#Mau Mau uprising

[captain-price-unofficially]

An armed British man, probably a member if the settler militia, holds a Kenyan man at gunpoint in his own house during a raid searching for Mau Mau freedom fighters, November 1952

[afrotumble]

Dedan Kimathi (1920-1957) •

Kimathi rose to prominence within the movement in the early 1950s, first acting as an oath administrator, a method of initiation and a way of ensuring loyalty within the Mau Mau movement. He quickly became a leader of the Mau Mau fighters who migrated into the forests to fight the British forces after the declaration of the State of Emergency in late 1952.

[probablyasocialecologist]

How can a person make up for seven decades of misrepresentation and willful distortion in the time allotted to a sound bite? How can you explain that the Israeli occupation doesn’t have to resort to explosions—or even bullets and machine-guns—to kill? That occupation and apartheid structure and saturate the everyday life of every Palestinian? That the results are literally murderous even when no shots are fired? Cancer patients in Gaza are cut off from life-saving treatments. Babies whose mothers are denied passage by Israeli troops are born in the mud by the side of the road at Israeli military checkpoints. Between 2000 and 2004, at the peak of the Israeli roadblock-and-checkpoint regime in the West Bank (which has been reimposed with a vengeance), sixty-one Palestinian women gave birth this way; thirty-six of those babies died as a result.That never constituted news in the Western world. Those weren’t losses to be mourned. They were, at most, statistics. What we are not allowed to say, as Palestinians speaking to the Western media, is that all life is equally valuable. That no event takes place in a vacuum. That history didn’t start on October 7, 2023, and if you place what’s happening in the wider historical context of colonialism and anticolonial resistance, what’s most remarkable is that anyone in 2023 should be still surprised that conditions of absolute violence, domination, suffocation, and control produce appalling violence in turn. During the Haitian revolution in the early 19th century, former slaves massacred white settler men, women, and children. During Nat Turner’s revolt in 1831, insurgent slaves massacred white men, women, and children. During the Indian uprising of 1857, Indian rebels massacred English men, women, and children. During the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s, Kenyan rebels massacred settler men, women, and children. At Oran in 1962, Algerian revolutionaries massacred French men, women, and children. Why should anyone expect Palestinians—or anyone else—to be different? To point these things out is not to justify them; it is to understand them. Every single one of these massacres was the result of decades or centuries of colonial violence and oppression, a structure of violence Frantz Fanon explained decades ago in The Wretched of the Earth. What we are not allowed to say, in other words, is that if you want the violence to stop, you must stop the conditions that produced it. You must stop the hideous system of racial segregation, dispossession, occupation, and apartheid that has disfigured and tormented Palestine since 1948, consequent upon the violent project to transform a land that has always been home to many cultures, faiths, and languages into a state with a monolithic identity that requires the marginalization or outright removal of anyone who doesn’t fit. And that while what’s happening in Gaza today is a consequence of decades of settler-colonial violence and must be placed in the broader history of that violence to be understood, it has taken us to places to which the entire history of colonialism has never taken us before.

[readyforevolution]

Kenya recently lost one of its last Freedom heroes. Mau Mau freedom fighter, Field Marshal Muthoni Kirima, died at the age of 91. Muthoni was the only woman to have been bestowed with the rank of field marshal during the Mau Mau uprising. She died on Tuesday morning at around 3 a.m.

#africa #freedomfighter

[hlaas]

the uk riots are something else. only the british could complain about being “infested” by immigrants whilst never being victims of colonisation in history where they could feel consequences in the present themselves.

funny how the british people can whine about the “safety of their children” while under 100 years ago, the british empire:

orchestrated famines in south asia killing upwards of 29 million people to the point of genetic alternation in south asians, where they are now predisposed to diabetes and other health issues due to their ingrained auto-survival response to their ancestors famine experiences

shot innocent protestors IN THEIR HOME COUNTRIES and were rewarded for it. i.e. amritsar massacre where ~1000 were killed (the general who ordered the continued killing of protestors, brigadier dyer, was also awarded £26,000 as a show of gratitude), mau mau uprising suppression where it is estimated ~100,000-200,000 died, 5000 were tortured, girls were raped, women were brutalised, and men were mistreated. the british government’s only comments towards this now are that they said they “sincerely regret” this took place. 75 men were killed in batang kali, kuala lumpur (1948) which had generational effects on families. the nyasaland massacre in malawi where 33 peaceful protestors were shot down and buried in a mass grave. bloody sunday, where british soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians in northern ireland.

