Palestinians Score Shocking Victory with “Al-Aqsa Storm”

By Kevin Barrett, for the forthcoming American Free Press, posted here in full for paid subscribers

On October 7, 2023, Palestinian resistance groups, led by Hamas, broke out of the Gaza Strip—a de facto concentration camp—and gave their Israeli tormentors hell. By October 10, more than 1000 Israelis and 700 Palestinians had been killed, and more than 150 Israelis taken prisoner.

The Palestinians escaped Gaza and infiltrated Israel in a combined land-air-sea operation. Soaring paragliders swooped over walls while bulldozers punched holes and boats evaded the naval blockade. Palestinian commandos overwhelmed border guard posts, pulled Israeli soldiers out of their tanks, and captured several high ranking officers including at least one general.

Numerous Palestinians fought their way deep into Israel. More than 72 hours after the operation was launched, many were still holding defensible positions and fighting off Zionist attempts to retake them.

While Zionist-dominated Western media focuses on stories of Hamas atrocities—most of them false or grossly exaggerated—Arab media shows authentic footage of outgunned Palestinian commandos storming Zionist military facilities and capturing high-ranking officers, Hamas soldiers releasing a captive mother to reunite with her child, Hamas captors treating their prisoners humanely, and other heroic and/or humanitarian acts by the Palestinian resistance. The copious footage showing Hamas in a good light, such as this photo showing a smiling Israeli grandmother with her Hamas captor, is systematically suppressed in the Zionist-owned Western media.

Western mainstream media, dominated by Zionists, spun the concentration camp escape as “terrorism.” They highlighted alleged atrocities like random shootings at a music festival and the desecration of a tattoo artist’s corpse.

Arab media, by contrast, showed Hamas fighters pulling Israelis out of tanks, overrunning IDF soldiers, and taking over Israeli military posts. Unlike the cowardly Israelis, who specialize in sniper murders of children, Palestinian fighters routinely confront opponents who are far better armed than they are.

The biggest Western media lie was that the operation was “unprovoked.” Before the Gaza breakout, the ultra-extremist Israeli government had already killed more Palestinians than it did all of last year. Now is on track to set an all-time record.

Unprovoked?! The Palestinians have been massacred, blockaded and starved, penned up in de facto concentration camps like the Gaza Strip, and subjected to endless indignities. Their children are shot for sport by IDF soldiers.

Their neighborhoods are broken up with Orwellian checkpoints, and illegal settlers steal more and more of their land. Their homes are invaded and demolished. Their women are assaulted, their holy places defiled, their olive trees uprooted, their water, sewage and electricity systems destroyed. Their schools and ambulances are bombed, their teenagers are mowed down from aircraft while they play soccer on the beach, and their bodies are burned away with white phosphorus. Experimental weaponry is tested on them. Their bravest leaders are targeted and killed. And anyone caught resisting who isn’t killed is imprisoned and tortured.

The ongoing slow-motion genocide of Palestine set the stage for Operation Al-Aqsa Storm. But the proximate cause was the Zionist regime’s ever-worsening series of desecrations of the al-Aqsa mosque, the Islamic world’s oldest and greatest architectural monument. In what has become a familiar scene, Israeli police escort rabid settlers into the mosque, watch them attack worshippers and violate women, and beat up and arrest any Palestinians who try to defend themselves.

The Zionist settlers who invade the mosque under police protection are not just trespassers and bullies. They intend to destroy al-Aqsa, and their invasions are meant to gradually erode Palestinian control of the mosque and assert Zionist control. Once Muslims have been fully dispossessed of their greatest spiritual and architectural treasure, the Zionists intend to destroy it so they can “rebuild” a blood sacrifice temple.

The Zionists also spit on Christians and desecrate their holy places. Most Palestinian Christians have been forced to flee Palestine due to the nonstop persecution meted out by Zionist Jews.

Pessimists think the Zionist genocide of Palestinian Christians and Muslims will accelerate in the wake of Al-Aqsa Storm. Some wonder whether Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who immediately proclaimed 10/7/23 “Israel’s 9/11,” orchestrated it as a false flag operation. Palestinian resistance insiders, for their part, say that some Israeli military personnel collaborated with the operation.

Regardless of how Hamas obtained Israeli inside help, it pulled off a stunningly successful and strategic military strike. Unlike al-Qaeda, which was never anything but a catspaw for intelligence agencies, Hamas is a real and formidable organization pursuing a long-term strategy. And unlike al-Qaeda, which never enjoyed any significant support from Muslims, Hamas is backed by the vast majority of people in the MENA region. It also gets overt help from Iran and covert help from other regional governments.

If Israel goes too far in punishing the Palestinians, Hezbollah with its estimated 150,000 rockets will join the fray—followed, if necessary, by Iran, which has more than enough deliverable firepower to flatten Israel and drench it with radiation from the smoking ruins of the Dimona nuclear facility.

By refusing to end its occupation, Israel has been digging its own grave. Operation al-Aqsa Flood will go down in history as a major milestone en route to the liberation of Palestine. And October 7, 2023 will be remembered as the day Palestinians conclusively demonstrated that apartheid walls will go the way of crusader castles, and that the Zionists can be defeated.