Genocidal Coverage in Real Time Has Reinforced the International Struggle for Palestine Liberation

Since 2023 there has been an upsurge in the movement for solidarity which has impacted various aspects of United States and global politics

By Abayomi Azikiwe

Editor, Pan-African News Wire

Saturday October 10, 2026

Political Review

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Note: These remarks were delivered at a public meeting held on Saturday October 10, 2026 in Detroit to commemorate the last three years of the genocidal onslaught in occupied Palestine. This event was hosted by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI). Endorsers and speakers included the Michigan Coalition Against Genocide featuring Heather along with Steve Friday of the Michigan Social Workers for Palestine; Nabil Sater from Lebanon read a series of resolutions drafted by Jewish Voice for Peace; there was a statement from the United States Palestinian Community Network with Ali; Frank Hammer, a retired local president of the UAW discussed the passage of a disinvestment resolution at the national constitutional convention for the labor union; the final speaker was Dr. Ismail Noor of the Nakba Survivors Association. 

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After the beginning of the Al Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, the United States backed Israeli regime embarked upon a military campaign to completely destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza and throughout the entire country.

The events of the last three years were by no means the beginning of threats to destroy the Palestinian people and their neighbors, the origins of this phenomenon dated back more than a century.

In fact, the plight of the Palestinians and the peoples of West Asia is inextricably intertwined with the colonization and national oppression of others throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. This is evident in the literature and speeches of the founders and successors of the world zionist movement which surfaced in the late 19th century. 

Zionism as an ideology and political tendency has always been designed to further European domination within the context of colonialism and imperialism. The concept of orientalism as an academic approach to history and cultural studies has its origins in the desire by Western Europeans to dominate the world economic system.

Palestinian American scholar Edward Siad was one of the fiercest critics of Orientalism during the latter decades of the 20th century. His writings parallel the work of figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, among others who intellectually and politically provided the basis for the destruction of colonialism and imperialism. 

Despite the orientalist view which rationalizes the oppression and exploitation of people who are the colonial subjects of Europe, the victims of imperialism have developed their own methodology aimed at liberation. By challenging the outlook that there are “inferior” and “superior” peoples and cultures, the oppressed during the 19th and 20th centuries vindicated the ideas of waging political and ideological struggles aimed at liberating the victims of imperialism.

Siad in his best-known work entitled “Orientalism” published in 1978, emphasized that:

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission [to civilize].” (https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/16770310.Edward_W_Said)

These observations by Siad remain true well into the 21st century. The US and Israel remain exceptional within the literature of mainstream imperialist thought. Any form of thinking which questions the virtues of capitalism, imperialism and zionism are immediately attacked as abhorrent and unacceptable. 

Reflections on the Last Three Years

Of course, the anti-zionist movement has been in existence for well over a century. In the US since the conclusion of World War II there has been the rationalization of the oppression of the Palestinian people and others living in West Asia and North Africa. 

Nonetheless, the impact of the Palestinian struggle for liberation has had an enormous impact on the political atmosphere in the US. When resistance forces based in Gaza broke through the artificial lines drawn by the zionists and imperialists in West Asia it constituted an act of liberation against the existing political system.

At the same time the events of October 7 revealed the sense of urgency within the international solidarity movement. The apologists for the occupation of Palestine began to strike out at any and all forces expressing sympathy with the Palestinians. 

This was exemplified on the campuses of higher educational institutions in the US where the administrations began to purge those articulating an alternative viewpoint to that of the modern-day orientalists. Even those college and university administrators who were far from being advocates of Palestine liberation were pressured to leave their positions because they were not willing to ban all activity on campuses by the students, staff and faculty which advocated a change in the status-quo in relations to US-Israeli relations.

By the spring of 2024, demonstrations had spread to campuses across the US from the east to the west coast. At Columbia University where Siad taught during his career, a strong Palestine solidarity movement arose demanding that the institution disclose and divest its financial holdings in corporations and entities with ties to the State of Israel. 

Here in the state of Michigan, which is home to the largest concentration of people whose origins are within West Asia and North Africa, has been for decades a center of Palestine solidarity.  Dearborn, a bordering western suburb of Detroit has again been targeted by racists and fascists with lies and even violence which cannot be distinguished from the question of Palestinian and Lebanese liberation and sovereignty.

At two of the leading higher educational institutions, the University of Michigan (U-M) and Wayne State University (WSU), the administrations ordered the violent destruction of encampments making the same demands geared towards exposing the links between zionism, racism and imperialism. The encampments and other forms of protests were attacked falsely as being “antisemitic” at the highest levels within the federal government and law-enforcement.

Nonetheless, the impact of the Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Yemeni, Iranian and other resistance forces had a profound impact on the consciousness of people living in North America, Western Europe and internationally. Solidarity activity outside the West Asia and North Africa regions also played an instrumental role in building a formidable movement against genocide.

In December 2023, the African National Congress (ANC) led government in the Republic of South Africa took the Israeli state to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest legal body within the United Nations organization, charging the regime with violating the Genocide Convention of 1948. Although the South African government won a favorable ruling by the ICJ which said that the claims of genocide in occupied Palestine were plausible, no action has been taken to end the genocidal project in West Asia.

In fact, the death and destruction spawned by the imperialist defense of settler-colonialism has spread to as far away as the Islamic Republic of Iran and Yemen. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations in the US the support for the zionist occupation forces has remained study. 

The current administration of President Donald Trump launched an unprovoked war against the people of Iran with the expressed intent of overthrowing their government. At present these efforts have failed prompting an economic and political crisis under which there appears to be no escape.

These efforts related to the liberation of Palestine and the ending of the zionist and imperialist hegemony of the region has spilled over into electoral politics. Unabashedly pro-Israel candidates are being defeated at the polls while on a mass level where African American youth service workers such as Ariana Hamilton on the east coast have become icons globally for their stand against racist impunity within the labor market.

Moving Forward in the Struggle for Palestine Liberation

It is quite remarkable that the Palestine solidarity movement has not been effectively silence after three years of repression, right-wing propaganda and psychological warfare. The slogan “Free Palestine” is far more widespread and recognizable than the day before the Al Aqsa Flood erupted.

Consequently, the movement must continue until its objectives are achieved. The oppression and genocide against the Palestinian people and others throughout the region are closely related to the rising levels of racist and fascist control of the US. 

As the late South African liberation movement leader Nelson Mandela often said that our freedom cannot be fully achieved absent of the emancipation of the Palestinians. Another well known South African clergyman Archbishop Desmond Tutu doing his lifetime charged that the system of Palestinian oppression was worse than apartheid.

The institutionally racist settler-colonial systems in West Asia and around the world will continue to exist until imperialism is destroyed. Let us make our contribution to this goal of bringing liberation and social emancipation to peoples throughout the world.