Honoring the martyrs, advocating for the resistance: Charlotte Kates at the Athens conference on Imperialism and Law

Imperialism, Resistance, and the Role of Revolutionary and Peoples’ Lawyers

Thank you to all of the organizers and to the People’s Law Office for holding this important convening, specifically, to focus on imperialism and the need for an anti-imperialist alliance of lawyers and legal workers, in an explicit sense. 

How fitting that this event takes place under the name and the call of Ebru Timtik, a dedicated fighter for the people, a lawyer who loved and upheld the popular movements, the resistance and the revolution, a martyr who lives on in the work that all of you continue to do today in the face of fascism, repression, and imperialism. I had the honour of meeting her in Istanbul, and many of our comrades had the same in a variety of movement events and struggles, always with her eyes fixed on the goal and her anti-imperialist compass clear.

I want to begin by saluting all of the martyrs, from the great leaders of our global anti-imperialist movement and movement for justice, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and every doctor, health worker and nurse, every laborer, engineer, electrician and aid worker, every baker, teacher, and student, every beloved child and youth, every mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin and grandparent slaughtered by the US-Zionist genocide, and every heroic resistance fighter, every martyr on the road to al-Quds, whose lives have been taken by the malign forces of imperialism and Zionism,

And the wounded, the hundreds of thousands whose limbs have been taken, whose health has been destroyed, whose environment has been poisoned, whose homes have been demolished, by the invader and the occupier seeking to uproot them from their land,

The prisoners, the 10,000 resistance fighters and leaders behind bars, undergoing the most severe and unimaginable forms of torture and abuse from the notorious dungeons of Sde Teiman to the starving of children in Megiddo prison, whose freedom is so precious to the Palestinian people that they undertook the largest military operation in their history in large part to win their liberation, and who continue to win that liberation with every battle, and

The armed resistance, the fighters of Hamas and the Al-Qassam Brigades, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement and Saraya al-Quds, the PFLP and the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and all the factions of the Resistance, the warriors of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the armed forces, the people, and the AnsarAllah movement of Yemen, the resistance fighters of Iraq and the revolutionary forces of Iran who continue to resist imperialism in the region…at the center of our global movement.

The vast destruction imposed upon humanity, upon the global majority, by imperialism, led by the United States but accompanied by the imperialist powers from Britain to the European Union countries to Canada to Australia and New Zealand — NATO, the Five Eyes and similar aggressive alliances –  is immense and terrible, and cannot be confronted except by confronting those directly responsible and the systems that they profit from. At the same time that we are living in a time of genocide, of destruction, warmongering, the extraction of the resources and wealth of the people of the world for the benefit of imperialist powers and their ruling classes, we are also living in a time of great and heroic resistance that is, indeed, changing the world and pointing toward not only a multipolar but a revolutionary order. 

So, for us as people’s lawyers, as revolutionary lawyers, as anti-imperialists, there is always the question to ask, and, indeed, to answer: why are we here? What is our role? There are many roles that people can play and many kinds of harm reduction, defending those most vulnerable and most attacked by the state. At the same time, we must address this by being clear about the purpose of “law” particularly bourgeois law, which is not to protect us nor to defend us but to repress us. If we have revolutionary movements, they will not be protected by the systems of bourgeois law, because that is not the purpose of this legal system. And so the question is, will we use what we have of a law as a weapon in this struggle and be part of and serve the resistance, or will we instead seek to take the guidelines of bourgeois law and impose them on the people’s movements, demanding their compliance rather than defending their noncompliance? What we see today is the facade of freedoms of expression and association falling before the crisis of imperialism and a revolutionary upsurge which bears the name Al-Aqsa Flood. 

