Over the last 15 months, artists have mobilized against Israel’s attacks on civilians in Gaza, which organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have determined to be consistent with genocide. After multiple failed attempts, Israel and Hamas agreed to a mutually negotiated ceasefire deal that went into effect on Sunday, January 19, with an initial phase stipulating a halt in Israeli attacks on Gaza for six weeks. The deal will reportedly allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip as Palestinians are permitted to return to their locales and Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners will be released in stages. Still fragile as it unfolds day by day, the US-backed ceasefire deal marks a precarious break in the onslaught of violence and destruction throughout Gaza. On Monday, January 27, tens of thousands of displaced Gazans began to return north.
In their international push for a permanent ceasefire, artists have developed visual languages to demand institutional divestments from Israel and call for an end to violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Many have either foregone or been denied life-changing career opportunities in their public advocacy for Palestine, underscoring the importance of community, solidarity, and artistic freedom in the broader culture sector.
Below are some of the most impactful moments of artistic protest for Gaza since October 2023.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have begun in New York City as the Trump administration pushes for an increase in arrests of undocumented people across the United States.
On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was in New York City to oversee ICE enforcement operations.
Noem confirmed on X that at least one arrest happened in the Bronx as a result of an ICE raid. The Aurora Police Department later confirmed the suspect arrested was wanted for burglary in Colorado.
Mayor Eric Adams addressed the ICE operation in a statement, which read in part:
“Our city coordinated with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on a federal criminal investigation involving a suspect hiding in New York City. As I have repeatedly said, we will not hesitate to partner with federal authorities to bring violent criminals to justice — just as we have done for years.”
An ICE spokesperson told [news source] that raids will be conducted in New York in a statement, which read in part: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began conducting enhanced targeted operations today in New York to enforce U.S. immigration law and preserve public safety and national security by keeping potentially dangerous criminal aliens out of our communities.”
Columbia University says it has suspended one student after “expediting” its investigation into a group who disrupted a class on Israeli history.
Demonstrators handed out flyers with “violent imagery” to students attending a History of Modern Israel class on Tuesday, the university said in a statement.
Columbia said it identified and suspended one student involved, pending a full review, and that its investigation remains active.
It was the first day of Professor Avi Shilon’s class, and students had only just been introduced to the course when protesters – whose faces were covered and appeared to be wearing keffiyehs, entered and distributed anti-Israel leaflets, student Elisha Baker told [news source].
One flyer shows a burning Israeli flag underneath the words “Burn Zionism to the Ground,” and another depicts a large black boot about to stomp on the Jewish Star of David and reads “Crush Zionism,” according to pictures taken by Baker.
“It was shocking for everyone in the class,” said Baker, a junior studying Middle Eastern history. “I’m still super excited for this class. It’s a shame that this incident is going to put us on edge inside the classroom.”
New York City police are searching for a group of people they say took a subway train on a joyride.
The department released images and video Wednesday of six individuals who they say commandeered an unoccupied “R” train over the weekend.
Surveillance video from inside the train shows the group, who all wore jackets with their hoods up, as they exited the conductor’s compartment and walked through the otherwise empty car.
A video of the group on their joyride was also shared on Instagram.
The clip shows one of them seated at the controls while another appears to be sitting on the outside of the car, their legs dangling over the edge.
“Cover your faces. Cover your faces,” one of them says on the video as the train accelerates through the tunnel.
The department said Thursday that they believe the joyride occurred around 10 p.m. Saturday at the 36th Street and 4th Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn.
Police and transit officials have not said how long and how far the suspects travelled in the stolen train. They said the suspects damaged glass panels on the train’s camera.
The group fled on foot, according to police. No injuries were reported.
Spokespersons for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said they are working with police on the investigation.
Police in September said two teens took an empty subway train in Queens on a brief joyride before crashing it and fleeing.
“Im so scared. Please come.” One year ago today, these were Hind’s last words as she called for an ambulance, while Israeli forces unleashed 355 bullets murdering her as she hid in a car. One year ago, the world failed Hind. But today and everyday we owe Hind, all our martyrs, and ourselves, action.
So today we acted. Inspired by Hind, and the bravery of every Palestinian child who has faced down Israeli genocide for the last century – whether they threw a molotov at a checkpoint, a rock at a tank, or made a call for help. So long as they resist, so must we. We attacked two targets at Columbia University. First, the Kravis Columbia School of Business, one of Columbia’s most recent violent gentrification projects into Harlem, the construction of which was conditioned on the creation of Columbia’s Apartheid Global Center in “Tel Aviv”. We will not allow this land-grab to go unchallenged. Second, we attacked the School of International and Public Affairs – the first Columbia institution to expel a student for their support for Palestinian liberation, currently run by a former “Israeli intelligence officer” – Killer Keren, and staffed by Rebecca Weiner, head of the Counterterrorism Unit of the NYPD, who directed the brutal police assault on our comrades in Hind’s Hall last May. We left Hind’s call painted on SIPA, and we cemented the sewage lines of the entire building, forcing them to shut down business-as-usual.
