at the sacrifices, steadfastness, and patience shown by the people of the Gaza Strip.

The people of the Gaza Strip fought a war the world has never seen before and stood up to the tyranny of the enemy, the brutality of its army, and its massacres. We say to the heroes of the resistance, just as you were men in battle, we were men at the negotiating table.

The agreement includes opening the Rafah crossing in both directions. We received guarantees from the intermediaries and the American administration, and they all confirmed that the war has completely ended. We will continue working with all national and Islamic forces to complete the remaining steps.

The negotiated word of the colonizers is, of course, worth nothing (just ask the Native Americans about treaties) but what Hamas et al has done is change history with deeds. For a long time there was a red line drawn across the world, with non-violence for us and ultra-violence for them. But that as my hero Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in 1986, “Experience has shown us that red blood is capable of obliterating red lines, and if the nation chooses to follow this path, Israel and America will find that they are incapable of changing anything in the equation.”

That was the calculation, 40 years ago, and I'm ashamed to say I didn't believe it, but we can see results presently. Hamas duelled the entire White Empire and never put their weapons down, never conceded, and certainly never surrendered. The Empire's ‘immediate aim was to throw his opponent in order to make him incapable of further resistance,’ and that never happened. The Empire had to negotiate with Hamas, on same the terms that had been offered since October 8th, mutual hostage exchange. They had to acknowledge the savages as someone they were duelling with and were revealed as dishonorable in front of all human society. This is a severe loss in duelling terms. The Palestinian people have certainly lost more bodies, but the Empire has lost face. And that's what duelling—and the gruelling warfare that emerged out of it—is all about.

This is unfortunately not the last duel in the long war for Palestine—as Satan Clause says, “countless duels go to make up war”—but it has been a decisive one. Palestinians have asserted themselves as deciders of their own fate, and their deeds have spoken to the world. As Fatah (which historically duelled with Hamas) recently said, “Hamas has won, the Palestinian resistance has won, and the fronts supporting the resistance have won through legendary steadfastness and heroic epics that history will record as a beacon and guidance for future generations.”