“Resistance Through a Realist Lens”

On October 8th, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the group that had organized the student encampment for Palestine last spring, posted a statement on their Instagram account apologizing for compromising their message to “[pander] to liberal media and make the movement for liberation palatable and digestible,” and affirming their commitment to liberation “by any means necessary, including armed resistance.” Almost two weeks later, a collective of Palestinian student organizers calling themselves the Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition (CPSC) published an article in the Columbia Spectator disaffiliating from CUAD and arguing for “recentering” the movement on its core demand of divestment—a goal which, at its peak, mobilized thousands on campuses across the country, and which went entirely unmentioned in CUAD’s statement. “Palestinians deserve a movement focused on Palestine, with clear goals and demands from a University with extensive ties to the occupying state,” they wrote. While strongly affirming the right of occupied Palestinians to resist their occupiers within the bounds of international law, the CPSC students maintained that they “equally and firmly . . . disavow any violence outside of this context.”

This internecine battle over the direction of the student movement on Columbia’s campus is just one illustration of the fractures within the international Palestine solidarity movement over the past year. At the heart of this debate, which has been raging since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7th, are questions about the Western left’s relationship to armed struggle—and to Hamas, the de facto leader of the Palestinian resistance. On the Verso blog, scholar Jodi Dean and writer Andreas Malm both argued that the global left should unequivocally support Palestinian armed resistance and, by extension, Hamas. In a reply to Malm in the same publication, scholar and activist Matan Kaminer questioned whether support for armed resistance must entail support for the manner in which it was carried out on October 7th, and asked whether exhortations to stand with an Islamist group like Hamas flatten Palestinian political diversity, a point echoed by Bashir Abu-Manneh in Jacobin and Ayça Çubukçu in Boston Review.

In response to these debates, Abdaljawad Omar, a Palestinian writer and lecturer at Birzeit University near Ramallah in the West Bank, published an essay in Mondoweiss called “The Question of Hamas and the Left.” In a sober, insightful analysis, Omar affirms the fragmentation that has led to a diversity of perspectives within the Palestinian body politic, while breaking down what these fissures have meant for the constrained political choices open to leftists on the ground: the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) collaborationism on the one hand, and Hamas’s armed resistance on the other. He troubles the question of what constitutes progressive action and principles within the context of this political reality. “Ultimately,” he writes, “the Western left’s quixotic search for a secular progressive alternative to Hamas overlooks a simple fact: at this particular historical juncture, the political forces that are still holding onto and leading a resistance agenda are not of the secular left.”

But while Omar’s political analysis aims to deepen Western leftists’ understanding of the realities on the ground, it stops short of addressing how the international solidarity movement should behave in light of this understanding. Indeed, while I found his analysis deeply clarifying, I was also left with questions both strategic and ethical: As we seek to build a mass movement for Palestinian liberation, how do we account for ideological and affective diversity on questions of violence? What does it mean to predicate inclusion in parts of the international solidarity movement on an embrace of armed struggle—especially when rhetoric in support of such tactics, while solely discursive, nonetheless promises to bring down unprecedented state repression? How might a movement that accepts the inevitability of such violence relate to it without glorifying it? And how might it avoid adopting the zero-sum logic of the regime it aims to dismantle? As I read more of Omar’s work, his haunting, illuminating essay “Can the Palestinian Mourn?” helped me think through my persistent preoccupation with the uneasy place of grief—both Palestinian and Jewish—in the struggle for Palestinian freedom. I reached out to Omar, a writer who has both challenged and educated me over the past year, to discuss his analysis of the choices of the Palestinian left, how we face armed struggle without rendering it either sacred or profane, and what such an approach might mean for the international solidarity movement.

AA: I want to talk about the concrete reality of armed resistance, so we’re not just speaking abstractly. I read the Human Rights Watch report about October 7th over the summer, which, as you can imagine, is very harrowing. While acknowledging instances of friendly fire, they counter Hamas’s claim that the group hadn’t set out to kill civilians, arguing that the consistency with which the attack was carried out in different places suggests a specific modus operandi. The report details really horrifying things—naked bodies bound to trees at the Nova rave, certain kinds of mutilation. And while it seems there is little to substantiate the widely circulating claim of systematic mass rape as a weapon of war, there is enough circumstantial evidence to say—as the UN did in their own report—that there were probably instances of sexual violence. How should leftists ethically confront these actions? Is there room in the framework you’re presenting for critique or even condemnation of particular kinds of violence in the context of armed struggle?