As we speak about Palestine, of course, we must be clear – the genocide in Palestine did not begin on 7 October 2023. It did not even begin in 1947-1948 and the illegitimate establishment of the so-called “state of Israel,” the Zionist regime, on Palestinian land; the genocide was inherent in the Balfour declaration and the imperial gift of Palestinian land to the Zionist movement in an explicit alliance with British imperialism, then the leading imperialist force in the world. As Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, said in seeking a meeting with Cecil Rhodes, “This is something colonial.” And of course, as Indian lawyer Niloufer Bhagwat noted yesterday, the colonization and genocide of Palestine has worked hand in hand with the division and colonization of the Arab people and of all the peoples of the region, setting up this Zionist colonial project, a tool and mechanism of imperialism, in the heart of the Arab world, to prevent Arab national unity and true liberation and self-determination. So from al-Nakba to the ongoing ethnic cleansing and destruction of the Palestinian people, this has been an ongoing process of genocide. 

The great, heroic operation on October 7, 2023 was an organized, strategic operation by the Palestinian resistance, which holds a deep relationship and alliance with the other forces of the Axis of Resistance, or, more broadly, what we might call the global camp of resistance, centered in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, and, of course, Syria, where we are today witnessing a great tragedy and crime created by the machinations and the killing sanctions of US Imperialism. It was a brilliantly planned military action that surprised even the fighters and leaders when they encountered the inability and unpreparedness of the zionist soldiers in their military bases to actually fight against an attack, a tactical offensive. To use the terminology of the Philippines revolution, the Palestinian liberation movement has been on the strategic defensive for some time, and the Al-Aqsa Flood was a way of shifting this moment. The leadership of the Al-Qassam Brigades, including the martyrs Mohammed Deif, Marwan Issa, and of course Yahya Sinwar, clearly viewed this action as, as Deif said in video footage released after his martyrdom was announced on 30 January 2025, one that would change the world, and they were correct to do so. 

When we speak now, after 18 months of genocide, and after 18 months of resistance, we must be clear: October 7, the great Al-Aqsa Flood, changed the world, irreversibly. This day made clear before the world that it is quite possible to envision a Palestine free of Zionism and a region free of imperialism, and that this resistance camp is capable of achieving that goal with its own hands. 

And this was utterly unacceptable to the Zionist project and to the imperialist powers themselves, already beset by the crisis of capitalism, the conflict in Ukraine, the growth in de-dollarization and de-linking, and so their response, their only response to the shifting of the field: genocide, mass murder and massive bombing and destruction, the unleashing of all the most brutal and reactionary forces and elements, in order to make such action, such revolution – indeed, the date of the beginning of the new Palestinian, Arab and international revolution – unimaginable due to the river and ocean of blood and rubble they intend to create over that heroic memory. 

And every day since then, the unified Resistance has continued to defend and uphold humanity against genocide. The unified resistance front, stretching from Palestine to Lebanon, where the Lebanese Resistance cleared northern occupied Palestine of occupation soldiers and settlers and sacrificed its beloved leaders in order to uphold Palestine; to Yemen, where the Yemeni people, government, armed forces and AnsarAllah movement have shut down the supply lines of genocide in the Red Sea, causing the port of Eilat to declare bankruptcy; to Iraq, to Iran, and stretching around the world to all who confront imperialism, Zionism and reaction. 

When we speak about the movement for Palestinian liberation, it is important for us to have a clear and solid understanding: this movement does indeed have a leadership. Many of the crises and contradictions of the movement in solidarity with Palestine in the West and in the imperial core come from the refusal – often-times, imposed by so-called “anti-terror laws” and the mass terror and fear they create among the people – to recognize and acknowledge this leadership, which is those who are leading the armed struggle and those imprisoned for fighting for the liberation of Palestine. We know that armed struggle is a legal right under international law and upheld by UN resolutions, but it would be a legitimate right even without that as a basic framework for humanity defending itself against occupiers and destructive forces that come to exploit and plunder by force of arms. We certainly know that the imperialist powers do not value peace or nonviolence; indeed, their massive military budget and industry does everything possible to ensure that the majority of people in the world can never live in peace. Our societies in the imperial core venerate violence, but excoriate revolutionary violence. And one of the things that has happened since 7 October at a popular level is a wide-scale, popular support and recognition, even in the heart of the imperial core, after a campaign of lies and propaganda aimed to smear the Palestinian resistance and its fighters, is that of the justice of the Palestinian cause and the heroism of its fighters. 