We are not experts in what it means to take revolutionary action. We are people – just like you – who, today, chose to act. We were afraid- to be arrested, suspended, and expelled; and that is exactly the point. The goal is not to be fearless, but to recognize that to be afraid is merely a symptom of our moral clarity. We are soberly aware of what we may lose if we act, and we are soberly aware of how much more we will lose if we don’t. The most severe consequence we could face today is not expulsion or prison time- it is the knowledge that we had the opportunity to act, and, instead, chose cowardice. The most severe consequence we could face is not only to have failed Hind one year ago, but to have continued to fail her today.
So we invite you to join us. Let us identify the actions that elicit fear in us, find the people who we can be courageous with, embrace the fear, and take collective action.
As Hind’s mother watched the scene of Hind’s Hall unfold, she said “I wanted these movements and support to come while Hind was still alive and not after… but I was still happy that there’s a possibility that Hind’s cause could move and mobilize people in this world.” Let us act together and transform that possibility into a reality.
Activists vandalized the outside of @miriamrest , a disgusting genocide supporting israeli restaurant in Brookyln. Not only was this act condemned by pig mayor Erikkk Adams and zionist senator Chuckkk Schumer, but “pro-Palestine” mayoral hopeful Zohran Kwame Mamdani decided to join in on the disavowal. Zohran was infamously arrested outside of Schumer’s house at a protest, but here it looks like they agree that fighting genocide supporters outside of “permitted” protests is too far. A supposedly socialist mayor denouncing some red paint and playing into antisemitism accusations is too far, but Mamdani’s dedication to the cause was already in question because no true supporter of the liberation and resistance would ever run for a state-elected position. No more wheatpasting or support for this fuck!
Found on social media.
The attack went down just before 3 a.m. Sunday morning, with three vandals sneaking up on the spot under the cover of darkness with their faces hidden behind hoods and masks.
One of the vandals served as a lookout, while the other two hurriedly marred Miriam’s windows before scurrying off into the night, security footage obtained by [news source] showed.
“It’s just a sad thing, you know, I don’t know what people, why they’re so angry about a restaurant in Brooklyn,” said Rafael Hasid, who’s owned the restaurant for 20 years.
“I’m Israeli, like, ‘I’m sorry I was born in Israel?’ I’m not stealing anybody’s food, not doing anything. I don’t know what people, what do they want from me, what did I do?”
The incident was the second time his restaurant was targeted by anti-Israel agitators. About two years ago, Hasid’s Miriam location on the Upper West Side was similarly vandalized.
He’s also been subjected to numerous threatening phone calls, while he said random people who have never eaten at his restaurants have blanketed him with negative reviews online.
While he has everything he needs to clean the paint off his glass, Hasid decided to open his doors Sunday without cleaning it off.
And he said the public’s response has been inspiring, with people stopping by to eat who otherwise hadn’t planned to, some offering to donate to help with the clean up, and others sticking their heads in the simply offer their support and condolences.
US Sen. Chuck Schumer even stopped by to place an order and show his support, the owner said.
Police are investigating the incident, and have have posted officers to stand watch nearby.
January 18 is the Day of the Forest Defender, honoring the life of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers two years ago while protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta, and everyone else who has given their lives in the fight against those who would render the earth uninhabitable in the course of their pursuit of profit. This year, a call circulated for people to organize festivals of resistance in their communities on the weekend of January 17-19. Here, we share reports from some of these events.
The situation is grim. Despite acknowledging that Trump represents fascism, Democrats have nonetheless welcomed the arrival of despotism, dutifully voting for new legislation targeting immigrants and doing their best to keep protesters out of the streets. Tech CEOs have followed suit, pouring millions of dollars into his inauguration and crowding into St. John’s Church to worship at the feet of their new master.
Elon Musk made the Nazi salute twice from the podium during the inauguration, leaving only just enough plausible deniability to confuse the most naïve. Musk has posted fascist dog whistles on Twitter before, even before he purchased it in order to reintroduce Nazis to the platform, ban anarchists, and promote the fascist agenda.
