Palestine’s Symbolic Statehood, Egypt, and Lessons From the Palestinian Resistance With Ameed Faleh

Jared: Welcome everybody to another edition of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism Live. It is good to be with you again. It feels like it has been a very long time, even though I know we did some stuff last week, but It's certainly been a while since we've had a conversation on Palestine. Obviously, a lot has happened in that context. A lot is going on in the United States right now, and we'll have some more conversations to talk about that soon. Couple things on tomorrow. So Tuesday we will have a conversation with Raul Muller, which is going to be about art in the Vietnamese liberation struggle. A really cool book that he wrote the introduction. I believe he was also involved in translating it, and we'll talk about all of that. But it's about, or it's a set of pieces that are written by Vietnamese cultural theorists, artists that were, you know, developing the theory and the practical guidelines, as well as like some strategic principles and things like that for how artists in Vietnam would relate to the— what they called the war of resistance against the United States, right? Which I think is an interesting thing too, reading through the text, all the All the discussion with resistance, right? It also, there's a lot of, obviously, that we could talk about in terms of resonances between the war of resistance against the United States in Vietnam and the war against— the war of resistance against the United States and Zionism in Palestine. So anyways, I look forward to that conversation. It'll kind of be a continuation of the conversation we had last week.

Ameed Faleh: Yeah.

Jared: With Musa Springer, Erica Caines, and Slink about, you know, the State Department, YouTube, and art, which got demonetized because YouTube didn't like us talking about that. So we'll see how they feel about today's conversation. So anyways, our guest, if folks don't know, Ameed Faleh, we had a conversation A couple months ago now, a few months ago, that was about Rifat Alarir and also Fatih Al-Shakaki. And you know, is a really good conversation, and I encourage people to go back and check that out. It was on a piece that was written in Eb Magazine, I think. No, maybe it was. I'll have him confirm. It was either Liberated Texts or Eb Magazine. I get confused because Louis All Day, of course, is involved in both. And shout out, as always, to Louis All Day. day for the great work that he does. So Ameed is a Palestinian student at Al-Quds University and a member of the Good Shepherd Collective. There is a link in the show notes to support the Good Shepherd Collective. We've had a few conversations now, 2 with a couple members there, and then Ameed also is involved in that project. So if we combine them all together, this is be the 4th, I think. So anyway, appreciate the work that they do there, and shout out to them. And shout out to them also just on Twitter and on Instagram as good Palestinian voices that fight against all the bankrupt versions of anti-Zionism, so-called, as well as, I think, offering a lot in terms of insight of what anti-Zionism actually entails from a Palestinian perspective. And so very appreciative of them. So with that, I'll bring Ameed to the stage and we'll start to get into this conversation. Ameed, it's good to be with you again.

Ameed Faleh: Thank you for having me, Jared. I'm so glad to be back. So my name is Ameed Faleh. I'm an economics, political science student at Al-Quds University. And the article was actually in App Magazine, so you're right.

Jared: Okay.

Ameed Faleh: And shout out to Louis, as per always. He is an amazing individual. And shout out to Mehmet Ali.

Jared: I love Louis.

Ameed Faleh: He is amazing. And shout out to the Good Shepherd Collective. They are an amazing group of really principled people. I cannot, like, it's a pleasure to work with them. You know, I work with them daily. They are amazing. This is the least I can say about them, that they're amazing. No words can describe them. Unless you've worked with them, you cannot grasp how amazing they are. Like, they are amazing with the tweets, but the articulation with their ideas, how they go about their ideas, is absolutely amazing.

Jared: Well, that's great to hear. Is it?

Ameed Faleh: Yeah.

Jared: Anyway, it is good to hear. And yeah, I appreciate— and shout out to Lara. In the chat. Shepherd Collective.

Ameed Faleh: Hello, Lara.

Jared: And just good morning to folks tuning in. Appreciate y'all. So let's start. So there's 3 pieces we're going to talk about with you today. I have a couple questions on each. And the one that I reached out to you about first actually was this piece called I Don't Want a State and I Never Did. And I think it's an interesting piece because I think for a lot of folks, even in— we have these questions in the US of state versus non-state and these questions around socialism, so on, right? What kind of state and all of that. But I think what you're really talking about here is a very important thing to understand from the context of the West Bank, context of Palestine, of You know, just what the state-building project, so-called, has been like since Oslo, you know, in that context, and how Palestinian people have felt. Obviously, I'm sure there's different feelings among different people about it, but the way that many Palestinian people feel about the Palestinian Authority and that project that emanates out of the Oslo Accords. And so, You start your piece with this story. It really helps ground some of what you're grappling with in the piece. So I wondered if you want to share that story and kind of just share a little bit about how many in your generation, other people that you are politically kind of aligned with, view that process of state building.

Ameed Faleh: Yeah. So I start with my article with a little, I guess, anecdote. It was in 2017 or 2018, I can't remember. I think it was in 2017. It was a normal Sunday. Sunday is the start of the week for us. So I went into school, same routine. They check your fingernails, did you cut them or not. You stand up for the anthem. And we do the regular morning routine in the school. And what was the routine? And suddenly, the sports teacher, who was also the announcer, basically relayed the martyrdom of the cousin of one of our students that I know. He is in my class. So I was confused because, A, I never heard about this. B, I searched everywhere for the guy. He's nowhere to be found. So he was absent from the school at that time. Day. And within the sort of speech he gave, he said, despite all the hardship, despite the martyrs, despite everything, we will prevail and we will stay rooted in the land and we'll have a state with Jerusalem as its capital and President Mahmoud Abbas as its leader. And I didn't say anything. Like it was just the regular speech schmear thing that we have, you know. But students actually laughed. Like they chuckled and laughed amidst the news of the martyrdom of someone. They laughed. So there was this sort of tonal shift between you're confused and maybe you're sad, maybe you know the guy that got martyred. Yeah. But the entire atmosphere shifted. And even one teacher said, like, his little state is going to outlive us all. Like, for how long do we want this state? For how long is this guy ruling this self-perpetuating interim authority? Because legally it is an interim authority. It's not supposed to be permanent like this. So I start off my article with that. To highlight both. And it's very interesting for me, the older generations, how they view statehood and the newer post-Second Intifada generation, which I belong to. I was born in 2003, smack dab in the Second Intifada, but I never really, I was a little kid, 2, 3 years old, 4 years old when the Second Intifada ended. I didn't catch it. Basically, so the attitudes are kind of the same—is that everyone knows that after you know 24, 25, 26, it's all it verged on 30 and counting years of the Oslo Accords. What has been achieved? And this is the central question: like if if we take symbolism as We reify symbolism, which is the act of imbuing sort of a material consequence upon symbolism, which is recognition of Palestinian state, is reifying symbolism, reifying a Palestinian state in and of itself. Because in reality, there's no such thing as a Palestinian state. And this This thingifying or reifying of a Palestinian state has a lot of harmful connotations for us, has a lot of harmful consequences for us. And this is what I'm trying to get across in my piece. And the reason I chose to publish it at Medium is I was crass, honestly. I was very frank and very crass. Like, I didn't want, you know, an editorial team looking after my words and saying, this is a bit too You know, unprofessional or something like that. So this is what I come across, where I come from. And with regards to my generation specifically, you know, we are the second intifada generation. We have been socially engineered to accept the status quo as is. You know, we were born when, for example, Interest rates with banks were really low, so you could get a loan and do whatever you want. You could start your little startup business. And the politics of startup businesses have been very in the forefront in the West Bank. So yeah, take out a loan, start a business, take out a loan, start a business. Don't care about politics. You don't want the Israelis to— Right. To arrest you or murder you. This has been the case up until 2021 for my generation. I think it has been a moment of awakening personally for me and a lot of people that were in my generation. 2021, Sayfa Quds battle happened. We know everything that happened. It's not a long time ago. Sheikh Jarrah, was being ethnically cleansed. Gaza intervened to defend it. And the rest is history. I cannot overstate how pivotal that specific moment in Palestinian history, looking back at it and how it shaped national consciousness. On a personal level, completely transformed me, 2020. And I think for a lot of people in my generation, especially the West Bank, when you talk about the armed resistance in the West Bank, Jenin and Pul Kerem, previously Nablus, those guys that are resisting, they are part of the same post-Second Intifada generation that I belong to. They never lived through the Second Intifada, but they lived through one of the most clear-cut victories in Palestinian history. The fact that Gaza intervened for Jerusalem and scored a total military victory over Israel. Israel was in a state of attrition and shambles, not counting also the popular uprisings in the West Bank that happened during that time, and even in '48, AKA Israel proper, whatever they call in academia, it's '48. So within that context, this is how sort of the discourse of having a state for my generation has transformed from We want a state to we want land, and this is a constant theme in my article that I don't want a state. I want land, and there's a big dichotomy. You know, people ask me, you know, what's the difference between state and land? Doesn't a state have land? Well, yes, but the specific state I'm I'm referring to is is the one that we have been you know trained. to envision in the future. Maybe we'll have a state, but in reality, I don't want a state like that. It's one of my worst nightmares to have a state run like the Palestinian Authority. I don't want a state like that. I would rather be stateless, even if it came at the context of a really true 2-state solution or even a 1-state solution. It's not viable. Those are corrupt collaborationist people. And if it came down to me, I don't want any association with them, but I'm forced to associate with them via my passport, via my ID. So this is the context of which I'm speaking.

Jared: No, I appreciate that. And I think it's interesting because it's like, I'm thinking about some of my conversations with Abdul-Jawad Omar too. And in some ways, What you have, um, I mean, obviously there's, there's a lot of unique qualities to your situation, you know, because you have 2 sets of, uh, you know, you have the IOF, right? And then you have the PA, and then you have 2 different carceral systems. You have, um, you know, 2 different layers of Counterinsurgency, which is kind of like saying 2 different layers of colonialism in some respects. And when we have these conversations on the PA too, I mean, honestly, it reminds me a lot of what I think about the US in terms of a state apparatus, which is that primarily what it does is it It is there to crush dissent. That is the— I mean, we could talk about, for instance, all the student organizing, the student intifada, as it was called, this past year, and how many people were just arrested up and charged, and then how much the universities welcomed in the police. But all that is to say that, as I understand the Palestinian Authority, it seems like their primary use is his counterinsurgency, right? Is his domestic counterinsurgency. It's like, oh, well, these are the native, quote unquote, counterinsurgents, right? And so it's kind of like indirect colonial rule or something along those lines. And the more, unfortunately, those methods of rule are often more effective Because people can say, well, they're Palestinians, they look like us, they are our people, right? And so we're more comfortable with that kind of arrangement than we would obviously be if they were Israelis directly, then this feels differently. But go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.

Ameed Faleh: Thank you. Yeah, I think that aspect of kinship and familial ties runs deep within Palestinian society. So if you have a cousin who's part of the PA, if you have an uncle who's part of the PA and you criticize the PA, the first person, the first thing that gets lodged at you in that conversation with anyone is that, why are you criticizing the PA when your uncle is part of the PA? And this is a valid criticism. There is no counterargument to it. But one thing, Yanni, I have seen people say, like no one in my family is affiliated with the PA, thank God. But one thing I've seen people in that situation say is the fact that, you know, I criticize the PA and I have an uncle in the PA and I also criticize my uncle. Like he's not exempt from that criticism.

