ONE MAN’S TERRORIST IS ANOTHER’S FREEDOM FIGHTER
AMERICA SHOULD EMBRACE ITS REVOLUTIONARY ROOTS AND SUPPORT THE PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
COMMUNIQUE #2
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One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.
Americans know this instinctively since our great Nation was born with bullets in a bloody armed revolt against a colonial overlord.
As soon as Patriot militia opened fire on British infantry to ignite the American War for Independence at the Battle Of Lexington, 19 April 1775, another group of "terrorists" started out for Fort Ticonderoga—a remote British outpost in the wilderness of New York's Adirondack mountains near the Canadian border.
Ethan Allen's outlaw militia called itself the Green Mountain Boys. Their mission was to seize the fort and, more importantly, the multitude of cannon, big and small, that protected it.
Our rebels were numerous, well-motivated and equipped with small-arms but they lacked the heavy weaponry needed to go toe-to-toe with the British Army and Royal Navy.
Allen's outlaws aimed to even the odds with Ti-Con's guns.
The small, peacetime detachment of British soldiers who manned Fort Ticonderoga were caught totally by surprise by Allen's "freedom fighters." Amazingly, nobody was killed during the operation. In return, the rebel colonists were rewarded with a treasure trove of artillery.
Col. Henry Knox—a former Boston street gang fighter-turned-book store owner-turned-self-taught-combat engineer—selected 59 to sled to Boston that winter. These included three massive 13-inch mortars that weighed about a ton each, 13 18-pound cannons, 10 12-pounders, two eight-inch howitzers and a giant 24-pound cannon Knox nicknamed "Old Sow." All together, the guns weighed about 60 tons.
Soon-to-be-General, Knox's Noble Train of Artillery arrived in Boston 25 Jan. 1776. The rebels deployed the biggest of them in Dorchester Heights, overlooking Boston Harbor. On 4 March, they opened fire on the British fleet anchored there. They literally blew the British out of the harbor, forcing them to abandon the city. Americans, not the British, controlled Boston for the duration of the war.
A Continental Army victory on another Adirondack mountain battlefield, Saratoga, convinced France to enter the war on the rebels' side.
A combined Franco-American task force effectively ended the war at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781—where they defeated the British Navy at sea and captured an entire British army on land along with its commander, Lord Cornwalis. The Crown formally capitulated to the rebels with the Peace of Paris in 1783.
America spent the next 120 or so years building the powerful Nation that exists today. What it couldn't purchase with dollars, it took by force-of-arms. Having established a comfortable hold on the land from sea-to-shining-sea, as the multi-talented Katherine Lee Bates famously wrote in "America the Beautiful," one might think the country had earned the right to relax a bit.
But with power comes the temptation to use it. Everything starts to look like nails with a hammer in your hand. In the 20th Century, Americans forgot the lessons of their own national birth and became that which they hated and fought a revolution against: a world empire.
It is with these lessons in mind that we look to the Palestinians' long war for independence from Israel.
Like early Americans were justified in fighting for their freedom from an English King, the Palestinians are justified in fighting for their freedom from military occupation under the boot heel of Israel. The steady, decades-long growth of Israeli settlements throughout Palestinian lands in the West Bank and, before 2005, Gaza, can only be fairly called what it is: colonial expansion.
The war between Palestinians and Israel didn't start with Hamas's cross-border attack into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. It started 75 years ago, in 1948, when Israel unilaterally declared its own independence which meant seizing Palestinian land. The Israeli Declaration of Independence lays claim to all the land in "Eretz-Israel." That includes the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinians waged the First Intifada against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from 1987 until 1993. They waged the Second or al-Aqsa Intifada from 2000 to 2005. Palestinians’ waged the First Intifada with rocks. They waged the Second Intifada with bombs. The Second made the First look like child's play.
Instead of accepting a truly independent and sovereign Palestinian state next to its United Nations’ established borders, Israel walled-off the Gaza Strip and West Bank, sent more settlers into the West Bank and actively undermined the secular Palestinian Authority—much like its information warfare attack on the United Nations today.
Of course the Palestinians are fighting for their freedom and their land. The Palestinians are doing the exact same thing America's Revolutionary generation did when they faced oppression from the British: they are shooting back. Now the Palestinians are fighting for their liberty under the banner of Hamas—which makes practical sense considering they’re mostly Muslims.
One can imagine Palestinian militia leaders debating the future of the Palestinian cause in Gaza in 2023. Their rebellion had largely been forgotten. It had fallen off the world map. Former American Pres. Donald Trump changed American policy to say settlement building in the occupied territories was legal. Americans were funding settlement construction at an unprecedented rate. Israel was growing, and continually expanding—all at the expense of Palestinians.
And, as always, Palestinian blood was cheap. Israeli soldiers and police regularly got away with murder. Settlers seized Palestinian lands like the Israeli government had given them a license to steal—in fact, it and the American government did exactly that. It was despicable, really.
Now, Trump was running for re-election again, in 2024. Another four years of Trump-backed supercharged settlement construction in the West Bank, there would be no Palestine left to fight for. The time to act was now, or never.
Meanwhile, the relative peace created opportunity. The calm soothed the enemy into slumber. Tactical surprise was an unexpected gift the rebels could seize—or let pass away.
Israel’s Achilles heal was its American-backed military and its absolute ruthlessness on the battlefield. The Israelis were so ruthless they rather kill their own kind than allow them to be captured. They even have a code-named for it. They call it the Hannibal Directive—after the brilliant but brutal Carthaginian general who beat several Roman legions then, when finally defeated, killed himself with poison instead of allowing himself to be captured alive.
Cold Machiavellian calculus by Hamas commanders led to them to conclude that the more Israelis the rebels could kill, the greater Israel’s military response would be. The Israeli public would demand Palestinian blood, and its democratically-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not hesitate to slake their thirst for vengeance with barrels of it.
But the more Palestinians Israel killed, the more more enemies it made. The more world opinion would turn against them. In sum, Israel’s predisposition to commit genocide was a force multiplier Palestinians could exploit to win the greater information war and, with it, their right to a homeland of their own.
Maybe there was a Palestinian version of Patrick Henry to encourage them. To remind them that the world is sometimes smaller than what tyrants think. That allies can be found everywhere in the Digital Age, including on the Internet.
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year?
Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?
Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.
Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.
In supporting Israel over the Palestinians, America has disgraced its Revolutionary roots. Not only that, but the blood of the 30,000-plus Palestinians murdered by Israel since October 7 is on America's hands.
The true spirit of America is revolution and radical self-determination. Wherever in the world people are fighting for liberty against oppression, America should be there, fighting by their side for freedom and a better future—not aiding and abetting tyranny.
The Palestinians must be supported in their war for independence from Israel. Liberty and justice for all—not bullets and bombs—is the true American way.
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