In 1968, the Palestinian National Charter affirmed: “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it . They also assert their right to normal life in Palestine and to exercise their right to self-determination and sovereignty over it.” At that time, the Palestinian revolution was led by the armed factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and today, it is led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with a broad alliance of forces. But the compass to liberation remains the same, without substitution, as popular action is a stream that flows alongside and together with the resistance, not an alternative or a replacement.

It is within this context that it is important to discuss multiple mechanisms by which genocide is carried out. Certainly, it is carried out by F-16s, by two-ton bombs dropped on residential buildings, hospitals, mosques, and churches, and refugee camps and schools, by missiles signed by “Israeli” schoolchildren and politicians and visiting imperialist officials, by intelligence operations and boobytrapped pagers, by aircraft carriers, by weaponry shipped through Irish, and Greek, and Spanish ports, by AI software provided by Microsoft, Google and Amazon. But it is also carried out through multiple strategies that aim to empower and assist these weaponry in achieving their goals, because they target not only the physical characteristics of life, but also the popular cradle of the resistance and the strength of the internal front of the people under attack. These include but are not limited to: 

• The assassination policy
• Anti-terror laws and designations
  
• Sanctions and unilateral coercive measures

The assassination policy has been a core tactic of Zionist strategy for decades and is a policy pursued around the world, including here in Greece, where in the 1970s and 1980s, Khaled Nazzal, Ziad Nukhasi, Munther Abu Ghazaleh and Mamoun Muraish were assassinated by Zionist forces, with shootings and car bombs. The assassination policy has always targeted not only military leaders, but writers, poets and intellectuals such as Ghassan Kanafani, Wael Zuaiter, Mahmoud Hamshari, Kamal Nasser, strategists, political leaders; those who make the liberation movement and Palestinian society function under the unbearable pressure of genocide. 

From Sayyed Nasrallah to Sayyed Safieddine, from Ibrahim Aqil to Fouad Shukr to Abbas al-Mussawi, from Ismail Haniyeh to Saleh al-Arouri to Fathi Shiqaqi, Abu Ali Mustafa, Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Imad Mughniyyeh, Yahya Ayyash, Abu Jihad, Kamal ‘Udwan, Mohammed al-Najjar, Basil al-Kubaisi, Wadie Haddad, Mohammed Boudia, Basil al-Araj, Tariq Izzedine to Samir Kuntar; the Zionist regime relies on the assassination weapon against the liberation movement. We see this also with the US assassination of General Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, part of the same strategy.

Tareq Izzedine said, “Whenever a leader ascends, ten will emerge to replace them. When a martyr ascends, 100 martyrs will emerge to replace them. The march continues, and it does not stop until the defeat of the occupation.” And as Saleh al-Arouri said, “We are martyred like our people, we are arrested as they are arrested, our homes are demolished and we are being chased and pursued. We fight because we must.”

For the past weeks, since the overt resumption of genocidal bombing on 18 March, we have witnessed the assassination policy in extreme escalation in Gaza, clearly relying on intelligence obtained during the ceasefire period, because these are by and large political and social leaders being targeted for assassination, with the exception of Naji Abu Saif, known as Abu Hamza, the spokesperson of Saraya al-Quds: 

• Issam Al-Da’alis, Chairman of the Government Work Follow-Up Committee.
• Yasser Harb, member of the Political Bureau of Hamas.
• Ahmad Al-Hatta, Deputy Minister of Justice.
• Mahmoud Abu Watfa, Deputy Minister of Interior.
• Bahjat Abu Sultan, Director General of the Internal Security Service.
• Mohammed Al-Jamasi, Chairman of the Emergency Committee
• Salah al-Bardawil, member of the Political Bureau of Hamas
• Ismail Barhoum, member of the Political Bureau of Hamas and responsible for social and charity affairs
• Abdel-Latif al-Qanou, spokesperson of Hamas

