[G]round fighting continues to rage on between Palestinian resistance groups and Israeli armed forces in the Gaza Strip. At least 41 Israeli soldiers have been confirmed killed since the beginning of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Israeli media reported, while the army claimed to have killed 30 Hamas fighters in the past day, including the head of Hamas’ amphibious forces unit. Hamas has yet to confirm or deny these reports.
Two weeks into Israeli sending ground troops into Gaza, Haaretz reports that Israeli commanders estimate it would take “a time frame of months” to achieve their goal of defeating armed Palestinian resistance in the northern Gaza Strip, but that Washington, D.C. — Israel’s staunchest ally — was “signaling that there won’t be more than a few weeks, even after a limited deal for the release of captives.”
“After that, the U.S. is pressing for the fighting to take place in a different format,” Haaretz wrote.
Despite its continued stance in favor of Israel’s right to so-called self-defense in public, United States officials are balking — privately and publicly — at the ruthless and, some say, unrealistic methods pursued by Israel.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown said on Thursday that Israel’s aim of toppling Hamas was “a pretty large order,” urging for Israel to limit the length of its war in Gaza. “The faster you can get to a point where you stop the hostilities, you have less strife for the civilian population that turns into someone who now wants to be the next member of Hamas,” he said.
Israel’s goal to eradicate Hamas was also dismissed by Palestinian Authority officials — which itself have been embroiled in conflict with the group ruling in the Gaza Strip over the years.
“Hamas is not only in Gaza, Hamas is an idea,” P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told France 24 on Thursday. “Hamas is in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Syria, Hamas leadership is in Qatar… so to say the goal is to eliminate Hamas is totally not going to happen.
Meanwhile, CNN revealed on Friday that U.S. President Joe Biden had received “stark warnings” from American diplomats in the Middle East and North Africa that its continued support for Israel was having a devastating impact on Washington’s standing in the region, “losing us Arab publics for a generation.”
Palestinian armed resistance groups have claimed rockets fired towards Israeli towns in the Gaza envelope as well as Tel Aviv in the past 24 hours, while groups in southern Lebanon were exchanging fire with forces in northern Israel. Armed groups in Iraq and Syria claimed strikes on U.S. bases in the country in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel.
Violence also continued unabated in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Armed confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian resistance groups reportedly took place in Jenin, Balata refugee camp, Qalqiliya, Beit Furik, Jabaa, and al-Askar refugee camp.
there had been reasonable critiques and conflicting reports about actions around the ‘fascist friends of the isn'traeli occupation forces gala’. the following communique adds more context to it and provides operational details of their actions as well.
For Palestine.
To rebels everywhere.
With deepest love and ancestral rage,
We gathered with heavy hearts and humble hands holding a promise for a world safer from white supremacist, settler-colonial violence. Those who declare war on original peoples and pillage sacred life and land will face retribution. There has been a great fire building, may it overflow and take all enemies of life with it. May it create fertile grounds for victory against violent occupiers.
We took it upon ourselves to make sure these fascists could not gather. Rather than the constant reactivity and rigidness of mass protest spectacles, we wanted to hit them where it fucking hurts.
On November 5th, the Zionist fascist scum, “Friends of the IDF,” who represent the interests of wealthy American capitalists in their direct support of the settler colonial state of Israel and its continued campaign of genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people, attempted to hold a fundraiser gala at Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California.
The IDF are known to kidnap, torture, kill, and rape Palestinians, as well as disrespect the bodies of martyrs. They are among the most deplorable people to ever walk the earth.
Despite reports and appearances otherwise, this fundraiser was effectively shut down within the first hour. Donor attendees began hurriedly leaving in a steady stream at the start of what was planned to be a full evening of blood money raising. This disruption, however, was not achieved by the tame, above-ground rally being safely contained by both the police and the rally organizers themselves, at a far distance from the unbothered attendees. These symbolic and futile attempts to shame and appeal to the moral conscience of individuals who have no shame or conscience, will always fail.
You cannot do damage to the Zionist project by merely engaging with its facade; you must strike at its soulless heart. You must strike at its veins (supply chains, logistics, cash flows, infrastructure).
While the liberals were congratulating themselves for having their nonthreatening photo op parade out in front of the gala, our people were out of sight at work on the veins of the building. Palestinians have suffered decades of Israeli soldiers and settlers restricting and destroying their access to water, often bricking up or concreting any water source not directly under strict control of the occupation forces, cutting off Palestinian access to the Jordan River while draining it to near extinction for settlement mono-crop agriculture, shooting holes in Palestinian water towers, bombing Gazan water treatment facilities, poisoning Palestinian springs and enforcing water apartheid in order to exert total control over Palestinian life. We decided to give these Zionist bootlickers a taste of their own medicine.
We cracked open the water main for the building housing the gala, switched it off, and filled the box with fresh concrete. This form of sabotage is quick and incredibly easy to replicate, and the tools are quite cheap. It also renders the building in question completely uninhabitable and unusable. We had a good laugh imagining these fascist motherfuckers driven out of the gala by the stench of overflowing toilets, unable to raise any more money for genocide. As we did we were reminded of how Israeli settlers flood Palestinian olive groves with sewage, poisoning food sources, destroying livelihoods.
There are specialized tools that can make this job easier to perform and faster.
Water main shut off tool
Irrigation lid tool / large screwdriver
The steps are as follows:
Lift lid off water box
Identify the valve, usually rectangular
Turn valve to be perpendicular to the pipe
Add a lock to the available hole
Fill hole with concrete
Put lid back on
At 6:40 PM, just 40 minutes into the gala, we put an end to things before they even began. No auction, no speeches, no propaganda screening, thus cutting off one stream of funding for genocide and apartheid. Donors began sneaking out of the backdoor of the space around 7PM, escorted by fascist police and private security. Around 7:10, a utility truck arrived to attempt a repair. They failed to do so, as our successful sabotage held. The building was evacuated. The Zionists ran home with their tails between their legs, their facade of security and impenetrability proven vulnerable.
We hope that this will inspire other autonomous actors to strike at the infrastructure of genocide everywhere it can be found.
While the Zionist occupation forces deliberately target Palestinian infrastructure to render human survival impossible, we must turn these same tactics on the oppressor, targeting the civil, economic, and political infrastructure that feed the Zionist project, starving it of the resources that sustain its existence and enable its genocidal violence. The targets are here and everywhere. We send a message that there will be no safe space for genocidal capitalism. There will be no safe space for fascist Zionist terror. Wherever you amass, we will find you and shut you down.
This was executed by a group of autonomous anti-Zionists and anarchist saboteurs. We have no name. We are not an organization. We are not an entity. Do not try to find us. We are everywhere and we will not stop.
“After the ceasefire marches, sit-ins, and symbolic displays of solidarity in the hundreds of thousands, after the Palestine actionists’ spectacles of sabotage of Elbit and other manufacturers of death, after the incendiary expansion of the struggle to Stop Cop City into internationalist terms of solidarity as attack, and after quiet nights of anonymous spray-paint, banner drops, wheat-paste, shattered windows, and scorching accelerant, we were all here together with an exact material aim, the urgency to accomplish it, the numbers, energy, and desire to succeed in it, and, despite unfavorable terrain, an acceptance of the collective risks involved. So why the fuck did we stop?
The basic action as imagined and executed by the main organizers –– Samidoun and AROC-Bay Area, with auxiliary support from Tacoma DSA and Tacoma Mutual Aid –– was a picket line at every of the three entrances into Pier 7, the deepest into the port. Every entrance was already blocked, however, by Tacoma Police, Port security, presumably DHS and border patrol, the Coast Guard, and the military. The action, then, would be directed towards the ILWU Local, who would be able to cite ‘Health and Safety’ concerns in order to honor the picket line and refuse to load the genocide boat.
Without direct access to the boat, all the Block the Boat action would be able to accomplish was to force the issue of worker solidarity and direct the masses of participants (over 1,000!) to walk in circles repeating the chants ‘protest marshals,’ conspicuously dressed in yellow vests, relayed through megaphones, breaking up the monotony of the picket with updates from their anonymous sources about the status of the blockade, instructions to stretch or break, some speeches, and many self-congratulatory declamations of success. Throughout the day, focus was emphasized for shift-changes when workers would be potentially entering the pier to load the weapons, and on a single worker who apparently was wanting out of the operation, refusing to participate in the logistics of genocide. Snacks, waters, canopies, rain ponchos, all streamed in, while hundreds continued to walk and to walk and to walk in circles.
The more militantly-minded, meanwhile, were off gathering rocks, rail ties, tires, pallets, and concrete slabs to build impromptu barricades at the entrances, where behind the fence the police and port security were waiting in intimidation, flashing their lights in the fog. Graffiti emerged on every surface, window, shipping container, and concrete barricade –– which the organizers were not pleased about, and intervened often to, but still it proliferated. Rocks and other ballistics were gathered in dumpsters and placed in strategic areas for potential confrontation. The main rail line in and out was barricaded. So sure was everyone of the inevitability for confrontation –– since a blockade is by nature a disruption of crucial logistics that must at all costs continue to flow, the weapons of the state would surely be used to ensure the weapons of the state reach their destination –– that the hundred or so militants present just waited, preparing themselves, gathering the energy and preparing the surroundings for battle.
But, what the organizers didn’t tell us –– didn’t tell anyone until it was far too late –– was that the blockade as it was imagined and executed, as a picket line to prevent the ILWU workers from loading the weapons, was useless in the first place, since the military was already there to do the work of loading the weapons and were loading the weapons both from boat and from pier while the militants were constructing barricades and the protesters were marching in circles. There were rumors that since the dock workers were unable to operate the cranes, the military was only able to load small arms, instead of the Strykers, Iron Dome batteries, or Markava tanks that were actually destined to be loaded from JBLM caches. There were many rumors, but the boat was loaded, and left.
What the organizers did tell us is that our action was a resounding success, that we made a material impact to stop genocide, that we should be incredibly proud of ourselves, that we fucking did it, we accomplished a blockade –– but they also told us since the boat was loaded, we should all leave. Everyone was confused, startled, stunned, deflated, disappointed, and left. Either the boat had been loaded, and we didn’t even complete a port blockade, or the boat hadn’t been fully loaded, and if we left there would be nothing stopping the boat from being loaded. Yet, the boat left regardless. The boat wasn’t blocked. Worse, the opportunity was wasted in order for fraudulent displays of ‘success.’
If the military had been loading the boat the entire time, why didn’t we change tactics, why didn’t we reorient, why didn’t we find opportunities to engage, why didn’t we escalate the possibilities of resistance? According to one worker, in the morning of the action ILWU local leadership informed longshore workers that the military personnel already present within the terminal would load the boat, which, if true, would mean that the point of the action –– to prevent the ILWU workers from loading the boat –– was decided the morning the action began. According to another worker, it was indeed the military that loaded the boat, which, further, potentially violates the ILWU contract. Why didn’t we act?
Even the militants bought into the misinformation from the organizers that we were doing something materially impactful, and since we were doing something materially impactful, the situation would inevitably escalate until we could be decisive and seize the moment for attack. Except we weren’t impacting anything. So the moment would never come. While we were waiting, we could have been acting. If we knew that from the moment the action began, the ILWU wasn’t going to load the boat and the military would take over, we could have shifted. If all of the weapons were already behind the fence, we could have focused less on barricades to block the entrance of trucks or trains and more on possibilities of bypassing the fence. Even the indigenous-led kayak action to block the boat was manipulated into thinking their action was a success and left the water. When the organizers called for dispersal at what felt like the height of the action’s power, we could have taken that moment further. We didn’t.
When questioned about why we were disbanding a powerful action before its power had even been realized, when the opportunities for engagement were all around us, when innumerable more supporters were pouring in from the north and the south, an ‘organizer’ in a yellow-vest told us, “What, you think we can take on the US military?” Later when asked why we were leaving at the height of the action, they said “As a Palestinian, I’m feeling very escalated in this situation, and I’m going to walk away from this conversation.” Can we remind these solidarity organizations that it is nothing other than the Palestinian resistance that is taking on the US military and its support for the Zionist occupying entity? Can we remind these solidarity organizations that it is nothing other than the Palestinian resistance that is escalating the global situation towards victory, freedom, liberation, and return? If you won’t do what’s possible to stop a genocide, please do not fucking hinder those who will try.