AO: There are several issues here that we must contend with. First and foremost are the oppressive conditions that bring violence to the fore: Nonviolent civic forms of resistance, international legal avenues, and even security cooperation have been continually met with violence, sanctions, and repeated refusals to negotiate. This cycle underscores the reality that, regardless of the method of engagement, Palestinian initiatives for asserting sovereignty are obstructed, leaving little room for meaningful progress. When every other form of expression and resistance is systematically denied, violence becomes not merely a tactic but a form of existence—a means of reclaiming agency within a structure that denies even the most basic forms of recognition.

Meanwhile, when we consider the long history of the so-called “exchange” of fire, Israel’s actions have been far more brutal and horrific, establishing systems of terror aimed at managing and controlling Palestinians and systematically erasing the distinction between civilians and combatants. (Ironically, Israel still wants us to respond with “nuance” when it employs violence against Palestinian civilians.) In other words, whatever transpired on October 7th did not happen in a vacuum; it unfolded within a system built to incentivize violence as the only remaining language of agency.

As the horrors of killing or being killed become so tightly woven into this history, the real question becomes: What does the world do to end the necessity of violence? For such a transformation to take place, Israel must confront the historic injustices it has inflicted, seek redemption by asking forgiveness from those it has dehumanized, and endeavor to create a new relationality between “us” and “them,” one that moves beyond the entrenched zero-sum logic. This would mark a truly radical gesture—a commitment to healing rather than domination. It is a choice that Israel could have made after regaining control of the areas around Gaza. Instead, Israel chose genocide and ethnic cleansing; it chose to solve violence with greater violence.

AA: I do find it grotesque the way that many people in the West treat the intimate, face-to-face killing as somehow more “savage” than the violence that a bomb does. We’ve seen the families of those killed in the bombing of a school in Gaza City given bags of undifferentiated body parts apportioned by weight to bury; we’ve seen people burned alive hooked up to IVs in hospital courtyards. To the person whose parent or child has been killed and had their body maimed in that way, it’s the same. Precisely for this reason, I still have the question of how we relate to the violence—how we really face it, ethically and spiritually. Because as you are bringing out, even as the power differential is stark, the logic on both sides becomes mirrored.

AO: It’s true that in this environment, people often revert to tribal affinities, falling into a zero-sum mentality. But this logic did not originate with Palestinians; it has been embedded within the Zionist project from its inception. Overcoming this entrenched worldview would require a profound shift in the balance of power. In this sense, Palestinian resistance is not merely a mirror of Israeli violence, but can embody a hope for a different kind of relationality. There is a crucial distinction between violence that seeks to sustain domination and violence that seeks to liberate from it. Palestinian resistance is animated by this latter impulse, a drive not for subjugation but for self-determination, which holds within it the possibility of imagining a new framework of relations.

AA: Ideally, but might these noble intentions be compromised or corrupted by the self-reinforcing reality of the violence? That’s not to negate those intentions or those potentialities, but to acknowledge the potency of the violence itself.

I want to bring in your essay from December, “Can the Palestinian Mourn?”, which was framed in part in response to a piece [the philosopher] Judith Butler wrote soon after October 7th, in which they are reaching for a kind of universalism that can be unlocked through mourning, a way of reaching past this zero-sum logic. Like you, I disagree with Butler’s emphasis on condemnation: What is the purpose of condemnation in a paradigm in which no meaningful alternatives are on offer? But I am sympathetic to Butler’s emphasis on grief, precisely because I understand the incredibly violent shape of the Zionist project to be a result of Jews’ failure to mourn the suffering they endured for centuries; it’s what makes these October 7th deaths continuous with the Holocaust for many Jews in totally obscene ways, and what makes them project onto Palestinians the intentions of the Nazis. Of course, this kind of Jewish suffering largely ended in the mid-20th century, with the end of the Shoah and the absorption of Mizrahi communities into Israel, even if the residue persists through the generations. Palestinians, by contrast, are still subjugated, and you write movingly about the inability to mourn from that position, and the need for resistance in order to get to a point where mourning could actually begin. I think that’s very compelling. At the same time, I wonder if there’s a danger in the assertion that mourning isn’t possible, and if the deferral of mourning can become a habit that’s hard to break—something that may outlast the circumstances that have mandated it, with adverse personal and political effects.

