Forgive this short introduction for there is much to cover; Hawai’i’s nature is certainly one of the most beautiful on Earth. If we want to keep it that way, we must do everything in our power to decolonize the Hawaiian islands that have been under U.S. occupation since 1893. But let’s start with some history. Let’s talk about the illegal occupation and annexation of Hawai’i.

While we should rightly begin where history begins — that is, from the initial Polynesian settlement of the islands to the establishment of the unified Kingdom of Hawai’i in 1795, this is not a history I would be able to tell, because it is not mine to communicate. I could not do justice to the millennia of Hawaiian history and  its language, culture and people. For that, I would instead point to Indigenous Hawaiian sources, such as the Ka Mooolelo Hawai’i — the first history of Hawai’i written by Native students in 1838 — or the Papaliko database which hosts a collection of data on historically and culturally significant events, curated by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, If you know more Indigenous resources, feel free to post them in the comments for our readers.

We will begin shortly before the pivotal event that cemented Hawai’i’s status to the United States: the overthrow of queen Lili’uokalani.

In January of 1893, the queen of the independent and sovereign kingdom of Hawai’i (which had been united by King Kamehameha I in 1795, putting all the islands under one monarch) was overthrown at gunpoint by U.S. Marines. She had ascended to the throne only two years earlier after the untimely death of her brother Kalakaua, and quickly set out to restore power to the monarchy and native Hawaiians with a new constitution after one had been forcefully passed just four years earlier. This effort, however, was quickly opposed by a group of U.S. and European businessmen and lawyers, known as the “Committee of Safety”, who favored annexation with the United States.

We have to understand the context surrounding the United States in 1893 to understand why the U.S. were interested in Hawai’i. By that time, most of the territory that now forms the continental United States had been settled and attached to the Union. In 1846, just half a century earlier, settlers had stolen Texas from Mexico, which led to a war in which Mexico relinquished control of what now forms the southwestern quarter of the United States territory, including California. With this, coast-to-coast imperial ambitions were  achieved.

The following years would be marked by rapid settler expansion to the west, and with it came industrialization — including the building of the transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869 and of which 90% of the workforce was Chinese (on the western portion). They would later be expelled by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 passed by Congress. In Hawai’i, Chinese immigrants were instead welcomed (alongside Japanese immigrants) by Native Hawaiians, though plantation owners instituted a blanket 10-hour work day on plantations under harsh conditions.

This rapid industrialization didn’t please slaveowners in the south who saw their privileges threatened, and led to a civil war that marked the 1860s. The industrialized Union won, and with it came what is called the Reconstruction era: the final rupture of the slaveowning mode of production that remained in the South and towards a proletarianization of the labor force, which allowed manufacturing to become even more productive.

This laid the final brick in the foundation of the American Empire’s hegemonic ambitions, and they could start to look outwards. In 1898, the U.S. declared war against Spain and, in the peace deal, took the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam — the final colonies of the declining Spanish monarchy.

But the Philippines are far away, especially in the age of the steamboat. To pave the way to Asia, a base of operations was thus required in the Pacific, and Hawai’i was perfectly suited for it. In 1898, President McKinley declared “We must have Hawai’i to get our share of China.”

On top of that, Hawai’i’s climate made it perfect for growing cash crops — prior to annexation, U.S. businessmen had already established large sugar plantations on the island chain. And of course, Hawai’i also formed a shield against attacks from the west, seen as recently as the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

All of this leads us to the reasons the U.S. wanted to annex Hawai’i.

When queen Lili’uokalani took the throne in 1891, she had her work cut out for her. A few years earlier, the so-called Bayonet Constitution had been passed in the kingdom, imposed on King Kalākaua on July 6, 1887 by the aforementioned plantation owners. They called themselves the Hawaiian League (despite none of them being Hawaiian) and, through arms, forced the new constitution that they had drafted for the king. This constitution allowed foreign residents to vote — which, to this day, no country offers — and denied over two-thirds of Native Hawaiians from voting.

In 1892, the Legislature of the Kingdom of Hawai’i passed the Highways Act to protect public lands from privatization. At the same time, the monarchy was also trying to push forward a new constitution that would undo the Bayonet Constitution.

As we’ve already seen, all of this came crashing down in 1893. Shortly after the new year, queen Lili’uokalani made her intentions to push the new constitution clear. Immediately, the Annexation Club — composed of six citizens of the Kingdom (specifically not recorded as being Native Hawaiian) and seven U.S. and European foreigners — carried out their counter-plan: with help from the U.S. government, a fully armed warship anchored in Honolulu harbor (a tactic that the U.S. would use several more times in the future, including in 1974 in Portugal). This move initially scared the legislature who withdrew their support for the new constitution.

Lili’uokalani tried to ease tensions by walking back some of the changes she wanted to make, but it was too late and annexation was within reach for plantation owners. On January 16, 162 U.S. sailors and marines landed in Hawai’i and illegally occupied the sovereign and independent nation.

On January 17, the Committee of Safety — the descendent to the Annexation Club — announced martial law and the deposing of the queen. Specifically, they also declared a provisional government until a union with the United States could be achieved.

Queen Lili’uokalani surrendered to the U.S. government and thus came the end of the long-standing Kingdom of Hawai’i.

Before we continue with this important piece of history, we should take some time to understand what life in Hawai’i was like prior to the coup.