If the goal was to Block the Boat, to prevent the boat from being loaded with weapons, to prevent the boat from leaving, we massively failed. If the goal was to delay the boat with a large spectacle and display of solidarity for a ceasefire, an end to the genocide, and a free Palestine, we accomplished that spectacle. This is a form of solidarity that has its own importance –– as a symbolic display. Not as a material intervention into the logistics of genocide. The anger, rage, and desire with which we entered the action still remains – we still wish to meet the Palestinian resistance in a global Intifada against genocide and its imperialist support. with which we entered the action still remains. This rage is real. While the Tacoma action wasn’t our moment, the feeling of being around others who shared that rage in the midst of the concrete logistics of genocide convinces me that we will find countless other moments. If we can delay a boat transporting the weapons of extermination and leave with unimaginable potential, what else can we do, alone and together? The targets are everywhere. The secret is to begin. In every city, we should call for militant demonstrations for the freedom of Palestine and the victory of the resistance. Multiply sabotage. Multiply blockades. This time, let’s mean it.
From the River to the Sea.
Intifada Until Victory.
Victory to the Palestinian Resistance.
Palestine Will Be Free.”
read this first article in its entirety. the next one is reposted in whole and thus won't be equally edited.
The Boat That Wasn’t Blocked
Another reportback from the Tacoma Block the Boat action
“On November 3rd, we got word of the inspiring action down in Oakland where people were blocking a Merchant Mariner ship delivering weapons to Israel, we were filled with joy and excitement! Not long after, we got word the ship was going to be coming to the Port of Tacoma on Sunday and a call went out for people to come block the boat. Our crews got together and began to plan what we were going to do, but many of these plans got thrown off by constantly changing times from the organizers and worries about peace policing based off an event in Olympia on Saturday, as well as people talking down “side organizing” and telling everyone to “just listen to the organizers”. Eventually the final call went out for Monday at 4:30 in the morning and we sighed a heavy sigh at getting up so early and got ready to do just that.
We got up around 3, got ready and headed out. Our crew trekked through Tacoma for an hour to arrive to the picket, it felt like walking into Mordor and along the way we breathed in what felt like a lifetime of cancerous materials. While we were expecting to basically walk into a trap as we rolled into the zone and saw all the people and just how chill it all seemed to be we were relieved. We went to go look around for other crews and by the time we all got together there was about a 30 person consolidated black bloc with probably another 30-40 of scattered individuals and smaller crews who came in bloc.
Much of the day was spent standing around in the cold and rain while running off 3 or 4 hours of sleep. At some point we all found a nice tree hide out to chill in and other people got a barrel fire starting, and hours later more long term infrastructure like hot food and drinks and tarps and tents began to appear.
Throughout the day the numbers didn’t dip below a couple hundred and at their height seemed close to a thousand, and even in the cold and rain the energy was really high and a lot of people seemed ready to throw down if something were to happen (and we’ll return to this point later). People literally walked in circles and chanted nonstop for hours, like not even new people the same people. Just seeing it exhausted me more but you know what good for them.
There was some graffiti that went up and from what we saw very minimal peace policing – though we have heard from others who did experience it more intensely – and when people began barricading the rails and gates and stashing rocks for a potential confrontation many people were excited and jumped in to help us and other people within the broader picket started advocating for more barricades.
Ultimately the day and all the present energy and excitement petered out. There was a lot of conflicting information coming from the organizers, first that we totally blocked the boat from getting loaded! Then the military was loading it! Then only 7 of the 20 containers could get loaded! Then it was all loaded okay time to go home. There was also lots of conflicting information about what we were actually there to do. We came to block a boat, and so did many others, but some organizers said that wasn’t realistic (the eternal excuse of cowardice) and then others say we were simply there to show solidarity with the workers? Either way, they called off the action and by the time we realized what was going on we tried to talk both with them and with others in the crowd to get people to stay – as far as we were concerned as long as the boat was there we should be there and the water blockade was on the way – but it was too late, numbers were thinning and the police who were stationed in their riot gear behind the fences were eyeing all of us and we had to retreat.
We affirm the objective that many came with in mind – to block the boat – and that we all failed to do so not only makes the action a failure but explicitly makes us murderers for not doing all we can to stop the shipment. We will not pat ourselves on the back and invent victories, especially not when we look at the genocide before us. If we are going to stop a genocide, we are going to jail, to prison, we are getting felonies, we are getting terrorism charges, we are going to ruin our lives and we must face these facts down, make peace with them, and do what needs to be done. All the “victories” are meaningless in the face of bombs, the excuses of “safety”, of “realism” of “you’re making us look bad” don’t mean shit when we let weapons get delivered to murder people.