From this point forward, nothing should surprise us. The incoming government has made it clear that they intend to inflict as much harm as possible on those who are vulnerable while concentrating as much money as possible in the hands of the ultra-rich. These are the central points of their agenda. Attempting to spread information about their misdeeds in order to provoke popular outrage is a waste of time. From here out, all that matters is developing the capacity to defend each other from their attacks while preparing to go on the offensive as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
The faces of the oligarchy looked craven and servile as they lined up at the inauguration to toady to Trump. Capitalism concentrates power in the hands of the most rapacious, but they can only hold on to power by being completely subservient to its demands.
Fortunately, not everyone is taking this sitting down. Anarchists around the country called for “festivals of resistance” the weekend before the inauguration in order to bring communities together prepare to resist. Here follow reports from a few of these. You can read the original call to organize festivals of resistance here, along with a list of dozens of events around the country.
January 11
Sacramento, Chicago, and a few other locations hosted events a weekend early, building up momentum.
Sacramento, California
On Saturday, January 11, well over 600 people came together in downtown Sacramento for a community gathering at a local Methodist Church featuring workshops, skillshares, info-tables, and a key-note address from anarchist author and mutual aid organizer Dean Spade. The previous night, people had gathered to write letters to political prisoners. On the day of the event, hundreds streamed into the building, dramatically outnumbering the nearby Trump rally at the capitol, which brought out only a hundred people.
The workshops included basic first aid, tenant organizing, food autonomy, anti-fascist organizing, community self-defense, and mutual aid. Dean Spade spoke for over an hour on mutual aid organizing with the recent fires in Los Angeles in mind, and also talked about how we need to change the broader culture in our movements, bringing in more people and creating a home for people to grow in through different cycles of struggle.
The event featured a well-organized security team and several zine tables and distros. No major problems occurred. So much pizza was ordered from a local business that the owner told one organizer, “This is bigger than Dave Matthew’s Band.” Crash into this, Dave!
January 17-19
Over two dozen cities hosted Festivals of Resistance this past weekend.
Brooklyn, New York
From noon until after 10 pm, the Interference Archive hosted a marathon of presentations and skillshares aimed at bringing people together and building capacity within New York City’s radical communities. The Archive collects and displays ephemera from social movements; it was covered in banners, posters, communiqués, and other material from the Stop Cop City/Defend the Atlanta Forest movement as part of its ongoing exhibit, “This is Not a Local Struggle.”
The event opened with a moment of silence for Tortuguita. Then, over a dozen local groups and autonomous organizers gave trainings on topics including tenant and union organizing, protest and jail support tactics, and proposals for peoples’ assemblies and other new political formations, coalescing into a conversation about how to oppose the city’s prison expansion plan. The event ended with a community dinner, followed by a screening of several short documentaries about land defenders in Atlanta and Louisiana.
Elsewhere in Brooklyn, people courageously redecorated a billboard. Here follows their statement.
Today, thousands of people across the world organized events and took collective action in honor of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers two years ago while protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta. Tortuguita died defending the Weelaunee Forest. January 18, the Day of the Forest Defender, commemorates their 26 years on this earth and their steadfast commitment to collective liberation. Their spirit is alive in our resistance.
We, the writers of this message, took over a billboard on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, one of NYC’s largest highways, used by 130,000 vehicles daily. We covered a CopShot police billboard—that recruits informants with a $10,000 bribe—with a tribute to Tortuguita and all land defenders. In the context of a city that spends $29 million dollars a day on policing, off the side of a highway that displaced thousands of families with a stroke of a pen, we replace the state’s cowardly propaganda with a commemoration of land defenders’ sacrifice and struggle. Collective memory animates our will to destroy this empire that is killing us and our planet. As the US funnels billions into building Cop Cities across the country in its latest attempt to repress us, they concede what we already know—that rebellion is inevitable.
Viva Tortuguita and all land defenders. We will destroy this empire, with Earth as our witness.
The billboard before it was improved.
Cleveland, Ohio
In Cleveland, dozens of people gathered in a snowstorm to occupy a park and demonstrate our determination to build a world that works for everyone. Gathering around a banner reading “No matter who is in power, we keep us safe,” we held space near a busy intersection where people freely shared their experiences of a failed system and imagined the better world that we can build. This occupation was preceded by an indoor direct action training, allowing folks to hone the skills required to move forward. After the occupation, members of the community gathered indoors to discuss our collective needs and ongoing efforts to meet them, forming new connections and deepening existing ones. The day concluded with a documentary screening by the IWW [Industrial Workers of the World].
These events were organized by a newly formed group of anarchists that includes both experienced folks and individuals new to the movement. While the formation of this group was occasioned by calls for a Festival of Resistance, those involved are determined to cultivate the connections formed, building a group that fosters ties within the community and facilitates future actions, building our capacity for future resistance.