the british uprooted south asians in 1947 when cyril radcliffe drew borders between india and pakistan OVER HIS LUNCH, where he split the sub-continent up, ultimately uprooting over 10 million people and causing religious and cultural divisions to ensue as up to 1 million people lost their lives as a result of sectarian killings.

when the british plundered the state of india during its colonisation with figures of up to $45 trillion during the period 1765 to 1938 which apparently “doesn’t matter now” according to the british people in these riots as the past is the past and yet reparations of $45 trillion could make or break india in its current situation and could stop the “mass immigration” if such reparations were paid to help build back the country.

the united kingdom is required to pay £9.5 trillion in reparations to jamaica.

this is not even the tip of the iceberg. and yet not one of us ACTUALLY AFFECTED BY THE BRITISH EMPIRE’S ATROCITIES are complaining as much as we should be. why? because we have moved on. to the british people saying the “past is the past” WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO MOVE ON FROM? PAY YOUR PRICE. WE MOVED ON BECAUSE WE HAVE TO. YOU DONT GET TO MOVE ON. YOUR ANCESTORS DIDNT GET TO PAY, SO DONT COMPLAIN ABOUT THE SAFETY OF YOUR CHILDREN OR AN INFESTATION OF UNWELCOME IMMIGRANTS. WHAT DID YOUR ANCESTORS DO WHEN OUR ANCESTORS WORRIED FOR THE SAFETY OF THEIR CHILDREN? FROM THE GREEDY, EVIL, BLOODTHIRSTY, RAPING, MASSACRING, SILENCING, WHITE MAN? THEY SHOT OUR ANCESTORS, STARVED THEM, RAPED THEM, BRUTALISED THEM, SILENCED THEM. SO DO NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT YOUR MOTHERLAND’S RUINATION, WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND AND YOUR PETTY PATRIOTISM CANNOT STOP IT, YOUR THUGGERY AND ANGER MEAN NOTHING AGAINST THE UNIVERSAL SCALES OF BALANCE.

[sharpened--edges]

The tension between liberal declarations of victory over racism and the real lived experience of Black people in America exploded into full contradiction with the [1965] Watts Uprising in LA. […] What followed was six days of “insurrection against all authority,” as the local CBS radio station reported it. “If it had gone much further,” the news report said, “it would have become civil war.” More than 950 buildings were damaged, and 260 were totally destroyed. Looting and property destruction amounted to over $40 million in damages — nearly $330 million today adjusted for inflation. But the destruction was hardly wanton or senseless. Almost no homes, schools, libraries, churches, or public buildings were even partially damaged. The use of arson was strategic and controlled. The majority of Black-owned businesses were not looted, nor were those businesses that were seen as dealing fairly with the community. Signs went up saying “Black-owned” or “soul brother” and the like, which would (usually) protect a shop from rioters. On the other hand, businesses that had traditionally exploited people, in particular pawnshops, check-cashing stores, and department stores that operated aggressively on credit, went up in flames. Credit records were usually destroyed before anything else took place. Brave rioters even made attacks on police stations; one was set alight. The tactics were simple but effective, as Gerald Horne records in his important history of the Watts Uprising, Fire This Time. One common tactic saw a group of rioters, usually young men, drive up to a business, hop out, break out the windows, then drive away. Then cars of looters, a much more mixed group, split between men and women, young and old, would arrive and work to empty the store. The store would only be set alight once credit records had been destroyed and goods had been fully looted. Rioters usually remained nearby to make sure the building burned, attacking firemen with bricks and bottles if they tried to put out the flames before the fire had fully consumed the hated business. Tactics reflected effective communication and mobility among the rebels. Rioters transmitted information over the radio waves, used payphones to spread intel, and listened in to police broadcasts to see where cops would be deployed. False reports were called in to send police scrambling, at which point areas they’d just “pacified” could be re-taken. In areas they didn’t entirely control, rioters focused on hit-and-run strikes, then dispersing quickly to reappear elsewhere. All of these tactics would be adopted and practiced, with local modifications, in other riots throughout the period. The media described these as guerilla tactics, and police and reactionaries compared the situation in Watts to fighting the Viet Cong or the Mau Mau of Kenya. Rioters often appreciated the comparison: many, encouraged by the thought of Malcolm X, Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), Robert F. Williams, and local militants, understood their actions as guerilla warfare, too. Other rioters tied their actions to anticolonial struggle via resistance to imperialist war. Many men of draft age interviewed afterward said something very similar to what one rioter told SNCC newspaper The Movement: “I’d rather die here than in Vietnam.”