The imperial core’s own institutions recognized Hawai’i as a sovereign nation. By 1843, Hawai’i became the first non-Western nation to receive full recognition as an independent state by Western powers. By 1893, the kingdom maintained over ninety consulates and legations (which served the functions of an embassy) worldwide, including in the United States. Only sovereign states maintain embassies abroad to serve as their representatives on foreign soil.

This fact cements that prior to the deposing of the monarchy (and arguably even prior to the Bayonet Constitution), Hawai’i was a fully sovereign nation in the eyes of the imperialists. Thus, logically, the occupation by U.S. Marines on January 16 was an illegal invasion by a foreign state, and annexation by the U.S. was a coup.

By the mid-19th century, Hawai’i had achieved a 95% literacy rate, the highest in the world. The Constitutional Monarchy established in 1840 guaranteed equal voting rights regardless of race, gender or wealth — the first of its kind in the modern world; at the time, most Western countries were still limiting voting rights to landowning males, if they had any at all. The constitution came about on the impulse of king Kamehameha III himself (also known as Kauikeaouli), as part of efforts to modernize the kingdom.

In 1859, the Queen’s Hospital was established and provided free healthcare to all native Hawaiians. Electric public lightning came to the streets of Honolulu in 1888 — before even the White House had electric lightning. Laws on land distribution made by the Declaration of Rights (1839) guaranteed virtually no homelessness. Affordable mass-transit made travel between islands possible for everyone.

All of these achievements were instantly reversed after the foreign coup in 1893, which turned Hawai’i into a plantation colony for the United States.

Hawai’i became the 50th state of the “Union” in 1959. What happened between 1893 and then?

Immediately after the queen was deposed, a provisional government was set up. This government immediately sent envoys to Washington to seek a treaty of annexation — manifesting their desire for the complete destruction of an independent Hawai’i into an occupied colony of the United States. The treaty was delayed by the inauguration of Grover Cleveland as U.S. president however, and stalled there. Because of this, the Republic of Hawai’i was proclaimed by the Committee of Safety in 1894. Sanford B. Dole, a white man born in Honolulu, became its president. He was approved for a six-year term and if the name Dole is familiar, that is because his cousin James D. Dole is the one who started the Dole fruit company (then called the Hawaiian Pineapple Company). James Dole came to Hawai’i in 1899 and developed the pineapple industry which he had started there in 1851 — pineapple, which is used on “Hawaiian Pizza”, is not native to Hawai’i.

The new constitution accompanying this puppet temporary state required voters to swear allegiance to the republic. Strict property requirements prevented most Hawaiians from voting. The U.S. quickly recognized the coup government, despite president Cleveland publicly criticizing the involvement of U.S. Marines, as is usual — to this day we see the same performative criticism of the particular forms brutal occupation takes, but not its end result.

A counter-rebellion was attempted in 1895 to restore the sovereign kingdom, but failed. In 1898, the situation had stabilized sufficiently that then-president McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution, which annexed Hawai’i to the United States. A petition signed by over half the Hawaiian population was presented to the U.S. government protesting the move, but was ignored.

In 1900, Hawai’i became a territory of the United States — the same status that Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and ‘American’ Samoa have today. Stanford Dole, previously the president of the coup republic, was named governor of Hawai’i.

At that point, everything that existed under the late constitutional monarchy was broken and rebuilt. There was no more President or king in Hawai’i, but a U.S. governor — and with it, the laws of the occupier came along too, which is illegal under U.N. Occupation Law.

During that time, sugar production expanded from 289,500 short tons in 1900 to 939,300 short tons in 1930 in plantations owned by white Americans and toiled by native Hawaiians. Pineapple grew from 2000 cases in 1903 to 12 million cases in 1931. Tourism, which plagues Hawai’i to this day, started in 1901 with the opening of the Moana hotel. By 1958, tourists amounted to 171 thousand in one year compared to 25 thousand in 1940. All the while political control remained largely in the hands of the Haole — non-Native Hawaiian, specifically white.

In 1896, the Hawaiian language was banned in public schools — that ban remained in place for 100 years, until 1986. Today, UNESCO still classifies the language as critically endangered.

U.S. businessmen were not the only ones scrambling to the newly-acquired territory, of course. The government immediately set out to fulfill its ambitions and established a dozen military bases in Hawai’i between 1898 and 1922. Since it now considers Hawai’i part of their territory, military presence has only increased, and with it came many scandals and destruction. The military occupies 6% of Hawai’i’s land (illegally), and these bases have displaced many Indigenous Hawaiians and destroyed sacred cultural sites. The U.S. military contributes heavily to environmental crises in Hawai’i, being responsible for example for the Red Hill water contamination crisis.

The effects of the colonization of Hawai’i are still felt today because the U.S. government still considers Hawai’i to be their playground for tourism, army and the mass distribution of pineapple.

Native Hawaiians face higher rates of poverty compared to whites — 15.4% versus 9.6%. Cost of living has soared in Hawai’i with the introduction of a tourism industry (owned by white businessmen); 40% of Indigenous Hawaiian households are cost-burdened by rent prices, meaning they spend more than a third of their income on rent. Indigenous Hawaiians form only 10% of the population of Hawai’i, yet make up 51% of the homeless population. 50% of Native Hawaiians live outside of Hawai’i. The tourism industry pays pittance wages with most of the profits going to the white owners.

