“Palestinian liberation is inseparable from the fight against global fossil capitalism”

—We are conducting this interview on the second year anniversary of the “prison break” that was October 7, 2023. The Gaza Strip has been destroyed by a genocide that has also sparked the greatest global Palestine solidarity movement in history. What is your general assessment?

—That is a very broad question. But I think it is important to analyze what happened on October 7 from the perspective of anti-colonial resistance: it was an inspiring act of resistance by the Palestinian people against Israeli colonialism, against apartheid, occupation, and dispossession. I think it is crucial to say this, because in the initial days and weeks that followed the narrative we heard was, “Hamas are terrorists, this is violence,” forgetting the wider context, the historical perspective of 100 years of colonialism since the British Mandate, the seven decades of settler colonialism, occupation, and apartheid.

October 7 had many effects. It succeeded in putting the Palestine question – which had been buried – back on the table. Many efforts were made to crush the Palestinian cause. We saw it with the Donald Trump-promoted Abraham Accords (2020) signed by Israel with Morocco, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Sudan, and which Saudi Arabia was close to signing. Palestinian resistance stepped in, in the first place to stop that wave of normalization with the Arab regimes, especially with Saudi Arabia, one of the most important players at the regional and geopolitical levels. If that normalization had moved forward with Saudi Arabia, it would have been a major blow to the people of Palestine. Now there is a renewed debate around the Palestinian cause, resistance, issues concerning armed struggle, and peaceful forms of struggle. October 7 showed that Israeli colonialism is not invincible.

But, at the same time, we have witnessed complete and utter destruction. And it is not just genocide. It is ecocide, and what some are calling holocide: the annihilation of the entire social and ecological fabric of life. The events of October 7 gave Israel the opportunity to further its genocidal project of annihilation in the context of fascistization of both Israel and the world with Trump's arrival to the White House.

It is very hard to be hopeful right now. But in past experiences of anti-colonial struggle, from Haiti to Algeria, Vietnam, and South Africa, we have seen that liberation can take decades. In Algeria, French colonialism lasted 132 years; but the people never gave up hope, resisting in multiple ways and eventually putting an end to colonial rule. That is my hope for the future of Palestine.

—I wanted to ask you about the role of Palestinian violence in general and about October 7 in particular, because the other side will say, “Well, this anti-colonial struggle discourse, when Hamas killed children or kidnapped civilians (which is illegal), clearly shows that Hamas is not interested in resistance, that it simply hates Jews.”

—Hamas is an integral part of the social and political fabric of Palestine, it is not something alien or isolated, and, whether we like it or not, over the last decades it has led Palestinian resistance. It has an Islamist ideology, but it is not a rigid or reactionary ideology, as mainstream Western stereotypes paint it. Of course, socially there are things that we in the Left can and should criticize. As a leftist, I would have preferred that the anti-colonial resistance be led by Marxists, communists, and radical leftists, but that is not the reality. Leftist, nationalist, and secular forces played a role in the 1960s and 1970s, but they have been weakened and killed by imperialism, and also by the wider attack against Arab nationalism in the region, which was an emancipating leftist project. Islamists, not just in Palestine, filled that void with an anti-Western – sometimes anti-imperialist – rhetoric, posing nationalist issues. In Palestine, there are left-wing forces, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but they are much smaller.

Going back to the issue of violence: at the beginning, there was a lot of propaganda and lies. It was claimed that Hamas had raped women and slaughtered and burned children. However, it was later proved and documented, even by the Israelis themselves, that there is no evidence that any of that happened.

—There were children killed and kidnapped.

-Yes, of course. In retrospect, we can say that there are things that should never have happened. But let us not forget that Hamas did not control one hundred percent of what happened on October 7. Because, when they broke the blockade, other people unconnected with Hamas got through and looted, committed violent acts, and murdered people. That is not to say that Hamas did not commit war crimes; but we need to place that violence within the greater violence of colonialism.

I always bring up two quotes to talk about the historical context, to understand why the focus is placed so much on the violence of the colonized, of the oppressed, of the very victims, and why they are called terrorists. This does not only happen with Palestinians; it has happened since the slave groups. Walter Rodney, a Caribbean Marxist, asked what standard of morality could be applied to judge the violence used by a slave against their master to break the chains of oppression and injustice. The greatest violence is the violence of the colonial status quo, of the slave system, of dispossession, of bondage, of the oppressors. They cannot be equated.

