Resistance does not evolve in a vacuum. Resistance is, by definition, the reaction to occupation. Western media portrays resistance as 'terrorism', that is, inexplicably violent, but never questions what they are doing in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, or even in the West at all. Their propaganda breaks the concept of causality, everything is forever 'new' (re: the news) with only a comic book concept of history (good guys, bad guys, explosions). The heirs of the most violent peninsula are really quite insular in their thinking. Such is the state of White Empire, now headquartered in America, which is the thing being resisted.

Resistance is almost a biological process, local species evolving in reaction to an invasive species which, at first just decimates them. Over time, people that were soft become hard, technology that was behind catches up, and the body politic adapts to expel the foreign body in its midst. Albeit, not without both sides being forever changed by the contact. Evolution is, as Darwin said, a bitch.

One particular shape of the Axis of Resistance in the Middle East is its shapelessness. Because of the evolutionary pressures of Empire, independent states simply did not survive besides Iran, and a deeply wounded Yemen and Syria. All of the major parties in the Six Day War of 1967 (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq) have been corrupted, crippled, or outright destroyed. And yet the occupation remains and the local body politic still rejects it, so the resistance took different forms. The form of formlessness.

This Resistance cannot have a head because it will be decapitated and cannot survive above ground (literally) without being droned. And so they went hydra and underground. This Resistance cannot communicate without being surveilled and it cannot collaborate without being compromised, so they communicate through action and rely on an overarching strategic unity to guide them.

It's not like Hamas decided to attack on October 7th and surprised all of its allies. Nobody knew the date the resistance would pop off (indeed, even Hamas didn't know exactly what its military wing was doing), but they knew something was coming. The Resistance was always resisting, October 7th was just the pièce de résistance. Hamas had been digging tunnels and training for decades, as has Hezbollah. The last fully free state in the region, Iran, had been making weapons and training nascent freedom fighters since the beginning. All parties were not read-in on the plans, but they were all ready. This is because—for as long as I've been alive—the Axis of Resistance has agreed on strategy. That is what unifies the fields.

The Unity Of Fields

This phenomenon of coordination despite surveillance, command despite assassination, is called 'the unity of the fields,' which we've discussed previously. Because the Resistance cannot communicate or collaborate reliably, they have to let their actions do the talking. They have to act and count on their comrades reacting appropriately, without too much tactical coordination. Decentralize or be destroyed. I'll repeat an explanation that the Resistance News Network gave to global university students recently:

It [the unity of the fields] leverages the instant exchange of information available to us today to take facts on the ground and purpose them as “signals.” For instance, when news is confirmed that negotiations have ended between the Palestinian resistance and mediators, the resistance in Lebanon may intensify its strikes to apply pressure. When Lebanon is bombed heavily, Yemen or Iraq may respond with force.

What unified the fields on October 7th was Hamas taking the field. That was the signal, but what was signified was already known by everybody. For decades, the strategy of armed resistance has been agreed upon. For decades smaller attacks had happened within this larger strategic paradigm. October 7th was just the biggest attack, which exposed the Empire as a big fraud. As Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in 1992:

The long-term strategy of the Islamic Resistance is clear and does not require additional explanation. It involves fighting against Israel and liberating Jerusalem, as well as Imam Khomeini’s proposal—namely, ending Israel as a state.

Hamas is literally an acronym meaning 'Islamic Resistance Movement' and they follow the same strategy. Everything else is just tactics. Indeed, what happened and 'Israel's' reaction isn't even new, it's just the scale that changed. October 7th was the biggest act of resistance, and 'Israel' reacted with its worst atrocities. But it's still the same shit, different day. As Fotros Resistance recounted about Hezbollah in the 1980s:

Sayyed Hassan reports that in the 80’s Hezbollah had launched a self-sacrificing attack on an “Israeli” convoy killing and wounding its soldiers. As a result, they besieged the village where it took place, arrested all males aged 14–60, imposed a curfew and cut off water and electricity from the village. People weren’t allowed to buy medicine nor food and were besieged in their houses for a certain period. At the time people (among which were big scholars) complained to the leadership of Hezbollah that the operations weren’t guided by wise decisions. They said that the resistance suffered more than the “Israelis” as a result of the retaliations. All while on the “Israeli” side there were only a couple of deaths and injuries. The leadership went to Imam Khomeini [of Iran] for guidance. He replied that they should continue with resisting. He said the people misidentified the benefit of the attack. The benefit wasn’t that they killed a couple of soldiers. The benefit was that the buildup of the operations would lead to liberation. Imam Khomeini’s response was clear, continue resisting whatever the price may be.

Sound familiar? 'Israel' has always reacted with collective punishment, what's happening to Gaza today is just a matter of degree. 'Israel's' strategy is that terror will keep the natives in line, but the Resistance long ago decided that fear is the mind-killer and made a strategic decision to keep attriting the occupier until they leave. And in Lebanon, they succeeded. 'Israel' withdrew from Lebanon and is still scared to take Hezbollah on directly. As Nasrallah said just after he became Hezbollah leader (in 1992):

We are not unrealistic. We do not pretend that our military capabilities and the numbers of our mujahidin would be enough to regain Jerusalem; none of us have ever made that claim. We do, however, believe that the resistance has to finish the job it started. It is impossible for us to fight the Israeli enemy through traditional and classical methods, but rather [we must fight] through a war of attrition, whereby we drain its energy, weaken it, then one day force it to withdraw. Some claim that the withdrawal that took place in 1985 came as a result of political pressure and negotiations; this is obviously a misguided notion. The amount of losses the enemy incurred, and the fear it lived through, created enormous pressure on the Jews in the occupied territories; they, in turn, put a lot of pressure on their own government and forced it to withdraw. The enemy considered the price it paid on the ground as exceedingly high, and [former Israeli Premier Yitzak] Rabin admitted earlier on that their 1982 invasion was a very big mistake, because it introduced another group onto the battlefield, and created new enemies for Israel.