More than a quarter of missing girls in Hawai’i are Indigenous, and the average profile of a missing person is a 15-year-old Indigenous girl. Hawai’i is the state with the eighth-highest rate of missing persons in the United States, and 84% of Indigenous women experience violence in their lifetime. In Operation Keiki Shield, 38% of those arrested for soliciting sex from a 13-year-old online were active-duty U.S. Military personnel. 

The tourism industry in Hawai’i has put over 60% of plants and animal species in the ‘endangered’ status, largely due to deforestation to build resorts that make a parody of traditional Hawaiian culture. 44.7% of water on the Big Island (the island of Hawai’i) is consumed by hotels and resorts.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military causes crisis after crisis, and never cleans up after. They pollute potable water through mismanagement. Over several months in 2021, fuel tanks failed one by one at U.S. navy bases at Red Hill (Oahu island) and released tens of thousands gallons of fuel into the island’s drinkable water supply. The U.S. military controls 30% of the land on this island and used it — and the sacred cultural site at Kaho’olawe — as a bombing range for decades. The issue was compounded by the fact that the leaks happened over several months, raising the question as to why the fuel tanks were not inspected and fixed after the first leak. Petroleum contaminated the public water supply for 1 million residents, and the U.S. Navy both refused to help fix the problem and did not notify the authorities when the leaks happened — the problem was reported far too late, when local residents noticed the leak in their tap water. Instead, the Navy ‘promised’ to close the facility by 2027. Today in January 2025, 4,000 gallons of fuel and 28,000 gallons of sludge still remain in the pipes and tanks. In the first weeks after the leak, colonial authorities in Hawai’i even said that the water was safe to drink, leading to the poisoning of thousands.

Pearl Harbor, which we mentioned at the beginning of this piece, was known as Wai Momi (Pearl Waters) by the Hawaiians, and got its name from the pearl oyster diving trade that took place there. The pristine and shallow waters were perfectly suited for that activity, as well as fishing to feed the population — and they did so faithfully for over 600 years. 27 fishponds lined the shores of the Pearl Waters. In 1887, after the Bayonet Constitution, the U.S. gained exclusive rights to the lagoon as a coaling and repair station and from there built their naval base. Today, the water at Pearl Waters is polluted with arsenic, lead and mercury.

In the mid-20th century, the U.S. military detonated nuclear weapons as part of tests in the Pacific, not far from Hawai’i. At the Pacific Proving Grounds — Johnston Atoll, Bikini Atoll, and Enewetak Atolls — nuclear bombs were detonated. As part of Operation Fishbowl, a nuclear test was conducted in high-altitude, which caused an artificial aurora visible from Hawai’i and an electromagnetic pulse that damaged electrical infrastructure on the island chain. Over 100 nuclear detonations were made in the Pacific between 1946 and 1962, and the fallout caused — and is still causing — cancers in Hawai’i and other Pacific Islander populations. Residents of Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands chain, still cannot grow food locally.

In 2023, deadly wildfires burned on the island of Maui, becoming one of the deadliest natural disasters in Hawai’i’s history. The fires were caused by sparks from broken power lines that ignited dry vegetation. 102 people were killed by the fires, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in history. As of 2025, only three homes have been rebuilt, out of 2,200 structures destroyed. Landlords immediately sensed a good business opportunity, and rent rose by 44% on the island, further displacing Indigenous Hawaiians from their ancestral home. The only help from the federal government was a FEMA loan that will stop in 2028.

In terms of land ownership, some 200,000 acres have been set aside by the Department of Hawaiian Homelands to be distributed to Indigenous Hawaiians, but long waitlists persist. The U.S. Federal government, in comparison, owns 531,000 acres which are used for military bases and national parks. National Parks in the U.S. (under Roosevelt), as in “Israel”, were mainly established to drive Indigenous tribes away from their homelands — Yellowstone Park, for example, is located on the ancestral homeland to the Shoshone, Bannock, Blackfeet, Crow, and Nez Perce.

Mark Zuckerberg has also been acquiring land on Kauai since 2014. He now holds over 1,400 acres including beachfront and agricultural properties. In 2016, he initiated lawsuits to force owners of kuleana (small parcels with ancestral rights enclosed in ‘his’ property) to sell their property, dragging them in expensive lawsuits that the families could not finance. He is not the only one: other U.S. tech figures such as Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) own mansion compounds of their own in Hawai’i. Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder, owns 98% of Lanai island, one of Hawai’i’s eight islands. Meanwhile, Indigenous Hawaiians pay $3,000 per month in rent for an average of $18 per hour, which is twice as low as the occupation state’s average wage of $32 per hour.

Again, all of this is technically illegal, not only under U.S. law, but also under international law. The U.S. is illegally occupying Hawai’i, an occupation made possible only by their military might and the putting down of independence movements. In effect, the Kingdom of Hawai’i is under occupation and U.N. Occupation law applies to it — similarly as it does to Palestine. More and more organizations are recognizing this occupation status, including U.N. bodies, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the National Lawyers Guild. Under Occupation Law, the occupied population has the right to resist occupation, including by force.

Indigenous Hawaiian groups have been very clear about the effects tourism has on their homeland, and have thus requested that tourists refrain from visiting Hawai’i — not just U.S. tourists, but all tourists. I can only echo their voice and make you reconsider visiting Hawai’i as long as it remains a U.S. colony. 