Jared: Yeah, and honestly, I mean, this is similar, like, in cities in the United States to police Black and brown folks. There's been a concerted effort, especially over the last 40 years, to make the police force look more like the people that it's policing, and also to, like you say, I mean, it's the same thing, like, You just run into context of, well, yeah, prisons might be bad, but my mother-in-law is a corrections officer. And it's honestly often the only form of— not the only form, but one of the few forms of employment that's available to folks in those communities.

Ameed Faleh: Exactly.

Jared: And I'm sure that's the same in the West Bank, is just this idea of, Well, the PA has jobs that people can then go into where they can get maybe some benefits, maybe a pension. I don't know the case in the PA, but that's kind of the logic that makes it an avenue for people that they see as like, okay, I want to be able to buy a house, or I want to be able to have this kind of life. I want to be able to retire someday. These are the jobs that are available that can get me there. And of course, then, so then they rationalize why they're involved in this counterinsurgent operation, essentially.

Ameed Faleh: Yeah, it's the same in the West Bank. The pay isn't great. When you work for the pay, the pay isn't great, but there's guaranteed pay, and this is very crucial. The West Bank is economically subservient to Israel. There's no question about it. So when Israel wants to release, for example, certain trade goods, it can release. If it wants to block them, it can block them. It has complete say over the West Bank. So what often happens is that the markets fluctuate, boom and bust cycles that are not natural. Traditional Keynesian economic theory, which I hate, by the way, I dislike Keynesian economic theory, says the market goes through boom and bust cycles, that's okay.

Jared: Right.

Ameed Faleh: But in the context of the West Bank, those are colonial modes of control. You resist us, we'll make your life a living hell. We'll call out, for example, laborers from '48. So we had before the 7th of October about 130,000 Palestinian laborers. So we're talking about 139,000 laborers from a population of 2 million.

Jared: Right.

Ameed Faleh: So that's a huge amount of people. So they told them, you can't go back, you can't work. So we can see how Israel creates facts on the ground and we're supposed to adapt to it. So what the PA does is that it guarantees a certain safety net. No matter how things get bad, I'll get my salary. It's a bad salary, but at least it's something.

Jared: Right.

Ameed Faleh: And when you look at the officer-to-civilian ratio in the West Bank, it is absolutely frightening. So between 48 people, there is 1 officer that's affiliated with the PA, and it's one of the highest ratios in the entire world. And this model of high officer-to-civilian ratio, from my research, was replicated in post-2003 Iraq. So it is a US strategy for people to police their own people in order to grant legitimacy to colonial violence, basically imperial violence.

Jared: Yeah, that's right on. And yeah, thank you for that. So where I want to go next with this is that you write this in a context where We're seeing not as much right now, but when you wrote the piece, the weeks and months prior to that, that you would have more states coming out and saying, we recognize the Palestinian state. And it's one of the things you address in the essay. I could see folks, and I have seen folks argue that this is a positive step, and we could imagine a point based on how Much Israel's conduct right now is kind of isolating itself from a lot of the world, not the United States, not the UK, and so on, but a lot of the world, even parts of Europe to some degree, not extremely, but you see at least on a symbolic level, right, where it's becoming difficult for certain states to not do certain Take certain steps to kind of distance themselves from it. And so you could see a point, and I don't know how close we are, but I think it's not too far off, where on paper there's more states that recognize Palestine as a state than actually recognize Israel or the Zionist entity. And at the same time, just after you published this essay, I think it was last week, You know, the Knesset, the Zionist parliament, basically, they voted to ban their own recognition of a Palestinian state. Obviously, they don't recognize it currently, but basically, as I understand, this would be a future thing, right, of saying, like, it's illegal, essentially, for us to recognize this. And, you know, we also have this ICJ ruling that came out last week that—

Ameed Faleh: Mm-hmm.

Jared: Again, talks about certain things related to '67 and basically a stronger condemnation of settlements and things like this and occupation in these specific regions than we have seen from them in the past. And so part of what I see you talking about in the piece is—

Ameed Faleh: Yeah.

Jared: I'll let you say it, but basically the very little that you take from these kind of, maybe even, yeah, I'll let you say it. How do you feel about those developments? We'll just put it that way, and I'll let you put it in your own words.

Ameed Faleh: So when the Knesset voted on that, and I saw that news, I was laughing. So the first thing that came to mind is, what is the PA going to do? Yeah. If it's going to be outlawed, what leg can the PA stand on? The very concept of collaboration in and of itself is not a mustache-twirling collaborationist. They need to have a discourse, a certain discourse to sway the masses. And the primary discourse for the Palestinian Authority is a state. Yeah. We're gonna get a state, and these are the checklists that we need to have in order to get a state. And one of those checklists is, you know, be collaborationist. We have to be collaborationist because there is there's no other way to get a state. This has been the discourse for the PA since 1993. So if the Knesset, you know, did that, what is the PA gonna do? And it's not a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely asking. If you discredit yourself so much in the eye of the masses and you put yourself on the opposing end of their aspirations, do you think your fate is going to be good? Like you're going to live business as usual? It's not going to be business as usual. And this is the sort of thing I'm thinking about. It reflects the status quo for all intents and purposes. It's not a big deal, but it's also a big deal. Big deal in the fact that it's legislated now. We don't want this 2-state solution, and anyone who wants it is going to be criminalized for it. So on the one hand, it is a development, and on the other hand, In terms of law. But on the other hand, it's not. It reflects the status quo. We're economically dependent as per the Paris Protocols. We don't even set our own tariffs on goods going in. It's set by Israel. We're not allowed to have outside trade with anyone but Israel and through Israeli approval. So if you want to trade, for example, with, I don't know, maybe Saudi Arabia, Mm-hmm. Now, for example, we have to get Israeli approval for the goods to flow in. Politically, there is nothing on the horizon, nothing. Settlements expand. What has the Knesset done is already cement the status quo that's been known to everyone since 2005, maybe, since the wall was semi-completed. So the question is, lots of states are recognizing the Palestinian state, but what has the so-called Palestinian state done to grant itself a modicum of sovereignty? It's stuck to the written agreements when Israel is not sticking by them. It's violating them every single day. Those daily raids that happen in West Bank towns and cities, They're not allowed as per the Oslo Accords, and they are a new post-Second Intifada invention. Before the Second Intifada, the Israeli army wouldn't storm a PACE-controlled Area C city. That was off the books for them. But what happened as per the Second Intifada, they saw a new leadership, a new leadership that's willing to concede even more. Than what the old leadership did. And they took that opportunity. When in 2002, the Israelis invaded the West Bank towns and cities, they were planning to dissolve the entire PA. There's no PA in the April 2002 invasion of West Bank towns and cities. What they found was a servile puppet Name Mahmoud Abbas, and they they took that opportunity, and they propped him up. They gave him legitimacy. They give him political legitimacy for the time being. You know, when you when you come off the heels of Yasser Arafat, he is well loved. For better or for worse, he is well loved by Palestinians. When you come off the heels of Yasser Arafat. You need someone who politically has a project that's maybe better than him or equal to him. So what they did in that time span, 2005 to 2010, '11, was pushed for the notion of a Palestinian state. We're going to give you a state. We are meeting with the PA leadership. We're ironing out the details. We're negotiating with them. But what happened when you look at the leaks of these meetings in the Palestine Papers, they were leaked by Al Jazeera, I think. What happened was the PLO's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, who passed away, I think in 2020 or 2021, I don't remember, he was literally begging the Americans, Give us something we can work with. We have killed people for you. He literally said, we have killed people for you. We've controlled the mosques. We've controlled the sermons in the mosque. We have curbed down on any organizations that might be affiliated with the resistance. Please give us something to work with. And the Americans were like, you have to discuss this with the Israelis. We have no leverage over them. them. So what really happened was, of course, there was never going to be a Palestinian state. They never intended for a Palestinian state to happen. If you look at all the negotiations between the PLO and Israel, there's no mention of a militarized state. So we're always going to be demilitarized. There's no mention of Control of airspace. And there is no mention of the most crucial part of it all, control of the water table. There's no mention of it. So how are you going to build a state when you don't have even control of your own water table? A demilitarized state, it's one of the most shameful things to have a demilitarized state. Yeah. Because we have our own right to bear arms. Now, that's a right. But maybe it can work. Maybe. I have no idea. I'm being optimistic here. But control of the water table is one of the most crucial things, and Israel's not willing to give that to you. So the question here is, after 31 years of the Oslo Accords, why has the PLO and the PA and You know, stuck by so loyally to the terms set by the Oslo Accords when their opponent or their partner for peace didn't. Israel is not even its opponent. So this question kind of begs itself. And when we look at the bigger picture, I'm not surprised that Kinesa did this. I'm not surprised. What I'm surprised with is states thinking they're pro-Palestine just because they recognized a Palestinian state. This is what I'm surprised with. The audacity of it all. You have done nothing to support Palestine. Your aid is conditional as states. Your aid to Palestine is very conditional. You have been, you've had your hands dirty, whether it's Colombia, whether it's Spain, with Israel's military technology, with everything Israel destructively did in our world. Israel is a very destructive force. And Zionism in a way transcends Israel and Palestine itself. It travels. It travels to South Africa. Israel offered South Africa nuclear bombs to apartheid South Africa. It set up surveillance technology, military technology for Colombia to crack down on Marxist groups there. So the question here is that— is not how I see it. How do you see it? How I see these developments. The question here is, what are these developments even? What are they indicative of? And they're indicative of a longstanding dying status quo. The status quo of Oslo is dying. Whether the US, whether Israel, whether anyone likes it or not, it is dying. You cannot resuscitate An already failed project. You know, the 7th of October happened. It changed every single paradigm we we have known, and they're trying to turn back the clock for the 7th of October. And I think, despite the clever attempts, despite everything, it's not going to be turned back. Oslo is dead.

Jared: Yeah, appreciated. And we should say you have a piece about that too in, in, um, that first issue of, uh, Ebb Magazine printed out. So if folks have that, you can read it. If not, you can check out and get it from Ebb Magazine, um, the piece specifically on Oslo Is Dead, essentially. Um, and, um, so Given all of that, there's a distinction you make in the piece, in this piece that we're discussing, which is called I Don't Want a State and I Never Did. There's a distinction that you make between the dynamics of state-building in the Palestinian context juxtaposed with the politics of national liberation. And so, obviously, when we think about the PA on one side and the Palestinian resistance factions on the other, we can see the contradiction that exists between these 2 projects. But yeah, say a little bit more about that for you and maybe how you think your generation sees that dichotomy growing up in the era that you did.

Ameed Faleh: So in my article, I distinguish between land and state. And for me, for the conceptualization of the state, it doesn't need to have land. It needs to have the veneer of a state, ministries, a modest police force that's able to curb down on any resistance.

Jared: Right.

