Rundale

Rete degli Studenti Medi at the general strike for Gaza in Ancona, 22 September 2025, by Ukrain4Pal (source: Wikimedia).

Sara Troian

Over the last two years, the Western world has undergone a gradual awakening to the exercises of doublethink of global powers. Palestine has been the compass: the genocide it endures has exposed both Israel’s violence and the maze of support of Western governments and economies that sustain it, unveiling the imperial nature of our time. This awareness has sparked unprecedented mobilisation: massive marches and protests, public events, university encampments, a tide of ships carrying aid to Gaza, and nationwide strikes paralysing an entire country.

As Israel’s annihilatory violence has continued unabated, enabled by Western complicity, the movement reorganised around key political demands: the conscientisation of Zionism as a colonial project to be abolished, supporting Palestinian resistance, and ending Western political, military, and economic participation in Israel’s structure of domination. Yet, this moment carries as much transformative potential as the risk of co-optation. Preventing the Empire from reducing it to a symbolic process incapable of eroding the structures and power dynamics of the international colonial system, while simultaneously bewildering the masses. To this end, a critical assessment of the solidarity movement –its pitfalls as well as its radical agency– is necessary. Critique is functional not to weaken the movement, but to reject compromises, expose traps, and work toward revolutionary justice.

This piece is written in this spirit: to help channel the current political awakening into strong grassroots alliances, build collective consciousness, and orient the struggle toward a tangible, sustainable, and radically just alternative to the status quo. This reflection is inspired by Ghassan Kanafani’s lecture Thoughts on Change and the ‘Blind Language delivered in Beirut in 1968. It took twenty years for it to be published in al-Hadaf, during the First Intifada, and its message remains relevant today. Kanafani’s lecture was given months after the 1967 Naksa, when Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights: a painful defeat across the Arab region. According to Kanafani, this required a rigorous intellectual effort to “rise from a fall” and redirect revolutionary fervour toward radical change. His intervention remains timeless as it seeks to reorient movements in moments of systemic rupture and mass mobilisation: when they are most vulnerable to hijacking by the very powers they oppose, and to the abyss of depoliticization.

The moral economy of solidarity in the age of genocide

At this historical juncture, the solidarity movement faces numerous challenges. First, the influx of new participants mobilised by the unprecedented scale, intensity, and brutality of Israel’s genocide. From public figures and politicians to ordinary individuals, millions have joined protests, launched initiatives, and used their platforms to express solidarity. Yet, many of them, largely from the West, have centred themselves in the narrative, motivated by guilt or helplessness. Personal experiences –cancelled performances, financial sanctions, smear campaigns, or other personal sacrifices– often overshadow the cause itself. While these realities are not insignificant, they pale in comparison to the daily systemic violence Palestinians have been enduring for over seven decades.

The struggle is not about us; it is about Palestine and her people. Oversharing individual stories and self-referential discourses reduce Palestine to a trend or a content stage, emptying solidarity of political meaning, opening it to co-optation and rendering dissent disposable to consumerism and neutralisation. This problem is compounded by a lack of historical engagement. For many, Israel’s genocidal escalation of October 2023 marked their entry point into the Palestinian cause, with little awareness of what preceded it: the relentless wars on Gaza, the progressive fragmentation of Palestinian geography, the millions of refugees whose right of return remains denied, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, the declaration of the state of Israel on 78% of Palestinian land, and the emergence of Zionism in the late 19th century. Without understanding this context, calls for a ceasefire risks, reducing political demands to a plea for less regular killing rather than revolutionary justice, return, and liberation. Solidarity acts are often guided by what Ghassan Kanafani termed bourgeois morality, whereby moral outrage replaces material struggle, visibility substitutes for revolutionary praxis, and ‘peace’ leaves the structures of domination intact.

The risk of blind solidarity

The second issue concerns those who have long supported Palestine –those who are well-versed in the settler-colonial and imperialist nature of the enemy and thus enter the struggle with the duly anti-systemic approach. In these spaces, there has been a renewed interest in revolutionary theories, figures, and ideals. This, however, risks sliding into what Ghassan Kanafani described as “blind language”: a condition in which “the most significant words [lose] all meaning.” Language, far from being neutral, is inherently tied to power and resistance. To challenge domination, we need more than symbolic gestures or surface-level solidarity; we need a re-politicisation of language itself, a language that is precise, grounded, and accountable. While it is encouraging to see radical thought resurfacing within the movement, this must be rooted in clarity and commitment. If concepts are invoked without depth, or revolutionary language is used without an anchored political vision, we risk sanitising critique, disarming theory, and obstructing the very transformation we claim to seek. This turns the movement in ‘blind solidarity’, easily disposable to contradictory agendas. In fact, unless theory is translated into collective, material action, it becomes the emotional outlet of impotence, providing a sense of security to those who are scared from systemic change, and moral relief to those who lack a clear definition of a political goal.

This revolutionary awakening, then, becomes the working strategy of great powers to maintain the status quo: the absence of substantive clarity is weaponised by the neoliberal system, which absorbs the language and ascribes to it symbolic meanings that fall short of political and material depth. The discourse is thus neutralised, increasing the curtain of fog over the movement’s vision and deploying blind language as a shield, protecting the economic and political forces that suppress the anti-systemic transformative potential of the movement. The role of the intellectual in this period is critical: they must not only balance between a sincere and committed critical assessment of what must be rejected and what must be defended, but also must ensure that theory is connected with organising, that critique is aimed at construction, and that these efforts together are channelled towards restoring collective political agency through long-term, committed and relational engagements.

Collective political consciousness against the spectacle of solidarity

The flotilla movement exemplifies these dynamics. It has become a form of performative solidarity that soothes individual guilt, alleviating discomfort through symbolic actions that often bring personal gains: followers, visibility, legitimacy, or psychological consolation. In doing so, it centres the West rather than Palestine, neglecting lessons from the past and failing to adapt strategy. Palestine ends up being reduced to a passive object of pity, while energies focus on those sailing the seas rather than those under bombardment and colonial violence. These actions appeal to familiar frameworks –international law, humanitarianism, neutrality– that have long upheld imperial domination. Spectacular acts of solidarity, valorised as heroic, recentre the West as moral protagonist, reinforce structures suppressing Palestinian agency, and paradoxically legitimise the systems the movement purports to challenge. Without a radical enaction of solidarity that foregrounds Palestine as the political subject, the transformative potential of these mass mobilisations risks dissipating into symbolism.

Therefore, the revolutionary movement today faces two interconnected challenges. First, educating and organising the growing number of allies. The call for justice does not end when the bombs stop falling. As a new ceasefire is feebly being implemented, the sensitisation and mobilisation of the masses towards collective struggle becomes a priority. This must be rooted in historical awareness, political clarity, and long-term vision. Second, the movement must continue to practice self-critique: reassessing the forces at play, identifying enemies, and aligning strategy with material change. Solidarity is not a matter of charity or performance; it requires mutual aid among the forces striving towards the same goal and the rejection of privileges that uphold domination. Disciplined organising, intellectual honesty, and a commitment to ground construction in critique are the seeds to build a radical just alternative. The struggle for a liberated Palestine –and against all manifestations of imperialism– demands patience and the firm refusal of evasive discourses that distract from the political demands of the Palestinian street.

Sara Troian is a Hume and IRC PhD Scholar in the Department of Law and Criminology at Maynooth University, Ireland. Her research examines the tension between international law, imperialism, and liberation movements with a focus on Palestine. She has previously held leading research and administrative roles with UN independent mechanisms, and worked with NGOs and policy think tanks in South West Asia.