Vicky Osterweil, In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action (Bold Type, 2020), pp. 196–8.

[alanshemper]

Saree Makdisi, October 25, 2023

If you place what’s happening in the wider historical context of colonialism and anticolonial resistance, what’s most remarkable is that anyone in 2023 should be still surprised that conditions of absolute violence, domination, suffocation, and control produce appalling violence in turn. During the Haitian revolution in the early 19th century, former slaves massacred white settler men, women, and children. During Nat Turner’s revolt in 1831, insurgent slaves massacred white men, women, and children. During the Indian uprising of 1857, Indian rebels massacred English men, women, and children. During the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s, Kenyan rebels massacred settler men, women, and children. At Oran in 1962, Algerian revolutionaries massacred French men, women, and children. Why should anyone expect Palestinians—or anyone else—to be different? To point these things out is not to justify them; it is to understand them. Every single one of these massacres was the result of decades or centuries of colonial violence and oppression, a structure of violence Frantz Fanon explained decades ago in The Wretched of the Earth.

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 26 March 1953, Mau Mau guerrillas fighting British colonialism in Kenya attacked the Naivasha police station. They inflicted a humiliating defeat on the police and released 173 prisoners, many of them Mau Mau adherents, from an adjoining detention camp. While the uprising was eventually crushed by mass repression and murder by British forces, independence was achieved just a few years later. Pictured: Mau Mau fighters https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2237867189731752/?type=3

[captain-price-unofficially]

British colonist practicing with a pistol during the Mau Mau Uprising, Kenya. 1952

[freehawaii]

KE AUPUNI UPDATE - SEPTEMBER 2024

The Queen Never Abdicated September is Hawaiian History month. The article in the April 27, 2024 Ke Aupuni Update was titled: “The Queen Never Surrendered”. This one is about the so-called “abdication” of Queen Liliuʻokalani. It is true, sort of… Here’s a brief recap of events leading up to the so-called abdication.

On January 17, 1893 with a company of armed US Marines backing them, white insurgents seize control of the government.

On December 18, 1893 President Cleveland denounces the actions of the insurgents, and calls for the reinstatement of Queen Liliuʻokalani and the lawful government of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

The insurgents respond by telling the US to mind its own business, then on July 4, 1894, proclaim the Hawaiian Kingdom was now the Republic of Hawaii.

From January 6-9, 1895, Hawaiian Patriots fail in an armed uprising to overthrow the “Republic” and restore Liliuʻokalani to the throne.

The leaders of the “rebellion” are captured, tried for treason and sentenced to death. January 16, 1895, Queen Liliuʻokalani was arrested, confined to a room at Iolani Palace and, on February 8, 1895, tried for treason against the Republic. On January 24, 1895, while under house arrest, representatives of the Republic presented Liliuʻokalani with a letter of abdication for her to sign. They made it clear to her that if she did not sign, the leaders of the “rebellion” would be executed.   Under those conditions, to save the lives of her dear followers and friends, she signed the document of abdication. The Republic then announced to the world that the Queen had abdicated and used it to fortify their claim of legitimacy. Countries with treaties with the Hawaiian Kingdom, shifted to dealing with the Republic of Hawaii and business went on as usual.   But did the Queen abdicate? Actually, no… for several reasons. First, a document signed under coercion and duress is invalid. Second, what she signed, was not her name. She signed, Lili’uokalani Dominis, a name she had never used before or since; nor was it her official name as the monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Third, in her autobiography, and in many other instances, she completely repudiated that “letter of abdication”. Fourth, the Queen worked tirelessly in the years immediately following that “abdication” to have the Hawaiian Kingdom government and herself as the sovereign, restored as an independent nation. Words have been used to distort, embed and promote the false narratives in the telling of our story. It is up to us to set the record straight for us and for others who need to know the truth.

“Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station.” — Queen Liliʻuokalani ---------- Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono. The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness. ------ For the latest news and developments about our progress at the United Nations in both New York and Geneva, tune in to Free Hawaii News at 6 PM the first Friday of each month on ʻŌlelo Television, Channel 53. ------ "And remember, for the latest updates and information about the Hawaiian Kingdom check out the twice-a-month Ke Aupuni Updates published online on Facebook and other social media." PLEASE KŌKUA… Your kōkua, large or small, is vital to this effort... To contribute, go to:   • GoFundMe – CAMPAIGN TO FREE HAWAII • PayPal – use account email: info@HawaiianKingdom.net • Other – To contribute in other ways (airline miles, travel vouchers, volunteer services, etc...) email us at: info@HawaiianKingdom.net All proceeds are used to help the cause. MAHALO! Malama Pono,

Leon Siu

Hawaiian National

[the-quasar-hero]

Reading about the Mau Mau uprising. The British haven’t paid nearly enough for their egregious crimes

[musings-of-a-lit-student]

The Noose Tightens: Part 6

Disclaimer: I don’t own Maus or any of Spiegelman’s work. I have attached the photos from the work itself, but do not claim to own the scanned version either. I highly recommend purchasing the book to support the original author. My thoughts do not represent the author's work and are merely my own interpretations.

Warning: MAUS is a graphic novel based on the author’s father’s experiences during the holocaust and includes anecdotes and scenes including violence, blood which may be considered triggering. 

Introduction: The work MAUS by Art Spiegelman is a novel that tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman and his experiences during the holocaust using an allegory and parallel storylines to depict the Vladek's past and Artie's present as he hears the story from his father. This work includes an autobiographical and biographical element due to the inclusion of two main characters - Vladek and Artie. Spiegelman makes the decision to introduce himself as a character in the work as a mouthpiece for himself.

Main Characters: Artie: The author Vladek: Artie's father Anja: Artie's mother Mala: Vladek's second wife Françoise: Artie's wife

Navigation ->The Noose Tightens Masterlist -> Previous Part

MAUS by Art Spiegelman

Points of Interest:

Death

The implications of such fear in the house don't bode well. These members are the first close deaths addressed in the past, and while we see the loss, there is a bridge where we see how these past events came to shape Vladek to be as he is in the present. The bringing about of such terrifying events seems far more meaningful in contrast to the expectations from the previous chapters that were relatively lighter. The focus shifts from the Spiegelmans to look into the Holocaust, and this pivot in focus is drastic.

Crack vs Suit

Contrasting states of life come to meet against each other in the fight for their new setting. Their suits are a symbol of the wealth they hold, and the crack on the wall comes to show us how poorly they have been forced to live. It seems to be a commentary on how they are forced to survive while refusing to let go of the status they deeply cherished. They may be destitute, but the Zylberbergs' wealth has become a part of their identity.

Referencing the Cover Page

The inclusion of such a traumatizing image being incorporated into the cover page makes this a key point and discusses the importance of such a shift in morale. The threats to their life and destruction of hope are brought on by such a publicized spectacle. The literal noose hanging over the people develops the grim expectation, and in a rather traumatizing scene, we see how these mice are strung up to die. Their families and loved ones would be terrorized, and such fear-mongering was prevalent in implying the lack of escape.

Message

The presence of a cat guard serves as an intimidation tactic. This message from the Nazis presents a picture of strength furthered by the violence. Such desecration was common during the Holocaust and served to discourage any rebellions or uprisings. The use of brute force and weaponry set up the hierarchy in Poland and all over Germany. Looking beyond at the depravity behind such atrocities, we have only fear, directly at the eyeline with their shoes. This is a choice image they chose to show, and in a pop culture reference, I would relate this panel to Jojo Rabbit and the imagery they used. The movement and liveliness have been stagnated to hanging, and it creates a morbid image.