A projection at the entry to the Festival of Resistance in central North Carolina.
Durham, North Carolina
The weekend opened with a concert and dance party on Friday night. On Saturday, the Festival of Resistance in Durham, North Carolina drew 300 people for four hours of workshops running two or three at a time. Visitors could take their fill of free material from a dozen literature tables representing various mutual aid and community defense groups; some of those have been around for years or decades, while others emerged out of the assemblies that followed the election in November. Food Not Bombs provided a full hot meal, there was a busy childcare space.
The events continued on Sunday with four more hours of workshops in Chapel Hill, followed by a screening of a film about Rojava that concluded with a discussion featuring the director.
Gary, Indiana
Following up outreach events in Chicago, more than 75 people gathered outside the Gary/Chicago International Airport to demonstrate against the role that it plays in deportations, which Trump has been threatening to ramp up as part of his program of doing harm to undocumented people.
You can read one report on the action in Gary here:
The Gary/Chicago International Airport has been used since at least 2013 to fly deportees out of the region. GlobalX, an airline company based in Miami, FL, subcontracts with ICE to deport people every Friday from Gary/Chicago airport to Kansas City, MO before taking them out of the country. More than 19,000 people were deported out of Gary between 2013 and 2017 according to public records obtained through a Freedom of Information request by a local organizer.
Demonstrators were leaving the airport on foot Saturday morning when around two dozen Gary police officers descended on them. Officers grabbed and arrested two protestors who were in the process of complying with police instructions. A photojournalist was also seized and arrested by the officers while documenting the other arrests, in what amounts to a violent attack on the freedom of the press.
The march, held two days before Donald Trump takes power for a second time, represents the Gary community’s commitment to their immigrant neighbors in the face of state violence, but builds on the diligent work of community organizers over the years. Since 2017, interfaith groups, immigrant rights activists, and rank-and-file union workers from East Chicago and elsewhere in northwest Indiana regularly held prayer circles and other peaceful protests, but had not been met with significant repression.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
About thirty people attended a movie screening of Fell In Love with Fire, including many new faces. In the discussion following the film, many participants related their experience in the George Floyd Uprising to the uprising in Chile, reflecting on how to fight the new Trump regime. The evening concluded with writing letters to prisoners. People were very engaged and took a lot of zines and posters.
Oakland, California
About 150 people, mostly anarchists, marched to an abandoned OUSD [Oakland Unified School District] building, broke in, and held an assembly in a courtyard inside the premises. A dozen people spoke about various existing projects and how to get plugged in. Then, there were six breakout groups to discuss strategic horizons related to
Antirepression 2, International Solidarity
Housing
Immigration
Community resiliency/disaster relief, and
Other.
Afterwards, at 5 pm, a dance party got underway at the amphitheater at Lake Merritt, and people reconstructed the George Floyd memorial there.
Olympia, Washington
In Olympia, a coalition of local organizations and people from different political scenes organized a big-tent “People’s March.” The more anarchist contingent within the group advocated to attach a Festival of Resistance directly after the march. Dozens of organizations sponsored the events.
The event was diverse, well-attended, and notably intergenerational. The rally before the march drew about 1000 people. There were several speakers, including a speaker for Palestinian liberation, a recorded speech from local incarcerated pan-Africanist Tomas Afeworki, and a speaker and translator from La Resistencia, the group dedicated to shutting down the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center. There was also a moment of silence for a beloved long-term organizer, a participant in the organizing group behind the event, who passed away a week earlier. The march began with a local Indigenous activist performing a drum song; in the back, a marching band kept time.
Because of the ties between anarchists and other local activists, there was a lot of good faith participation. It appeared that the black bloc of about 20-30 people designed its splinter march with consideration for the family-friendly march, diverting police attention elsewhere. A little vandalism and graffiti occurred, to only a few people’s dismay; most in the march seemed unconcerned.
The march ended at the capitol, where people promoted a brand-new announcements-only Signal thread modeled on Austin’s Sunbird. A couple more speakers closed out the march.
The Festival of Resistance started immediately afterwards at a location only a few blocks away. The building was packed from the beginning. Probably 150-200 people circulated through it. This was the real aim of attaching the two events. Food and drinks were served. Several organizations set up tables—letters to prisoners, the Emma Goldman Youth and Homeless Outreach Project, zine distros, and the like—and people mingled and ate for an hour before the sessions. Then, there were announcements, a toast to our dearly departed, followed by two rounds of discussions and workshops. The workshops included direct action 101 (with a local history flipbook collecting printed communiqués), resisting repression, and the history and culture surrounding the local Artesian Well and the struggle against its enclosure. There were topic-based facilitated discussions, as well.