Ameed Faleh: Symbols of autonomy that are not actually autonomous. So I juxtapose that with land because land represents everything antithetical to the PA and its project. And this is one example. And this is an example, it was stated by Taufiq Haddad in his book Palestine Limited, It's a really good book. It talks about neoliberalism in the West Bank. It's one of the most concise books on neoliberalism in Palestine. And he said basically, when you look at real estate prices in the West Bank, how they fluctuate, how they go up, how they go down, they're under the assumption that no further liberation of lands is possible. Yeah. So the markets, the real estate markets, which makes up a lot of the Palestinian GDP, Is subservient to the status quo and actually benefits from it. If in some moment Israel releases some land to be Area C to the PA, the land prices are going to go down because they have got more land. There's more land on the market. There's more supply.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: So when I read that example, I think it stuck with me for a reason that, you know, if your entire economy or semi-economy is premised around collaboration and The status quo being, you know, business as usual. How come you claim you want the state when it's antithetical to your— even to even your own goals? Um, so in this, in this context, if, if we take a look, the land represents everything antithetical to the PA because it's detrimental to its project, like materially and figuratively, it's detrimental.

Jared: Thank you.

Ameed Faleh: And what the Palestinian resistance has done in 2005 when it liberated Gaza and parts of the Northwest Bank is that it liberated land. And this is not to say the Palestinian resistance factions do not want a state. No, they have clearly expressed the need for a state, but a different state, a different type of state, a different, entirely different from what the PA is preaching. Right. You take a look at the PA's alliances, which is a state, and you take a look at the Palestinian resistance alliances. They're totally different, two opposite sides of the spectrum. One is, you know, being trained by the US. One is being trained by Iran. One is being funded by Israel. And the US and the European Union, and one is being funded by Iran also, Hezbollah. One is allied with an entire axis of genocide and one is allied with an axis of resistance that transmits technology, transmits expertise, Treats them with the agency that they deserve as a Palestinian resistance movement. And one of the most baffling things about this is the Iranian puppet card people love to use about Hamas or the Islamic Jihad is that it's a projection, especially when it comes from people affiliated with the PLO. All your life, you have taken money from Saudi Arabia, from the Palestinian bourgeoisie in Jordan and the Gulf, and you have obeyed their orders leading to the Oslo Accords. This is history. Every capitulation that the PLO made from the 10-Point Program, which preemptively recognized a 2-state solution in a really indirect way. So basically, any liberated territory is part of a Palestinian state. Yeah. Self-governing authority, basically. It said that in the Ten-Point Program, and that was in 1974. All the way to the Declaration of Independence, which also was a hint to the Israelis that we're willing to talk, all the way to the Oslo Accords, it was done. And the first meetings between PLO and Israeli officials were also facilitated by the Palestinian bourgeoisie based in Jordan and the Gulf. And the U.S., all of these give us the impression that you're the one who is tied to your donors. So it's it's a case of projection. You know, they can't they can't conceptualize the fact that Iran gives money and technical expertise and training to the Palestinian resistance without asking for anything in return. They cannot envision a project like that because all their life they have only known to be controlled by other actors, whether it's the US, whether it's the Gulf. So the land and the state, there's always this dichotomy and it's represented by the Palestinian resistance and the PA. And there's nothing else I could say about this except that—

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: They are diametrically opposed. They cannot be reconciled. Talks about reforming the PLO, I think they are hopeful at best, very much hopeful at best. If I take the best case scenario that the person is genuinely asking for reform, they're hopeful. And at worst, they are harmful.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: They are very harmful because in whatever framework Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are allowed within the PLO, they need to concede something. They need to recognize Israel. They need to agree to the deformed two-state solution that PA agreed to. There's no way to reform the PA without— the PLO without restructuring the entirety of the Palestinian Political compass, and I think there's no hope for the PLO. For me and my entire generation, there is no hope for the PLO. We don't count on the we don't count on the PA. We are born in a sort of a limbo identity-wise. You know, all these years, we haven't we have been in as a generation in an identity crisis because. We have been told to believe that Hamas is bad. We have been told to believe that the Islamic Jihad are bad, or if not bad, you shouldn't associate with them, shouldn't talk about them. They're taboo subjects to talk about because you might get arrested. And we have been also conditioned to know that the PA is also bad. Our parents hate the PA. Most of our parents hate them. So talks about this stuff kind of go around. So we were in an identity crisis. Nobody represents us. But I think going back to 2021, I think we have realized at that point that the dichotomy between the land and the state, one people are working tirelessly to free the land and one people are working tirelessly to get more recognition from a certain state.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: Let's add one state to the checklist that we have. They view statehood as a technocratic checklist. We have ministries, we have this number of countries recognizing us, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But they're missing the most crucial thing, which is land. You have no land. And there was a video— I'm sorry to bring this up. This may be too— I don't think it's too inappropriate, but it's also indicative of something. There was a video of an Israeli soldier taking a pee pee on a PA military base, like on the wall of the PA military base. And it says a lot. It says something. It says a lot about the PA. If even your military bases, your muqata'as, your compounds, they are not safe from Israeli soldiers, Actively undermining their own, undermining them, what else will Israelis do in the future? So in that context, I really think there is no reconciliation between them. There's only one project and one project must prevail. And Palestinians must decide, do they want a state? Do they want a land?

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: They must decide. We as a people must decide. And within our own recent surveys showed by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Studies, I think, I forgot its name. Let me check. It's, yeah, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. It was 10 days ago, the study was published, the statistics.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: 60% of people want the PA to be dissolved in Gaza and the West Bank. So it's unpopular. More than half of the people interviewed choose armed struggle as an alternative to diplomacy and negotiation. So we're seeing a paradigm shift. We're seeing a paradigm shift of how Palestinians think about liberation, How they envision it, how— what they actually want collectively. And I think that facts of it will be felt in the years to come.

Jared: Much appreciated. Salam, thank you for, uh, becoming a member and support. Appreciate that too. Um, so we're going to move to another piece, and there's, there's a couple more we want to get to. Um, and of course As we're talking through this, even though we're talking about multiple pieces, they're all really related in a lot of ways and help us understand, I think, various aspects of what we've seen over the last 9 months of this genocide and of the organized resistance against the regime.

Ameed Faleh: Yeah.

Jared: The genocide and for Palestinian liberation. So you wrote another piece. This is the one of the 3 that we're talking about today that was published by Liberated Texts. Again, shout out to Louis Allday. I'm just going to shout Louis Allday out on every conversation I have. But it's called An Undying Dream of Sovereignty and Liberation. You probably have to help me with pronunciation here, but it's—

Ameed Faleh: Yeah.

Jared: Anur Adel Malek?

Ameed Faleh: Yes, you're spot on.

Jared: Oh, well, first time for everything. Egypt's— Egypt Military Society. And so say a little bit about this, about what drew you to writing this review now, because you're talking— you're looking at a period of Egyptian history that is 50-plus years ago, a lot of it. And kind of, you know, it deals with Abdel Nasser's period and some of the, you know, the writer comes from a Marxist tradition, so you could probably say a little bit about him and who he was, you know, analyzing Nasser's kind of Arab socialist project and looking at it through different periodizations. So yeah, I mean, I guess the question I would ask is, A little bit about why this piece now. What was the dynamic that you were interested in having a conversation about that you're seeing in this moment? And a little bit about who the author was.

Ameed Faleh: So a little bit about Anwar Abdel-Malek. He is a Coptic Egyptian born in 1924. He was born to a Walad family. He, within the political spectrums of Egypt, you know, there were the fascists, there was the Muslim Brotherhood, there was the Pan-Arab socialists, The pan-Arabs, the nucleus of them, so to speak, the nuclei of them, which emerged from sort of European liberal thought, not the bad type of liberal thought, not the bad, bad liberal thought.

Jared: Is there a good European liberal thought? I don't know. We might have to have a debate about that.

Ameed Faleh: It's the type, I guess pan-Arab socialism emerged from that. So when he analyzes the political, the Arab political thought. He traces pan-Arab thought to European liberal ideals that emerged in the Renaissance period. So they're not the traditional ones. They have been Arabized. They have been, you know, molded. They have been— some of the European theories have been even discarded by the, um, the pan-Arabs. So it's a completely different dynamic, I think, within the Arab world. Um, so they're not Arab liberals, so to speak. Um, but their cultural background within this nucleus has been influenced by these humanistic, which I, which I dislike which I really dislike. I have a lot of criticism of humanistic liberal ideals because, A, they're not materialist, and they have paved the way for colonialism. Yeah.

Jared: That's the reality. Yeah, I mean, I think one way to think about it is, yeah, you're looking at kind of— when you're talking about that period, it's liberal thought that emerges You know, as an advance, quote unquote, over kind of feudal and, uh, monarchical, um, and, you know, the hegemony of the church and, and these things within, in Europe. So it's kind of that— it's like the Enlightenment and, like you say, humanistic Rousseau, people like that.

Ameed Faleh: Mm-hmm.

Jared: And, um, so, so political liberalism as opposed to, um, What we think about in terms of liberal parties, which is, is a different thing, um, nowadays. But yeah, I, I agree with you. It is— I mean, it is still an idealistic, um, and has— and, and very compatible with colonialism and ultimately fascism too.

Ameed Faleh: Yeah. And, um, within these political spectrums, um, Anwar Abdel-Malek chose Marxism, so he was affiliated with The Democratic Movement for National Liberation headed by Henry Curiel. He was an Italian Egyptian. So in that time period, a lot of Europeans settled in Egypt, Greeks and Italians specifically, some French also. They settled in and they were treated as Egyptians, kind of. There was a weird sort of relationship between the native Egyptians and them. So So within these Marxist circles, he was basically the leader of the communist circles in Egypt. And the Democratic Movement for National Liberation was a sort of a merger between ASCRA and the Egyptian Movement for National Liberation. So they merged and they, you know, I have no idea what the differences between them were. I'm not educated on that subject, but what I'm educated about is their sort of stances, the Arab communist stances about Palestine, how it was initially revolutionary and how it slid towards, you know, really weird theories about Israel being one social step ahead of the Arab world, which was really weird and not indicative of any historical materialist analysis of the Arab world. But that's a different tangent. So Anwar Abdel-Malek, you know, was affiliated with them. He fought off the— he fought off with the communist volunteers in 1956, the British, French, and Israeli invasions. So he was a fighter in there. He was imprisoned by Nasser during the crackdowns on communists in 1959. And afterwards, After he was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib, I think he fled to France and he continued living his life there. He sometimes went back, I think, to Egypt, but it wasn't a permanent stay. So he passed away in France. And he, I think he studied at Sorbonne in France. Okay. So this is a bit about Anwar Abdel Malik. What prompted me to write the article itself is that, you know, there's a lot of talk about Egypt and what its role, you know, what is needed from Egypt and what Egypt is actually doing. And what Egypt is actually doing, it's Nobody can describe it as anything less than treacherous. It's absolutely disgraceful what it's doing. Before Israel's invasion of the Rafah crossing, they didn't allow any aid in through the Rafah crossing. If they did allow it, they allowed it in small allotted sums of aid. It was very much coordinated with the Israelis. It went through the Netzana border crossing, so it was inspected by the Israelis first, then it went into Rafah and then into Gaza. Egypt since 2007 has been one of the major contributors to the blockade. The Rafah crossing was closed for like a year, I think. A year or so, and it triggered the diplomatic crisis, or not a diplomatic crisis, but a crisis between the Gazan residents and Egypt, to the point that Gazans threw a bomb on the border crossing and they went to shop on the other side of the border in Egypt, and they went back.