Like many other countries and territories, Hawai’i is not spared by the effects of ongoing colonization; and all of this is still happening in the 21st century. The only just solution for Hawai’i is the complete expulsion of the U.S. army, the recognition of a sovereign Hawaiian state and nation by the U.S. government, and the relinquishing of its status as a U.S. state or dependency of any kind.

When “Israelis” left Europe to settle Palestine in 1948, they brought European plants with them to remind them of “home” — the home they said did not accept them. Introducing non-native plant species was also a means to drive Palestinians out of their own homeland and towns and deny them access to water and land.

One tree the settlers favored was the eucalyptus tree, known in “Israel” as the “Jewish Tree” (despite being native to Australia) as it was so instrumental to the colonization of Palestine.

But first, what is settler-colonialism? Colonialism is the forceful arrival of settlers into a land that is already occupied to enable exploitation benefiting these settlers’ state back home. The settler part, however, presupposes that a native population, which becomes Indigenous when it exists in relation to settlers, is being displaced permanently so that settlers can occupy their homeland for themselves. Settler-colonialism creates new countries where none existed, and usually ends up carving out a state of their own instead of staying beholden to the state that sent them in the colonies — an example being pre-independence British Colonies and post-independence United States of America.

The importation of these foreign plant species into Palestine firstly played a part in concealing the Nakba. After 1948, zionist organizations planted more than 250 million trees in Palestine, most of which were invasive pines and eucalyptus. These trees were planted around the ruins of Palestinian villages that were ethnically cleansed and emptied during the Nakba. Under the guise of “turning the desert green”, land around ancestral Palestinian communities was seeded with these foreign plant species and then expropriated to be turned into a ‘natural reserve’ that is neither natural nor a reserve of anything. Legally, it means the land cannot be built on. It cannot be excavated. The Nakba is concealed.

When objections are raised about this practice, settlers —  who think of everything in terms of their potential for exploitation — is “well, at least we’re doing something with the land!” but Palestinians were doing something with the land too. Just because the settlers didn’t understand this relationship doesn’t mean that the land was not being used in some way.

It’s difficult in the West to understand ties to the land. We are removed from the processes of production, and see commodities only as the object in front of us on the grocery store shelf. We don’t see the labor that went into bringing us vegetables on a stall or candy in the aisles. Someone has to till the land, someone has to plant the seeds, someone has to water the sprouts, and someone has to harvest, package, and drive the grown crops to the store so we can eat them.

Thus, we think of land in the abstract. We think that the shelves will always bear food, because from our perspective it just appears there, conjured out of thin air. But for most of human history (and for a vast portion of the world still today) this has not been the case. It was instantly clear to any farmer of the past, including in Europe, that land had to be taken care of lest it stopped providing for good.

Before the Nakba, Palestinians distributed land communally under the Masha’a system. Plots were distributed among families for a certain period, and land outside villages was held in common for grazing and collecting firewood.

Many ways in which Palestinians made use of the desert and marshes and why they chose to leave them as they did may have very well been lost in the Nakba. Most of the information about the Masha’a practice in Western studies comes from British sources and is thus seen through their worldview. After which, the absence of evidence about how people used to survive on their native land is used by the settler to justify more of their destructive practices.

A system that works for its population cannot be said to be a failed system. That settlers “made the desert green” is a childish myth for a childish people who mythologize their history where none has been. Throughout history, Palestine had long been a provider of commodities around the Mediterranean. Even today, the only use “Israelis” have for the Naqab desert is to abandon asylum seekers there to die. No settler wants to live in the desert — they prefer the lush, neatly-colonized landscapes west of the Jordan, or the seaside accommodations that Gaza keeps away from them. What one finds in the Naqab today are 36 unrecognized Palestinian villages that do not appear on any map (including Google Maps), and several kibbutz suspiciously close to the border with Jordan; this makes sense within “Israeli” settler-colonial policy, as the kibbutz were established to serve as the first line of human shields against incursions (and that is indeed the purpose they served on October 7, 2023).

The introduction of destructive species in Palestine has disrupted local ecosystems and the availability of water. Eucalyptus trees drink up as much water as is made available to them, which can be used to justify not providing water to Palestinian communities – and eventually forces Palestinians to abandon their homes. Eucalyptus trees have also been the cause of many wildfires in Palestine — the oil in the bark is highly flammable and makes the trees explode under heat, spreading the fire. Wildfires in Palestine are now more common than they used to be, and this can be directly attributed to the presence of foreign plants that have been imported to Palestine.

Since 1967, settlers in Palestine have uprooted over 800,000 olive trees — trees which are suited to the local climate and provide food and livelihood to millions of Palestinians. Settlers are not interested in cultivating olives for themselves; they prefer to destroy these generational trees and import olive oil from Turkey or Spain; Because of this, the “Israeli” settler state has become the 35th largest importer of olive oil in the world. The settler state turns itself into a caricature because no concessions can be given — not one step back can be made.

The ramifications of this form of colonialism are plenty. Under humanitarian concerns, the settler reinforces their power and ensures the native population will never be a problem for them. They kill the Indigenous; they force them into reservations; they sever their ties to the land that feeds us all, and then wonder why climate catastrophes happen. And when these catastrophes happen, the settler retort is to say “well, there’s just nothing we could have done to prevent this!” To say otherwise would mean recognizing that the land is occupied and that people did know what to do for hundreds of years, but they were uprooted and severed from the land — only then will the settler know peace, however briefly. To recognize and integrate Indigenous practices would mean to recognize their claim to ownership of the land – at least partly – and this is antithetical to the survival of any settler state.

