Witness the outright banning of protest and expression of support for Palestinian liberation from within Europe, particularly in Germany and France; themselves no strangers to committing genocide. Witness the arbitrary arrests, detentions and deportations of Palestinians and Muslims across North America and Europe. Witness the targeted lawfare and phony “terrorist” and “sham charity” designations against Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network for their unwavering defense of the Axis of Resistance and the prisoners locked in zionist concentration camps. Witness the terror lists that criminalize international solidarity. Witness the banning of Students for Justice in Palestine at multiple campuses, the civil suits aimed at students to demobilize the most active part of the movement, the collaboration between zionist vigilantes and militarized police forces, the doxxing and death threats and expulsions. Witness the terror of attacking the livelihoods of opponents, bullying people out of jobs and institutions. Witness the political prisoners of the Palestine solidarity movement locked up for their conscience, from the Holy Land 5 to Casey Goonan. Witness the brutal murder of six-year-old Palestinian Wadea al-Fayoume in Chicago, whose picture was displayed in Elias Rodriguez’s apartment window. Witness the utter impunity with which they accomplish all of this—cynically cowering behind the absurd assertion that zionists are the real victims while having the backing of the most militarized empire in the history of humanity, the USA.

Extending beyond this repression within the West, the zionist movement uses all means to repress opposition among the people and states existing outside of, or on the boundaries of, western dominance. They have used diplomatic, economic and even military means, through the provision of weapons, mercenaries, and training to any agents whom they can use as tools for their interests. They have crossed every line and boundary, attacking Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. Engaging in perfidy across the world, killing civilians and assassinating even negotiators, often under a flag of truce. Witness their diplomatic and economic attacks on South Africa, through their senior partner in crimes against humanity, the US government. The zionist movement, as concentrated and formalized in the israeli state, are explicit that they will not respect any limits, everything and anything is permitted in advancing their supremacist world view, and cementing the festering settler colony they have, temporarily, established on Palestinian land.

In this light, the operation conducted by Elias Rodriguez against israel’s diplomatic functionaries in Washington DC—people actively engaged in facilitating this comprehensive violence across the globe by creating the diplomatic space to continue and deepen it—was, by his own account, a declaration of ENOUGH! To paraphrase a great revolutionary, protest is when we say “we don’t like this”, resistance is when we put an end to what we don’t like.

To be clear, what we are asserting is more than a recognition that the violence and oppression meted out by the zionist movement will inevitably give rise to counter-violence, an indisputable truism. We are saying that such counter-violence is legitimate. It is justice.

Elias Rodriguez’s act was fully justified, at that place where legal and moral duties meet. It is clear that international law, which the West itself established and whose institutions are dominated by the interest of these imperialists, establishes a duty to take action to stop genocide, including the use of violence to do so. Under international law, this duty is assigned to states—it is not for non-state actors to assert. But what of the case where no state has taken sufficient action to stop the devastation, where a genocide occurs in front of everyone’s eyes, live streamed both in the carnage of Gaza and also in the explicit and implicit admissions of the israeli government and broader zionist movement? In this case, our case, the only actors who dare to impose consequences have been, by the designation of the imperialists themselves, non-state actors, besides Iran.

This is the point at which those legal obligations, derogated and left unfulfilled by those responsible to them, fall to the free people of the world to fulfill. Elias Rodriguez exacted a consequence, a mere drop in the bucket of consequences due to the zionist movement and its military garrison of a state. May it redound to teach a lesson and set an example. To finally give pause to the zionists, that there are limits and that impunity will not be permitted, anywhere.

The Palestinian struggle is the tip of the spear against global imperialism. As imperialism has made the entire world its battlefield, it is justified to fight it, by any means necessary, without regard for geography. This holds especially true for those of us struggling behind enemy lines, inside the US, an entity that is an equal party in all crimes committed by the zionists. Whether in the beseiged Gaza Strip, the Red Sea, the South of Lebanon or the heart of the US, there must be consequences for genocidal zionist imperialism, and those consequences are righteous.

The moral force that compels us to put an end to the unprecedented brutality of the Gaza genocide—and the imperialist world system as a whole—is grounds for asserting a new law, a law created by revolutionary actors, and standing in defiance against established law which has proven itself to be inadequate and fundamentally illegitimate. In the face of unfathomable imperialist and colonial violence executed on a starved and imprisoned people with absolute impunity, we have an obligation to rupture with the authority that has made that violence possible. Elias Rodriguez did exactly that and his act of resistance has put the law itself on trial.

But this is only the beginning of his battle, and he must have the support of all free people around the world. Opponents of imperialism, zionism, and genocide must rally to defend Elias Rodriguez, and through this defense support the legitimacy and necessity of resistance itself. What takes place with regard to his case over the next months and years will fundamentally alter the trajectory of the international movement against zionism and US-led imperialism. Revolutionaries and people of conscience everywhere have a stake in this fight.

The US state will undoubtedly seek the death penalty for his case, as they have with Rodney Hinton Jr. and Luigi Mangione, whose alleged actions also helped to balance the scales of justice. The zionists will make Elias Rodriguez an avatar of our movement, while distorting his and our message, seeking to strike yet more fear, to intimidate us further into silence and hapless, hopeless “protest.” If we allow them to silently kill Elias Rodriguez, if we sit back and watch or allow ourselves to forget his resistance, then they will have also killed a part of our movement, a part of us; that part that yearns for justice against the outrageous and humiliating impunity of this system of genocide and, indeed, biocide. Again, we have no choice but to defend Elias Rodriguez. All the better that his actions are eminently defensible and morally righteous.

And so, we call on all people of conscience, those for whom the outrages of the last 20 months are simply too much to bear, to gather in support of Elias Rodriguez. Take some part of his act of justice for yourself by supporting his struggle to the end. Send him moral support by mailing letters. Send him monetary support by putting funds in his prison account and by supporting his legal defense. Gather at his court hearings. Gather at the dungeons in which they hold him. And, in all cases, raise your voices to echo his own words and actions for the sake of justice and accountability, that this genocide against the Palestinian people ends now and Palestine be free. Do it proudly and without shame. This too is a way of imposing consequences and sending a message to genocidaires and their accomplices that from this point forward accountability is coming, swift, unforgiving, and unrelenting.