Jared: Wow.

Ameed Faleh: So Egypt has been a major player, a major, major player in the plan to asphyxiate Gaza, to rid it of its ideology of resistance. And especially as of late, there have been plans by Israel, by the US conducted with Egypt to build a high-tech wall You know, separating Gaza from Egypt. And this high-tech wall is supposed to be tunnel-proof and stuff like that. So when we talk about the Nasserist period, we must— when we talk about this period, we must also take into account the Nasserist period, because the Nasserist period helps us understand what went wrong. And in the article I wrote, I'm trying to get across the idea that this, this, and that went wrong. And choosing this book in particular offers the avenue to do that, because he analyzes Egypt in a really unorthodox manner, but in a really historically materialist manner. And he is You know, he is not. You know, when you read his work, he's not supportive of Nasser. He has a lot of stuff to say about Nasser. But one thing that I think Anwar Abdel Malik has in his preface and in the end, because they were both written after 1967, is that he acknowledged that Jamal Abdel Nasser, with all of his faults, with all of the, with all everything, he. Of course, he's not going to be a fan of him when he got imprisoned by him. But he said, even though I got imprisoned and I had no idea why I got imprisoned, I still think there is hope. And the primary engine for Nasser to continue his policies is the people. And in a later interview, He was asked about 1952 and he said, it's a revolution. And the interviewer said, but you called it a coup in your book. And he basically said, yes, I did call it a coup, but I think it's one of the most pivotal moments in Egyptian history. And in light of Camp David, basically, it should be remembered as a revolution, not a coup. And it's one of the most— it is an achievement of the Egyptian people because the people that did 1952, the Free Officers, were not some— they didn't come from Mars. They were part and parcel of the Egyptian people's political developments, political aspirations, their views, the various forces that dominated Egyptian society. And he basically said it is a revolution and we have to grant him that right.

Jared: There's an interesting— and I'm gonna get this wrong, um, but I remember a conversation between Too Black and Vijay Prashad, um, and it might have been on Darker Nations or one of those, but, uh, Vijay makes a con— a distinction that I always appreciated between A general's coup, and I don't remember if it's an officer's coup or a captain's coup or something like that. But basically, what he was getting at is that militaries within Africa, within other parts of the world in general, actually too, that there's class dynamics within them, right? And so. There are the people who— a general's coup most often means that basically the whole social order doesn't have any risk of being kind of upended by this most often because they come from a certain strata within the society, even if it's a colonial or neocolonial society where they're really a part of the ruling class.

Ameed Faleh: Yeah.

Jared: already and are most likely going to reproduce something similar to what already exists politically. Maybe they're shifting allegiances between other foreign imperialist powers and things like that, but it's not as likely to change things. And then there are coups that are supported from basically the bottom up within the military, where you have more working-class people or people that are looking to actually—

Ameed Faleh: Yeah.

Jared: Change. And so I don't know who the, who the people, the figures were so much, but I do know that, um, then, you know, what leads to Nasser is, is more, is closer to the latter, at least if we're thinking about the politics of it. So, um, that's a, that's interesting. So, um, so one of the things that you trace here is, um, through, through Abd al-Malik is, um, that there's different currents also in this period within Arab communist circles. And I think this is really important for people to understand too, to also understand some of the ambivalence that sometimes Palestinians and other people have towards the left sometimes and towards communists. And because there were those who Who were— there were those who supported the partition of Palestine from the beginning. And obviously some of this, you don't get into this too much in the piece, but also some of this has to do with what was the USSR's position and things like this too. But share a little bit about that history within Egypt in terms of the factions and because Abdul Malik also takes a specific kind of position here too. So yeah, I'm just interested in that part of the history.

Ameed Faleh: Yeah, as you said, it's not black and white. It's not, you know, it's not like all communists woke up one day and said, yeah, we support the partition. No, some of them woke up one day and actually said that. And that's on the directive of Moscow, unfortunately. And I'm not saying they're Soviet puppets. There is a lot of dynamics to that. But in that specific context, they followed the orders from the USSR. And some of them rejected this outright. And they said, you don't understand the class dynamics of the Arab world, so you cannot speak on it. And here is X, Y, Z arguments on why. Your whole rationale for supporting the partition is bad. So the rationale behind supporting the partition for the quote unquote, and this is by Abdul Malik's words, the internationalist wave, is the fact that Arab societies are feudal societies and therefore the presence of a capitalist force will induce class struggle in Arab societies to catch up to capitalism. But when you actually read about that period, there's a great book on the development of capitalism in the Arab world. It's called The Modern History of Arab States. It's by Vladimir Lutsky. He's a Soviet historian, Soviet Orientalist, not the bad type of Orientalist, the one who studies the Orient. And he traces the class dynamics of Arab societies, the development of capitalism, foreign market exploitation of Arab countries, including Palestine. And Ali Kadri also speaks on it. Which is great. He speaks on it on the proletarization of the West Bank. And he basically says the moment that any society transitions from a subsistence farming model to a cash crop farming model is the moment that social relations, a lot of social relations, feudal social relations are upended. And a lot of Also, modes of productions change. And if we see that through these eyes, Arab societies were also as capitalist as Israel. And the term feudal in Arab societies, there are feudal residues maybe, but the very fact that the moment you're exploited, And your entire reason for farming is upended and replaced with a new reason, that the entire— when your entire sort of work process is altered, family relations also change. Everything changes around you. You know, foreign products are pouring in and you give your crops to foreign markets like London, for example.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: Capitalism starts. And it's not 50% capitalist, 50% feudalist. Historical materialism doesn't work like that. When you transition to capitalism, you transition fully with residues. So this is what Ali Kadri said debunking Arab communists. Yeah. In this sort of regard. So there was the internationalist line that said this, and there was the national Marxist line. It has a lot of connotations. National Marxist is not National Socialism, not Nazism. He called himself a national Marxist, Abdelmalek, and he said that the national Marxist line emerged And it was led by Shoudi Atiyah Shafi, who is who was a longtime friend of Anwar Abdel Malik, and he he died in Abu Zabal prison, I think, in 1961, I believe. And the entire book Egypt Military Society is actually dedicated to Shoudi Atiyah Shafi, together with Anwar Abdel Malik. They formed the Democratic Movement for National Liberation, the Revolutionary Bloc. And this represented the sort of anti-Zionist Marxist current in Egypt. And eventually, when Suez happened, the invasion, the Tripartite Aggression happened, Arab communist parties, the traditional ones, realized their mistakes and they reevaluated their positions vis-à-vis Israel. And after 1967, I think this was the breakthrough for the Arab left that Israel is a colonial force. It's not a progressive force. You cannot reform it. You cannot do anything about it. And within that period, communists had a tumultuous relationship with Jamal Abdel Nasser. It was a very weird, very complex relationship. It cannot be boiled down by they hate Jamal Abdel Nasser or they were, if they hate them or he hates them. It was a tumultuous relationship. Even the reasons Abdel-Malek was flabbergasted by the fact he got arrested. He was like, I don't know why I got arrested by Nasser. On paper and in principle, we were in complete agreement. We need to drive out the invaders. We need to nationalize a lot of companies. I don't know why I was arrested. So this specific chapter, I think it gets exploited by a lot of people to demonize Nasser. And I think it's unfair when even communists who got imprisoned and probably tortured in these prisons said that, I may not like Nasser personally because he tortured me, but I recognize the fact that the welfare state he built, the project he had in mind, it's not that difficult to mine. And I think a lot of the left, when talking about Nasser, refuses to recognize that. Yeah. If if someone who got tortured in these prisons can say that, I think you as a leftist on your keyboard can also type that out. So it's not clear cut. It's not black and white. Communists are not black and white. And unfortunately, the internationalist wave, I I think did a lot of damage to Arab communist movements. Because they were the reason that the Arab regimes had a casus belli against communists. They could arrest any communist they want. They could kill any communist they want just because they're Zionists. I mean, they agreed to the partition plan. Of course they're Zionists. This was the rationale behind the repression of communists in the Arab world. And I think we still pay the price to it to this day. Uh, yeah, history is a nightmare, as Marx said. That's all I'm gonna say.

Jared: The— I, I just want to clarify for people, you probably said this in this, but just to underscore it if anybody didn't quite understand that, that when you talk about the internationalist wave, which you talk about in the piece and you, you lay this out, like It's funny because that term, like a lot of us would say, well, no, I'm an internationalist. Like it in in some ways, I mean what internationalism meant in that context was basically a recognition of Israel and an acceptance of the partition plan because I guess this was the dominant international through the USSR and so on understanding of the kind of geopolitical strategy at. At the time, and it was the nationalists actually who understood, um, the Marxist— of the Marxist current, it was the nationalist current that understood that no, this is a colonial, uh, outpost. This does not have, um— and there's an interesting part too, and you probably referenced this, and I've talked to this about this a little bit with Abdul-Jawad as well, but there is this also belief of Israel of being the kind of progressive, the beacon, and also the most developmentally advanced society within the Middle East. And therefore, because of the kind of progressivist teleology that exists within certain currents of Marxism, people would say, well, Actually, we should all aspire to be more like that, and because they're here, we should learn from them. And so it seems so fucked up, and it is, but it also— I just want people to understand that there are grounds for those kind of beliefs within Marxism. You can read the Communist Manifesto and their currents of it within there, of this idea that colonialism, basically that capitalism would be spread across the planet into the colonies and that this would lead to positive developmental outcomes. And it really is later that Marx begins and Engels begin to be more critical around this question. And then Lenin becomes much more critical around it. But then, you know, even within Stalin and even within different currents in the 20th century, and even today, these things crop up sometimes where people will sort of buy into some of these. I mean, we could get into a whole debate within the US context. There's a bunch of people who are communists who see or describe themselves as communists who see the American Revolution as a very progressive moment in history that we should build off of. And then there are people who are communists who say, no, it was a settler, you know, war. It was a settler kind of liberation. And there was still settler colonialism and slavery. And so we can't just look at this as this You know, clean progressive step forward. There are real material harms and crimes and also ideological problems that come with embedding our own view of progress and the future in the society we want within this construct, you know. And so we have to— so anyways, I just want to highlight that. And I think the piece does a good job of talking about that, and we'll get into more of it. Also say '67 is really important, I think, in terms of just understanding the left across the world of how they— like, you get a lot of bad positions by Marxists, by leftists, etc., from like the mid-'40s through '67. And '67, I think, becomes the moment where a lot of things become much clearer To people of what side are they going to be on. And if people still take bad lines after '67, I think it's very telling. Whereas for some people, '67 became a real wake-up moment of like, oh, this is actually really bad and I'm on the wrong side of this. I need to align myself with the Palestinian people. And so to give an example, if people want to go into some of that history, The conversation we had with Hamza Beg on Malcolm X. He's a good example of a figure who starts to see it before '67, but we talk about some of those pre- and post-'67 shifts within the Black left in the United States, for instance. All right. So continuing on in the piece, there's a broader context. So I'm going to read a quote From your piece here, and then we'll dig into it a little bit. You write, the broader context, of course, was US imperialism's staunch opposition to any form of sovereign development and means of defense against Israel, a development Abdelmalek described as nationalitarian construction. That's in quotes. A term that Abdelmalek created to delineate the difference between nationalism A Eurocentric construct of the Westphalian state that had negative, perhaps fascistic connotations in his eyes, and the type of national conscious that the Global South has accumulated as a result of its anti-imperialism, end quote. So can you unpack this a bit and talk about Nasser's opposition to Israel and its Western backers in this era and this distinction around nationalism and the types of nationalism that Abdelmalek is looking at?

