The pronouncements of the resistance's death are greatly exaggerated

If history is any indication, the resistance will only strengthen from here.

These are some of the updates from Al-Qassam Brigades — the armed wing of Hamas — from just this week:

• This morning, one of the Qassam mujahideen managed to stab a Zionist officer and 3 soldiers from zero distance, finish them off, and seize their personal weapons in the Jabalia camp, north of the Gaza Strip. [December 19]

• [At] 11:30 Al-Qassam Brigades targeted the “Magen” military site with the “Zouari” suicide plane. [December 19]

• One of the Qassam mujahideen managed to finish off a Zionist soldier next to a “Merkavah” tank, seize his weapon, and throw two grenades into the tank west of the city of Beit Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip. [December 18]

• Al-Qassam Brigades targeted the enemy command and control site in the “Netzarim” axis with “107” rockets. [December 18]

• Al-Qassam mujahideen sniped a Zionist soldier and directly wounded him in the “Al-Tawam” area, north of Gaza City. [December 18]

• Al-Qassam mujahideen were able to target a Zionist force holed up inside a house with a “TBG” shell near the Abu Sharkh roundabout, west of Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip. [December 18]

• Al-Qassam mujahideen were able to finish off 5 Zionist soldiers from zero distance near the Al-Khalifa Mosque in the middle of the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. [December 18]

• Al-Qassam Brigades blew up a Zionist troop carrier with a “Shuath” device near the Martyr Imad Aqel Mosque, east of Jabalia Camp, in the northern Gaza Strip. [December 18]

• Al-Qassam mujahideen were able to detonate a booby-trapped house in a Zionist force of 11 soldiers, leaving them dead and wounded in the middle of the Jabalia refugee camp, north of the Gaza Strip. [December 17]

• The Qassam mujahideen were able to clash with a Zionist foot force west of the Jabalia camp and eliminated 3 soldiers from zero distance. Helicopters were seen evacuating the dead and wounded. [December 17]

• Al-Qassam Brigades destroyed a Zionist troop carrier with a “Shuath” device in the middle of the Jabalia refugee camp, north of the Gaza Strip. [December 17]

On December 19, Al-Qassam also published this video of a sniping operation that hit its Zionist target accurately:

All in all it has been a busy week for Qassam — just live every other week for the year or so — underlining the group’s resilience and capabilities as it battles the most immoral, unethical, and well-armed genocidal military that ever existed, for 15 months straight.

These updates are only from Al-Qassam Brigades, the largest resistance faction in the Gaza Strip. There are many other factions, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Al Nasser Salah-al Deen Brigades, among others, fighting the genocidal Israeli terrorists with the same ferocity. All these resistance groups conduct multiple operations near-daily, sometimes in combination and at other times on their own.

The success of their operations is the reason why the Israelis haven’t been able to exercise any amount of control anywhere in the Gaza Strip despite the unprecedented destruction they have wrought with their unhinged savagery in the besieged enclave since October 7, 2023.

The Palestinian freedom fighters continue to exact a high price from the Israelis despite facing considerable odds against an enemy whose foot soldiers roam the streets of Gaza, get round the clock support from their air force armed with devastating ammunition furnished by the genocidal Western regimes, and are supplied with all the reconnaissance they need from those same allies.

Despite nearly all of Gaza being reduced to rubble, the resistance’s tunnel infrastructure remains largely intact as the Israelis have refused to venture inside them even when they have found them. Hamas has been replenishing its ranks, recruiting new fighters for several months and have acquired ample explosives to last for years courtesy of the unexploded bombs dropped by the Israelis.

Back in July, Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesman Abu Obeidah gave an appraisal of Hamas’s new fighters and the brigades’ fighting capabilities: “We managed to recruit thousands of new fighters during the war, rehabilitate important capabilities, set up ambushes, manufacture explosives and shells, and recycle Israeli enemy leftovers.”

Those new recruits featured prominently in an August operation that I reported on here.

Hamas's 2024 recruits are now blowing up Israeli troops in Gaza

Multiple reports have since affirmed Abu Obeidah’s announcement of Hamas reinforcing its ranks. In September, Hamas official Osama Hamdan gave an assessment: “There were martyrs and there were sacrifices… but in return, there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance.”

On Thursday, the Israeli outlet Walla put the number of Hamas recruits at 4,000 and said that the faction has implemented “unusual methods of operation” to evade the Israelis. From Middle East Eye:

Sources within the Israeli military’s Southern Command revealed that Hamas has implemented “unusual methods of operation” to counter Israeli troops in southern Gaza. These tactics have allegedly allowed the group to evade Israeli intelligence and prevention operations throughout the conflict.