The other quote is from Gillo Pontecorvo’s famous movie The Battle of Algiers. There is a major scene in the film, in which General Massu, the French paratrooper sent to repress the guerrilla forces in Algeria in 1957, has captured Mohammed Larbi Ben M’hidi, one of the leading minds behind the Battle of Algiers and brings him to a press conference. In that scene, a journalist asks Ben M’hidi: “Don’t you think it is a bit cowardly to use women’s baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?” To which Ben M’hidi responds categorically: “And doesn’t it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims?” And he adds: “Give me your bombers, and you can have our baskets.”

If we judge things simply from a moralistic perspective, and not from a political or emancipating perspective, we will condemn all forms of violence. Violence itself should be denounced in a perfect world. But we do not live in a perfect world. Violence is all around us: the violence of imperialism, the violence of capitalism, the violence of dying colonialism in Palestine today. Are victims expected to stand idly by, accepting their fate, dying and disappearing? To me, October 7 is fundamentally an act of revolutionary violence.

The other point I would like to add is the issue of Islamophobia. I have seen it internalized even in radical leftist circles in Europe. I think the anti-terrorist work of the United States and the West against uprisings has been internalized by many people in the Left, who assume that any Islamist is simply a terrorist. You do not have to look too keenly to see that some Islamist movements are more moderate than others. Some Islamists have evolved and their ideology has evolved with them, including Hamas, whose 1988 [founding] charter could be said to be anti-Semitic; but by its second charter [2017] it had evolved and even accepted the two-state solution. But Israel does not give a damn. Even if the events of October 7 had not been led by Hamas and had instead been led by a secular Left, Israel and its allies in the imperial West would have found another justification to commit genocide.

It is easy for them, because they have set the stage with decades of Islamophobia and anti-terrorist laws that equate all Islamism with the Daesh. But Hamas is a political movement with an ideology, strategy, plans, and tactics; it changes and adapts as a result of internal and external pressures.

—I believe this also has to do with Frantz Fanon’s thinking on violence. In the West, there is often a reductionist critique of Fanon’s ideas, or perhaps a stereotypical view of his ideas on revolutionary violence.

—In the West, Fanon has been reduced by many to a prophet of the violence of the oppressed. There is also, even in academia and critical progressive circles, a tendency to depoliticize him, to reduce his thinking in many aspects. Fanon accurately placed the violence of the oppressed and the colonized in the wider context of colonial violence. He said that the colonial project was the product of a Manichean world. It generates violence, it breeds violence, and it can only be confronted with violence. Because, if violence is exercised daily, there will naturally be resistance. For him, it was logical that the colonized and the oppressed would rise up violently against their oppressors to free themselves and also to regain their self-esteem, to reclaim their dignity, to become human beings again.

But he did not see violence as an end in itself. It was not directed at white people themselves, but against the colonial system. Revolutionary violence would free both the colonized and the colonizers. Fanon’s analysis is still very relevant today for understanding that this violent system generates violence and needs to be confronted with violence. But, as I said, there is a tendency to depoliticize him or to reduce his thinking to: “This guy loves violence.”

—You wrote an article connecting the Palestinian struggle to the liberation of Vietnam and Algeria. Tell us about those connections.

—I wrote that article linking the Vietnamese and Algerian revolutions and Palestine in November 2024, prompted by the debates I have seen in the West on Palestinian resistance and how it is all reduce to a barbaric violence. I thought it was important to place Palestinian resistance in that long line of anti-colonial struggles that dates back to the revolutions in Asia, Vietnam, Algeria, South Africa, and other parts of the world. But I also wanted to show the links between these different revolutions, because they do not happen in a void. There is international solidarity among the various struggles: people learn from each other and inspire each other.

One example of this is the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, in which the Vietnamese inflicted a crushing defeat on the French army. It was the first time that a people realized that French colonialism was not invincible. It inspired the whole world, especially Africa, where France had many colonies. One of those colonies was Algeria. In fact, many Algerian nationalists of the time said that the Viet Minh had shown us that armed struggle was the path to take, and we were confident that we could succeed. In fact, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu took place in May 1954 and the Algerian revolution began in November, just six months later. Stevedores and dock workers in Algeria and Morocco also carried out acts of solidarity with the Vietnamese, blocking the shipment of weapons and other supplies to the French colonialists. It is what we are seeing today being done for Palestine. Even if we have yet to see the fruits of such actions. Still, more and more people, the younger generations, are inspired to act and learn about Palestine, to do more.

The Israelis and their imperialist allies are taking note and they do not want to see this solidarity grow and become a problem. In part, I view the negotiations currently underway in the context of trying to absorb the energy of that international solidarity. But we should not let ourselves be fooled. Solidarity must continue until the Zionist entity is dismantled.

