This is a war against all of humanity and so long as the human spirit has the capacity to resist oppression, to see through the fog of lies – to value truth, liberty and love – there will always be those who rise-up and resist.
Those who commit evil do not like having a spotlight shone on their activities, anymore than they like those who oppose them. Controlling the narrative therefore becomes critical to their agenda for waging a war. Resistance movements, leaders, governments to be overthrown, or countries to be occupied, are first demonised and then proscribed as terrorist.
Re-reading Alistair Crooke’s book — Resistance the Essence of the Islamic Revolution — reminded me of why Western leaders fear resistance movements such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and others. Alistair Crooke writes how, “Jihad is a response to aggression: it does not itself initiate aggression. Jihad also means an internal struggle against resisting evil desires. It has a clear spiritual dimension because it is about following God’s wishes, protecting the vulnerable – young and old.”
One could expand this internal struggle further, to understand that Jihad, as a battle against evil, is a battle that faces all of humanity. If we simply indulge ourselves in the pleasures of life and ignore the genocide of children and babies in Gaza; the holocaust that is facing Palestinians in all of occupied historic Palestine; the murder of civilians in Lebanon and the murder of the school children and citizens of Iran, then we lose what humanity values most – our compassion and love for other human beings. Lose that, and then what do we have?
What is of increasing concern is how Western governments and institutions, have fallen into lockstep with the Israeli Zionist narrative, and have gone along by prescribing movements that resist these grave injustices, as terrorist.
Journalists, academics, doctors, aid workers and others, who attempt to expose Israel’s crimes, and expose the false propaganda, are either assassinated or labelled as terrorists. If they live in the West, these critics of Israel are frequently arrested, charged with ‘hate speech’ and labelled antisemitic.
Neither Hezbollah, Hamas nor any of the groups associated with ‘the axis of resistance’, pose a threat to Western nations. What they pose is a threat to Zionist Israel’s brutal, genocidal treatment of the Palestinians and Israel’s expansionist aspirations for a greater Israel. These Zionist ambitions don’t just mean taking over all of historic Palestine and Lebanon, but expansionist ambitions to occupy other West Asian countries as well. Western leaders, are so mentally occupied and entrenched in the Israeli Jewish-Evangelical Christian Zionist agenda, that they have become blind to any critical analysis and blind to the real suffering that is inflicted on innocent civilians resulting from these wars.
The Christian Zionist view is that we destroy the world in order to save it. It’s a view that requires the Messiah to come in and save us. ‘Save us from what? Save us from ourselves.’ The logic of this defies credibility, it defies early Christian thinking since it strips us of any responsibility to behave according to our conscience. Christian Zionist ideology not only stands in direct contrast to the concept of Jihad, it stands in contrast to the Christian message of ‘love thy neighbour’.
One wonders if this attempt to indoctrinate the US military into Christian Zionist dogma is to offer a competing ‘religious’ narrative to the Jihad concept in Islam — the ancient religious wisdom that originated in West Asia around one and a half thousand years ago. While the Biblical scriptures used to support Christianity are also ancient, the Evangelical Zionist interpretation of them isn’t. Western soldiers subjected to this Zionist doctrine have complained in large numbers. This indignation is hardly surprising, since it is Western soldiers who are asked to risk their lives for an ‘end of time’ scenario, where murdering innocents becomes a requisite to being saved.
The resistance fighters are dangerous to Israel and their Western backers, not because they have superior weaponry or high numbers. They are dangerous because they are fighting for what they authentically believe in. They are not fighting because they are seeking a military career, or hoping that enlistment might lead to a college degree. They are also not fighting because, unlike all Israeli youth who were conscripted into this war, they joined voluntarily. They are fighting foremost to protect their families, their community and their country. However Islamic resistance goes beyond the physical battle onto a spiritual realm where sacrificing oneself for truth, dignity, and the freedom of all oppressed people, becomes an honour.
The Iranian resistance movement originated out of the oppressive years of Reza Pahlavi. The Shah had been installed by the West after the CIA and Britain overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, when Mosaddegh tried to nationalise oil for the benefit of the people. The Iranians know their history. They know full well the harms that Israel and the West have done to them over the years. How Mossad operatives have assassinated scientists and tried to stir up revolution within Iran against the leadership. They share in the Islamic view of Jihad and have long prepared for this battle because they know they are fighting for freedom and sovereignty. Surrender would mean the subjugation and humiliation of this ancient nation.
Hezbollah became a resistance movement after the 1982 invasion of Israel into Lebanon and the September massacre of over 3,000 Palestinian women and children in Sabra and Shatila Refugee Camp. Hezbollah resistance fighters don’t just know their history, they undergo a study of philosophy. They are encouraged to be critical thinkers. To believe in themselves. Although gentle and humble in their relationship with others they have an inner resilience that sustains them. They have not taken up Jihad for mercenary reasons or because they were forced to. This battle for justice belongs to each and every one of them. It is internal and not external in the way that western soldiers are trained to view war.
Hamas originated from the Islamic tradition of offering charity. They ran hospitals and welfare programmes to help those in difficult circumstances. The call for battle came later. It came after the Israeli atrocities were such, that military confrontation became the only choice. In both natural law and international law, the right to resist is enshrined. This is true in Islam. Those who can fight are called upon to protect those who can’t.
Palestine has become a rallying call for all those who oppose oppression. However joining into a military confrontation isn’t the only way. Each individual has their own talents and the doctors, paramedics and journalists all face the same dangers when they refuse to ignore the cries of their fellow human beings and refuse to submit to oppression.
Compare this to the training of soldiers in the west who undergo exercises where they are regularly humiliated. They are screamed at by Sargent Majors who are trained to purposely maximise this psychological humiliation. Soldiers who think critically and disobey orders seen to be wrong, are court-martialled. Soldiers fighting in Vietnam used illicit drugs to help them cope with what they were being asked to do. More soldiers committed suicide after the war finished than died in action. It was not so long ago that, if a soldier in the West refused to fight, he could face a firing squad. While there will always be heroes on all battlefronts — soldiers who risk their lives for others – these illegal wars stand as a sad and damming testament on what many western soldiers are expected to do.
Ultimately suppressing truth, suppressing the human spirit cannot be sustained. As some are killed and others crumble under the sheer weight of cruelty and lies, there will always be those who rise-up the world over and fight because this battle for the integrity of the human spirit is a battle that cannot be lost.