There is so much to say about each one of these people, and it must be noted here, their wives and children assassinated alongside them – indeed, the Zionist regime has recently claimed victory in assassinating the 6- and 8-year-old grandchildren of head Palestinian negotiator Khalil al-Hayya – not to mention the 15 paramedics and civil defense workers, the journalists like Hossam Shabat and Wafa al-Udaini, the writers like Refaat Al-Areer, all deliberately targeted. These assassinations were followed just hours and days later by attempts to undermine the social fabric in Gaza, with the Zionist war minister openly calling on people to protest against the resistance in Gaza, with the collaboration of the so-called Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

In a Zionist media article boasting about the “success” of these assassinations, the author notes about the assassination of Mahmoud Abu Watfa, “His death is considered a significant loss …due to his prominent role in enhancing security and stability in the Strip,” noting that he was recorded telling a Palestinian woman in Gaza, “We will rebuild it stronger than ever” after the January ceasefire. Mahmoud Abu Watfa was martyred alongside his wife Manal Abu Hussein, his sons Muhammad, Ahmed, and Zein, his daughters Shahd, Hala, Elin, and Aya, and her child Muhammad and her unborn child. His son Salah el-Din was martyred on 7 October 2023.

Assassinating those responsible for justice, security, charity and aid distribution, and those who document Zionist crimes, is a central tactic meant to allow the genocide to continue. On too many occasions, we discuss the crimes of the zionist regime and assure listeners that the victims were “not Hamas.” Or we say that the presence of one of the men above “does not justify” the killing of children, families and entire residential buildings or refugee camp blocks. All of these things are true, but the killing of these men is itself a crime – it is quite clearly the international crime of extrajudicial killing and execution, and it is also a key mechanism to disrupt society and enable genocide. The assassination policy is one of the key strategies of the Zionist regime and we must confront it head-on; rather than minimizing the effects of the assassinations or refusing to speak about these great leaders sacrificing for Palestine because we fear it “justifies” the Zionist attack, the Zionist regime and the US – whose intelligence is almost certainly responsible, along with the British whose reconnaissance planes routinely fly over Gaza – must be held accountable under the law and through popular action for each one of these assassinations.

Yes, the popular cradle of the resistance is strong and the resistance movements are resilient and powerful and have the ability to recover from assassinations and martyrdom, even of beloved leaders of almost legendary character. However, every one of these assassinations is also a serious blow, a serious injury to the body and the mind of the movement and the people. 

It should be noted here that they also seek to make it impossible even to memorialize the martyrs. The turnout of over 1.5 million people in the streets of Beirut to honour and remember the martyrs Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hashem Safieddine sparked the Zionists to fly warplanes over the crowd and bomb several locations in Lebanon, while multiple people have been targeted for questioning, arrest, deportation and firings from their jobs in the imperial core for attending the funeral or expressing mourning for Sayyed Nasrallah, the great anti-imperialist leader of our era. 

They aim not only to assassinate the leaders of the Resistance movement but to assassinate their legacy and memory. Unable to defeat the Resistance through assassination, they bomb the hospital named after the assassinated Kamal ‘Udwan, they bomb the school founded by the assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, they cut the funding and support of a women’s institution named after the martyr and fighter Dalal al-Mughrabi, they intimidate, threaten  activists and students over holding a poster of Yahya Sinwar or Ismail Haniyeh. 

This of course, goes hand in hand with the use of anti-terror laws and “terrorist” designations, organization bans and the like, to suppress support for the resistance. It is meant as a form of moral, political and social assassination, especially in areas where it is difficult for the Zionist regime to carry out a physical assassination. In short: anti-terror laws and terrorist designations exist not only to persecute and imprison people for supporting the resistance. They also aim to entirely reshape the way that the movement and the people themselves think about, speak about and perceive Palestine, while denying those at the heart of the movement itself – the armed resistance – solidarity and support on a global level. This is somewhere that it is necessary for people’s lawyers to critically examine our engagement with fighting such designations. We must clearly call for an end to the terrorist designation of Palestinian Lebanese Yemeni, Iraqi, Iranian forces, and for that matter, organizations in solidarity like Samidoun, which was itself designated a “terrorist entity” by Canada, a “specially designated global terrorist” by the US, banned by Germany and designated a “terrorist” group by the Zionist entity. It is clear that this definition is ever-shifting: as we discussed yesterday, Germany banned the phrase, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” both as a “slogan of Hamas” and a “slogan of Samidoun.” 