In every anti-colonial struggle – for example, in Nigeria, Vietnam, Algeria, Haiti, or South Africa – there was a process of dehumanization of the colonized by the West. A very harsh language was used to depict them as savages, as barbarians who love violence. We have seen it in Palestine: they focused on the barbaric violence of Hamas and used it to justify the genocide and the destruction. That element is always present in any anti-colonial struggle. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela – a leader who is now loved by the West – used armed struggle among other tactics. He said: “It is not the colonized or the oppressors who determine the use of violence. It is always the oppressor and the colonizer who dictate the forms of struggle. If the colonizer wants peace and peaceful means, we can negotiate, we can do it.” But that is not normally the case.

Food and hunger are also being weaponized to crush anti-colonial resistance, just as they did in Vietnam. The French army’s intention then was clear: they knew resistance is squashed by starving people, destroying their crops, their food supplies; and that is what they did. Today in Gaza, we see how Israel is doing it in a much crueler, more inhumane, and extreme way.

The French in Indochina knew very well what their strategy was and they said: “If we lose here, we’ll lose our colonies in Africa.” What is happening today is exactly the same: Israel and its main ally, the United States, are trying to hold the imperial line in the Middle East. It is a very important geo-economic and geo-strategic region because of the fossil fuels and all the trade routes, both sea and land. The United States and Israel, with what they are doing against Palestine and against the Axis of Resistance – including Iran, Yemen, what they have done in Syria and later with Hezbollah – are trying to hold their imperial line of domination in the region.

It is essential to place the liberation of Palestine within that context. It is not simply an issue of human rights or freedom for the Palestinian people. It is that as well, of course. But, above all, it is a struggle against US imperialism and against global fossil capitalism.

—Is there a connection with what is happening in Palestine, the rest of the Arab world, and the rest of the Middle East, for example, with respect to the restriction of democracy that has existed since the decolonization of these countries, which also coincides chronologically with the founding of Israel and the role of US imperialism in the region?

—Good question. From my point of view, it is reciprocal. There will be no free Palestine without the liberation of other Arab peoples from military dictatorships, from the sellout regimes, and from the reactionary Gulf monarchies. But at the same time, there will be no liberation for the region or for the Arab people without a free Palestine. These two causes are dialectically intertwined. From the beginning, it was a matter of Arab liberation: it was referred to as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Over the years, it has been disassociated due to many factors, but it is gaining increasing relevance. We are realizing, as Arab peoples and progressive forces, that it is more important than ever to pose the issue of Palestinian liberation and the liberation of the Arab people as an interrelated issue.

The two waves of Arab uprisings are connected with that. What was called the Arab Spring began in 2010-2011 in Tunisia and Egypt, and then spread to other countries: Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Morocco. Then there was a second wave in 2018-2019, with Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The people rose up against authoritarian and corrupt regimes that had appropriated their countries’ wealth and served the interests of neocolonial agendas. What happened with those two waves was that counter-revolution, led by domestic and external elements, triumphed. The external elements were, of course, imperialism, with the United States at the helm, furthered through diverse means, including economic means, to promote greater neoliberalism and dependency. The domestic factors were the ruling classes and the local bourgeoisies that profit from the looting of the people. This include Palestine, of course: the Palestinian Authority only represents itself; its collaboration with Israel is complete. That is Fanon’s critique of the national bourgeoisies that end up reproducing the same oppressive system of the colonial era because they lack a social, political, and emancipating vision, or because they simply abandon it.

The other counter-revolutionary players in the region are the Gulf monarchies: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain. The UAE and Bahrain normalized their relations with Israel. But Saudi Arabia is, in my opinion, one of the most reactionary regimes in the Arab world. All of these regimes have done everything possible to interfere in the countries of the region and, of course, in others as well, backing uprisings, intervening economically, and influencing conditions. These Gulf monarchies and their ruling classes are part of the global imperialist system led by the United States, and they benefit from it. They are a sub-imperialist reactionary force. They, of course, depend on and are subordinated to the United States; but they also promote their own interests. We see it in the expansion of Gulf capital throughout the region; UAE capital is intertwined with Israel and US capital. Trump visited Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, and received billions of dollars.