But we cannot wallow in guilt and defeat. We accept our failure and we must think about moving the struggle further, in a combative direction that can secure material victories by stopping and physically destroying the infrastructure and materials that prop up the genocide. To this end we offer the following critiques of the organizers, but also of us who are just as much – if not more – to blame for those weapons that we we directly watched leave that port.
ON THE ORGANIZERS
The critiques of Organizers and Organizations have been repeated infinitely over the years, but this is for a reason and we will again repeat it here.
These groups put out calls with militant language, chant things like “resistance is justified” and “intifada revolution” and give people the impression that they are going to engage in militant direct action, yet all people find time and time again are highly controlled and marshaled events that pose no real risk to the war machine. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, these large organizations with very public organizers are under intense public and legal scrutiny and are structurally incapable of escalation – if they are interested in it at all.
Many of the organizations that were involved were the usual scene of movement grifters – PSL, WWP, ANSWER, RevCom – who aren’t interested in anything but building their particular groupsicle and we still remembered how all over the country these groups explicitly played counter-insurgent during the 2020 uprising.
The other groups we are less familiar with and as such are going to operate under the assumption there there is some sincere desire to escalate and make a direct impact. Which is why we cannot understand why there was a call for everybody to go home. When we have a grasp on power, like shutting down a major port and doing economic damage, making the call for you as the organization to go home shouldn’t translate into a call for everybody to go home. Not only do liberation movements need to cultivate a sense of initiative for more and more people to get involved and take more decisive action, but so many people were still coming and excited about digging in. Even if the ship left, continued economic damage to the Port of Tacoma could stop them from shipping out military equipment again like what happened with the Port of Olympia during Port Militarization Resistance in 2006 and 2007, or how the rail blockades in Olympia in 2016 and 2017 failed to stop those specific loads of fracking proppants but sent the port into an economic death spiral from which it has yet to recover and led to the cancellation of future fracking proppant contracts.
We propose that liberation movements need to develop an explicit culture of when their organization or crew decides to call it, to leave it up to the autonomy of others on if they decide to stay or not rather than declaring an action over. People need to learn to accept the risks and make decisions for themselves rather than play the game of follow the leader which makes for passive, docile movements that cannot think on their feet.
ON US
It’s easy to critique others, but we also bare an intense blame for this failure and must do some intense reflection on ourselves to better fight in the future.
The first failure on our part was when organizers called off the initial start time, we should have put out a counter call for an occupation to block the port. While we don’t know for sure, its possible that the delay of the boat arrival allowed military scabs to preemptively come into the port and a full occupation from the start could have blocked their arrival in the port and if nothing else would have explicitly set a more confrontational tone.
Second, there was a failure in logistics and many supplies and tools that crews had prepared were unable to make it up. While we had defensive and offensive equipment for us we should have come prepared with more for others – more respirators, more goggles, more helmets, more black clothes. Passing out or leaving out extra equipment for others to grab could have also done wonders to build an energy of confrontation.
Third, we relied way too heavily on the organizers’ intel which proved to be wrong or questionable due to “trusted sources” that could not be verified. A comrade with a solid head on their shoulders repeatedly stated whenever we got info or heard rumors that we needed to visually confirm for ourselves before making any moves. On this point many of us lamented multiple times that we lacked scouts or binoculars. If we could have gotten visual confirmation of the boat being loaded – or not loaded! – that we could have shared with other people so they could see for themselves perhaps we could have actually gotten people to storm the port with us.
Fourth we were too okay with half measures. When people told us what was happening was blocking the port we were fine with not escalating. If it works, no point in escalating, fighting and risking arrest. However we should have been skeptical from the start that the police were not attacking. In all of our collective history of struggle when we are actually doing damage and blocking something critical the police will attack. Yet they didn’t, and then suddenly we heard that only 7 of the 20 containers were able to be loaded. At this point we should have begun agitating the crowd to attack, 7 of 20 is still 7 containers of weapons that will be used to murder people yet we accepted this half victory until suddenly they said everything got loaded and it was time to leave.
Fifth and most critical of all we were too docile. Who gives a fuck about the security team or the plan when there is a clear objective and an obvious way to achieve it that we all came prepared for. We should have yelled more, contested the security team and organizers, agitated more directly, spent more time talking to people that showed up to block a boat rather than trying to convince the organizers of what we came to do. This is probably what cost us the most.
