By Nahid Poureisa
“From the earliest phases of its modern evolution until it culminated in the creation of Israel, Zionism appealed to a European audience for whom the classification of overseas territories and natives into various uneven classes was canonical and ‘natural.’
That is why, for example, every single state or movement in the formerly colonized territories of Africa and Asia today identifies with, fully supports, and understands the Palestinian struggle. In many instances… There is an unmistakable coincidence between the experiences of Arab Palestinians at the hands of Zionism and the experiences of those black, yellow, and brown people who were described as inferior and subhuman by nineteenth-century imperialists."
What Said described decades ago still stands. I echo his words completely. It was true then, and it has only become clearer after the Al-Aqsa Flood.
The moment of Al-Aqsa flood cracked open the meaning of brutality, resistance, and what it means to keep fighting against impossible odds.
The martyred Hamas leader and strategist Yahya Sinwar also pointed to it in an interview:
“The world expects us to be well-behaved victims while we are being killed — to be slaughtered without making noise. This is impossible. We decided to defend our people with whatever weapons we have,” he said.
What Sinwar is saying here is simple: this is why they crossed the Gaza borders, set foot in the occupied land of Palestine, and sent a message to the world with paragliders cutting through the sky.
What Palestinians lived through before Al-Aqsa Flood was buried, ignored, and pushed aside. Now it is not only heard globally, but it is also felt, recognized, and it has become a platform for the oppressed everywhere to find themselves again.
The cause of Palestine wasn’t the cause before October 7, but after that day, it became the clearest definition of colonial barbarism.
October 7 shook the world. Not symbolically, but literally. We have never seen an earthquake that shakes the entire planet at once, but October 7 did.
It dragged a buried discourse out of academic closets where “anti-colonial” and “decolonial” became jargon, buzzwords, distractions for a Eurocentric left with no hands left for struggle.
It breathed life back into the discourse. It returned it to the people.
To the youth.
To the Black and Indigenous.
To every community taught to numb its own pain, to forget its history, to chase “success” defined by capitalism instead of dignity.
Al-Aqsa Flood forced the oppressed to reread themselves, to remember. It helped billions of colonized people recover what they were encouraged to forget: that liberation is possible — even when it is bloody.
The post-Al-Aqsa Flood era has revealed with new clarity the centrality of the Palestinian cause within global justice movements.
This moment offers an essential lens for understanding what is unfolding in the Somali community of Minnesota, where young people have taken to social media to parody Zionist claims that Palestine is a “promised land” by comically declaring Minnesota to be their promised land.
On the surface, it is a joke; beneath it, an incisive political act. These youth expose the absurdity of Zionist mythology and revive, through humor, the historical realities of settler colonialism, displacement, and racial violence that structure both the United States and Israel.
This satire is not merely a clever critique – it marks a profound political awareness. Somali and Black youth in the United States recognize that the cause of Palestine strengthens their own cause. They see Palestine not simply as a distant injustice, but as a platform that amplifies their struggles against white supremacy and racism.
Their humor brings to the surface the deeper layers of US history: the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the forced displacement of African peoples through slavery, and the construction of a settler colonial society built on stolen land and exploited lives. In this context, Palestine becomes a mirror reflecting the foundational violence of the United States itself.
The genocide unfolding in Palestine today materializes the same settler logic that shaped the Americas: a land taken from its people, reallocated to newcomers under divine or civilizational claims, and secured through continuous violence.
Zionist settlers who migrate to Palestine do so as ideological recruits – participants in a propaganda apparatus promising a homeland that, in reality, requires the displacement and erasure of another population. The structural parallels are unmistakable.
For years, imperial powers attempted to undermine the centrality of Palestine by deploying whataboutism: “What about Sudan? What about Congo? What about Myanmar?”
The purpose of this strategy was not genuine concern for other oppressed communities – it was to fragment solidarity, to ensure that Palestine could not remain the focal point of global resistance, and therefore to weaken the discourse of resistance itself.
If Palestine disappeared from political consciousness, the very language of liberation, land defense, and anti-colonial struggle would lose its anchor.
Yet this tactic has failed. Instead of dispersing solidarity, the global uprisings for Palestine have reconnected struggles that imperial powers sought to isolate.
From Indigenous communities in Australia, Canada, and the US dancing with the Palestinian flag, to Black communities identifying familiar patterns of racialized violence, oppressed peoples recognize in Palestine not only a tragedy to oppose, but a historical pattern they themselves have endured. They support Palestine not just out of moral duty, but out of self-recognition.
This recognition is also grounded in material connections. The same structures and powers funding the genocide in Gaza are implicated in ongoing violence across Africa, including in Congo today. The extractive, militarized, and imperial networks that sustain Zionism also sustain global exploitation. These are not parallel struggles – they are deeply interlinked.
Returning to the Somali community in Minnesota, their humor becomes a political act of historical memory, global consciousness, and solidarity. They understand that the Palestinian cause amplifies their own fight for dignity, safety, and liberation.
It is not merely that Palestine represents one of the most blatant cases of occupation and dispossession—it is also that the resistance to this oppression stands as one of the most powerful inspirations for oppressed peoples worldwide.
The centrality of Palestine lies in this dual reality: the clarity of its injustice and the strength of its resistance. It is the banner under which global struggles converge – not because other struggles are secondary, but because Palestine illuminates the universal structures of oppression and the universal possibility of resistance.
In witnessing Palestine, communities across the world are witnessing themselves.
Nahid Poureisa is an Iranian analyst and academic researcher focused on West Asia and China.
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