Israeli forces have reportedly been grappling with exhaustion and psychological strain, further complicating their operations.

The fact that the Israelis have revived the dormant ceasefire talks is yet another indication of the problems they are facing against the Palestinian resistance. It’s another matter that they will likely kill this negotiation as well, as they have done several times in the past. Whichever way the latest talks go, it’s important to remember that the Israelis never negotiate from a position of strength.

All these developments point to a thriving armed resistance sustained with the recruitment of new fighters and Gaza’s indigenous arms manufacturing capacity which has continued to churn out all the weapons the fighters need to resist Israeli savagery.

While the indigenous fighters continue to put their bodies on the line in defence of their land and people, the self-appointed white saviours have been busy writing obituaries of the resistance. British politician and talk show host George Galloway, who couldn’t even defend his seat in the last parliamentary elections, pounced readily after the fall of Syria: “That part of my life, fighting for the Arabs, being behind the Arabs, is over.” Scott Ritter was tag-teaming Galloway from across the pond, “Sadly, I’m with you.” He later pronounced that the Palestinians have surrendered already.

The views of Galloway and Ritter are in wide currency in the Western geopolitical commentariat. However, as Syrian analyst Laith Marouf recently remarked, their views “reflect frustration at their own impotence” as they remain completely powerless to effect any change in the Middle East, unlike a Palestinian in Gaza. The Western commentariat merely watch as their tax dollars fund Gaza’s extermination while the indigenous resistance stands as a resolute bulwark against the savagery. West Asians have never been and would never want to be the “White Man’s burden,” much to the chagrin of the likes of the Galloways, the Ritters, and their dead white kinsmen.

While the fall of Syria is bound to affect Hezbollah’s overland supply chain, a fact that even Hezbollah General-Secretary Naim Qassem acknowledged in his latest speech, it won’t have any impact on the resistance operations in Palestine. In time the Lebanese resistance too will find other routes to build back its capabilities.

It’s fair to say that the resistance has seen worse days. Just three decades ago, all the weapons that Palestinian fighters wielded came from the Israeli soldiers who would sell them in black markets. Azzam Tamimi writes in his book Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, “Sheikh [Ahmad] Yassin set up two separate systems for the purchase of arms, which were readily available for sale in Israel and usually originated with the Israeli army. Israeli officers and soldiers would steal weapons and sell them on the black market.” There weren’t even enough weapons to give each fighter his own.

The First Intifada (1987-93) was fought without arms, “relying instead on mobilising people, mass demonstrations and throwing stones at Israeli soldiers,” writes Khaled Hroub in his book on Hamas. “Hence it was called the ‘stones revolution’.”

The Palestinian factions gradually built up their arsenal with weapons smuggled mostly from Africa via Egypt into Gaza. Now there’s an indigenous arms industry, built without outside help for the most part. Its effects have been devastating for the Israelis who were beaten comprehensively on October 7, 2023, and since that fateful day have failed to put down the fierce resistance, lost thousands of men in the process, and left facing a recruitment crisis.

It’s worth noting the enemies that the Palestinians have been fighting. Not just the Israelis, but they have taken on the might of the entire West — which has done away with any pretence of abiding to international law and green-lighted a live-streamed genocide — and have been rubbing their noses in the rubble of Gaza.

Usama ibn Munqidh (d. 1188) a fighter, poet, and writer who witnessed and fought the Crusaders, in his chronicles titled The Book of Contemplation, writes: “Victory in war is from God alone (may He be blessed and exalted), not from organisation or skilled conduct, and not from strength of numbers of troops or allies.” Nothing exemplifies Usama’s assertion better than the Palestinian resistance in Gaza as they fight, to borrow from Marouf again, “the Jewsaders.” To view this genocidal war through Usama’s religious lens becomes all the more relevant when you take into account the Israeli framing of these genocidal wars in Biblical terms and see in action the Palestinian fighters, who never fire a salvo at their enemies without reciting parts of the Qur’anic verse,

[Qur’an 8:17] وَمَا رَمَيْتَ إِذْ رَمَيْتَ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱللَّهَ رَمَىٰ ۚ وَلِيُبْلِىَ

Nor was it you who threw but it was Allah Who did so.

History is witness that most wars of consequence have been won by the underdog facing seemingly insurmountable odds. When the Palestinian resistance set into motion the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, none of the other members of the resistance axis were in the loop. They opened their fronts in support of the Palestinian resistance. Even after Hezbollah’s guns fell silent after a fraudulent ceasefire — thereby removing the biggest deterrent to the Israelis — the resistance in Gaza never slowed down. It continues apace. It is safe to say the resistance’s obituary writers have been too hasty in their pronouncements. If history is any indication, the resistance will only grow in strength from here.

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