Many people expressed the desire to keep the ball rolling and repeat this model in order to try to continue the conversations rather than having to begin again from scratch. In retrospect, it would have been ideal to have already planned a future event that people could put in their calendars, or an activity that could facilitate people generating something like that together.
Providence, Rhode Island
Following the Providence Festival of Resistance and words from Tortuguita’s friends and comrades, some people marched to the Atwells Avenue overpass and hung a banner over I-95 reading “Revenge for Tortuguita—No More Presidents.”
Richmond, Virginia
Up to 500 people attended the Richmond Festival of Resistance in the course of the day. Many contributed names, remembrances, or tokens of other martyrs to the altar honoring Tortuguita.
In addition to celebrating grief together, Richmond’s “Festival of Resistance,” advertised locally as the inaugural “People’s Assembly,” included a full day of tabling, workshops, panels, and free food. The gathering launched a new initiative, the People’s Assembly, a recurring venue for citywide coordination and strategy building.
The idea is to hold citywide assemblies in each season, building from the neighborhood assemblies that many people left this gathering inspired to begin.
Tucson, Arizona
Less than a week in advance, a handful of friends decided to hold a humble “Parade of Resistance” on the Day of the Forest Defender. With only three days’ notice on a busy weekend, 30-40 people gathered in a park while members of a local brass band played a short set.
The parade then took a one and a half mile route through the part of town with the most pedestrian traffic. The sound system was bumping a cumbia mix made by a comrade who recently passed away. The vibe was fun and playful, and generally very well received by bystanders, some of whom joined in, dancing in the street for a block or two. The cops arrived about halfway through, but people ignored their orders to vacate the street, and they resigned themselves to redirecting traffic for us. Their investment in a “progressive” image often complicates their efforts to assert control.
The messaging was an experiment in vagueness. The only banner read “Towards a Free World”; it was accompanied by colorful butterfly puppets. A few paraders distributed pamphlets with accessible language calling for revolutionary action and transformation. On the back, a flier promoted an upcoming “Festival of Rebellion” on February 15.
The march ended at sunset at a classic spot for punks and train kids. Across the tracks, there was graffiti honoring Tortuguita and our dear friend who has just passed away. The dance party continued into the night with a bonfire and more graffiti.
Ultimately, it was a nice morale boost and very worthwhile, considering what a light lift the organizing was. It gave some of us a chance to get out in the streets without demanding a bunch of work from an already overloaded network. Definitely better than doing nothing. Hopefully, it created some momentum to carry forward.
New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has installed spikes at subway stations to stop turnstile jumpers—and they don’t seem to be working.
An unidentified subway rider wasn’t fazed by the visible spikes at the 59th Street/Lexington Avenue station, jumping right over them. Sporting a Rick and Morty sweatshirt, he carefully placed his left hand on the metal spikes to jump over the turnstile pole just in time to walk onto the train approaching the station.
No one stopped him.
“Oh, so now I gotta jump over it? OK, I don’t give a f–k, I’ll jump over it,” the man was overheard saying.
In a May 2024 communique, the student movement in Gaza issued a salute as well as a challenge to the global student movement. Published through the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, the statement acknowledged student organisations across the globe as ‘a revolutionary fighting vanguard, and a natural and integral part of our Palestinian Liberation movement’. Commending the student mobilisations which culminated in a wave of university encampments across Northern America in April, the Secretariat of Palestinian Student Frameworks in Gaza at the same time called for a ‘revolutionary escalation of the global student intifada for Palestine’.
Amidst the broadest and most sustained campaigns of international solidarity with Palestine witnessed in recent years, what grants students pride of place in the salutations, as well as exhortations, issued by the besieged in Gaza?
A ‘revolutionary vanguard’?
Next to the regional armed movements which provide the bulk of military and logistical support to the Palestinian struggle for national liberation, the Western student body is surely a marginal figure, at best playing an auxiliary role. Yet the encampments have highlighted the centrality of university campuses as key battlegrounds for Palestine solidarity in the global North, and perhaps even the potential of students to accede to the exacting title of a ‘revolutionary fighting vanguard’. To produce such a force though, the Western student movement must reckon with the conditions of its possibility as well as the contradictions of the present moment.
On the whole, it’s possible to characterise the current movement as an organic recomposition of at least three social forces or political valences present in the imperial core, each bearing a distinct historical stamp. First, it is a natural outgrowth of an anti-racism revitalised and radicalised in recent years by the George Floyd uprisings and the Black Lives Matter movements, as well as the protest camps of NODAPL Standing Rock. Second, it inherits decades of strident campaigning by the Palestinian diaspora and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions organising. Third, it has revived the legacy of student opposition to imperialist wars and Apartheid, most notably in Vietnam and South Africa. As Aziz Rana recently put it, this movement can be seen as marking an indisputable return of the ‘language of empire’ to public consciousness.