Despite being removed from its process of production, land is land: it feeds us. We extract its resources for our devices. This is true whether one is Palestinian, European, American, or anyone else.

In 1626, when Puritans arrived in what is now Salem, located off the Bay of Massachusetts, they came across empty buildings and, thinking they were abandoned, appropriated them. By winter, when the Naumkeag band of the Massachusett came back to their winter fishing grounds for the season, they found white people occupying their homes, redecorating them to suit their European tastes. Instead of driving them out, the Naumkeag welcomed these newcomers as people needing help in a new land they did not know. They taught the English how to cultivate the land, how to plant in the hills productively, and how to survive there.

In Salem the settlers drained swamps and built upon them houses and industry, despite the fact that the Naumkeag had been living perfectly well with these swamps next to their fishing grounds for thousands of years. They understood the importance of these biomes because they had lived with them for millennia. In Salem too the rocky hills in Salem were also a problem to the settlers — just another obstacle to be flattened, destroyed and paved over.

When Europeans came to Turtle Island, they thought they were seeing wilderness; huge forests and marshes greeted them. But what they were actually seeing were carefully-tended autonomous systems that served as breadbaskets for the Indigenous population. Controlled burns were used seasonally to renew the soil, promote the growth of fire-adapted plants and prevent wild forest fires. Over generations, these burns could be massive and span over hundreds of miles — but they were not random. They were the result of careful planning over decades.

As fires destroy entire towns in California right now, we may want to remember that Native American burns across Arizona and New Mexico showed that it is possible to break the typical climate-fire pattern across large areas. This pattern consists of a few years of rainfall promoting plant growth followed by a year of drought that starts wildfires. It becomes even more mind-boggling to witness these fires and wonder how much must have gone wrong that things have come to this when Indigenous people would be able to enact these practices today in California, but are kept away from doing so at the administrative level.

Native tribes actively managed and enriched forests by introducing beneficial species and useful plants for human life that could thrive in a given system. Plants were sustainably harvested and encouraged to become resilient by sometimes purposely — but always strategically — disturbing the ecosystem.

This was not wilderness and neither was it unique to the Americas. This was not undeveloped land. It looked undeveloped to the European eye because they did not see cobble roads or brick houses, but it sustained life for millions of people for millennia. The European considered the Natives’ tie to the land magical, as if they had some secret sixth sense and knew just where to find berries and game, because they could not see the approach taken to building a multi-generational system with reason and labor.

Dams along the Klamath river were removed just three months ago to restore salmon populations, and now enlightened descendants of Europeans are blaming the Indigenous populations that led this initiative for dispersing water that could have been used against the fires. But salmon indirectly help forests become resilient against wildfires, and this is what the settler mind refuses to see.

The Naumkeag band used the Salem grounds as their seasonal fishing spot. How did all the fish happen to congregate there specifically?

And European settlers could have enjoyed this way of life too — the Naumkeag and many other tribes did not pick up weapons against them, even as the settlers killed them off with diseases they brought over from Europe, but instead welcomed them into their homes and communities, teaching them what they knew of the land. Instead, settlers chose to create reservations outside of the nations’ ancestral homelands through 535 treaties that the U. S. government broke with the Indigenous at every turn.

In California, forest fires are a natural risk. The climate is naturally prone to wildfires, and certainly climate change is worsening the situation. But the European response to these constant risks is always to consume more. Build more dams to dump more water on more fires. Then build more walls to retain more water when the dams flood. Build more dykes to help the walls we built…

Indigenous practices are not magical or mystical. They are the result of understanding the local conditions (something we all do as humans) through practice over millennia. What seems more magical is expecting that we would be able to transpose foreign practices to entirely different conditions with no friction.

I can tell you one thing: if the land in California had been under Native stewardship, the fires would not be destroying thousands of acres, countless homes, and causing the suffering we are all witnessing at this moment.

The seats of power in the imperial core — Biden, Scholz, Macron, Starmer, etc. — who have the power to end this genocide with a phone call decide instead to brazenly defy the wishes of their own people, who have been protesting for Palestine nonstop for over a year.In such a context, it’s easy to feel dismayed. It’s easy to feel like nothing we do matters, like we have no power to change it.

But this is exactly what our imperial masters want us to think. They want us to stop supporting Palestine, to stop calling for an end to their meddling. The less they are challenged, the more they can continue the genocide on unimpeded. They want us to be complacent and quiet, but doing the opposite of what our enemy wants is already a step towards victory!

Be careful of actors who urge us to stay quiet and still, who try to redirect the riled up masses towards ineffective means of protest — or even stop them in their tracks.

What would have happened if Vietnam had said, “We can’t take on the might of the U.S. army, let’s surrender”? Or if Cuba had said, “The Batista regime is propped up by U.S. money, we’ll never win”?

What if Palestine had said, “This is hopeless, let’s accept our death”?

We can take inspiration from popular movements that succeeded, and study their tactics to apply them. But we have to do so on our terms, not on the terms our enemies decide are best for us.