Ameed Faleh: So to start, I think the original title of the article was An Undying Dream of Nationalitarian Construction and Liberation, but I decided with the editors to cut that out because if you're not reading thoroughly about what nationalitarian construction means, you're not going to understand it. But I think it serves as a very good term to describe when we talk about the Third World or the Global South rising up. There's also a national consciousness imbued with the fact that they're rising up. They're building their own economy. They have their own foreign policy.

Jared: Right.

Ameed Faleh: They decide their own fate. This sort of national consciousness for Abdel-Malek himself, he cannot describe it as nationalism because nationalism as a concept evolved within the European Westphalian state. And in his eyes, the direct heir to nationalism is Nazism. Right. And fascism. So to imbue nationalism on that would be Eurocentric in his eyes. And I think he said that verbatim, that it would be Eurocentric. And if we use the term nationalitarian, it would actually grant a certain identity to the national consciousness that emerges within the Global South, because the modes of the development of national consciousness in Europe and in the Global South are very much different, under different circumstances, under different historical conditions. They're not the same. So for Abd al-Malik to put the label of nationalism on both of them, it's erroneous and it's Eurocentric. And maybe— and he had, I think, a natural disposition towards—

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: Not wanting that to happen. So in that sense, this is how nationalitarian construction or nationalism is, how it was coined, which is basically a synonym for nationalism. With regards to Nasser and his sort of opposition to Israel, A lot of incidents stand out. And I'm going to mention at least 3 or 4. The first one is that he fought in Palestine in 1948. So he fought in the now ethnically cleansed village of Fallujah. It's near Gaza. And he was actually under siege by the Israelis. And I don't think he believed they would ever get out of the siege. Yeah. But the siege was broken and he went back to Egypt. And afterwards, one of the reasons that he formulated pan-Arab consciousness is because of his interactions with Palestine. And he said it verbatim, I saw a little girl searching for food on the streets, running away from bullets. This could happen to my daughter. This could happen to any Arab country. We're not living on separate islands. So within that experience with Palestine and Zionism and his opposition to Zionism, he sort of began to understand that the fate of the entire region is intertwined. You cannot separate Palestine from anything else. And this was clearly shown with I think the tripartite aggression on Egypt, the quote-unquote Suez War. Israel invaded first and then Britain and France went in as peacekeepers. We don't want both sides fighting, but they were actually fighting Egypt. So it showed how Israel is an imperialist outpost to the British, to the French, to the Americans. And this sort of— Nasser's victory in that confrontation strengthened his popularity and allowed him to be more, first of all, critical of Arab regimes like Jordan, like Saudi Arabia, very much critical of them. And B, allowed him more leeway to do whatever he sort of wants in a way.

Jared: Right.

Ameed Faleh: With basically the armament situation. So in 1955, well, since 1952 to 1955, Nasser requested weapons to meet the qualitative edge of Israel. He requested weapons from the Americans, from the British, from the French. They all turned him down or gave him Really minuscule amount of modern weaponry. But in 1955, he appealed to them for the last time and they said no, basically. They didn't want Egypt possessing any qualitatively higher weapon than Israel. They didn't want Egypt to be on the same level as Israel. Okay. So he went to the Socialist Bloc. He went to Czechoslovakia, and he got weapons from Czechoslovakia. And within that moment, and after Suez especially, the Egyptian army began to modernize itself and get more weaponry to meet the quality of the French. Did it meet it? I don't think so. Even like there were CIA reports on the eve of 1967. 1967, saying basically, if you want, if Egypt attacks Israel, Egypt has no chance. And this was proven in 1967, even though Israel is the one who attacked, but still. The defeat in 1967 was, it was shocking to people.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: That is also part of the confrontation with Israel, with Nasser. So after 1967, there was also the War of Attrition, and he was planning for the next war with Israel to liberate the Suez Canal, the east bank of the Suez Canal, and Sinai. And within that, and I don't remember which person, I think it's I have no idea where it was written, honestly. I read that somewhere. I have no idea where it's written. But Nasser used to sleep like 3 hours, 4 hours a day. For a man in his 40s or something like that, it was very harmful for him, sleeping 4 hours and constantly stressing over yourself because he felt guilty for that loss. He felt personally responsible for it. And this is why he resigned. This is why protests erupted to want him back. So he felt personally responsible for '67. And he tried to restore that ideology of resistance. Did it work? I think fate took him from us way too early to say if it would've worked or not. Yeah. I think if Egypt was under Nasser's leadership with the capabilities it had during the October War, or the Yom Kippur War as it's known in the West, it would've been different. I think the outcomes would've been different. And yeah, I think that's about it. Definitely a lot to unpack. And I think—

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: Yeah. And I forgot to mention, in Gaza, especially since Egypt ruled that, he created the Fida'iyyin unit in 1955. So through that, he could, you know, launch operations against Israel, and he did. And he launched countless amounts of operations led by an Egyptian officer called Mustafa Hafez. I believe he was assassinated by the Mossad. But in his own tenure, he led countless basically special forces operations inside '48 against surfers. So this is how his interaction with the Palestinian cause, one, shaped him on a personal level, and B, shaped Egypt as a nation.

Jared: Because?

Ameed Faleh: Both are intertwined, the personal and the nationwide.

Jared: Yeah, appreciate it. And I should say too, in talking about that Malcolm X conversation, that one of the— I mean, Nasser's key in that development because Malcolm X goes to Egypt, he goes to Gaza because it's under Egyptian control rule at that point. And so that's— I should have noted that as well. But let's talk about the aftermath of this, because I think this is really, in many ways, what you're trying to sort of get to, right, is to like, how does then this history and what happens after this history structure where we are now, where Egypt has fully, even amid this genocide and being right there and having a border that it's supposed to control with Gaza, it has been A collaborator, right? And it has, you know, and so anyway, so talk about, you write about this with a few figures because you look at Abdelmalek, of course, as kind of central because you're reviewing this book of his, but you also talk about Ali Kadri again. And there's another person, I forget his name, you can add it in, but as you're looking at the defeat of Nasser then and Nasser-style Arab socialism, so like there's these two who he is as a person. There's also kind of the political project that was ongoing in Egypt, but also represents a broader set of regional politics and a broader kind of regional project. And one of the things, I can't remember if you write this or if— but you talk about losing the ideology of resistance that was embedded within that project as well. So talk a little bit about that and say what you think some of the impacts are of this today.

Ameed Faleh: So I think the very fact that losing ideology of resistance is not my own concept, I took it from Ali Kadri. He has an entire book about this. It's called The Unmaking of Arab Socialism. It's really great. I recommend it to anyone who wants to read how neoliberalism introduced itself in the Arab world. And the first sort of discreditment of the Nasserist project came in 1961 when the unity with Syria happened and it dissolved. So 1958 happened, 1961 it dissolved. So this was the first sort of discreditment of him. That he didn't get the job done, basically. He had this golden opportunity towards unity with a rich, resource-rich country, a manpower-rich country like Syria, and he basically dropped the ball on it. And to the credit of the people criticizing Nasser, I think There is a lot of stuff that needed to have been done, but hindsight is always 20/20. If anyone was in his position, maybe they would've done things the same. But the centralization of the economy in Syria had detrimental effects, so it wasn't as prosperous, it wasn't as successful as it was in Egypt. And this is down to the different ways capitalism introduced itself in both Syria and Egypt. So there's no set template or recipe for a welfare state in any country. Each country has its own sort of distinct features, I think.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: But there are common through lines, of course. So 1961 was the first discreditment of the Nasserist project. Communists made fun of Nasser all the time at that time. It was a golden opportunity for themselves to say, look at Nasser, he is basically fumbling the bag. He's not getting the job done. He is He is proving us right. And the notion of we told you so. So with the unity with Syria, the communists were opposed to it. This triggered a lot of violent reactions between both sides. The Arab nationalists were like, you're being Zionist agents again. After '48 and you're still being Zionist agents? And the communists were like, we're not being Zionist agents. We're saying, It's the different circumstances of Syria will not allow for that sort of unity. You need to start out small with maybe a customs union, maybe some economic framework that you can build political unity from, not start from political unity from the get-go. So they opposed it. They worked tirelessly to discredit it, even before it was dissolved. And when it was dissolved, it represented a moral win for them. And this prompted a very famous Palestinian thinker called Munir Shafiq to stop being a communist and be a Nasserist. And he was like— He was a communist. They're making fun of Nasser and they're actively trying to discredit him like they're petty, petty children. Like they cannot envision a project where they cannot agree with— where they can agree with Nasser. They don't agree with him on anything, and it's not out of principle for him. You know, he said it, it's not out of principle. It's out of the fact that, you know, they hate the guy and want to discredit him. Uh, So Munir Shafi, he was a communist and a Nasserist, then he joined the Fatah movement. He fought in Lebanon. And he is one of the most prolific, I think, Palestinian— the Palestinians who tell the story of Jordanian communists, Syrian, and also Lebanese communists. He is amazing. He chronicles that period in his book, and I think it's only available in Arabic, but it's called Journey Through Embers. It's amazing. It's an amazing autobiography. So 1961 was the first defeat. 1967 was the most significant defeat. It shattered the Nasserist project. Even even saying shattered it, I think it's it's it's giving it a bit. It's it's you know it's being a little too soft on the impact of it. Masses the entire masses were in shock and awe. In my town Nablus actually there was a little photo in 1967 of people waiting on the gates of Nablus. You know normal people. Looking at the Israeli tanks going in thinking they're Egyptian or Iraqi tanks. They didn't realize it was Israeli tanks until it was too late. So nobody expected this hardship of military defeat. And in that sense, After 1967, the right wing in Egypt was, the residues of the Egyptian bourgeoisie that Nasser aimed to upend, they were strengthened and they said, look, this is what resistance gets you. Let's make peace. Let's do something about it. And within the new dynamics in Egypt after the death of Nasser, it ultimately led to the Camp David Accords. The October War, lots of things can be said about it. It was a heroic feat, the very fact that they crossed the Suez Canal. They launched the most successful offensive against the Israelis. If we don't take into account October 7th, which I think is an even crazier feat, Of military prowess. Save for that, the history of the October War was weird. Sadat was on the— the Egyptian leader Sadat was on the phone with Kissinger all day, literally telling him every move by the Egyptian army. And Kissinger used to relay that to the Israelis. It's almost cartoonish what was happening in the October War. And with a competent leadership, the phone thing wouldn't have happened and probably a lot of lives would've been lost by the Israelis. I have no word to describe it. It's crazy what what happened in the October War. And it was not out of stupidity. It was out of malice. Nobody calls up Kissinger telling him every day every move of the Egyptian army without knowing who can relay that information. So with a competent leadership, if Nasser was alive, I don't think the October War would have turned out the way it would've turned out. Okay. So the October War was also a defeat, and this accumulated upon the defeats. Five years later, Camp David Accords were signed. Soviet advisors were kicked out of Egypt. Soviet advisors were amazing. They didn't treat them like like the Soviets didn't treat the Egyptians as like we're here to teach you how to run things. It's not like how Americans come in to Arab countries, for example, that they're above everything, above everyone, and they're here to teach everyone how everything works. No, they actually engage with them. They learned Arabic, they learned their language. They were very much embedded in Egyptian society, and they loved Egyptian society. Uh, Sadat had other thoughts, so he kicked them out. He told them, you have a month to leave without any prior notice. By the way, you have a month to leave, pack up your stuff and go. And I think there were 30,000 advisors in Egypt. So it was no small feat, 30,000 advisors. So yeah, I mean, those were the most major defeats and they paved the way for what we see in Egypt now.

Jared: Okay.

Ameed Faleh: Um, yeah, no, you can go.

Jared: Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I was just gonna say, for folks who aren't familiar with the Camp David Accords, I don't expect you to give a thorough explanation of all of it, but just say a little bit about basically what that, uh, entailed and put in place.

Ameed Faleh: Yeah, it put forth— so the Camp David Accords were the first Arab-Israeli quote-unquote peace treaty. It amounted to normalization. It recognized— so Egypt recognized Israel as a state. Egypt pledged to never launch any military action against Israel. Uh, it deemed— if the Israelis withdrew from, um, Sinai, um, they established A demilitarized zone in Sinai, which is very telling they would establish a demilitarized zone in Sinai and not in Palestine itself. So it speaks a lot about uneven power dynamics in negotiations. Since Israel was the primary aggressor in 1967, the demilitarized zone should have been in Palestine, not in Egypt. Yeah. So they established a demilitarized zone over Sinai. And basically what happened is the fact that Egypt was, before the Camp David Accords, was being introduced to neoliberalism. And in order to complete that process of neoliberalization, The logical extent to it was normalization with Israel. So Sadat flew to Jerusalem. He gave a speech to the Knesset about peace, about land for peace, which also established the framework of Oslo. So Camp David established the framework of Oslo and it has a specific annex related to a Palestinian state that needs to be negotiated.

Jared: Yes.

Ameed Faleh: And from the testimony of a leader in Fatah, when the October War ended, Arafat came up to the fighters in training camps and said, the war ended and there will be a settlement soon between the Egyptians and the Israelis. And we need to decide, do we want to be part of that settlement or do we not? Want to be part of that settlement. So, everything that happened with the Oslo normalization, it all stems from Camp David. And I think it's one of our worst defeats. It's even worse than Oslo because it paved the way for Oslo. It paved the way for it legally within the certain annexes within Camp David. And it also allowed for Israeli tourism and trade. Between Egypt and Israel, and I think this trade relationship has been has came to the forefront in the midst of the Yemeni blockade. So Egypt and Jordan are substituting you know the losses that Israel incurred during the blockade, and they're forming a land bridge between you know. Countries who want to ship to Israel but can't, or to Palestine. So yeah, so this is the Cliff Notes version of the Kadri Accords.

Jared: No, I think that's really important. Thank you. So, all right, the next piece is on, and we're going to keep going. Do you still have time? Are you good?

Ameed Faleh: Yeah, I'm good, but let me grab my charger.

Jared: Okay, go ahead. Yeah, I have something I can do while you're doing that. Um, so while Ameed is grabbing his charger, I'm gonna just share my screen for just a second, um, just to share something with folks. So I just wanted to let people know that We are relaunching, starting up again, um, the study group for, um, millennials. We do this frequently. We, uh, what was the last one we finished? We just finished up Tip of the Spear by Orasame Burton. Um, and so quick, before I go into this, I just want to say you do not have to be a member. There is a free membership to our Patreon. Um, You don't have to pay for this. I will put a post, a link in the chat there. But we're going to be reading The Trinity of Fundamentals by Wissam Rafidi, who's a PFLP member. And it's a fictionalized account that he wrote while he was in prison, right? And it was smuggled out when he was in prison, and it was recently translated into English for the first time by the Palestinian Youth Movement. And so you could see the details here. You can just email me if you would like to participate. Obviously, I should say it's helpful and wonderful if people do want to kick in. You can become a member for as little as $1 a month, but especially Given what's going on in the world right now, I, I did not feel good about making it one of our study groups where we required people, um, to pay. Uh, so, so you don't— um, Lara asks a great question. No, you do not have to be a millennial. Um, the name, for those who have not heard me describe this, is mainly a joke. I mean, there was a period in which, um, about between 7— 5 and 7— 5 and 10 years ago, where almost every article for a long time was about how millennials were killing some industry by not spending enough money. Um, but, you know, millennials are killing the housing industry, the car industry, this and that. And, um, the reality of it was just that millennial— like Generational differences, but millennials didn't have the money to be participating. You know, it's okay, Lara, because this is a question that people ask us from time to time. And so the point being that the actual podcast does not actually have a whole lot to do with millennials. I mean, we obviously talk about a whole range of revolutionary politics and People also will say millennials aren't really killing capitalism, and I agree with that. I wish we were. And so that is more of an aspiration than it is an analysis. But anyways, what I would say is, yeah, that's what the name came from. So it was kind of a joke and a way to flip those articles at the time. And anyway, Folks are welcome to join. It may not work. It probably won't work for everybody everywhere in the world because we will meet, uh, due to my schedule at 7:30 PM, uh, Eastern Time at night. Maybe we'll do some kind of component of it that we'll share, um, maybe some— maybe along the way some stuff on YouTube so that everybody can, can, you know, get something out of it. But for the most part, it meets on Zoom and we meet weekly. We go chapter by chapter. We break out into small groups. Thank you. Discussions with a lot of folks from different organizations who always participate. And anyway, it's open. I wanted people to know it starts in, I think, 3 weeks. And the book is like, there's 11 chapters and then there's some other stuff. So I think it'll be about 12 weeks. And so yeah, that's the basic gist of it. But Now that Ameed has his charger, we will reconvene and continue the conversation. So welcome back. All right, let me see. All right, so before we move to the next piece, I guess I should leave you space because you said this piece was to look at things that went wrong, right? Like, how did we get here? Was there anything that you feel like you think the piece highlights or that you wanted to highlight in terms of what went wrong that we haven't really underscored with those questions I asked?

Ameed Faleh: It's not necessarily about what went wrong, but about the dynamics of neoliberalism itself. So I'm an economics student, and the principle of neoliberalism is the retreat of the state. And what we mean by the retreat of the state via economic matters is the fact that it privatizes stuff, healthcare, education, stuff like that. But in essence, what neoliberalism is, is not the retreat of the state. When you look at Egyptian neoliberalism especially, you look at the Egyptian bourgeoisie, they're very much intertwined with the security police apparatus of Egypt. So they have their connections, they have their people, they have their family. They may even be part of it, part of the military, part of the police. So there's this intersection from it, with it.

Jared: Right.

Ameed Faleh: And the state grants a certain type of protection to these formations, to these economic formations, tax write-offs, stuff like that. If they're discredited in the eye of the media, that would help them, stuff like that. And the most prominent example that came to the forefront, I think, is Ibrahim al-Ajjani. He is the leader of Sinai's tribal council, which is a militia formation, like a full-fledged militia formation in Sinai, armed to the brim, that fought off ISIS in Sinai. So the Egyptian army, as per the Camp David Accords, couldn't go in with its full strength. So what it did was something very clever, but I think will backfire on it. You know, kind of how is arm those those tribes and make them form a body that you know represents them. And Ibrahim Al-Jani was chosen to represent that body, and he created several companies, you know, several shadow companies, you know, companies that don't actually exist but are cover for you know operations, of course of dubious and illegal nature. And several legitimate companies. So one of his companies is the Hala Company, which is basically, it's a services company. So if you're a Gazan, you will pay the Hala Company. It would sort out all the paperwork, quote unquote. But what it actually did was it was the only intermediary between the Gazan and the Egyptian state.

Jared: Hmm.

Ameed Faleh: to go out of Gaza through Rafah. So what would happen is it had its ties with Egyptian intelligence, Egyptian army, Egyptian police, and it served itself and it still serves as a monopoly, as a monopoly in that sense. So it's the only company that you can submit your paperwork into and you can go out of Gaza. You know, $5,000, I think, or even more, which is really exorbitant. It's really unfathomable that someone has to pay this amount just to get out of a genocide or to have a chance. So it's not guaranteed and the money is not returnable. So when we talk about the retreat of the state, what we are actually seeing is not the retreat of the state, it's the The retreat of the state from the welfare of the working class, from the social safety nets. So there are no social safety nets in Egypt. State subsidies have been cut down on bread, I think 2 or 3 months ago. The electricity situation in Egypt is bad. The developmental path Egypt is taking is weird. It combines a weird mix of American, you know, has partnerships with Russia, with China, but it's not a genuine national development strategy because first and foremost, they're predicated on IMF and World Bank loans. Any deals it strikes with Russia or China, it's approved by the US beforehand. Otherwise, they wouldn't give them these loans. In that sense, what neoliberalism actually is, is the blurring of the lines between the army officers, the army generals, and the Egyptian bourgeoisie. And this is not to say that army generals or army officers constitute a different class. This is not historical materialism, and anyone who says that doesn't know about Marxism. But there is, at least on the political level, this sort of blurring of the lines. You don't know who's an army officer, you don't know who's the bourgeoisie, you don't know.

Jared: Appreciated. Yeah, thank you. All right, so we're moving to the last of the 3 pieces. This one is a shorter piece, and I think we could probably work through it a little bit faster too. But it's 3 lessons that you wanted to highlight from the Palestinian resistance. So I'm just going to move through these 3, and we can kind of just go through them. The first is that mainstream analysis frequently gets it wrong. You know, this is in the context of analyzing the Palestinian resistance. Of course, we could say this is true about many, many things, you know, but say a little bit about what you were getting at in terms of the analysis of the Palestinian resistance. And I'll just say quickly that I work in a bookstore, and there's a lot of this kind of analysis that exists in that space, even as a leftist bookstore, because these are the books that have been written about the Palestinian resistance. So go ahead.