While the language of anti-imperialism and internationalism has no doubt returned, however, the material demands of these ideologies pose a real and formidable challenge to student movements in the North. In this regard, the Research and Destroy collective is correct in its assessment that the student intifada has to contend not only with state violence and secondary antagonists, but also with ‘the difficulty in the alignment of form and content, of tactics and goals, given its position as a solidarity movement distant from its primary antagonists and its primary purpose, the liberation of Palestine’. What the movement inherits and combines by way of anti-racist, BDS, and anti-war campaigning is by no means a guarantee of strategic efficacy.
From ‘anti-war’ to the people’s war
Despite the strong affinities built over the years between black, Indigenous, and Palestinian activists, this affinity has yet to translate into tangible and sustainable forms of internationalism. And while BDS has provided an effective strategy on several fronts, its impact is and continues to be blunted on others, not least that of the university-finance-military nexus. Thanks to the rise of asset management as a mode of enclosure and capital accumulation in recent decades, universities have been lavishly equipped with the means to out-manoeuvre student organisations and their already limited capacity to enforce and realise demands for divestment. Indeed, and as noted elsewhere, the challenge of divestment today often involves not so much specific investments in single companies as it does market performance in entire sectors, meaning that students are really faced with the entire architecture and ‘overarching system of finance capital guiding the ways their universities now accrue value.’
Moreover, while the language and clarion calls of the student movements of the 60’s and 70’s may still resonate with considerable force today, this resonance belies a telling ideological shortcoming. While struggles in Vietnam and Algeria inspired movements for peace in the West, they were received as a call for war in the Third World – namely a people’s war. The difference is striking, and it remains palpable today in the widely divergent aims and respective strategies employed to achieve them, including in the largely pacifist orientation of much Palestine solidarity organising in the West.
Finally, there is the reality of Israel today, which is neither Apartheid South Africa, or French Algeria, or even the US in Vietnam. It is rather the purest expression of militarised settler colonialism acting as a lynchpin of Western imperialism and fossil capitalism as a whole, and its fate has implications of world-systemic and world historical proportions. More than a geostrategic bulwark and forward base for the US empire, the Zionist state is a key and integral component of the cycle of capital accumulation in the region, described by Ali Kadri as ‘accumulation through waste’. Centred on the production and circulation of oil and weapons, this system ensures the recursive de-development and degradation of state capacities in the region, undercutting social reproduction on a societal scale. Far from being epiphenomenal, systemic destruction through instability and war is an elementary feature of this logic and, therefore, of the totality of capital. Israel plays several of key roles in securing the continuation of this cycle, including that of arms producer, geopolitical irritant, as well as a catalyst of region-wide militarisation.
These realities, and the challenges they pose, have not gone unnoticed by the wider student body. Calls for a ceasefire are only the most audible and visible demands of the movement, and underwriting them is an ideological shift which is likely to push the movement beyond the simple opposition to a genocidal war. As the encampments’ organising cadres have been at pains to highlight, Israel’s onslaught has been but a catalyst for a process that was already underway in the politicisation and conscientisation of a broad swathe of the student body in the US. A consequence of this has been the critical grasp on a fundamental quality of the world system which Israel embodies outright, and which makes opposition to it a material necessity and not just a moral imperative. This is the basic fact that core and periphery are interlocked through value flows which determine political, economic, and social life at the most intimate level.
The student’s movement beyond itself
Formalised into concrete and lasting strategy, this basic fact stands to make the student intifada a potent force indeed. To that effect, the groundwork has already been laid by the mobilisations across campuses worldwide. What distinguishes today’s student movement from those of yesteryear is that it has finally stood the critique of ‘financialisation’ the right way up. Since at least the turn of the century, financial capital has been identified by the Western left as its principal adversary, and successive waves of revolt have rallied under the banner of anti-austerity.
Within this vision, ‘neoliberalism’ has been, at best, understood as a capitalist broadside against labour, with finance acting as an instrument of plunder, despoliation, and new waves of enclosure. Vast, almost incalculable, transfers of wealth is both the goal and consequence, and where the periphery is taken into account, it does not complicate the picture so much as simply add a bottom layer to this upward transfer. For perhaps the first time in these two decades, a movement has now emerged in the North which is incorporating into practice an urgent corrective to this overall vision.
