Essays & Interviews
‘A Productive Language’: On Western Intellectual Paradigms and Refaat al-Areer
Placing Refaat Al-Areer's life alongside the likes of Hanna Mikhail and Fathi al-Shiqaqi as examples of Amilcar Cabral's class suicide in action, Ameed Faleh assesses the way that Palestinian intellectuals have sought to advance the Palestinian liberation struggle through their work, battling against attempts to foreclose it through normalisation and peace talks.
‘A Bond of the Same Nature’: Cartographies of Affiliation in the Global South
Tracing Palestine’s gradual role as a vanguard for Third World struggles, Suleiman Hodali details how the diverse set of triumphs, lessons, and tactics of resistance in the country formed a set of theories and practices for resistance against imperialism upon which others modelled their own forms of struggle.
Two Logics of War: Liberation Against Genocide
Unable to defeat the Palestinian armed resistance in successive battles, Israel has turned instead to intensifying its genocidal violence against unarmed Palestinians as the means to restore its necessary equation of material and ideological force.
Direct Action and the Global Fight Against Israel’s Arms Industry
Amid Western governments’ active participation in the genocide in Gaza, Liam Doherty describes the current state of organised and unorganised resistance in the imperialist core against manufacturers that facilitate the destruction of Palestine.
‘Got Fuck All’: Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes’ Dissident Republicanism
Marking the 15th anniversary of Brendan Hughes’ death, a short anthology of his writings – The Dark: Selected Writings of Brendan Hughes – bears testimony to a life which took Hughes from urban guerrilla, political prisoner, hunger striker and folk hero to reluctant dissident and outcast, told in its protagonist's own words.
‘Sides Not Solutions’: Zionist Propaganda in UK Schools
Investigating teachers’ resources used in UK classrooms, Alex Turrall details the misleading and disingenuous ‘both sides’ messaging in its materials, presenting Palestinian and Israeli perspectives as equally valid while being funded by and connected to a conspicuous number of Zionist organisations and individuals.
Anti-Zionism as Decolonisation
In this essay, Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani, two Palestinian writers, detail what it means to be anti-zionist, laying out foundational concepts and definitions as they explore essential strategies and tactics for a militant decolonial movement against settler-colonialism.
Misreading Palestine
In this article, Max Ajl deconstructs two widely repeated but false tropes related to Palestine: the first being the misguided notion that Netanyahu conspired with Hamas to maintain the Palestinian national division and empowered the movement in Gaza, and the second is the oft-repeated falsehood that Israel and its parasitic lobby drives America into irrational warmongering against its own interests.
‘An unyielding will to continue’: An Interview with Abdaljawad Omar on October 7th and the Palestinian Resistance
In this interview, Palestinian writer Abdaljawad Omar discusses the intergenerational character of Palestinian resistance and its aims on the 7th of October, what international solidarity means to Palestinians, and how narratives of progressive intellectuals in the West are often anti-intellectual and reactionary.
Gaza, the Fragility of Zionism, and the Inevitability of War
Surveying the balance of forces between Israel, its allies, and those of the Palestinian resistance and its supporters that have been revealed in the aftermath of the Al Aqsa Flood operation, Daniel Lindley argues that the now-exposed weakness of Israel and the fragility of the US in the region has made an escalation of the war all but inevitable.
October 7th: The Permanent Death of the Oslo Accords
Hamas’ surprise military assault on Israeli settlements on October 7th shocked everyone, forcefully breaking Gaza’s 16-year siege and with it the peace dividend that been established to subdue the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Ameed Faleh, a Palestinian student, writes that the death of the Oslo Accords marks the end of an era of pseudo-state building – with an age of liberation on the horizon.
Al-Aqsa Flood: Imperialism, Zionism and Reactionism in the 21st Century
On October 7 2023, Palestinian fighters from various political factions, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the DFLP and the PFLP, broke the 16-year-old siege of Gaza. They did so in an attempt to liberate Palestine from Israel, but we enter the eighth day of the war as the West has given the green light for Israel to commit genocide.
George Habash on Morality and the Palestinian Revolution: “Our Code of Morals is Our Revolution”
When the PFLP safely released a group of Western hostages in 1970, its leader, George Habash explained the group’s actions to them from a Palestinian revolutionary perspective. 53 years later, amidst unprecedented Palestinian resistance, his words should be listened to closely.
The Marcos Makeover: Revising History and Rebranding Martial Law in the Philippines
51 years on from the declaration of martial law by the Ferdinand Marcos Sr. dictatorship in the Philippines on 21st September 1972, Sonia Remontada reflects on the continuities between the dictatorship and the present-day rule of Marcos’ son, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr.
‘The situation in the North of Ireland remains a colonial one’: An interview with Odrán de Bhaldraithe
Ahead of its publication on the 22nd of June, Louis Allday spoke to Odrán de Bhaldraithe about Neglect in the North of Ireland, a book that details the manifest neglect in the North’s economy, its politics, housing, and healthcare, the root of which is clear: British rule.
The Imperialist Roots of the Manchester Model
In this response to Isaac Rose’s Tribune piece, Ignatz Maria critically assesses the deficiencies of the popular ‘financialisation’ framework as an explanation for the urban crisis in Manchester and for the contradictions of the so-called Manchester model. Maria highlights how an over-emphasis on the role of foreign capital in urban development obscures the role of Manchester as a key node in British capitalism and in turn serves to legitimise the chauvinism used by the local council to mask their own complicity in the crisis.
Imperialism of Our Time
Aijaz Ahmad grounds the 2003 invasion of Iraq in its historical conjuncture, inaugurating a new phase of imperialism following the inter-imperialist rivalries of the early 20th century and the ‘inter-systemic rivalry’ between the US and the Soviet Union, with the Bush government presiding over a ‘moment when history’s greatest concentration of force can be exercised without any restraint.’
COP27 and Imperialism: Weaving a Crown of Thorns for the Global South
While COP27 has been defined by greater inclusion of voices from the Global South, developed countries were vocal in their opposition to fund disaster relief efforts for developing countries – signalling the continuation of contempt towards popular anti-imperial movements and demands made from poor, working class peoples.
Against the Common Enemy: Godard’s Anti-Imperialist Cinema
Patrick Higgins recalls his encounters with the films of Jean-Luc Godard, who passed away last week at 91, charting Godard’s evolving politicization from his disillusionment with the Hollywood studio system that inspired his youth to his collaboration with the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
The Revolutionary Tradition of Kanafani's On Zionist Literature
Ghassan Kanafani’s political commentary was rooted in a broader revolutionary tradition of rebellion in the colonised world, which sought liberation through struggle for sovereignty and self-reliance. It is in this spirit that On Zionist Literature is not an appeal to the West’s collective conscience but is concerned with it only insofar as it facilitates colonial violence.
Subjects
- Imperialism
- British Politics
- Palestine
- Marxism
- US Politics
- Irish Politics
- Sinn Fein
- Racism
- Climate
- Gender
- Critical Theory
- Art and culture
- China
- Labour Party
- Black Power
- Technology
- Covid
- Palestine Action
- South America
- NHS
- Third World
- Green New Deal
- Iraq War
- Ukraine War
- Cuba
- Feminism
- Armed Resistance
- Essays