At the time Nasrallah said this, they were still nearly a decade away from 'Israeli' troops leaving Lebanon, and 'Israel' is still regularly killing Lebanese. That's how deep the strategic vision is. The Resistance thinks generationally, and simply regenerates when its leaders are (almost inevitably) assassinated. I reference these events from literally my lifetime ago so you can understand how deeply this strategy is set among the Resistance. As the late Nipsey Hussel said, “All my life, been grindin' all my life. Sacrificed, hustled, paid the price.”

The Resistance resists, that's what they are, that's what they do, as Ayatollah Khomenei said ‘whatever the price may be.’ And the leadership knows what the price is. They pay it themselves. This is not some disconnected leadership, they are constant targets for assassination, and the 'Israelis' try to kill their children with them. As the martyr Saleh-Al-Arouri said last year, “We deeply feel the pain of our people's suffering, our children, women, and the bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza, but this sacrifice is necessary to liberate our people, our sanctities, and our prisoners in jails who are now receiving the worst treatment.”

As Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal—who was poisoned by 'Israel', went into a coma, and only recovered when 'Israel' humiliatingly had to deliver the antidote—said:

Dear sister, nations are not easily liberated. The Russians sacrificed 30 million people in World War II, in order to liberate it from Hitler's attack. The Vietnamese sacrificed 3.5 million people until they defeated the Americans. Afghanistan sacrifice millions of martyrs to defeat the USSR and then the US. The Algerian people sacrificed six million martyrs over 130 years. The Palestinian people are just like any other nation. No nation is liberated without sacrifices.

This is terrifying but true. The historical fact is that there will be blood, that's the only ink that history seems to be written in. The onus is not on those who make the sacrifice, but the Empire that demands it. The blood comes from the body of the people but it is on the hands of Empire.

Strategic Unity

This shared recognition of the cause, the cost, and the causal chains required is what unifies the Resistance. To be honest, the idea was new to me, because—as an English speaker—all you really hear about is 'peace' and the 'peace process', to which armed resistance is just an atavistic hindrance. A relic of the past, and a folly. But, because of October 7th, I've gone back to read the speeches/interviews of Hezbollah, the history of Hamas, and thoughts of the Ayatollahs and even the Quran that inspires them so deeply. The truth is that the idea of armed resistance is very old, very established, and a very reasonable reaction, whatever the news might say. And people in the region have never given up on it.

This strategic unity about the need to fight makes the means much more flexible. The Al-Qassam Brigades could train and equip for October 7th and the months that followed without fully informing the political wing (Hamas), and thus without informing 'Israel' and their enemies. Yemen could stockpile missiles and develop their own indigenous industry without telling Iran exactly what it needed that support for, and thus without informing their enemies. And Hezbollah could maintain a constant state of readiness, without saying what exactly they were getting ready for. The Resistance never hid their overall strategy of resisting, but they hid the tactics, and the short-sighted occupation was thus deceived. Caught in the news cycle, they lost sight of history. They confused tactical silence with having a monopoly of violence, and now they reap the decentralized whirlwind. The occupation is fighting on at least six fronts, and losing globally.

Causality

Action and reaction are, in many ways, the eternal law. Causality. Only White Empire would impose such massive violence on a population and then call them terrorists. This is the Resistance they designed in many ways. It evolved in response to imperial predation. Empire asks why the Resistance isn't secular, after killing or couping the socialists or communists. They ask why they're not non-violent, after shooting the unarmed March of Return in the knees. They ask why there isn't peace in the Middle East, while being the warring party. They ask why the Resistance is seemingly everywhere, without even the dimmest sense of everything.

Most Resistance groups maintain a tactical separation between political and military wings because of constant assassination, torture, and corruption. They adopted terrorism (as in killing civilians) because their people were terrorized (if you can imagine brown people having feelings). Then they abandoned the tactic when the costs outweighed the benefits, and when their conventional military capability matured to near parity. They have long adopted a strategy of long-term attrition with flexible means. They know that they will pay dearly in innocent blood, but they also know that Crusaders eventually get tired out and leave. This is the central strategy that defines the decentralized 'unity of the fields'.

This is happening in our lifetimes, but what's striking is that people thought about this strategy a lifetime ago, and worked and sacrificed for a future they would probably never see. This is what it takes to right such deep degeneration. It takes generations of sacrifice and incredible struggle. This is what it takes to survive in such a tactically hostile situation. It takes a strategic 'unity of the fields', in the face of an enemy that constantly seeks to delay, divide, and deceive. This is the evolution of revolution, and the persistence of resistance.

Helps to read The Unity Of The Fields first, though if you're reading this, I guess it's too late.