The following article, by Jaldía Abubakra, member of the Executive Committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, was originally published in Spanish at RedH, the Network of Artists and Intellectuals in Defense of Humanity:
No Empire Was Ever Invincible: Palestine and the History of Peoples Who Resisted the Impossible
Exclusive article for the RedH by Jaldía Abubakra (Palestinian activist, member of the Executive Committee of Masar Badil, and member of the Alkarama Palestinian Women’s Movement)
For decades, one of the primary instruments of colonialism and systems of domination has not only been military force, but the construction of a mentality of defeat. Even before destroying cities, imprisoning militants, or bombing entire peoples, power attempts to convince the oppressed that resistance is meaningless. That the balance of forces is too unequal. That the enemy is too powerful. That there is no possible alternative except surrender.
That discourse is constantly repeated today with regard to Palestine. We are told that Zionism is invincible because it possesses one of the most sophisticated armies in the world, because it enjoys the economic, military, and diplomatic backing of the United States and the major Western powers, because it controls advanced technology, intelligence, borders, resources, and an immense international media apparatus capable of imposing its narrative across much of the planet.
The intention of that discourse is not merely to describe a military reality. Its objective is far deeper: to destroy political hope, break the collective will of the Palestinian people, and convince the world that all resistance is doomed to fail.
However, one only has to observe history to discover that this same argument has accompanied virtually every liberation struggle that today is remembered as a universal example of dignity and resistance.
It also seemed impossible to defeat French colonialism in Algeria.
It also seemed impossible for Vietnam to withstand the most powerful army on the planet.
It also seemed impossible to bring an end to apartheid in South Africa.
It also seemed impossible for the colonized peoples of Africa and Asia to expel the European empires.
It also seemed impossible for a revolutionary experience such as the Paris Commune, surrounded by enemies and militarily crushed in only 72 days, to become one of the most important political symbols in modern history.
And yet, history demonstrated time and again that military superiority does not guarantee historical victory.
Empires always attempt to present themselves as eternal. They need to do so. They need to convince peoples that resistance is useless because their power is absolute. But no empire has ever been eternal. No colonial system has remained intact forever. No regime of oppression has succeeded in completely eliminating the will of peoples to fight for their dignity and freedom.
All of those systems possessed superior armies, advanced technology, economic support, and international legitimacy.
And still, they confronted something that no empire can ever fully control: the decision of peoples to continue resisting.
That does not mean romanticizing suffering or ignoring the enormous human cost faced by peoples living under occupation and colonization. It means understanding that history never advances solely according to the military balance of the moment.
If that were the case, much of the world’s peoples would still be living under colonial rule today.
Palestine is part of that long history of human resistance against colonial projects that once appeared invincible.
And perhaps therein lies one of the most important things we must understand today: Palestinian resistance did not begin on October 7, nor did it emerge solely through contemporary resistance organizations. Palestine has spent more than one hundred years resisting colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and the ongoing attempts to erase the very existence of the Palestinian people.
From the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936–1939 against the British Mandate and the Zionist colonial project, through the Nakba of 1948, the refugee camps, the Palestinian revolutionary organizations, the popular intifadas, the hunger strikes of imprisoned women and men, to the daily resistance in Gaza and the West Bank, Palestine has produced multiple forms of struggle, organization, and collective survival.
Palestinian resistance is not only armed. It is also cultural, popular, educational, political, feminist, communal, and profoundly human. It exists in the mother who teaches her children the name of the destroyed village from which her family was expelled. It exists in those who preserve the keys to the homes stolen in 1948. It exists in imprisoned people who transform prison into a political school. It exists in those who continue writing, teaching, cultivating the land, documenting crimes, and organizing collective life even under bombs.
That is why Gaza today represents far more than a territory under siege. Gaza symbolizes the persistence of a people who, despite hunger, massive destruction, and extreme violence, refuse to disappear.
And precisely there lies the true fear of colonialism.
Colonial power never fears only the weapons of peoples. Above all, it fears the political and moral example that resistance produces.
The Paris Commune was brutally crushed during the so-called “Bloody Week.” Tens of thousands of Communards were executed by the French army. But the objective was not merely to retake Paris. The objective was to destroy the political example of a people that had demonstrated that the oppressed could organize themselves, resist, and challenge established power.
The same thing is happening today with Palestine.
The extreme violence inflicted upon Gaza cannot be explained solely through military logic. It also responds to a political and colonial need to send a message to the entire world: any people that challenges the imposed order will be punished in exemplary fashion.
That is why collective punishment, starvation, the systematic destruction of hospitals, universities, schools, bakeries, water infrastructure, and entire neighborhoods are all part of a strategy of colonial terror directed not only against Palestine, but against the very idea of resistance itself.