Our current tragedy in the Arab region lies in part in the failure of those uprisings. Just imagine if the Egyptian revolution had succeeded in establishing a progressive anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist regime. Do you think the Egyptian people would be keeping quiet about the genocide? No, they would not. Imagine if the reactionary Jordan monarchy had been overthrown and in its place a democratic regime had been erected that allowed the people to mobilize and organize. We would not have witnessed their silence or repression. We must criticize the Arab regimes and governments for their complicity, their betrayal. Which in some cases they are guilty of simply by not doing anything… This goes for Algeria too, which could have used the gas card. Algeria is the third largest exporter of gas to the European Union, but it has never used that as a threat. It limits its efforts to diplomacy in the United Nations and nothing more. That is not enough.

But, at the same time, I think the Arab people did not rise to the challenge. It might be easy for me to say this because I live in the West, and not in Algeria or Egypt. I don’t think I buy the argument that we live under a regressive military dictatorship. We need to do more, much more. We are afraid. What is happening is a genocide. It is not just repression. An entire people is being wiped out.

For us, it is clear that there will be no liberation without the dismantling of Israeli settler-colonialism and without the overthrow of reactionary regimes throughout the region. Palestine leftists say, “We have three enemies. The first is Israeli colonialism; the second is the reactionary Arab bourgeoisies; and the third is US imperialism.”

—I heard conservative commentators say, “This pro-Palestine movement in the West is a passing fad. Last year everyone was worried about climate change, and Greta Thunberg and all those people were going on and on about that. Suddenly they completely forgot about climate change and now the new thing is Palestine.” There is something interesting there, because climate change and the fossil fuel economy are connected with what is happening in Palestine and the Middle East. What is the role of fossil fuels in this equation?

—It is interesting that you mention Greta. She has long been praised by the liberal media and has been invited to speak in panels: Greta, the climate activist, and all that. When she linked the struggle for climate justice to Palestinian liberation, she suddenly turned into the enemy. She is no longer invited by the media. In fact, they are demonizing her, even many governments and ruling classes in the West are demonizing her. Greta realized something crucial: that Palestinian liberation is also a climate justice issue. These are not just words we are saying to chant a slogan: they are based on a political economy argument. Palestine is part of the Middle East, a region that is at the heart of fossil capitalism and its global markets; 35 percent of oil production comes from there.

And the Gulf monarchies play a key role in keeping it undisturbed. They will continue extracting fossil fuel and selling it, whether to the West or to China. But, at the same time, they are joining other value chains, including renewable energies and hydrogen. We see many of their companies, including the renewable energy companies, in the Arab region and elsewhere in Africa.

What the United States and its allies are trying to do is bring together their two pillars of domination in the region and in the world. The first of those pillars is Israel, as an imperial outpost in the Middle East, to protect the geoeconomic and geopolitical interests of the West: fossil fuels and shipping and trade routes. Let us not forget that the region is also critical from a military point of view. The second pillar is formed by the reactionary Arab fossil fuel monarchies.

Bringing together both pillars would further the US imperial project in the region. On the one hand, it would consolidate Israel as an imperial outpost, frustrating any liberation project in the region, including in Palestine. And, on the other, it would keep China out of the region, as China and its interests are growing, and it has entered into many agreements with Gulf countries such as Iran. The United States does not want that.

Based on this analysis, what does climate justice mean? It means we need to end fossil capitalism. That involves confronting with the United States and the reactionary Arab monarchies, because they are at the center of all this. These monarchies, along with Israel, are enemies of Palestine. Which is why Palestinian liberation is an issue of climate justice and a struggle against the force of capitalism.

Israel also wants to turn into an energy pole in the region. I don’t think it has many resources and, in any case, the resources – such as the Leviathan and Tamar gas fields on the Mediterranean coast – are Palestinian. Israel was a net importer of gas. When it discovered these fields, it began exporting to Egypt, Jordan, and the European Union. It wanted to become that pole, to replace Russian gas. That is what it has in fact been doing in recent years: the gas is sent to Egypt for liquefaction –as Israel lacks the necessary facilities – and from there it is exported to the European Union through pipelines. Egypt does that for Israel – imagine that.

This economic normalization is crucial because it creates enormous ties that integrate Israel from a dominant position. So these Arab regimes say: Is our water, energy, and even food security not more important than Palestinian liberation? Jordan obtains much of its gas from Israel. That is why we need to stop that normalization agenda. That is why the BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] movement is so very, very vital. We need to step up our efforts, isolate the Israeli colonial regime, not just politically, but economically as well.

—I found what you say in your article on greenwashing very interesting. It is always described as part of Israeli whitewashing. But in your article you provide more details and concepts, such as environmental orientalism, ecological supremacy, and eco-apartheid, to describe the Zionist colonial policies in Palestine and their devastating consequences for the population and the land, aggravated by the climate crisis and the military-industrial complex. It is the opposite of the expertise image of efficient environmental and water management touted by Israel to our countries.

