‘Where Do We Go from Here’? From Slave Revolts to Palestinian Resistance

February 7, 2026

Children in Gaza demanding an end to the Israeli siege. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

By Benay Blend

Until the Empire falls, the pattern remains the same. In order for entities like the US and Israel to plunder targets for land and natural resources, they must render the resistance either barbaric and/or invisible.

On August 16, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered a speech before the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in which he honored the group’s achievements on the 10th anniversary of its founding.

In order to address his theme, “Where Do We Go from Here?” King spoke to the value of recognizing the current situation, a time in which there were many problems left to solve, some of which still exist today.

Despite these odds, King maintained that “first, we must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amid a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values. We must no longer be ashamed of being black.”

“As long as the mind is enslaved,” he concluded, “the body can never be free.” King’s words are relevant today not only for the colonized but also for those who refuse to acknowledge the agency of such people to bring about their own liberation.

In a two-part documentary for PBS, Looking for Lincoln, historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. hosted an exploration of the myths surrounding Abraham Lincoln, the president credited with freeing the slaves at the close of the Civil War.

While Gates delved into his own ambivalence about the man who many consider to be racist yet progressive in his thinking over time, he seldom mentioned the role of enslaved men and women in freeing themselves from slavery.

Even before the onset of the war, black men and women revolted against their owners in a variety of ways—work stoppage, running away, buying their own freedom, and in some cases, armed revolt. During the conflict, black men served in the Union army while women worked as cooks for the military and sometimes as spies against the South.

“The issue is not Black people’s capacity to survive and succeed,” writes Prof. Kellie Carter Jackson. “It is White people’s ability to accept Black humanity and forfeit the myth of their supremacy.”

Throughout his odyssey, Gates argued that what is forgotten is just as important as what is remembered, particularly within the context of the Black experience. His admonition holds true for all historical journeys in which mainstream actors are privileged with a starring role.

After the Vietnam War, for example, commentators credited a variety of sources that brought the war to a close—student protests, working class opposition, peace movements within the military, and Henry Kissinger, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his role, along with Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho, in bringing about a ceasefire in Vietnam.

In “Lessons from the Vietnam War,” John Marciano analyzes several aspects of the conflict, including US war crimes, those who did and did not condemn it, and specific segments of the population who participated in the anti-war movement.

Significantly, Marciano rarely mentions North Vietnamese resistance as an important aspect of their victory. He concedes that the Vietnamese understood that their country was unified in their aspiration for independence and believed in their right to self-determination, but that information was contained in only one paragraph in his essay.

Until the Empire falls, the pattern remains the same. In order for entities like the United States and Israel to plunder targets for land and natural resources, they must render the resistance either barbaric and/or invisible.

Since October 7, “Palestinians have managed to reassert Palestinian agency,” claims journalist Ramzy Baroud, “including the legitimacy of all forms of resistance, as a winning strategy against Israeli colonialism and US-Western imperialism in the region.”

Nevertheless, numerous official statements tend to begin with an obligatory denunciation of Hamas before moving on to an admittedly overdue admission of Israel’s genocide.

In a statement issued on Oct. 7, 2024, Senator Bernie Sanders (Democrat-Vermont) noted that this date marked one year since the “horrific Hamas attack on Israel,” an event, he says, that murdered 1200 “innocent” men, women, and children.

“Yahya Sinwar and his Hamas accomplices are responsible for mass murder, the taking of hostages, and sexual violence,” continued Sanders. “They are war criminals. Nobody should forgive or forget those atrocities, which began this war.”

Not long after, Human Rights Watch repeated the same misinformation: Hamas had committed war crimes against an innocent population.

By February 7, 2025, there appeared clear documentation that Israel had issued through its Hannibal Directive an order to shoot and kill Israeli captives on Oct. 7th rather than have them taken by Hamas.

“Roughly 1,100 Israelis were killed,” explained Asa Winstanley. It remained unclear how many deaths were due to Israel’s order and how many were killed by Palestinians.

By February 2024, reports by the New York Times that Hamas had raped Israeli women and girls on Oct. 7 had also been debunked. Further information would follow as to the questionable sources that initiated the charge.

“From beheaded babies to a systematic mass rape campaign and everything in between,” Robert Inlakesh explains, “the lies espoused by genocide apologists have been numerous. What is even more shameless is that new lies continue to be created,” all within the service of “hoaxes” that are “inherently racist and play on orientalist myths” long used to justify “genocide and ethnic cleansing against the people of Gaza.”

When anti-colonial resistance is not ignored altogether, it is maligned in such a way as to warrant the displacement and erasure of indigenous people around the world.

Thus, while Senator Sanders finally admitted that “it is genocide” in a statement on December 17, 2025, he prefaced it with the obligatory description of Hamas as a “terrorist” organization, followed by a plea that Israel has a right to defend itself.

Under international law, a state cannot occupy a territory, then attack it on the assumption that it is a “foreign body” which presents a national security threat.

“Sanders chose to start his op-ed by essentially suggesting that ‘Hamas started it,’” writes Ahmad Ibsais. “This not only amounts to victim-blaming but also erases eight decades of pillage, plunder, and ethnic cleansing.”

In his speech quoted above, Martin Luther King asserted that “self-affirmation is the black man’s need, made compelling by the white man’s crimes against him.”

In “The Defeat of Israel and the Rebirth of Palestinian Agency,” journalist Ramzy Baroud affirms a similar refrain: “Palestinians have managed to reassert Palestinian agency, including the legitimacy of all forms of resistance, as a winning strategy against Israeli colonialism and US-Western imperialism in the region.”

Despite the machinations of official spokesmen and women, Palestinians in Gaza have won a significant victory, one that Baroud confirms “is a resounding triumph for the Palestinian people, their indomitable spirit, and their deeply rooted resistance that transcends faction, ideology, and politics.”

Self-affirmation enables self-determination. The former is a prerequisite for those who seek “human justice,” an attainment that requires the “determination of those who fight for it and aspire to achieve it”; the latter involves ignoring negotiations that seldom lead to peace in favor of employing all forms of resistance that ensure agency in the ongoing struggle for liberation.