Darkest panel of this chapter

A supportive Anja in this frame seems to stand for Vladek, comforting him as a rock through these events. It goes without saying that a great deal of attachment was formed while comforting each other through such movements. Unaware, Richieu sits on the floor and plays with a creepy, skeleton-like doll. His silent innocence in the face of such a dark scene seems to contrast and go on to imply that there were psychological effects on Richieu as well. A haunted Vladek has no qualms about the death of them, but rather chooses to focus on the risk to his own existence. His life is in flux, and it comes from both the close call with his life and the murder and abuse of his friends.

Diaries

The very first mention of Anja's voice shows us how determined she was to write her story. Here we see a spark of the woman from the first chapter, who was well-educated, elegant, and politically active. This focused desire of Artie's shows how badly he wanted her voice to be seen through his novel. In contrast, he responds by leaving Anja in moments of great emotional flux in order to show us the instability she was in. His true intentions seem to sway between the content for his novel, as well as portraying a fair Vladek. He doesn't skimp on the sexism in the family as we've previously seen, but it goes to show that Anja's diaries would have been a very valuable resource.

Smoking vs Pedaling

The light argument between the cause for Vladek's coughs goes from a scolding for smoking. Artie, however, shows us his disdain for his father's poor health and odd tactics to maintain fitness. This search for the blame seems odd when it's entirely possible that Vladek's poor health and lungs would probably be a background effect from the poor living standards he had. This retort, however, seems to be phased in as a change in topic and goes to completely divert Artie, and the diaries are not brought up again.

Inclusion of Richieu

The addition of Richieu in such illegal matters seems to show that Vladek took advantage of his son to get past obstacles. This, however, also put him at risk, and we must wonder about the dire straits that the family must have been in to do so. There is a building hint that Richieu was aware of all the stress that his family was under, and despite the odd depictions showing him as an innocent boy, we know that there is more than meets the eye.

Next Part

[lightdancer1]

As with other perpetrators of atrocities the British Empire made good efforts to conceal them:

The British Empire was able to throw a long shadow of secrecy on just how it went about suppressing the Mau Mau War , but history in the long run seldom keeps things truly quiet if people are determined to look for the truth. So has it proved here.

[thevividgreenmoss]

How can a person make up for seven decades of misrepresentation and willful distortion in the time allotted to a sound bite? How can you explain that the Israeli occupation doesn’t have to resort to explosions—or even bullets and machine-guns—to kill? That occupation and apartheid structure and saturate the everyday life of every Palestinian? That the results are literally murderous even when no shots are fired? Cancer patients in Gaza are cut off from life-saving treatments.2 Babies whose mothers are denied passage by Israeli troops are born in the mud by the side of the road at Israeli military checkpoints. Between 2000 and 2004, at the peak of the Israeli roadblock-and-checkpoint regime in the West Bank (which has been reimposed with a vengeance), sixty-one Palestinian women gave birth this way; thirty-six of those babies died as a result.3That never constituted news in the Western world. Those weren’t losses to be mourned. They were, at most, statistics.

What we are not allowed to say, as Palestinians speaking to the Western media, is that all life is equally valuable. That no event takes place in a vacuum. That history didn’t start on October 7, 2023, and if you place what’s happening in the wider historical context of colonialism and anticolonial resistance, what’s most remarkable is that anyone in 2023 should be still surprised that conditions of absolute violence, domination, suffocation, and control produce appalling violence in turn. During the Haitian revolution in the early 19th century, former slaves massacred white settler men, women, and children. During Nat Turner’s revolt in 1831, insurgent slaves massacred white men, women, and children. During the Indian uprising of 1857, Indian rebels massacred English men, women, and children. During the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s, Kenyan rebels massacred settler men, women, and children. At Oran in 1962, Algerian revolutionaries massacred French men, women, and children. Why should anyone expect Palestinians—or anyone else—to be different?

...AT ANY MOMENT, without warning, at any time of the day or night, any apartment building in the densely populated Gaza Strip can be struck by an Israeli bomb or missile. Some of the stricken buildings simply collapse into layers of concrete pancakes, the dead and the living alike entombed in the shattered ruins. Often, rescuers shouting “hadan sami’ana?” (“can anyone hear us?”) hear calls for help from survivors deep in the rubble, but without heavy lifting equipment all they can do is helplessly scrabble at the concrete slabs with crowbars or their bare hands, hoping against hope to pry open gaps wide enough to get survivors or the injured out. Some buildings are struck with such heavy bombs that the ensuing fireballs shower body parts and sometimes whole charred bodies—usually, because of their small size, those of children—over surrounding neighborhoods. Phosphorus shells, primed by Israeli gunners to detonate with airburst proximity fuses so that incendiary particles rain down over as wide an area as possible, set fire to anything flammable, including furniture, clothing, and human bodies. Phosphorus is pyrophoric—it will burn as long as it has access to air and basically can’t be extinguished. If it makes contact with a human body it has to be dug out by scalpel and will keep burning into the flesh until it’s extracted.