Unlike their predecessors, the current revolts on campus are not staged in protest to job cuts or student debt, but to the leveraging of universities as a link in the value chain between core and periphery. While it remains to be seen whether their momentum will be regained in the autumn term, the initial thrust of the encampments struck in the right direction, This struggle realises on the level of practice what has so often been posited only in theory. That is, that finance and the financialisation of higher education does not simply represent an attack on the ‘commons’ or a public good, but rather the acquisition and burning of social surpluses in the core to fuel the wasting and immolation of human lives in the periphery.
This process can doubtless be said to hold for any number of sectors and institutions commandeered by finance and ‘rentier capitalism’ in the North, but the extent to which its contradictions have been heightened and politicised on campuses seems unparalleled. Of course, this has much to do with the student’s contradictory position itself, which is somewhat ‘liberated’ from the fetters of the wage through the peonage of debt.
The political consequences for campuses are significant, with state repression dismantling one of the few traditional bastions for political organising left intact, if teetering, by neoliberalism. Whatever its outcome for universities, this unravelling crystallises a fundamental observation by organisers themselves, which is that the student activist is but a ‘transitional figure that ideally helps to broaden the movement for Palestinian liberation beyond itself from the campus as battlefield, generalising it into a struggle that engages with the material contradictions and antagonisms of society at large.’
Whither Palestine solidarity?
In this transitional process, it is not just the figure of the student whose destiny becomes manifest in its own dissolution. The question of Palestine ‘solidarity’ itself now meets a belated reckoning, its erstwhile self-evidence cracking under the historical force of Al-Aqsa’s Flood, and its faultlines revealing new depths and divergences. This is precisely as it should be: the Palestinian resistance has sought nothing less than to ‘crack history open’ and divulge the latent possibilities seemingly foreclosed by the hegemony of empire.
In the region itself, ‘normalisation’ named the total victory of fossil capitalism and systemic destruction. October 7th derailed this consensus and charted a different course, one which has recentered Palestine as the fulcrum of class struggle and which moreover insists on its final determinacy through what can only be described as a people’s war. The importance of the latter as a political project and strategic horizon cannot be over-stated, and its meaning has yet to become clear for Western solidarity movements. While it is unlikely that the resistance leadership fully anticipated the abyssal depths to which Israel would sink in exacting bloody retribution, the destructive and vindictive nature of the response was well within its expectations.
The Flood was nevertheless unleashed as an opening salvo of a war, the outcomes, stakes, and risks of which would implicate the masses of Palestine and the Arab world as a whole. The objectively incalculable cost incurred as a result is not the price of a negotiated ceasefire or a phased return to normalisation, but that of a concrete and calculated set of objectives which would give the resistance an advance position and a firmer footing in its anticipated popular war. These include but are not limited to: the liberation of a maximal number of Palestinian captives, the delegitimisation of the Vichy government of the Palestinian Authority, the undermining and demoralisation of Israel’s military and security apparatuses, and the deepening of its internal political crisis. These are the intended advances in a war of manoeuvre for which the resistance had been painstakingly preparing and capacity-building for years.
Across the West Bank and the wider region, the Flood continues to rally the masses and popular armed movements, crystallising political alignments and opening up new fronts of resistance. Beyond the region, however, such lines have yet to be drawn, and Palestine solidarity remains imprisoned in the form it acquired through its interminable war of position. If it is to have any meaningful role in the political terrain opened by the Flood, the solidarity movement must re-examine both its form and content in line with the people’s war, including its current objectives as well as its long-term ambitions.
In concrete terms, this will of course depend on a practical evaluation of the movement’s situation and conditions in any one locale. All the same, the task likely entails a reappraisal of some broad and characteristic features, which should provide the movement with a departure point rather than a terminus. Key among these is its spontaneity, which may have been a necessary condition for its emergence, but which is wholly insufficient for and antithetical to its continuation, let alone its escalation. Without a concerted political program giving it strategic and ideological clarity, the movement is unlikely to acquire a form adequate to the task at hand.
The university encampments, for instance, are paradigmatic in this regard. As a tactic which is naturally and necessarily contained, in terms of both space and time, the barricaded camp is potentially far-reaching if harnessed to a wider strategy within which disclosure and divestment campaigns are situated as initial or transitory phases. The camps could serve as both muster and training ground, bolstering the movement logistically and numerically, arming it politically and ideologically, and furnishing it with the organisational means to deploy beyond the camp itself. To date, however, this potential does not seem to have borne fruit. Whether through repression or concession or a combination, universities effectively dismantled the encampments within weeks of their emergence. But the end of the encampments need not have spelled a setback for the movement, which seems to be the case currently. It could have instead meant its expansion and re-deployment beyond campuses given a longer-term strategy with sufficient collective buy-in, successive phases for escalation, and/or multiple alternatives for redirection. In lieu of this, however, and once the disclosure and divestment campaigns reached a (rather predictable) impasse, the movement failed to initiate any manoeuvres to that effect.