Ameed Faleh: In my article, I struck the example of Darb al-Qawwini's Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of the Palestinian Resistance. And it's very telling that the name got edited out to say in Arabic, Hamas, the history of Palestinian resistance. And in English, Hamas contained— I don't know why they kept the contained, but they didn't in Arabic. I have no idea. Hamas contained the history of Palestinian resistance also. And I think, you know, Tareq Bakhlouni's work in that sort of contextualizing history, it's good. There's little to no criticism. I have my own criticism of how he puts the history of Hamas, especially circa 2011 and the Arab Spring, but it's merely, I think, nitpicks on my end. At least I consider them mythics. But the central thesis, which he doesn't get into until the last chapter, which is weird, the last chapter talks about containment from Israeli eyes. And he says that from the overwhelming Israeli military force, Gaza is Is caught between a hammer, basically a rock and a hard place. It cannot maneuver itself politically. It cannot, it can claim, you know, he said that, not I don't, it can claim military wins and both sides claim military wins. You know, the both-sidism, which I have a problem with in his work, but neither are able to break the status quo.

Jared: Right.

Ameed Faleh: So Israel is not able to break it and Gaza is not able to break it. So what does this tell us about containment? And he said that this containment, it's unstable. He said it. And it's likely to disintegrate sometime. Someone will try to one-up someone else. It's either Israel or Gaza. And within that, this whole containment hypothesis will break. So he is simultaneously taking Israeli, you know, an Israeli point of view, posing it as a fact, and then building an entire hypothesis over the fact. So what if it's broken? What if it's not broken? When in fact he hasn't interviewed any of Hamas's leaders. He didn't do that. He didn't dig through the archives to talk about containment. He didn't critically challenge the concept of containment, despite critically challenging a lot of stuff in his work. I will give him that.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: So this sort of NGO industrial complex is part of them. They try to peddle this sort of Israeli point of view that Hamas is contained, it's scared, it doesn't want a war. And the biggest, I think the biggest example of this for them, they think it is a big example, is in 2023 when the Islamic Jihad Fought an entire war with Israel without Hamas joining in, and people began to say a lot of people. You know, Hamas sold out the Islamic Jihad. Hamas did this. Hamas did that. Hamas is the new Fatah. I was you know part of these discussions, and I was like, you cannot say they're the new Fatah. They probably have a strategy. There probably is some sort of coordination between them. If the Islamic Jihad itself says there is coordination between Qassam and, you know, Sarayr Quds, their military, then there must be. There, like, you cannot be more loyal to the Islamic Jihad than the Islamic Jihad is loyal to itself. Uh, so this proved and this reignited talks about containment. And this mainstream analysis, you know, it absolutely went out the window on October 7th. And there's a lot of mainstream analysis, you know, they want an Islamic state, they want to rule us, you know, Hamas wants to rule us by despotism, when in fact it's not the case. You know, Hamas in 2006 participated fairly Square in elections that have been certified as genuine, authentic. And this is not to say, this is not to exonerate Jimmy Carter of any of his legacy, his bad legacy. He is a very bad person. But even his foundation said the elections were good. You know, they're authentic within the model of liberal bourgeois elections. So they won the elections and they have participated fair and square and they have shown goodwill towards any sort of democratic framework. The other side, aka Fatah, is the one that's not giving in to any of Hamas's rightful demands. And there's a lot to talk about, but I just don't want to take too much time. So this is what I meant by sort of how mainstream analysis gets it wrong.

Jared: Yeah, right on. Um, yeah, Jimmy Carter, that's a fascinating thing. He also— his foundation also certified, um, at least— I don't know the full history here, and it may be a little bit checkered, but at one point he— his, his group said that, um, the Venezuelan elections were the most Um, the best in the world, essentially, like that they had the best, that they had the best electoral system in the world, right? And this was reviled by Western media because, um, you know, they want to always claim that, you know, Chavez or Maduro, you know, don't have some legitimate claim, um, to power and that they're rigging the elections and all of this. And so, yeah, I mean, definitely, as you said, Not a good person, not a good history, but sometimes there are these ironies, right?

Ameed Faleh: Mm-hmm.

Jared: So the second point that you make is about Islamists and that they understand the power dynamics of the world too. And I think I appreciated this point. I think it's something we've talked about a little bit throughout the last 9 months through different folks that we've had conversations with, because it's a really frustrating part from— I won't say all, because I think a lot of it comes from a certain group of Western leftists, people who are very compatible and promoted within the mainstream, and then certain currents within, whether it's— the DSA or other, um, kind of social democratic voices and things like that, um, that there are these, these ways of just like, you know, you, you say the word Islam or Muslim and it just becomes— it, it's really kind of hilarious in a bad way, but like, you know, it just, it's like even people who should be critical and should want to go deeper in their analysis are really kind of stuck in a boogeyman kind of anti-terror discourse that comes out of 9/11 and obviously predates it as well. Actually, a lot of it ties into the history of Palestine, as people like Darryl Lee and others have shown in terms of US history. But I think for a lot of people, whether they're Gen Z or millennials or older, it really went into overdrive for folks with 9/11 and the way that our state and our society and our culture and our media all responded to that, which I should say I think was categorically wrong. But nonetheless, it had a an impact on the way people think about these things in a way that is sort of like— to give a very, you know, bad sketch of it, a limited sketch of it— is to sort of say, well, no, we want secular progressives, secular leftists, we don't want Islamists, right? One of these is good and one of these is bad. And I think that's, um, a very Western leftist kind of way to get, you know, caught up in some BS. But say a little bit more about what your point is.

Ameed Faleh: Um, before I say that, I think, you know, the, the notion of we want, and, you know, I think it's hilarious because you're not picking out a pair of jeans. Um, it's— we don't have— we didn't have the luxury of, you know, choosing What ideology a resistance faction is is part of. We don't have that luxury. If you want a leftist Marxist resistance movement, by all means create one or join already existing one and expand. Hamas is not preventing you from doing it. Nobody is preventing you except the PA and Israel. But Hamas itself, it doesn't care. The Islamic Jihad. Doesn't care. Today, I think there was a joint operation between Hamas and the PFLP in Gaza. It's not like they revile Islamists. They revile leftists. They may disagree with them on a fundamental level. I'm not being flippant about the differences. There are differences. But within the context of national liberation, and this also ties to Anwar Abdel-Malek, which is great, he talked about a national front. Even if you don't like certain currents within the national movement on a personal level, you don't have to agree with them, but you're both fighting for a certain cause. Yeah, you don't have to endorse their ideas, you don't have to endorse their ideology, you can You can study it. You can either like it or don't like it. That's up to you. But they're they're they're your allies. You don't have the luxury of you know picking and choosing allies. And I think this is what a lot of Western don't get, and a lot of Palestinians also don't. With regards to Islamists to understand the power dynamics of the world, I quoted a speech from the military spokesperson for Qasem al-Baghdadi. who basically said, we're fighting Zionist mercenaries in the field. They're armed with American weapons. They get the green light from the US. We are fighting them and we have amazing warriors. We have amazing fighters that are fighting them. And we manufacture everything from scratch, most things from scratch.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: Bullets, rockets, et cetera. But the greatest weapon that we have is the fighter that is fighting them, that has the indomitable will, that wants to fight despite the conditions, despite everything. And I think this is what— this summarizes all my point, is the fact that they understand it's colonialism. Yeah. They understand is driven by imperialism. They also understand that Zionism is bigger than Israel itself. And this is a point brought up by Ali Kadri in The Proletarization of the West Bank, that Zionism and Israel are compatible. They are the same. They're also not the same because Zionism expands over It extends beyond the confines of Palestine, and it has its hands reaching everywhere, whether it's in the US, whether it's anywhere, South Africa, apartheid South Africa, Latin America, Africa. Israel has had its hands everywhere, and it has never done a single good thing. Within its interventions anywhere. So within that sense, quote unquote, Islamists understand that this is imperialism, this is colonialism. Islamists understand what it takes to fight them, which is not nonviolence, which is not, you know, this notion of nonviolence, I think it's a false dichotomy. I have my own opinion on nonviolence and violence. They are new concepts introduced to Palestinians after the Oslo Accords. Before then, we didn't know what is nonviolence, what is violence. There was a national struggle. That's it. Clear cut. So they understand that. They understand what it needs to get the job done better than a lot of leftists. Hamas has had a lot of disagreements within its ranks. But unlike a lot of leftist groups and a lot of groups in general, it has never had a single splinter. They always resolve their differences amicably, and they always, you know, focus on a supreme goal, which is resistance. And this is the ontological reason of the existence of Palestinian Islamists: resistance. The reason that the Islamic Jihad broke off from the Muslim Brotherhood. Which was the nucleus for Hamas, is because of resistance. And the reason that Hamas identified itself as Hamas, not as the Muslim Brotherhood, is also because of resistance. So you cannot judge Palestinian Islamists by the same metric you judge other Islamists. You cannot judge judge Hamas because it had, you know, Muslim Brotherhood roots the same way you judge Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members. Totally different scenarios, totally different context, totally different organizations. Um, so within that sense, we need to be, I think, more humble with the fact that, you know, don't be condescending towards Hamas, towards the Islamic jihad. Maybe they have good ideas. You know, Fadhi Shafaqi even quoted from Gramsci, I think, in one of his writings. He quoted from Lenin. They are not ignorant people. They have read. They read. I think Robert Fisk interviewed Fadhi Shafaqi, and Robert Fisk had an idea in mind of what an Islamist is. You know, he would recite the Quran in front of him, maybe some sort of cartoonish version of an Arab. And he was like, I'm surprised by the guy. He didn't even make a single religious reference during the entire interview. He loves Shakespeare. He read Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He read Marx. He read Lenin. Robert Frisco was surprised by Shakur and was like, he's so— he almost said it like he's such a weird individual. But the very fact, no, it's not a weird individual. He's just Palestinian. Palestinians have this endless search for knowledge, for knowledge, epistemology that is rooted in their own language, not in the language of others. What happened to Palestinians after the '90s is an aberration to Palestinians. So those Palestinian NGOs that suck up to the Democratic Party, Those Palestinians who think their celebrity status makes them more superior than others. I won't name names, not because it's unprofessional, but because, you know, I just don't want to name names. But all of this stuff are aberrations. Palestinians historically have been, I think, One of any, every any. There's a proverb that says basically, um, I don't know how it translates well into English, but basically Palestinians are like onions, onions in a bag. Whenever, like, when you put your hand in the bag, you will grab something. So all of us are leaders. All of us, you know, want to be leaders. All of us, um, you know, have that drive to search for answers, to contribute something to liberation. And just because the Oslo framework bastardized that doesn't mean it's the new normal. It's the aberration. Within the history of our struggle, the Oslo Accords constitutes Nothing though.

Jared: Appreciate that. I don't understand the onions in a bag thing, but that's okay. We can, we can figure that out, uh, another time. I, uh, that's, that's funny, but I, I appreciate what you're saying.