Yet history demonstrates something that empires never fully understand: massacres do not always produce obedience. Many times they produce memory, consciousness, and new generations of struggle.
That happened in Algeria. It happened in Vietnam. It happened in South Africa. And it is happening today in Palestine.
There is also another historical pattern that constantly repeats itself. The colonizer always needs to criminalize the resistance of peoples in order to justify unlimited violence against them.
Algerian resistance fighters were called terrorists by France.
The fighters of the African National Congress were persecuted and criminalized for decades. Nelson Mandela officially remained on Western “terrorism” lists until relatively recent times.
Vietnam was presented to the world as a barbaric threat against supposed “Western civilization.”
Even the Communards of Paris were portrayed as savage criminals, enemies of order, and threats to society.
Colonialism always needs to dehumanize the people who resist. It needs to portray the resister as irrational, fanatical, or violent by nature, deliberately concealing the real causes of resistance: occupation, apartheid, plunder, racism, and colonization.
Palestine is no exception to that logic.
Zionism and its allies constantly attempt to reduce every form of Palestinian resistance to the category of “terrorism,” denying the colonial context and the right of an occupied people to resist dispossession and ethnic cleansing.
But history demonstrates that the judgment of empires rarely coincides with the judgment of peoples.
Many of those who were persecuted as “terrorists” ultimately came to be recognized by history as symbols of liberation and human dignity.
Even so, it would be a mistake to idealize revolutionary processes or to think that liberation struggles advance in a linear or perfect manner. The real history of peoples is far more complex.
Revolutions and anti-colonial processes do not always triumph the first time. They often pass through defeats, setbacks, contradictions, and new stages of reorganization. Each experience leaves behind lessons, political memory, and historical accumulation for the generations that follow.
The Paris Commune was militarily defeated, but its political legacy influenced revolutionary movements throughout the world for decades.
Vietnam resisted for years before defeating the United States.
Algeria endured enormous human sacrifices before achieving independence.
African anti-colonial struggles were the result of entire generations of rebellions, strikes, clandestine organization, and popular resistance.
Even African independence processes demonstrate that victories are never immediate, complete, or definitive. The end of apartheid in South Africa was an immense historical victory against one of the most brutal racist regimes of the twentieth century. It shattered the international legitimacy of apartheid and opened a new stage for the South African people.
But it is also true that much of the economic power remains concentrated in the hands of the old oligarchy and white bourgeoisie historically tied to colonialism and international capital. Structural inequality, land control, and many forms of exclusion continue to shape South African reality.
That does not mean the South African struggle was meaningless. It means precisely the opposite: liberation struggles are long, complex, and cumulative processes. The fall of a political regime does not automatically eliminate all the economic and social structures built over centuries of colonialism.
The same thing is happening today in different African countries that, after formally winning independence, continue confronting new forms of economic, military, and political dependency. In places such as Burkina Faso and other regions of the Sahel, we are witnessing the resurgence of popular processes once again challenging subordination to French neocolonialism and international structures of domination.
History demonstrates that peoples advance through historical accumulation. No generation begins from zero. Every stage of resistance leaves behind experiences, organization, memory, and political consciousness that nourish future struggles.
And that is precisely what Palestine represents today.
After more than a century of colonialism, expulsion, occupation, massacres, exile, prisons, and permanent siege, the Palestinian people still exist. They have not abandoned their national identity. They have not accepted disappearance. They have not renounced Palestine.
And that fact, in itself, already constitutes a political defeat for the colonial project that dreamed of erasing the Palestinian people from history.
The resistance of Gaza thus connects with the universal memory of besieged peoples who decided not to surrender despite the absolute disproportion of forces. Like Madrid against fascism during the Spanish Civil War. Like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against Nazi extermination. Like Algiers against French colonialism. Like Vietnam against American bombardment.
Not because all those experiences are identical, but because they all express the same historical truth: even when a people appears militarily weaker, it can profoundly alter the course of history through prolonged resistance.
Material force is not the only element that determines the outcome of a conflict. Legitimacy, the capacity for resistance, collective memory, popular rootedness, and the political and moral erosion of the oppressor also matter.
Palestine today occupies a central place in global political consciousness because it represents a question that cuts across our time: can a people continue defending its humanity against one of the most sophisticated systems of colonial violence on the planet?
And the Palestinian answer, from Gaza to the refugee camps and the diaspora, continues to be affirmative.
That is why Palestine inspires millions of people throughout the world. Because it reminds us that resistance is not born from the guarantee of immediate victory, but from the refusal to accept injustice as destiny.
To those who today repeat that Zionism cannot be defeated because it has more weapons, more money, and more allies, history responds with the memory of all the peoples who were considered defeated before they won their freedom.
Palestine is not outside that history.
Palestine is today one of its most vibrant examples.