At present, therefore, it appears that while the ‘student intifada’ has invigorated the Western solidarity movement and perhaps the left in general, it remains ill-equipped to rise to the challenge of escalation issued by Palestinian comrades. The failure to develop a political program can reasonably be attributed to a number of causes, all of them instructive. Of course, they include material challenges of forming broad and sustained coalitions in the context of a neoliberal, repressive, and Zionist university apparatus, but they also concern the class composition of the student body and the ideological consequences thereof. Both these dimensions and others deserve attention elsewhere, but it is worth noting in conclusion at least one precondition for escalated action.
Whether or not student organisations are really, truly answerable to their Palestinian comrades will likely depend on whether or not they see themselves as actually implicated in the latter’s historic mission and the people’s war which now seeks to fulfil it.
(For those who wish to print the newspaper, see the instructions below.)
The 3rd issue of the anarcho-nihilist/insurrectionary newspaper “Blessed Is The Flame” has been published. Its pages contain reports of direct actions, claims of responsibility, texts, poems, and news from anarchist prisoners and trials that were published in November and December 2024 in ten different languages across various parts of the world, or were sent to us via email and are being published for the first time. (Some of the texts published for the first time will also be uploaded as standalone posts on our blog, blessed-is-the-flame.espivblogs.net.)
Our goal is not only to break down the linguistic barriers that hinder information, solidarity, and the dissemination of propaganda by the deed on an international level but also to give counter-information a printed form. We believe it is crucial for counter-information to transcend the limits of the digital realm.
In an era of rapid developments, we unfortunately published the 3rd issue a bit later than we had planned, as this is the first time the newspaper is officially published in seven different languages: Greek, English, Spanish, Indonesian, French, Italian, and German. A new post will include links to all these translations, once they are published on the respective counter-information platforms.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to all comrades—both within Greece and abroad—who contribute by translating, offering financial support, and enabling the circulation of this newspaper in different parts of the world. Anyone interested in helping translate “Blessed Is The Flame” into even more languages can contact us at: blessedistheflame@riseup.net.
Printing Instructions:
For those interested in printing the newspaper, ask a trusted print shop to print it in A5 format as a colored booklet. In a few weeks from now, the English and the Spanish editions of the newspaper will also be available in an alternative format appropriate for the US paper sizing system.
For printing, please download the PDF directly from our website, as the download link may be updated in case we detect minor formatting errors in the file that may have overlooked.
THEMES OF THE 3RD ISSUE:
Counter-information for November – December 2024 (p. 1–11)
Luigi Mangione and political violence (p. 2–3)
Ampelokipi case: Memory and solidarity (p. 2–7, 17–18)
Italy: Words and actions against militarism (p. 7 – 10)
Statement from the Anarchist Union of Sudan (p. 10)
Anarchist news from Indonesia (p. 10–12)
Offensives against green capitalism (p. 12–13)
Responsibility claims with guides for action (p. 14)
Chile: Black memory, attacks, words from the prisons (p. 14–16)
Christmass offensive actions and anarchist wishes for the New Year (p. 17, 20)
Repression and counter-surveilance (p. 18–20)
EDITORIAL
When we conceived the idea for this newspaper a year ago, we could not have imagined that it would eventually take on such international dimensions so that, with the help of comrades from different parts of the earth, it would cross continents. The first issue was published only in Greek, but the second was also published in English and Spanish, and an effort is now being made to translate it into French as well. This issue is being published in even more languages and we hope that the translation efforts will multiply in future issues.
Comrades who are interested in contributing to this project can contact us in the email address blessedistheflame@riseup.net
Anarchy of action has always been a small but lively flame burning contemptuously in the vast gloom of apathy and compromise; let us make its blessed light reach the ends of the earth and kindle it with our destructive passion for freedom. Every attack born of this passion is a reminder that the resistance to the world of power is not alive only in certain historical moments with the approval of the masses, but is an everyday affair; that there will always be those who struggle to get out of the mire of oppression; every attack is a statement that there are black sheep who refuse the mutilated life offered to them by this rotten society.
Every unrepentant word that comes out of the mouths of imprisoned comrades is proof that repression does not break the rebellious spirits.
And finally, every death in action is an eternal call for struggle.
Regardless of whether nowadays the intensity of the anarchist offensive has dropped considerably, the above messages remain unchanged throughout the centuries, because this very intensity has always made circles, and it is in our hands to turn the wheel.
