Some do not like anything. They hate, and they hate to see us move forward even one single step. They despise any sacrifice or attempt to give us a victory, albeit a relative one, and to establish awareness and confidence in the feasibility of meeting the standards of the long struggle. This is what we heard and followed during and after the legendary epic of our people in Gaza. Some took the initiative, in the name of logic and rationality, to question, disregard and ridicule everything that the Palestinian resistance accomplished in this latest confrontation.
They rushed to promote the philosophy of defeat and plant it in our consciousness, as if it were our pre-determined fate. To prove the accuracy and scientific approach of their logic, they dealt with the latest round as if it were the final battle. They pretended that as long as Jerusalem was not liberated and Israel continued its policies, then no triumph occurred. They are doing their utmost to provide Israel a victory that he itself does not feel and to impose on us a false defeat!
The problem of some people is that they calculate victory based on supermarket equations, like differences in the price of a bottle of Coca Cola - mere numbers and statistics. According to this logic, for example, they build their equations by calculating the number of sacrifices and material losses of the Palestinian people compared to the human and economic losses of Israel.
For instance, ten dozen of our people compared to one dozen from the other side. Since our "number" is higher, this means we were defeated and the enemy has won. As the economic losses are higher for Israel ($2.14 billion, according to what an official source in the Israeli Ministry of Finance told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper), a logarithmic solution is found for them, and they say: Israel is able to compensate, meaning its losses are nothing.
If those geniuses were to judge history, they would say that Algeria, which sacrificed 1.5 million martyrs compared to several hundred soldiers killed from the French colonial military, was defeated. Similarly, Vietnam, which sacrificed millions of martyrs, lost entire villages and tremendous tracts of land scorched from napalm bombs, compared to 56 thousand American soldiers killed, was defeated while America won. Russia, which had 26 million victims in WWII while hundreds of it's cities were erased from the face of the earth, was defeated in comparison to parallel losses of Nazi Germany.
Some of these "pre-defeated" represent an intense expression of alienation and occupation of consciousness. They trust Israel - its vocabulary, constants and rhetoric more than they trust themselves or their people.
The lessons of peoples and history, however, possess a completely different logic. The victories of peoples and the cost of their liberation are not subject to the calculations of small-time brokers. They are instead linked to the equations of achieving national goals, or taking gradual steps toward them with all the enormous costs entailed. They are related to the ability to impose a gradual forced change in the in the strategic and tactical power relations in favor of the forces of liberation and resistance. One of the laws of liberation movements in dealing with the imbalance of forces in favor of the enemy is based on the achievement of small cumulative victories, a necessary prelude to achieving the final decisive victory.
That is why it is said that the cost of freedom is high.
The idea for this short text was inspired by the poet Mahmoud Darwish, who wrote in a marvelous way:
Oh those who pass between fleeting words
From you the sword – from us the blood
From you steel and fire – from us our flesh
From you yet another tank – from us stones
From you tear gas – from us rain
Above us, as above you, are sky and air
So take your share of our blood – and be gone
Go to a dancing party – and be gone
As for us, we have to water the martyrs' flowers
As for us, we have to live as we see fit
Quoted from Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Worlds, Mahmoud Darwish, 1988.