Ameed Faleh: Um, yeah, so yeah, it doesn't translate well to English. I realized that when I was reading that. No, if any Palestinian speaks Arabic, I think they will get the Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jared: So the last piece that you write is resistance is accumulative. And yeah, I mean, I appreciate that comment. I think we can see that very clearly in this current context because it's impossible to imagine, at least if you have any understanding of history and the conditions of Palestinians, it's difficult for people to imagine, how did Hamas, how did the resistance get here? How did they get to this point where they're able to continue to fight amid all of this and have developed these regional alliances, partnerships with other resistance factions and other in, in the region. Um, and, um, so yeah, you know, obviously that, that is a, is a product of, uh, accumulation, as is the, the tactics and the weaponry that they've developed. Um, but yeah, say a little bit about what you were, you were getting at here.

Ameed Faleh: Yeah, so when I wrote that, I actually didn't include the fact that A lot of people deride the resistance using really outdated arguments. The argument that, you know, the rockets they're shooting, you know, they're nothing. You know, they get intercepted by the Iron Dome all the time. Or if they hit something, you know, no one will get injured. But the reality of the fact that the rocket that they're talking about, was the rocket of 20 years ago, not the rocket of today. The rocket of today has a high explosive payload. It is capable of penetrating any sort of defense mechanism, air defense mechanism that Israel has, and it actually causes damage, material damage, and the lives of settlers, of course. And within that, sort of tone of belittling Palestinian resistance, there is this notion that fighting is useless. You're always going to be at the losing side because you're qualitatively inferior. And I'm always like, that's the whole point of colonialism. Of course you're going to be qualitatively inferior. Otherwise, the colonial power dynamics, the very fact colonialism exists is because of this uneven power It's not a reason to sound defeat by saying, you know, the power dynamic is unequal. No, that's a objective assessment of the fact. You're not bringing anything new to the conversation. What you should be bringing is the fact that every single leader that was killed by Israel, Within the past 20 years, that every single Hamas leader has been instrumental in developing, you know, the rocket, basically the rockets, the training of fighters, everything from, you know, Ahmad Yassin to Abdelaziz al-Rantisi to Ahmed al-Jabari to So all these names, they have left their touches on Hamas that are still prevalent to this day. And their contributions to Hamas as an organization, as a fighting force, is still seen today. So when we say, when I say resistance is accumulative, it literally means that anyone who gets martyred on the way, Their sacrifice won't be lost because they are seen in the material advancement of the resistance faction. And I think many Palestinians fail to grasp that. They think that they either have a very romanticized view that losing a leader doesn't stop a movement, which is true. I agree with that and I just said that. But also there's a certain blow.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: Time-wise, they will get— any organization can get over this blow. And there's also the type of people that say, no, this is actually a great loss and we won't overcome that. And we're always going to be in an inferior position and what's the point of fighting? And I think some of those people are very sincere and they're just scared. And some of those people who Whose purpose are just to sow defeat. They're not actually scared. They are very meticulous in what they say, and they don't mean what they say in the fact that they care about resistance. They mainly want to sow dissent against the Palestinian resistance. And I think that's a problem. And I think we saw that after October 7th. You know, why did Hamas do this if Israel's going to do that? And it's like Hamas is not—

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: Nostradamus didn't expect the scale of the genocide to be like that. And to pin the blame on Hamas instead of Israel itself, it's— why are you blaming the victim for what the aggressor did? And in this case, Israel is the aggressor, as it always is. People say, oh, but Hamas attacked first on October 7th, ignoring the historical background of everything.

Jared: Yeah.

Ameed Faleh: Ignoring the context. Hamas woke up, Hamas fighters woke up one day and just wanted to, you know, do October 7th. It's not, it's not, it's not like that. Gaza was politically deadlocked. The West Bank was politically deadlocked. Settlements expanded. There's a whole range of context beyond, beyond, you know, the mainstream analysis of October 7th. Thank you.

Jared: That completes our questions. I did have something I was going to ask you, and if you don't mind, and then if anybody in the chat has something that they want to add, feel free. You can ask a question to Ameed. You mentioned, and it comes from something you said, so early in this conversation, you talked about Operation Safe Out cuts And how that, what that meant for you to see Sheikh Jarrah. Basically, as I understand that, it was a moment or a time in which Gaza resistance around, basically the way I've heard it described is that it was one of the first times in a very long time that Palestinian resistance had unified and operated together, because the regions have been so isolated and people have been acculturated into thinking themselves as, I live in the West Bank, or, I live in Gaza, I live in '48, and they don't operate in unity, I guess it would be a lot of And so you talked about the meaning of that moment and seeing Gaza support in that moment. I'm thinking about that today because I've talked, we've talked a little bit. I didn't talk to you about this. I did talk to Abdul-Jawad about it, I think, and maybe one or two other folks. But there was the tit-for-tat With Iran, Israel assassinated one of their— I don't remember if it was a general now, but somebody who should have been diplomatically immune, basically, in Syria at a consulate. And this led, of course, to the drones and rockets that they were able to reach occupied Palestine, reach Israeli targets. I think they reached the airfield that the operation was launched from. And then this past week now, and I think this one has the potential to be more substantial, was Yemen and the response that Yemen had, and I can't actually remember what the full sequence of events, but at a certain point then, Yemen was able to successfully have a drone strike in, or a suicide drone, I don't know what it was exactly, but in Tel Aviv. And then, of course, there was the bombing of the oil tanks and everything else that Israel then enacted in response upon Yemen. And there was this response. I mean, we'll see what happens. We don't know fully where it will go from here. But certainly when I see Yemeni people online and stuff like that, There's these really powerful expressions of solidarity that I see. People saying, look, this is the highest honor to have the Zionists bombing us and taking some of these bombs away from being able to be used on people in Gaza, which is just like, I mean, we should all have that That's like a highest aspiration, I think, to think to in some ways. Anyway, I'm just curious from your perspective of what does that mean? How do you feel about Yemen in this context in relation to Palestinians? They've obviously, beyond that, what we talked about, there's been the blockade, which you referenced a little bit earlier.

Ameed Faleh: Mm-hmm.

Jared: But yeah, that's the question, really.

Ameed Faleh: I think what Yemen has done is showcase to everyone why they've been fighting Saudi Arabia, the US, the UK, tons of mercenary death squads through Palestine. It's been years since Yemenis have been saying, we're fighting this war in Yemen for Palestine. And people accuse them of using Palestine as a scapegoat. But what we have seen from the capabilities of Yemen, from the very fact that it doesn't respond to the conventional type of deterrence, Israeli officials said that we don't expect Yemen to be deterred. Yeah. Because Yemen basically through imperious aggression throughout its entire history really, from the time that the Portuguese set sails on their coasts and tried to dominate them, they've been accustomed to aggression, to famines, to blockades, to land invasions, to resisting every single thing that comes with them. So when they say this is the highest, highest honor, they're basically saying you can't back us in a corner. We haven't been backed in. They have— imperialism has shown its worst demons. It's unleashed its worst demons upon Yemen, and Yemen didn't kneel, basically. And I think this front that they're opening with in solidarity with Gaza, it has the potential to actually stop the war, stop the genocide. It has that potential. I don't think either the US nor Israel really wants a regional war, but from what's been happening the past few days, one cannot rule out this possibility. Hezbollah already stated that if Yemen wants, we could respond to this. There is a unity of these fronts. Those fronts are sort of united in strategies, tactics, stuff like that. Each one supports the other. So the question is here, For how long will, you know, this genocide keep going on within the fact that there's a military humanitarian front that is, that doesn't care if a regional war happens, you know, if a full-out war between, you know, I don't know, Iran and Israel happens? Hezbollah and Israel happens, and Israel should take that into account that they're dealing with an entirely different people from different epistemological backgrounds. You know, the epistemological background of the Yemeni people—they don't respond to threats. They don't respond to the conventional forms of shows of force, deterrence, trying to destroy their autonomy by bombing their electricity stations and their oil refineries. Their highest honor is honoring Palestine. But Israel doesn't recognize that because it operates within the go-backward the European humanistic liberal values. It doesn't see this as rational enough for it to work. They're being emotional, but no, they're actually being more rational than the quote-unquote rationalists because Palestine is inexorably tied to the entire region. They recognize that. They have that knowledge that No imperialist power. I don't know if it's out of hubris or out of ignorance that doesn't have. And yeah.

Jared: Thank you. I mean, you might have, you kind of touched on it there. Shout out to Banna.

Ameed Faleh: Go Banna, people.

Jared: She also says, well done. But is there anything else that you would want to say about the role of the Axis of Resistance today?

Ameed Faleh: There isn't anything I want to say that I haven't said, but I think I need to reiterate the fact that the Axis of Resistance, it has been likened to NATO. I disagree with that. It has been likened to a mutual defense pact. If anyone attacks, everyone joins in. But the Axis of Resistance is more complex than that. I think it's an axis that shares technical military expertise. It has a certain ideological continuity with regards to Palestine liberation, stuff like that. It doesn't necessarily mean a mutual defense. If all-out war happens with someone, all-out war happens. Because the nature of Israel imperialism, the US, there are certain power dynamics at play that can't allow this sort of mutual defense treaties to be formed. But the least they can do is open a support front, which is more than a lot of Arab governments can do. And if push comes to shove, they're not afraid of an all-out war. But as a preliminary step, It's a support front, and it's based on the advice and guidance from the Palestinian resistance. They even named, I think the Yemenis even named their drone Yatah at the advice of the Palestinian resistance. And they asked them, what do you want to name this? And they said Yatah. And it's highly likely that Hezbollah is keeping this tit-for-tat game with Israel at also the advice of the Palestinian resistance. That's also a possibility. From what we have seen from the history with Hezbollah, it has been willing to go to extreme lengths to support Gaza specifically. And with that 2006 aggression on Lebanon, one of its most principal aims is to alleviate pressure, military pressure on Gaza, because at that time, the Palestinian resistance factions imprisoned Gilad Shalit, who was an Israeli soldier. And there was an entire military operation sweeping in through the entire Gaza Strip to get Shalit back. And suddenly a war with Lebanon happened. And it alleviated one of the pressures off of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, all of the factions. So it's possible that's also on the advice. So it's not a mutual defense treaty. It's more of a, I guess, there is no example to strike here to make it more at home, but it mainly revolves around technical expertise, military training, funding, of course, a certain ideological continuity with regards to Palestine and liberation. It doesn't mean you have to be Islamist. You could argue the PFLP is part of the Axis of Resistance. That's fine. It doesn't necessarily have to be necessarily Islamist, but there are certain criteria that Need, you know, to be met, AKA you're resisting, cannot be part of the racist axis while you're, for example, Egypt. Um, so yes, it's in that sense.

Jared: Right on. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for this live stream. Um, I have kept you for 2 and a half hours, so I am gonna let us wrap up here. Um, but I really appreciate being in conversation with you Again, and I hope that we can do it again. And definitely encourage people to check out all of these pieces, follow your work. You are @ameedistyping on social media, on Twitter and on Instagram, and you can find that on the Twitter post we put up related to it. You're tagged there, but also the pieces that we talked about today. are linked in the show description, and people can just go and check them out and read for yourself and follow your Medium account too, where you're also publishing. We published a couple of these pieces. So anyway, it was great to be in conversation with you again, Ameed.

Ameed Faleh: Thank you so much for having me, Jared. It's been a pleasure.

Jared: All right. Thank you.