We must very clearly call to abolish these lists in imperialist countries, which are designed to create arbitrary mechanisms of repression – even if they sometimes list reactionary or criminal organizations – and to de-list Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, Al-Aqsa Brigades, Hezbollah, AnsarAllah and indeed Samidoun. 

I urge people’s lawyers to avoid using their influence to tell activists for Palestine, for example, that they must not say the name Yahya Sinwar, the great leader and symbol of Palestinian resistance, the martyr and commander, the liberated prisoner, who died fighting until his last breath on the front lines of battle, and instead to consider how they might help to protect those who uphold Sinwar’s path and work to achieve his goals. Anti-terror laws serve as a form of psychological warfare that aims to unroot the “solidarity” framework from the leadership of the revolutionary movement. Certainly we must defend those unjustly targeted and accused, yet we must also be clear that the “accusation” of “supporting Hamas, supporting the PFLP, supporting Hezbollah” is no accusation at all except under an entirely unjust framework of bourgeois imperialist law. 

In a sense, anti-terror laws are a form of sanctions and unilateral coercive measures applied to organizations as well as states, where we see forms of confluence between the two particularly in the cases of Gaza and the siege on Gaza, the siege upon Yemen, and the sanctions and war threats on Iran alongside the “terror” listing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – literally a state military! Sanctions are worthy of their own discussion, but these mechanisms of imperialist war on the people must be central to our struggle, particularly in the imperial core. It is, fundamentally, the siege that is killing Palestinians in Gaza through starvation, not only through bombs. We need only look north to Syria for a clear example of the destruction wrought by imperialist sanctions. From Cuba to Venezuela, to Iran, to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, we need a strong movement to confront sanctions legally, politically and by all means necessary, which includes a fundamental de-linking from US domination of the global economy. 

There is much more to be said about this, but we will certainly be over time. However, I want to close with a call to action and a call, at least, to legal arms. We must have no illusions about the institutions of the imperialist system, although we should and must use all mechanisms available to defend our peoples and liberation movements. We must fight sanctions and unilateral coercive measures and defend peoples and nations under attack by imperialism. We must refuse to leave our liberation movements alone and further encourage the use of anti-terror listings by abandoning those who are designated. We must fight the assassination policy. When we file lawsuits to hold the Zionist regime accountable, extrajudicial killings is one of those crimes and it is also fully a mechanism to impose genocide by weakening the ability of the people to resist and to protect their internal front. We have a role to play in the global popular cradle of the resistance, that extends beyond the heart of the struggle to our communities, to advance the resistance and the revolution, and we have a choice to make: is it our role to advance bourgeois law and restrictions and ensure compliance, or is it our role to do everything possible to break down that system and advance the liberation movement?

Al-Aqsa Flood is a flood of the people, for liberation, an end to colonialism and Zionism, and a head-on confrontation with imperialism. Let us play our role and join the flood, in the name of the martyrs and the prisoners, in support of those fighters, for a free Palestine from the river to the sea. For a liberated Arab nation free of imperialism. For a self-determined, revolutionary Iran continuing its revolution after 40 years free of war threats, and for a world liberated from US imperialism and Zionism. 

As the martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in his last speech, “The end of this battle will be a historic victory.” Let us do everything in our power to bring about that victory and play our unique role as anti-imperialist lawyers, with and as part of the global camp of Resistance and revolution.

**

The following images, shown as a slideshow during Charlotte Kates’ presentation, highlight just a few of the most recent martyrs at the time of the presentation (early April 2025) targeted for assassination and some of the highest profile leaders targeted throughout the ongoing genocide and the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood: