Protest is Not Power: What Palestine Actually Needs from You

Why are you critical of protests when they're one of the only ways people feel they can express solidarity with Palestine?

Okay. So, look, you're anti Israel because obviously. You're anti Zionist, obviously. You're anti American, obviously. You're anti Europe.

You're anti colonizers. You're anti United Nations. You're anti international institutions of international law and order. Internationally institutions of justice and so on. You're anti all of these things.

But in addition to that, you're also you're also anti Muslim and Arab governments. So you're pro who? You're for who exactly? Okay. You'll say that you're pro Palestinian, you're pro Palestine.

You're you're pro maybe a rank and file Muslims, maybe pro Africa, pro colonized people. Okay. But what does your pro stance bring to the table? You don't have power, you don't have wasta, what we call wasta. Means you don't have connections, you don't have contacts, you don't have money, you don't have authority.

And you are against everyone that has any of those assets. So what's the meaningful utility of your being pro Palestine, pro colonized people and so forth? What's the utility of your stance? Realistically, what's the function? What are you actually bringing to the issue that can resolve it?

No. You're just wrapping Palestine into your overall anti everyone and anti everything stance. You've confused rebellion with contribution. You know, you've mistaken opposition for strategy in and of itself. You've built your entire activism on being against, not being for.

You know, okay, for Palestine. Palestine just happens to fit into your aesthetic of resistance. This is your your overall aesthetic. An aesthetic, not a strategy, not utility, not deliverables. Basically just vibes.

You're anti everything, you know. You've made protest your identity, fine. But Palestine is not your accessory. Palestine is not your platform. Palestine is not your symbol.

Palestine is not just a canvas for your discontent with the world. The truth is you are functionally useless to Palestine. I'm sorry to tell you. You know, you're allergic to power. You see power and your reflex is to condemn it.

You see the Arab states making moves, you know, so called normalizing, investing, leveraging influence and so on. And all you choose to see is betrayal, treason, sell out. But you, what do you offer instead? Hashtag fury? Retweets?

You rail against the Muslim governments. You rail against the the, Gulf rulers, Turkish diplomats, Egyptian mediators, African leaders. You rail against investment forums, regional partnerships, conferences and so forth. In your world, everyone with any sort of capacity is complicit and only the powerless are pure. But that's not resistance.

That's a fetish for impotence. I mean, let me ask you something. When Israel plans its strategy, does it consider your feelings? When Zionist think tanks write their policy briefs, do they, do you think that they adjust based on what you will or will not protest? Do you think that the siege in Gaza is gonna be lifted by your moral stance?

No. The world does not move based upon your rejection or your approval. It moves based on leverage. It moves based on influence. It moves based on power.

If you want to be of service to Palestine, then you need to understand something foundational, fundamental. Victory is not a mood. It's not a t shirt. It's not a post. It's not a virtue signal.

It's a structure. It's engineered. It's built. So if you wanna help Palestine, then stop attacking the only people who actually have the potential to shift the situation just because they don't align with your quasi revolutionary cosplay, you know, like the Gulf States. You don't like them.

Turkey, you don't trust them. Egypt, you hate them. So tell me again, who exactly is supposed to deliver anything for the Palestinians? You think Arab government should be perfect Muslims before you work with them? Meanwhile, you'll work with Kufar, You know?

When was that ever a precondition for liberation? The prophet made treaties with the Quraysh. Actually negotiated with the crusaders. You're sitting in exile sipping iced coffee and demanding ideological purity from people who are trying to thread needles in war zones. You say, for example, normalization is betrayal.

I say dependency is leverage. And if Arab states can make Israel need them more than it needs the West, well, that's a shift in the structure of the occupation. You don't have to like it. You just have to ask, is it effective? Do you want justice or do you just want to feel righteous?

Listen. I'm not saying that you should stop caring. I'm not even saying that you should stop protesting. I'm saying that you should start building. You should start aligning.

You should start building relationships. You know, constructing coalitions. Learn diplomacy. Learn about capital flows. Learn about investment.

Learn about pressure points. Learn realpolitik. Stop just condemning the game just because you don't seem to know the rules. It's very easy to be anti everything and to protest everything. It's very hard to be for something real.

It's easy to say that they're all corrupt. But then ask yourself, are you useful? Because Palestine does not need more outrage. It needs more outcomes. And you're not gonna be able to deliver those outcomes, by isolating yourself in a circle of perpetual resistance and revolution and protest and what have you, where every actor with influence is disqualified for not fitting into your idealized quasi revolutionary narrative.

I mean, grow up. We don't need more pure voices. We need more power brokers. We need bridge builders. We need strategists.

We need investors. We need bankers. We need negotiators. We need urban planners. We need architects of a new structure.

So what are you bringing to the table? You act like power is always something that must be protested and not something to recruit. It's something that you're supposed to tear down, not something that you're supposed to build, you know. For westerners also, we have to consider the fact that there's always divided motives with westerners, let's be honest. You are after all settlers in America.

You're part of the settler power structure that America is. America is a settler power structure. So when you shout free Palestine, there's an element in that. There's a part of what you're really doing when you say that is trying to exonerate yourself. You're trying to free yourself from the categorization of a settler, of a colonizer.

And okay, I understand that. Of course, anyone would want to cleanse themselves aspect of their identity that was not not their fault. But the problem is of course that it means that you're not really looking for practical solutions because the act of protest for you, the outrage in and of itself for you is the solution to your problem. Because you're proving to yourself and you suppose you're proving to everyone else that you're a good person. That you're not part of the colonization machine.

So your problem is already solved just by the act of protesting. You see what I mean? Which means that you're not really interested in outcomes, in pursuing realistic outcomes. This makes western activists fundamentally different from anyone who is participating in this situation in the region, and fundamentally different from any serious Muslims who actually care about Palestine. Because we're not trying to prove something about ourselves.

We're not trying to solve some sort of internal psychological or emotional guilt issues. We're interested in real world solutions that can actually stabilize our lands and liberate our lands, from western interference, western domination. You really have to understand that the motives at play within the so called pro Palestinian movements in the West, they're not all the same. And you have to be able to accurately gauge what is and what is not, genuinely useful. Because yes, protest is useful or it can be useful, but not necessarily always and not necessarily even in the ways that you think it is.

It's not even useful in the ways that you think it is. I mean, like I've said and I've said this from the beginning, I've said it for years. Protest is useful mostly in terms of expressing the mood of the market. And to a lesser degree, the mood of the electorate. That's the main thing about protest.

You know, that's well, when we're talking about expressive protest, which is mostly what there have been, expressive protests. Disruptive protests, like say the dock workers refusing to, unload Israeli ships and so on, well, that's obviously, they have their own, practical impact. They have a practical impact on what they are specifically trying to disrupt. So those are different. That's a different type of protest than what we normally see and what most people participate in.

But what protest will not do is change policy. Okay? They are an element of leverage within the process of policy change, but for the most part, policy has very little to do with public opinion except in so far as public opinion actually changes consumer behavior. Can changes consumer behavior significantly, and has some kind of an impact on trade. Now, protest movement does, to one extent or another provide politicians with a sort populist rationale for adopting or for abandoning a policy, which they would be adopting or abandoning anyway for purely practical or geopolitical economic reasons.

You understand what I'm saying? In other words, like for example now we're seeing in Europe, the European countries are now openly expressing disapproval of Israel, trying to distance themselves from Israel and more specifically from Netanyahu. Okay. That's largely because everyone in Europe recognizes that the future of the Middle East is GCC led, BRICS led, and that Israel is a liability for purely practical geopolitical and economic reasons. So the popular opposition to Israel and to Zionism allows politicians to pivot under the cover of responding to popular will even though they never cared about popular will before.

They don't care about it now. They didn't care about it before. They don't care about it now with regards to Palestine or anything else. But the protests allow politicians the opportunity to pantomime conscience. When in fact, all of their decisions are always, completely mercenary.

So you have to understand what protests are and you have to understand what protests aren't. What they can and what they cannot do. And again, there are expressive protests and there are disruptive protests. There's, symbolic protests and there's protests of tangible impact. You know?

Protests that actually interfere with unjust processes, like the dock workers, for example. Or like the people right now in California who are trying to prevent the ICE arrests and so on. Whereas the the the people who are imposing costs on Elbit systems in The UK. You have that kind of protest versus expressive protest, which are basically just public choirs of outrage recital. Not all protests are equal.

Not all protests are useful. Not all protests are productive. And the protest mentality, like I said, the mentality of just being against, just objecting, just rejecting, without any sort of realistic strategic view to problem solving. In my opinion, this ultimately has to be understood as a sort of permanently disgruntled subgroup in society. Okay?

They have a function, but it's a limited function. And serious people need to recognize this. Because again, the actual decision makers, the actual policy makers in any society are what's called in Arabic the the people of influence, the people of means. And this is unavoidable and it goes across all societies. And if your only method for trying to influence the people of influence is antagonism and protest, well then you're ultimately gonna be sidelined, you're gonna be ignored, you're gonna be neutralized, you're gonna be irrelevant.

I've said it before. Either you have to work to change the configuration or say the component elements of the meaning, you have to change who the people of influence are within that grouping by means of trying to elevate certain people to that level who are more in line with your priorities, like say Islamic scholars and so forth. Or you have to work to try to become from the Al Harwal Akt yourself. Meaning, you have to try to acquire the means to exert decision making authority yourself. Or you have to work to influence the existing El Al Harwal act.