FINAL THOUGHTS AND REFLECTION
We cannot wallow in our failures but take lessons from them and move forward. Autonomous rebels and people who left feeling dissatisfied must find each other, talk, strategize and act. We must be bold and ready to act to the gravity of the situation, we must build up autonomous networks of individuals, crews and organizations that have the capacity to coordinate and the drive to act. This is what the struggle demands of us.
Come out to others demos’ and actions, yes, but also don’t wait for others – even us – to do what you can do yourself. Call for meetings, call for actions, carry out small night time actions. Expand the struggle. Lives depend on it and as someone once said, the future belongs to the daring.
“My name is Bima. I served time for possession of 15 kilograms of marijuana. I was active in the student movement and organizing the occupation with the homeless, as well as organizing anti-authoritarian prisoners in the formation of unions, while campaigning for the decriminalization of drugs. Since 2022 I have been on the list of the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners, which is updated annually and can be accessed here.
I founded my own self-publishing, Pustaka Catut, in 2017. I manage it alone in a mess, and now still manage it from inside the prison with the help of my comrades outside. Some of the books I have translated are the works of Emma Goldman, Murray Bookchin and David Graeber into Indonesian. My main interests are the study of anarchist historiography and anthropology, and carrying out a number of researches which have, and will, result in a number of books.
Even since being imprisoned in 2021, I have written, edited and translated 4 books, 2 pamphlets and almost a dozen articles. All of this was done under pressure from a prison environment full of violence, illegal levies, inadequate food ratio, a very corrupt prison culture, in a city with the world's 1st worst pm 2.5 air pollution level in mid-October 2023 due to forest and peatland fires (while I had been diagnosed with chronic laryngitis a long time ago).
I always publish all my books in free pdf versions, and allocate dozens of books to anarchist collectives and libraries throughout Indonesia. The following are some of my works:
Felix’s Explosive Power: Ernest Douwes Dekker and the Idea of Anarchism (1908-1928) (target for completion in December 2023)
Anarchy in Alifuru: History of Stateless Societies in the Eastern Indonesian Archipelago (target for completion in early 2024)
I have received a lot of support since I was first arrested, but due to several situations that I cannot explain here, I have run out of savings. I write this in despair. I don't want to be a burden to the people around me anymore. Therefore, I submit this proposal to my unknown comrade from different parts of the world, to help me with urgent funding so I can focus on writing, print my own books, share sales proceeds fairly with comrades who help manage book sales, and finally continue to run the publication. Give me another chance to improve my condition while serving my sentence in the coming years. How are fundraising proceeds allocated?
Living expenses while writing the book, which includes room and board contributions, meals, gallons of drinking water, etc, around €60/month (a total of €180 for three months, from December 2023-February 2024),
Procurement of books, access to commercial literature websites, costs for communication and other needs, around IDR 1 million (60€),
And most importantly, costs for book printing, around IDR 4 million (237€).
In total, I need aroubd €500. Is there another way to help?
You can become a regular patron of Pustaka Catut via Patreon or if you are thinking about donating in the future, via sociabuzz.
If you are willing to help procure the books (both physical and ebook versions) that I needs, which are all unaffordable (both price and availability) in Indonesia, you can contact me via email, and I will send you a list.
Offer my book to anarchist publishers to translate books that have been or will be published, so that I can reach a wider audience.
Share this campaign (I prefer private channels) and find out about the rapid growth of the anarchist movement in Indonesia against the cruel developmentalist regime which deprives the urban poor, farmers and indigenous people of their land, in here, or here.
I can provide other details. For further information, contact:
Instagram: @pustakacatut
Email: pustakacatut(Æ)gmail(Ø)com
I hope you guys will only hear about my work and contributions in the future. Thank you and f*ck this dystopia.”
Abu Baroud [one of the resistance fighters in the Jenin Brigade] asserted that they have been monitoring the activity of Israeli special forces. This allowed the Jenin Brigade to target the special forces on November 3 before they were able to enter the camp, according to Abu Baroud.
The Jenin Brigade has been active in the Jenin refugee camp for nearly two years now, and its military capabilities have grown steadily during this time, including its ability to manufacture locally-made IEDs. Members of the Brigade have established an organizational structure to keep a state of alert in the camp. “The resistance in Jenin has groups that fight, groups that keep watch, and groups that sleep, which is coordinated between all the resistance factions,” Abu Baroud said. “They are divided into several units, such as reconnaissance units, fighting units, and engineering units.”
“The engineering units make new IEDs which have been used to target and damage D9 military bulldozers,” he continued, referring to a particular incursion on November 3. “What happened was that the army’s forces entered the camp to try and extract the special force after it had failed in its mission and after the bulldozer was immobilized. The operation continued for another eight hours until they were able to repair the bulldozer and leave the camp.”
Abu Baroud also asserted the army has so far preferred to conduct quick operations led by special forces but that the Jenin Brigade has uncovered them each time and engaged them in combat. “The army is forced to remain for hours in order to evacuate these forces,” Abu Baroud said. “And with every invasion, the army’s vehicles are damaged.”
This also explains why the army has increasingly resorted to airstrikes in the camp. “They can’t confront us face to face, so they use their drones,” Abu Baroud maintained.
“I would like to report in this article about how colleagues and I went to the basement of the Horkheimer skyscraper [while Hegel's master-servant dialectic can still be read as an allegory of class society, in which the driving force of change can emanate from the enslaved, it helps to become aware of the powerless position of animals with the help of Horkheimer's skyscraper metaphor: In an aphorism from 1934, the Frankfurt School theorist symbolizes the construction of society by a skyscraper, at the top of which stand the big capitalists and in the basement of which is located “the indescribable, unthinkable suffering of the animals, the animal hell in human society [...], the sweat, the blood [and] the despair of the animals”.] one night to free a total of 130 laying hens from their miserable existence and hand them over to a sanctuary. My motive, by the way, was not a politically strategic one; I did not engage in effective-altruistic considerations (which probably would have led to the abandonment of the action), nor did I ask myself to what extent the theft of 130 laying hens would harm the farm's operators economically (the damage is likely to be laughably small with over 50,000 animals on site). What drove me I would call an act of materialistic solidarity: My awareness of the fact that there are countless living creatures that are in no way inferior to me in terms of physical ability to suffer, and that suffer agonies that are almost unimaginable, regularly turns my stomach and chills my heart. By this I don't mean, as might be assumed now, that my heart becomes cold in a sense of insensitivity — quite the opposite: whenever I become aware that tormentable bodies out there meet conditions that cannot be described in any other way than as torturous, it tightens in my chest and I experience this state as an unpleasant coldness in the region of my heart. So, together with friends, I decide to free at least some individuals from these conditions of misery. A fight against windmills, perhaps a Sisyphean task, but not only must we imagine Sisyphus as a happy man, but also the slightly pathetic, but therefore not untrue sentence applies: A liberated animal does not change the world, but the whole world changes for the liberated animal. At this point it should be emphasized that every animal liberation is only made possible by people who take care of the liberated animals, which are often in a condition that requires a lot of care. Without foster homes, without sanctuaries and without honorary office no animal liberations, so simply is it. The act of liberation, working one's way through the field to the facility in camouflage clothing with night vision equipment, may have an appearance of heroism, no matter how (completely unrealistic) heroic: the liberation itself is only the beginning, a singular night-and-fog action. What is actually heroic is the daily care of the animals, the trips to the vet with them, saying goodbye to them at the end of the journey together.
BEFORE any rescue, it is absolutely necessary to organize a shelter for the animals, that is the absolute condition for going out at all.
So we gathered in a secluded parking lot, already in the dark, but with still enough time to talk through the course of action in peace. We check that we have everything we need with us and that our equipment is working. Then we get in the car and head for a parking lot not far from the facility. We make a stop to strategically place the many transport bags and boxes it takes to move 130 hens in a bush so we can pick them up on the walk to the animal factory. Some of us are already getting out and hiding in the undergrowth as well. The rest park the cars and follow under cover of darkness. Reunited, each of us takes two bags and in single file we walk across the completely soaked and mowed cornfield towards the animal factory, whose outlines the glow of the full moon makes easily recognizable. 1/3 of the bags stay behind for the time being; a whole three courses are planned for tonight. After about a ten-minute walk over rough ground, we come to a small rampart behind which the plant is located. It has long smelled unpleasantly of a mixture of excrement and dirt. From time to time, conveyor belts rattle in the distance, and the ventilation system drones reliably. Every now and then, scattered chicken noises penetrate the night. The person with the night vision device goes ahead, crosses the rampart and checks the situation: is everything quiet? Are there any abnormalities? Can infrared light be detected that could indicate a camera? Today the situation is relaxed, there is no cause for concern. The person with the night vision device slowly works his way forward. Their target is the heavy iron door at the far end of the facility. The handle is carefully grasped and pressed down: the door can actually be opened, it is not locked. The rest of the people are informed by radio and immediately set off. Beforehand, teams of two were formed: always consisting of one person who grabs the hens and one who opens and closes the bag. After communicating by eye contact, the heavy door is opened and we disappear into the facility. One person remains outside as a guard. Inside it is noisy, musty and the air seems to be stagnant — despite ventilation. Since it is dark, we turn on the red light of our headlamps. A landscape of dusty and filthy grid installations becomes visible, some indefinable dirt particles liberally float through the light cone of the red light lamps. The corridor in front of us is lined with streaks of excrement and other garbage, and occasionally dead hens can be seen whose decomposition has already begun and which have been deposited here. The dimension of the complex shocks me, I don't quite know where to look. The grid installations, behind which countless chickens crowd, seem somehow endless and almost as if they do not fit at all into the complex, which is manageable from the outside. Slowly, I begin to gain a rough overview of this architecture of efficiency. From our vantage point, the huge hall is divided into several compartments, each of which is closed by a shabby iron gate. Behind this gate, which can be opened with a light flick of the wrist, the metal cage bars line up and over each other, on top of them loud animals whose miserable condition is easy to see. Those of them that are kept on the lower floors are covered with loud droppings of their fellow hens vegetating above them. Many hens are missing feathers, especially in the neck area and around the cloaca. Their combs hang limply, they are pale and I immediately associate their appearance with an attitude of resignation. In my perhaps too human perception, it looks as if they have hung their heads, surrendered. Between the mass of living animals, carcasses of long-dead hens appear again and again. The bodies of these animals were pressed into the grids by the weight of the others and it seems as if the metal had cut into them. It is nevertheless a particularly undignified sight in a room where dignity does not exist. Only after I slowly come to terms with these first impressions do I consciously perceive the noise. This cackling of tens of thousands of animals, this lament of the tortured creatures. Then we split up. Always in pairs we go into a compartment, the boxes or bags are prepared and placed. Together with my colleague, we laboriously push up another iron grate to gain access to the animals locked up behind it. Actually, this happens automatically, we do it manually in cooperation. The grate is in such bad shape that after we push it up a few inches, it stays in that position by itself instead of just closing again. This is very convenient for us and we I start to reach for the first animals. The question of which individual to choose doesn't really arise. Each one deserves it and every grab is a hit. Little by little the bags fill up — that the cages are getting noticeably emptier, however, it's a fallacy. Hens always move up, everything seems completely unchanged even after the work is done. There are simply too many. A chicken, which has actually already been in the saving box, frees itself from it in a moment of our inattention and flees back into the anonymity of the masses. It was saved and it is our fault that we now have to leave it behind. It feels bad, although of course we also realize that the animal that took its place deserves to be rescued just as much. After less than 15 minutes, all the transport boxes are filled and we meet up with the other teams at the exit. Before we radio in that we are done, we make sure that we have closed all the gates and left no traces. We will come back twice more that night, but this kind of check is standard. It has to take place so that it always does, ensuring that no conclusions can be drawn about our nightly visit. We give the signal and the door is opened from the outside. The first two bags are received, and we carry the rest outside. The cold air outside hits my face, I enjoy it and take a deep, long breath. The chickens in the boxes or bags are completely silent, nothing can be heard from them. I hope they are all right and that they are merely overwhelmed by the impressions of nature that had been denied them so far. With great effort due to the terrain, we make our way back to where the other boxes are located, each with two bags and six animals. One person runs to the parking lot and returns with the first car. The lights are switched off and a short radio message is enough to give the signal for loading. A few minutes later, the truck with the rescued hens is on its way to the sanctuary. We take a short breath, whisper a little, discuss whether there were any uncertainties and how to proceed. Shortly afterwards, we each grab another two empty bags and make our way to the facility for a second time — after all, the night is still young.”