AO: The problem, as I wrote, is that Palestinians live in a system that does not allow them to mourn. As you said, we don’t exist in a post-catastrophic state; instead, Palestinians inhabit a horizon of ongoing catastrophe and unceasing loss, facing a future where the threat of expulsion or death looms perpetually. We see what’s unfolding in Gaza, and many of us in the West Bank can’t help but think: We’re next. This is why I return to the idea of resistance, which could create a space where we might begin the work of detachment—allowing us to cry, to release the feelings of anger and grief that accumulate through years of struggle and dispossession.

Personally, I am not deeply attached to a chauvinistic nationalism labeled “Palestine” or “Palestinians.” I don’t believe there’s something intrinsic or necessary about this identification. The need for such a form of nationalism, in my view, arises directly from our conditions, serving as an ontological defense against our own erasure. In a liberated future, such identification would not be necessary; the constructs of nation and identity could be released, no longer rooted in a struggle for survival but rather in a shared humanity.

One of the key issues I had with Butler’s piece is that it calls for a shared vulnerability within an ongoing status quo of asymmetry. For genuine mourning—and even the radical notion of forgiveness, which I don’t believe we should entirely exclude from our movement—to take place, there must first be an acknowledgment of the injustices. People’s rights have to be restored. This process of mourning and forgiveness cannot unfold because Israelis, at a fundamental level, do not feel compelled to even ask for forgiveness. It isn’t a matter of them reaching out in remorse and us refusing to respond; rather, the need for accountability is absent altogether. Needless to say, the moral weight of forgiveness, of shared vulnerability, is untenable when one side remains shielded from any sense of responsibility, reinforcing the very structures that deny Palestinians the basic recognition essential for healing.

It sounds like you have an underlying fear that Palestinians could replicate the oppression they themselves have faced, becoming oppressors in their own right. This possibility certainly exists—Palestinians are no exception to the human tendencies and dynamics that shape all societies. And it is incumbent on us as Palestinians to try and truly learn the lessons of history, and one of the lessons—which we learn from Zionism and its relationship to European antisemitism—is that sometimes, in the name of victimhood, the victim becomes the oppressor. But whether this could manifest far down the line, somewhere in the distant future, is less relevant than the conditions Palestinians navigate today.

AA: The question for me is not primarily about the future—though that’s important—or even necessarily about Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Those are questions I’m not equipped to evaluate. The question for me is about the present, and how we on the global left avoid replicating or being limited by this orientation toward grief or mourning in our movement work when we are not under similar constraints. I am not asking Palestinians anywhere to mourn their oppressors. But I do think it’s important for Palestinians to find room for their own mourning, to the varying degrees they are able, depending on their positionality. And also, I want to hold onto the fact that in the international community, we may have more capacity for a different balance between mourning and militancy—in ways that serve the movement and are not depoliticizing—and even a different sense of who we can mourn.

It seems to me that it would be a mistake to fully foreclose a route through mourning as a means of facing and processing some of this horror, and thus being able to continue doing this work in broad coalition. I worry that when the movement takes affective cues from the ground despite not being in the same position—when that becomes the measure for belonging in the movement—it narrows the space too drastically. I’m not Palestinian; I have not experienced the things that make mourning impossible for Palestinians on the ground—and, in some similar though not identical way, for Palestinians in diaspora. I do feel I have room for a more capacious mourning. There’s no value judgment on this position, it’s just a different one.

AO: I think that mutual understanding requires recognizing our different starting points. We do not come from the same place, nor do we carry the same affects, contradictions, or reasons for engaging in this struggle. You, as an American Jew in New York, may be fighting alongside Palestinians for reasons shaped by your own history and view of this struggle’s significance, and these reasons might intersect with my own as a Palestinian in Ramallah, but they also diverge. After all, you might have family members who are Zionist, or you might be struggling within your own communities with friends and colleagues. This is not something I face; the face of Zionism for me is the soldier humiliating me at a checkpoint, the pilot dropping bombs, the settler who proclaims their desire to erase my existence.

We occupy different subject positions, which shape distinct political perspectives and perhaps different affective relationships to practices like armed resistance. In the international solidarity movement, a variety of voices will always emerge: There will be pacifists, those who advocate through a human rights framework, and others who are cautious of both of these approaches. Personally, I am more sympathetic to people who come to the Palestinian struggle not in relation to their own unique identity, but as a struggle they share because they share a desire to see a different world emerge, not only in Palestine, but in the world at large. However, I also believe that no single perspective should dominate or impose a singular narrative within the movement. These varied positions should coexist, or at least do their best to coexist, allowing the movement to remain both principled and inclusive.