Influence the influences. These are your three realistic options for trying to move policy in any sort of a direction that you want it to go. Protest can be a tactical instrument in doing this to one degree or another, but it can also very easily become untactical and unstrategic and self defeating. Then, and now you have to understand something very basic. A very basic thing about power.

No power wants to be subordinate. Understand this. To whatever degree any power structure anywhere conforms with another external power system. It's only doing so for the sake of necessity, by necessity. It's doing it for survival or it's doing it for the sake of trying to enhance and consolidate their own power in order to secure eventually their autonomy.

Now, intelligent and informed Muslims understand and recognize that this is exactly what our governments have done. Little by little, day by day, year by year for decades, particularly the leaders in The Gulf. It's absolutely grotesque to me when westerners try to lambast our governments basically for being colonized when you're the ones who colonize them. You understand what I'm saying? When you blame our governments for not having the sovereign autonomy that you have relentlessly and ruthlessly deprived them of for decades.

You blame them for that, you know. Why don't they do this? Why don't the Arab leaders do this? Why don't they do that? As if you have not sabotaged them and held them hostage and hobbled them and kneecapped our countries for generations.

You kept them in peril. You kept them locked in an asymmetric lopsided regional power dynamic for eighty years. And then you try to accuse them, the out of states of being complicit with your repressive colonial project in the Middle East, Israel, Zionism, the Zionist state. Basically trying to blame them for the sabotage and the shackling that you carry out against them. You wanna turn us against our own Halwal Akt.

You want us to undermine them. You want us to topple them. You want us to weaken them. You want us to go against our own governments, against our own rulers, against our own power structures which obviously will do nothing but leave us completely vulnerable and powerless and dependent upon you. And you want us to do all of that just as our governments have been able to successfully secure some degree of sovereign autonomy, a degree of global influence, a degree of a regional cohesion and organization.

And these are the so called protesters, like I said. The supposedly pro Palestinian activists who actually want nothing but the tearing down of any genuine alternative power players in the region who are actually actively building their own ability to impact the situation autonomously. I mean you have to be able to see through this. Wallahi, you have to try to see through this. You have to be able to see that this approach, this mentality, this methodology is designed to do nothing whatsoever but reinforce western domination in our region.

Like I said at the beginning, for protesters, what do you bring to the table to help Palestine? Just your anger, your outrage, your moral indignation? I mean, do you even have a job? I mean, I literally saw someone, who wanted to go to the march on Gaza, this so called march on Gaza protest in Egypt that's being organized, in my opinion, by western colonial activists. I saw some man asking for financial assistance to enable him to be able to pay for a ticket and pay for accommodation in Egypt so he could join the protest in Rafah.

Imagine. Do you have money? Do you have contacts? Do you have influence? What do you have even that can realistically sway policy?

Are you a geopolitically impactful entity? Are you an important economy? Do you control vital inputs? Do you control vital resources or trade routes? Do you have enough investment capital to move the needle?

No. Egypt does. The GCC does. Turkey does. Malaysia and Indonesia do.

These are the most powerful countries. These are the most powerful governments, the most powerful states with the most powerful leaders, the biggest sovereign wealth funds, the most strategically important players that we have as an ummah. And you want us to hate them. You want us to antagonize them. You want us to accuse them of what you're doing.

Let me say that again. You want us to accuse our own states, our own governments, our own leaders of doing what you are the ones doing. You want us to blame our own countries for your crimes. You want us to hold our own countries responsible for what you're doing. Not only what you're doing in Palestine, but what you have done to our countries, for generations to weaken them, to undermine them, to undermine their sovereignty, to undermine their autonomy and so forth.

No. Well, you must think that we're fools if you think we're gonna go along with that. You colonized us, you oppressed us, you exploited us, you disempowered us, you stole our sovereignty, and you're the ones who are committing genocide in Gaza. None of our governments are responsible for that. None of our governments are responsible for anything that you did to us or that you're doing to the people in Gaza.

Rather, all of our governments have been trying all this time to try to build, to try to consolidate, to try to grow, to develop, to overcome everything that you did to try to sabotage us. The last thing that any decent intelligent Muslim would do would be to turn against them. That's the last thing that you would do, you see? This is what I'm saying. They pretend to be on your side so that you will be on their side against our own states.

Against the most powerful, the most impactful players that we have on our side. Listen to what I'm saying. I hope you understand. They want us to turn against the Muslims who control our resources, who command our countries, who control our capital, who control our trade routes, who control our strategic power, they want you to abandon them and turn against them and align yourself with some ragtag street protesters who have no power in their hands to do anything whatsoever for you or for Palestine or for anyone else. People who cannot even do so much as stop their own governments from using their own tax dollars to murder our babies.