In the West, we have long abandoned violence as a systematic means of political protest. It wasn’t so long ago that it used to be commonplace: just look at worker strikes in the late 19th century to see how they used to protest for things we now take for granted, such as universal health insurance or the eight hour workday. Over time, the bourgeoisie gave us token concessions to protect their power, and this had the (intended) effect of calming workers down. It’s harder to die for a cause when you have something to lose.

People like Gandhi are lionized over contemporaries like Bhagat Singh. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela are heralded as champions of non-violence, despite both using violence (in different ways). And the John Browns, Malcolm Xs, and James Connollys of history are made out to be monsters.

The message is clear: to be a “good” citizen is to be peaceful, to make no waves, not to upset the social order. Non-violence has become a synonym for peace. Thus we have become accustomed to extending the olive branch to our violent political enemies in the name of peace, i.e. maintaining the status quo. But, as Kwame Ture said: “There’s a difference between peace and liberation, is there not? You can have injustice and have peace. So peace isn’t the answer, liberation is the answer. [To the question ‘you seem free at the moment’] I seem peaceful at the moment.”

Violence still exists around us — institutional violence, that is. Palestinian children are being bombed with our weapons. They’re being starved with our policies. Our governments demand peacefulness and compliance while they happily ignore popular demands and enact immense violence both abroad and at home. This is hypocrisy, and it’s built into the system.

The Palestinian Resistance has repeatedly expressed support for the massive movements of solidarity across the world, from marches to boycotts to student encampments. They want us to do more of this. We must listen to them, because they know best what will help Palestine, not “Israelis,” and certainly not Biden — the resistance knows best because they have been fighting the occupier for decades and have now made it into a global pariah, achieving all the goals the Operation Flood al-Aqsa sought to achieve; whereas zionists want to keep killing all Palestinians and would rather you not make a fuss or call attention to their genocide.

The International Court of Justice, a U.N. organ, agrees that “Israel” is committing a genocide and has ordered it to stop, to no avail. Now, their peacekeeping forces are being shot at — something which UNIFIL reports on the daily. “Israel’s” disobedience of U.N. orders is providing us with justification to keep the pressure on, and do each what we can to intensify that pressure.

I don’t know what the prognosis on Gaza looks like. I don’t think “Israel” knows either. This is reason enough to fight; nothing is settled until it’s over. We can only be sure about what’s happening right now, and the situation at this moment is this: there is no way “Israel” comes out of Gaza as anything other than a pariah state.

With every day that passes, zionists expose themselves just a little bit more as the deranged killers that they are. And through supporting them, our governments show themselves to be on the wrong side of the issue — and that this isn’t solely a problem with one or two individuals in government, or a problem of ignorance (that they don’t know what they’re supporting), but that this is calculated, institutional, and that it has gone on for decades even as different parties and individuals succeeded each other in office.

Zionists still expect to go about their lives unimpeded, when we’ve all watched babies mangled beyond recognition by missiles. After all they’ve done, they still expect to be able to fly their settler flags without consequences or promote zionism unchallenged in public.

They don’t grasp just how bad the situation will get for them yet. They will have no more friends. Much like “Israel” is ostracized from the world, so must we ostracize zionists from all circles. This means going against our instilled sense of peacefulness, which we have been brought up on to respect authority and politeness in all situations.

When you cheer for the killing of babies and families so you can own a beachfront property, you clearly position yourself as an enemy of all people, everywhere.

Zionism is not popular. In fact, zionism is so unpopular that our politicians have to make believe that their constituents are zionist, the media has to run sob stories about the poor IOF bulldozer drivers who ran over hundreds of Palestinians to get us to sympathize with them, social media has to ban us for posting anything against “Israel,” authorities have to crack down on protestors, and “private” interest groups have to spend millions doxxing students and buying out politicians to speak in favor of “Israel.”

If the protests were not effective, then they would not have required the repressive baton of the police to stop them. All of these acts of repression are meant to beat us into submission, to teach us learned helplessness. The major problem collective acts pose to the ruler is that they let us see we are far from alone, that there are millions of people on our side, and comparatively very few on theirs.

If zionism was so right, then the state of “Israel” wouldn’t need to be pouring millions into hasbara, making entire books filled with talking points that other zionists should use to defend their stolen homes and the massacres they cheer for.

They have the power of bombs on their side, but they don’t have the power of the masses. Those who have institutional power use different tactics than those who don’t. There’s already an imbalance of power, and so the balance of tactics must be equalized by other means than their bombs and their money.

We are expected to still carry polite conversation with zionists because our upbringing demands that we “respect our differences,” while they would never extend this politeness to us were we Palestinians — or even in the way of something they desire. They are polite with us because they think they can convert us to their death cult; the moment they realize we’re not buying, they will wish for our death all the same. Anyone who prevents settlers from stealing land might as well die, for they will not be useful to the grand plan.

All of this must change, and it will change. There is no world in which we can watch a 19-year-old burn alive in his hospital bed and still call to respect “both sides.” Anyone who does so has an agenda and is being duplicitous, and the first step for change is realizing when they’re doing this.

People on the fence must be corrected about their misconceptions and taught. Nobody is born with instilled science, we live and we learn. Many have spoken about how they “only” became firmly anti-zionist after October 7, when they saw the response from “Israel.” We must accept them — better late than never. But, we must see that they are genuine; again, don’t let the enemy tell you what to think. Many zionists like to pretend to be “concerned about civilians on both sides,” a position from which they will try to get you to abandon the fight and render you ineffectual. Anything short of the complete dismantlement of “Israel” is a concession to the enemy that they will use to drop more bombs and missiles and commit more open-grave massacres.