AA: This question about affect and its relationship to strategy comes up a lot in the international movement. Let’s accept the reality you lay out in your writing: that Hamas is basically the only force on the ground leading the resistance against Israeli oppression. And that in Israel’s failure to negotiate, the kind of violence we saw on October 7th is an inevitability. What does that mean for a participant in the international movement? After all, they aren’t going to physically go and join the fight—they aren’t providing “material support” for Hamas and its militant activities, despite the claims of groups like the ADL. There is, however, a fair amount of sloganeering in support of armed struggle, which often accompanies a political affect of celebration, glorification, and sometimes fetishization. Jodi Dean wrote in her Verso piece that it’s precisely this affect that provides the freedom to imagine something different.

In June, the BNC [BDS National Committee] put out a statement that included a paragraph that said, essentially, there’s no requirement for people in the international movement to advocate for armed resistance, and in fact, this isn’t the best international strategy, because it brings down the forces of repression really strongly, and it also alienates many people, when we need the broadest possible coalition. This statement was roundly criticized by Palestinians, both because of questions about the BNC’s authority to make such a statement and because of the content of the statement itself, and it was pulled within a few hours. But I do think the BNC was right that this kind of sloganeering shrinks the movement, rather than growing it. For many people, it’s much more difficult to participate in a movement that leads with the slogans and iconography of armed struggle. What do you think our responsibility is in the international movement in terms of how we relate to armed struggle?

AO: I don’t think that a broad coalition needs to be one that is all behind [Hamas spokesperson] Abu Obeida and carrying Hamas flags and chanting for the resistance. I don’t think that’s the kind of support that Palestinians are necessarily looking for from a broad spectrum of people with different experiences and backgrounds and reasons for why they’re in this movement.

What is central to me, personally, is the need for the movement to understand that, for the past 100 years, Palestinians have faced an ideological assault rooted in the belief that there is something inherently diabolical about them simply because they practice armed resistance. It’s one thing to have reservations or critiques about specific forms of resistance; it’s quite another to portray Palestinians as a profane people for experimenting with ways to challenge the oppressive system they live under—a system that, from birth, conveys to them that they are unwanted, that they are to be expelled or killed. It’s essential for the movement to recognize that resistance is a natural human reaction to oppression—a complex phenomenon with its own tragedies, traumas, and ethical questions for Palestinians to confront and navigate. Again, this does not mean that everyone must align with a particular party or endorse specific methods of resistance. But it does mean that Palestinian resistance should not be framed as something inherently profane. Instead, it should be acknowledged as a deeply human response to a system that denies Palestinians their very right to exist.

In many cases, I think, those who fetishize resistance are the ones least willing to engage in it directly. They elevate it to a sacred status, but it’s important to understand that both the sacred and the profane operate at a distance; in both cases, one avoids direct engagement. We need to view resistance through a realist lens—not as something to be profaned or fetishized, but as a response to material necessity. Palestinians do not engage in armed resistance out of preference. If there were a viable nonviolent means of disrupting the colonial regime, Palestinians would readily embrace it. This was evident in the First Intifada, where nonviolence was largely adopted in response to the conditions of the time. And it explains, for instance, why Palestinians inside Israel who have citizenship are far less likely to participate in armed resistance—not necessarily as an ideological choice but as a reflection of their circumstances. People often misinterpret [Palestinian writer and revolutionary] Ghassan Kanafani as someone who celebrated the image of a Palestinian armed with a gun, placing it on a pedestal. Yet Kanafani’s project was about recognizing that this position had been forced upon Palestinians. It wasn’t rooted in a love for violence, or even a celebration of war for war’s sake, but in the brutal calculus of survival.

Ironically, even some Zionists have recognized this. If we look back to [Revisionist Zionist Ze’ev] Jabotinsky or even to the writings of [Israeli MK Bezalel] Smotrich today, we see an understanding—though twisted—that for Palestinians, resistance is bound to hope. This is precisely why figures like Jabotinsky insisted on the need to crush that hope, to construct what he termed “the iron wall.” The goal, for them, is to extinguish the possibility of resistance, for they understand that as long as resistance endures, so too does Palestinian hope for liberation.