And you're gonna hitch your wagon to these people and take sides with these people against the real existing Muslim power players in the world and call yourself doing something virtuous. I said you'd have to be a fool to do that. There is only one power structure in this world right now that actually deserves to be overthrown. It's the same one that's sending the military right now against their own people in California. You've seen it.

It's the same one that says that, you need to pay double or you need to pay triple for imported necessities because they they they stopped teaching you how to make them yourself. It's the same one that tells you that you're not even allowed to say free Palestine without it being a crime. It's the one that doesn't even want you to have public education. They don't even want you to have public education or health care or to ever be able to own a home. It's the one that's planning to send you, to an industrial scale Guantanamo Bay type detention facility in El Salvador.

Yes. Whether you're an immigrant or whether you're a citizen. They're gonna take you out. That government that pretty soon is gonna be conducting drone strikes, believe me, against their own citizens in every urban center across that country. Just wait.

It's the one that's using their security forces, to shoot their own people every day. It's the one that's putting people in prison just as a business model. It's the one that has not existed for even one single decade of its existence without being engaged in killing and carnage at home and abroad. No. Stop talking about our countries.

Stop talking about our governments. Stop talking about our leaders. You have no business talking about anyone else. Our governments are trying to regain their own footing after you demolish them for decades. Do you understand?

No. We're not gonna turn against them for your satisfaction. No. We're not gonna be your new colonial foot soldiers to try to sabotage what our countries are trying to build. We're gonna stand with them.

Our countries are linking up. They're linking arms across the globe from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia. I'm saying they're linking up. They're they're standing shoulder to shoulder. They're trying to build a collective sovereign force that can actually reclaim control and sovereignty over our lands and liberate us from your incurable violence and predation.

And intelligent Muslims, whether they are at home or whether they are in the, western diaspora, They need to join hands with the global collective sovereignty movement that's happening all around the world, with the people and with the leaders and with the leaders and with the people. We're the ones who are gonna liberate Palestine through the sheer power of our capital, of our cohesion, of our solidarity, and of our strategy. We're gonna turn Israel from a menace to a dependency. You know, you want us to have a knee jerk reaction by calling capture normalization, but what it is is capture. The only way that you can't understand that is that it is capture is if you still believe in western narratives and western concepts of power, meaning power equals violence.

You still have to believe those old European Nazi tropes about Jewish control. No. Anyone can see that Israel is and always has been a dependency. And I'm telling you, it's about to become our dependency. It's about to get a new owner.

It's about to get a new landlord and that's us, the Muslims and the Arabs. And that's gonna mean Palestinian liberation and that's going to mean peace. The only people that you should be protesting are the people who oppose this. The only people that you should be protesting are the people who want to undermine what our states are trying to do. And that should be easy for you.

You can easily find those people because they're all over there right right right over there in the West, where you are. You know? You people are always talking about in the Arab countries, why don't they allow pro Palestine protests in the Muslim world or in the Arab world, in Saudi Arabia, in The UAE or what have you? Because we are pro Palestinian. Because there's nothing to protest in our countries.

We're not the ones that are committing the crimes. We're the ones who are working on trying to solve the problem in Palestine. We're the ones who are trying to resolve the conflict. We're the ones who are trying to establish the Palestinian state. Protests work.

Our countries are on the right side. You worry about getting your own countries in order. You worry about getting your own countries to stop being so brutal. You keep talking about us while we're the ones who are sending aid. We're the ones who are negotiating ceasefires, we're the ones who are negotiating humanitarian aid delivery, we're the ones who are building global solidarity among the most powerful entities in the world to try to support the establishment of a Palestinian state.

We're doing that, not you. We're the ones who are standing together in defiance of western demands. Meanwhile, you over there, you've actually got politicians right now after 600 introducing bills that would criminalize even saying free Palestine in America. No. We are absolutely keeping up our end on this issue.

But it seems like the only thing that you people can ever do to support Palestine is to lob accusations against the Muslims and against the Arabs and against our governments. While you're the ones who keep sending billions of dollars to war criminal, your war criminal client state. No. I'm sorry. We stand with the Muslims.

We stand with the Muslims from the lowest amongst us to the highest amongst us. We stand with the Muslims from the least powerful to the most powerful. We stand from the with the rank and file and we stand with the heads of state. We stand together as a single solitary structure. And if you wanna break our ranks, well then we know exactly what you're really about.

We know that you just wanna isolate us and you wanna exclude us from the most significant and the most impactful players in our ummah. You just wanna estrange us from the very people, from the very structures, and from the very institutions that actually have the power to liberate us. And you wanna do that because, they have the power to liberate us from you.