To do this, we must ourselves be exhaustively educated about zionism. Theory and practice go together, there can not be one without the other. Read and learn, and then apply that knowledge in the material world to effect material change: protest, strike, unionize, boycott! Refuse to order or ship items to “Israel” at your place of work, if you’re able. Take longer to deal with clients there. Misplace their orders, accidentally bump their items against a corner if you work in logistics. Get involved with local organizations that are doing direct action for Palestine!

Only you can decide how far you are able to get involved, but the first step is to recognize that together, we are stronger than they are. Start talking about Palestine with those around you, and find people in your proximity that feel the same way we all do after one year of open genocide. Talk to them, listen to each other: you’re not alone.

If we don’t want this genocide in Palestine to succeed, if we don’t want to send a message that genocide is tolerated and will happen with our silence from now on, if we don’t want genocide to the be new normal — then we must act!

The world is upside down. It is entering the height of its contradictions. They are culminating and soon a leap will happen: everything will change all at once in ways we cannot fully predict yet. But things are in motion already.

This is the law of dialectics, and it’s always faithfully happened.

I don’t want genocide to be the new normal, and if you don’t want that either, then ask yourself: what can I do right now to play my part?

May 7, 2024 is the seven month anniversary of the valiant Al-Aqsa Flood operation. It also marks the seventh month of the zionist entity’s genocide against the Palestinian people. Such a situation may seem hopeless, but hope is being renewed as emergent events in global geopolitics come to a boiling point and point towards a common verdict: we may truly and finally see the end of the zionist occupation in Palestine.

The colonial project that was born and continues the Nakba of 76 years ago will soon be but a distant memory.

But let’s step back a little.

The Nethanyahu government is becoming deeply unpopular in the zionist entity. Not because people want a ceasefire — they want the eradication of Gaza and Palestinians — but because they feel Nethanyahu is incapable of carrying this out to their satisfaction. Some facets of zionist society think the genocide has been enacted too boldly and attracted too much international criticism. Others think the zionist retribution for October 7th hasn’t been harsh enough. Some think Netanyahu should have avoided provoking Iran and Yemen, while others still think he hasn’t done enough to engulf the region in war.

What they do not know, what they can’t ideologically grasp, is there is simply no way they can answer the Al Aqsa Flood Operation. Genocide is out of the question; no genocide in the history of human society has ever been successfully carried out to completion. There are always survivors who tell the stories, who keep the identity alive. They have tried to forcibly relocate Palestinians to Egypt, but the crossing remains closed. They have tried to starve Gaza, but food aid is gradually making its way in.

It must be clear to the zionist entity that their plan of simply bombing Gaza from afar until no one is left is not going to go anywhere. Life endures. After seven months of fighting, while they have killed an appalling number of Palestinians in Gaza, with death toll estimates ranging from 40,000 – 200,000, Hamas (and the resistance at large) have only lost 10% of their capabilities — as relayed by Ayatollah Khameinei.

Six months on, the zionists were forced to pull their troops out of Gaza. They have taken such heavy and demoralizing losses that they had no choice but to withdraw and reorganize their ranks. Although the zionists called this a tactical retreat, battlefield footage and even mainstream journalism have chipped away at this hasty rationale. The myth of the occupation’s “invincible” army has been completely shattered, both domestically and internationally. To the occupier’s further humiliation, Hamas performed missile strikes from previously occupied areas, confirming that they still have their capabilities intact, and that the invaders have not achieved any significant military objectives.

It has always been a stated goal of the Resistance to force the colonizers to reckon with the pipe dream of occupation. Today, the zionist entity’s reputation is shattered. To many people around the world, it has become a pariah state, synonymous with the Nazis. Before, you could still find plenty of people on the fence, who dared not judge or make an opinion. These have largely stopped existing. The entire world is now aware of the plight of the Palestinians, which has been going on for over 76 years, and the masses in their millions side with them. There is more support for Palestine since October 7 than there has been in the entire history of its struggle against occupation.

The Nethanyahu government is reckoning with a global loss of popular support. It tries to appear strong, but is internally in crisis. Around the world, zionist politicians are being hounded and disrupted by activists every time they step outside. More and more of these politicians, including high-ranking officials such as Biden or Pelosi, now say they support a ceasefire. This is not believable of course, but it does represent a change from last year, when they rabidly defended the zionist state even in the face of genocide. The tides are turning. Companies supporting the genocide in any capacity are being vandalized and boycotted.

The zionist entity is getting desperate to finish what they started, but are steadily being made to realize that this is impossible. Residents of the settler state feel things are not moving and demand action. It is this desperation that leads them to commit major mistakes.

On April 1, the zionists struck the Iranian embassy in Syria, and on April 10, they targeted and killed three of Hamas political chairman Ismail Haniyeh’s sons, as well as three of his grandchildren (aged below 10). These are not the actions of a winning state.

Dragging a new contender into a war is not an act a winning state does. The goal of the colonial project has always been complete masterdom over the Arab peninsula, but that requires them to secure Palestine first — which is far from achieved. To get into a second war, to open another front at this time, is a desperate gambit that tests the limits of American support for its imperialist outpost and is simply foolish. A basic tenet of military strategy is that the winning side has time on its side, and can usually afford to be patient, while the losing side must make increasingly desperate attacks. For an example of this, look at how Russia is methodically crawling into Ukraine, while the Ukrainians attempt drastic and doomed large scale attacks.

This act was inviting Iran to retaliate. We have seen (and of course the zionists have as well) that Iran is capable of a sufficiently powerful response. To see such a response, one only has to look to 2020: at the beginning of the year, Iran struck a U.S. military base in Iraq heavily, shelling it for hours, as a response for the U.S.’ assassination of General Qassem Soleimani. Iran indeed retaliated on April 14, targeting occupation military sites with an estimated 200 to 300 missiles and suicide drones. Under this heavy fire, a colonial alliance — the U.S., U.K., France, and Jordan — intervened in defense of the zionist entity. But the coalition failed to sufficiently curb the attack, and zionist bases were pounded by explosions amidst cheers from beleaguered Palestinians and anti-zionists around the world.

Iran, by employing fairly standard missiles and drones, demonstrated little more on their part than a willingness to attack. Their full capabilities remain veiled. The occupation, on the other hand, was not only forced to reveal its dependence on imperialist powers, but the woeful inadequacy of their combined air defenses was on full display.

Since Iran’s response, the U.S. has been dragging its feet and shows it is unwilling to enter a war against Iran. While Congress does keep voting to pour military support towards the zionist colonial entity, the State Department has been hard at work trying to calm down Iran ever since the strike on April 1 and, once it happened, then switched to dissuading “Israel” from retaliation. Blinken instead wanted the colonial entity to accept the loss and move on, unequivocally distancing the empire from both the act and its potential escalation.

The gambit did not pay off. The occupation was unable to bring U.S. boots on the ground. Events continue to unfold unabated as they have done for the past six months. Now, the zionists threaten a ground invasion of Rafah, in a final but futile effort to exterminate the Palestinian people once and for all, or at least invokes a resistance response great enough to draw the U.S. directly into the fray.

In Yemen, Ansarallah has been handed everything on a silver platter: a coalition of ~20 countries that was supposed to restore shipping lanes in the Red Sea all but collapsed before it began. The U.S. is now offering their enemy huge concessions, thereby tacitly admitting defeat. They are now seeking diplomatic solutions and have offered Ansarallah to repair the damages incurred during their long civil war against the U.S.-backed Saudis and UAE, remove foreign forces from all occupied Yemeni lands and islands, remove Ansarallah from the State Department’s “terrorism list,” and recognize them as the legitimate government of Yemen. This is an unprecedented capitulation for the United States. Never before have they offered such a deal to an enemy they were at war with.

Ansarallah immediately refused this deal and remains steadfast in their support of Palestine. As they have loudly declared from the first day of their naval operation: their sole condition for lifting the blockade in the Strait of Bab El Mandeb is the end of the genocide in Gaza.  

Ansarallah’s actions have been highly damaging to the zionist entity. The zionist economy, for example, has been shrinking in 2024 and is finding it difficult to attract investment. This is not surprising; the genocide they are waging requires heavy investment in terms of manpower and money, most of which are not making it back. Businesses are decoupling and leaving the colony due to the wartime insecurity, and investment from foreign capital is going down.

To the zionist entity’s north, Lebanon’s Hezbollah is also making the zionists sweat. One of Hezbollah’s most notable qualities is their strategic calculus. Having mastered guerilla strategy in their successful resistance against previous zionist invasions, such as the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, they do not act rashly, but wait for the right time to intervene. Recall what I said above, about which side of a conflict tends to be the patient one! They have been ramping up their missile strikes on the northern colonies in the past weeks, hinting at a coming escalation. As their capabilities have only improved since the last time they defeated the zionists, they represent another existential threat on the zionist entity’s doorstep.

Hezbollah has not yet entered direct confrontation with the zionists beyond border skirmishes late last year. They are ready for war, should it come to that, and we can be sure that there is a coordinated effort between all participants in this international resistance. All know their place, and it is unlikely that any action (such as the Hezbollah missile barrage that preceded Iran’s retaliation a few days before) happens without the knowledge and approval of other nations.

Empires rarely fall like a house of cards, in one swoop. It takes time and crises. I believe, from observing the events outlined above, that we are seeing this crisis for the imperial outpost “Israel.” A crisis so deep, from which there is simply no way out. A crisis that will lead to their end. The resistance sees this as well, and that is (one) reason they are not declaring all-out war on the zionists by invading from Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The conditions are there, but they need time to unfold.

Now, even more pressure is being placed on the occupation, this time from within the very confines of the Empire itself. With the eruption of hundreds of student protests against their own universities’ financial entanglement and profiteering from zionism, the geriatric ghoul in the White House is forced to make difficult choices: violently crush the student movement in baldfaced defense of the zionist outpost, and commit political suicide by doing so, or permit the boycott and divestment of the academic establishment from the zionist entity, a potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars, to exacerbate the zionist’s financial ruin.

For the first time in months, I am hopeful again. I am hopeful for Palestine and for the human race. I am hopeful for the resistance, the student movement, and the overthrow of the U.S.-Canadian Empire to come. It has been seven months of pure hell in Gaza, a hell which I thought had been abolished, never to revive after 1945. But, I know that as soon as the genocide stops in Gaza, it will all look like just a bad dream. As the Resistance escalates its actions, so too must the movement here organize and escalate so that Palestine may finally awaken from its 76 year long nightmare.