–Absolutely. It is part of the colonial arsenal of tactics and strategies. If we talk about ecological issues – and this is something that some Palestinian authors have tried to document – we see that the Israeli colonial project has focused on ecological domination, ecological violence, and ecological destruction. The Indigenous population is seen as backward, as a people that does not know how to care for the environment, and attempts are made to replace its ecology with a colonial, foreign, and imported ecology. The local agriculture is thus destroyed, along with other sustainable practices of the people. It is what some call environmental orientalism.

White colonialists need to bring their own civilization, to “make the desert bloom”. But they are actually destroying Palestinian villages and stealing their lands. They have been doing this since day one. The Jewish National Fund planted trees on the Palestinian villages they destroyed, to erase any trace of the dispossession and any remnants of the people who lived there. They are presented as conservation and afforestation projects, but they are bringing trees from other regions to create European landscapes. And they end up causing new ecological problems, such as forest fires and loss of soil fertility.

I was not aware that Mekorot [the Israeli national water company] was operating in Latin America and in so many Argentine provinces. These are the normalization ties that are forged in the name of green credentials, with the claim that they bring technology to help people. They are selling agricultural technology to a large part of Brazilian agribusiness. This is how they forge new ties under this green sustainability agenda. That is greenwashing, green colonialism. It serves two purposes: showcasing Israel as an environmental steward that promotes a sustainability agenda; but much more important are the economic bonds and the new dependencies that are created, because it becomes more difficult for these countries and governments to break ties with Israel or raise their voices against it. Which is why it is essential to further the BDS movement.

—What about Latin America? What difficulties or potentialities do you see with respect to these issues?

—I feel much more inspired by what we see in Colombia – our criticism of Gustavo Petro notwithstanding – than what we see in the Arab region. [Petro] speaks out loudly and calls things by their right name: genocide. Colombia halted carbon exports to Israel. I believe it recently cut all economic and commercial ties. That is the political action we hope to see from other countries, including Latin American countries. I hope that at COP30, which will be held in Brazil in November, we will be able to pressure the Brazilian government into adopting a much firmer position with respect to stopping oil exports to Israel. We must demand an energy embargo.

We are going to publish an article, probably ahead of the COP, to show the deep ties that exist between Brazilian companies and the Brazilian state and Israel. These are major ties: in agribusiness, weapons, surveillance, fossil fuels. We need to step up the work of our movements to cut those ties and adopt much stronger positions in key international forums. Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva has been talking about this, but I am not sure if there is anything concrete yet. We need to see more.

It is also very important, generally speaking, to expose Zionism. Whom are they pressuring economically? We need to know these things, we need to research and document. I know that the global energy embargo campaign identified some targets: Turkey, Brazil, Nigeria, and Azerbaijan to a point. It identified energy resources that fuel the genocide. Even South Africa – which took the historic step of bringing Israel before the International Court of Justice – is still exporting carbon to Israel.

There are bold measures that our governments can take along with their civil societies, with their workers, with their unions; there has to be a discussion in Brazil, in South Africa, in many countries. We need to contribute our grain of sand to save the Palestinian people. Of course, the economic arguments are very important. But history will stand in judgment of those who continued exporting and doing business with Israel while the people of Palestine were being wiped out.

We need to overcome some challenges and difficulties to build that concrete solidarity between the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the struggles in Latin America. The language barrier and the distance are huge. But there is a natural link between the struggles of the Indigenous communities here in Latin America and in North America and the struggle for Palestinian liberation. You can see it in the declarations of some Palestinian forces and also of the Indigenous peoples that tell Palestinians: “We see you, the struggle is the same. We are fighting against the same colonial, imperialist, and capitalist system.”

It is not just about Palestinian liberation. It is about the liberation of humanity from diverse systems of oppression: imperialism, capitalism, colonialism, the patriarchy, and white supremacy. Connecting the struggles and having an anti-systemic vision is vital. The people of Palestine and the Arab peoples need to learn more about the struggles in Latin America. Similarly, the peoples of Latin America need to learn more about the struggles in other parts of the world, including Palestine. The system we are fighting against is highly connected and it is global. For them, oppressing people, pillaging their resources, subjugating them, and drowning them in debt is part of their agenda. They are doing it through their financial institutions, through extractivism, through the debt, through their own companies. Which is why our struggles need to be interconnected.