...In 2018, the United Nations warned that Gaza—its basic infrastructure of electricity, water, and sewage systems smashed over years of Israeli incursions and bombings, leaving 95 percent of the population without ready access to fresh drinking water—would be “unlivable” by 2020. It’s now 2023, and the entire territory, cut off from the outside world, is without any access to food, water, medical supplies, fuel and electricity, all while under continuous bombardment from land, sea, and air.5 “Attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes,” pointed out Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. “Cutting off men, women, children [from] water, electricity and heating with winter coming,” she continued—“these are acts of pure terror.” Von der Leyen is right, of course, but in this instance she was referring to Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure. As for Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s infrastructure, Von der Leyen says that Israel has the right to defend itself.

[readyforevolution]

Kenya recently lost one of its last Freedom heroes. Mau Mau freedom fighter, Field Marshal Muthoni Kirima, died at the age of 91. Muthoni was the only woman to have been bestowed with the rank of field marshal during the Mau Mau uprising. She died on Tuesday morning at around 3 a.m.

#africa #freedomfighter

[redstarnotebooks]

Standing with the Palestinian resistance: A response to Matan Kaminer by Andreas Malm in Verso

"If people identify as Marxists, what ought they to do if they were in Gaza? They ought to join Marxists fighting on the ground there. And if they are unable to enter the besieged and destroyed and occupied and burning ghetto? Then they should stand in solidarity with their comrades inside. These are not entirely hypothetical matters. It so happens that there are Marxists fighting on the ground, namely the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP): from the earliest morning hours of Toufan al-Aqsa to the battles raging yesterday, they have participated in the guerilla war against the genocidal occupation... "Precisely the dismal status of the left across the globe should make us value this one all the more. Here we have it, an actual organised left, present on the frontlines of the central battle against empire in this historical moment... "...[O]ne can – staying with the method of historical analogism – consider the first car bomb planted by the uMkhonto we Sizwe in 1983, aimed at an air force and military intelligence office in the heart of Pretoria, in which nineteen people were killed – civilians included. After this bomb, the armed wing of the ANC entered a phase of escalated struggle against the apartheid regime, causing a string of civilian deaths. What should we think of this?... "...I also don’t particularly enjoy reading about the killing of civilians at the hands of the FLN, the Mau Mau rebellion, the Nat Turner revolt, the Haitian revolution or the Sepoy mutiny or the Tupac Amaru uprising, to mention just a few cases – several of which indulged in gruesome mass violence against the civilian population of colonisers to an extent far, far beyond anything Palestinians have ever done. And yet we, on the Left, commemorate the Haitian revolution as the greatest single act of emancipation in the New World, perhaps even in the modern era. Should we, after October 7, rather start condemning it, on the principle that civilians must never be killed? Or should we remember the violence against the white civilians as an ugly aspect of a legitimate struggle for freedom, the victory of which marked an unusually genuine instance of progress in history? "When we speak of resistance against murderous oppression and the fight for survival and freedom, do we only bother about the past? Are we happy with it when it is so comfortably distant as to be amenable to kitsch? We have the Black Panthers in photo books and Malcolm X on our walls – then why not also the PFLP and Abu Obeida? Is revolutionary politics a posturing about the past, or about real struggles that happen as we speak? On what grounds do we admire the heroes from millennia of subaltern endeavours at self-emancipation, but not the Palestinian fighters who run all the way up to the tanks and deliver their bombs with their hands and dash off? Why should they not be in our pantheon? I see two possible reasons: we are actually not that serious about the commitment, or we do not consider Palestinian lives worthy enough to be fought for. This fight may well end in the defeat of a total destruction of Gaza and its people, and more beyond. Until then – so the streets of New York tell me – there will be quite a few of us who stay with the vow and stand with the resistance."