The imperialist empire coats the mechanisms of a murderous state and a global war machinery. All those who stand in the Western superpowers’ paths are crushed by the destruction’s propellers, which have no other agenda but absolute territorial expansion and destruction. By the same token, the Marcos-Duterte regime has chosen to sway the Zionist genocidal narrative—criminalizing opposition and launching state terror.
When oppressive rule is carried out in a foreign land, how can a state founded on resistance from centuries of colonial brutality ignore its atrocious realities?
Our Moro and Lumad siblings’ struggle for self-determination and liberation is relentlessly greeted with subjugation, exploitation, and militarization. The rejection of their identities, the demonization of resistance, and the forced displacement of generations after generations, among others—are paralleled experiences of Palestinians and Filipinos. In a proxy dispute against its own people, the Philippine government ended up taking on the form of the colonial persecutors.
Bombed houses, dismembered bodies, separated families, orphaned children, and wrecked places of worship in Gaza appear as an extension of our own collective traumas. In a common tongue of suffering and resistance, the gap between Palestine and the Philippines dissolves.
Way before President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. absurdly supported the two-state solution that acknowledges both Israel and Palestine and the US military presence in the nation, we had become utterly accustomed to all of the government’s previous inhumane tactics. Every administration that has sworn to uphold the Filipinos has always served their own political agendas. Capitalist bureaucrats who enforce US imperialism, bind the country to foreign debt, and auction off our sovereignty.
In 2018, former president Rodrigo Duterte boldly declared that he would solely purchase Israeli weaponry during his official visit because the settler-colonial state had no limits on its arsenal transactions. Prior to that, he had already invested $21 million in an arms deal with Israel in 2017. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, his predecessor, released $2.8 billion for military modernization. By 2023, the Philippines is the third-largest importer of Israeli armaments under Ferdinand Marcos Jr., after India ($1.2 billion) and Azerbaijan ($295 million). Based on the United Nations COMTRADE data on international trade, the Philippines purchased $472.83 million from Israel in 2022 alone.
Coinciding with the 53rd anniversary of the Martial Law declaration, Israeli-made IWI X95 rifles—firearms used to invoke genocide in Palestine—were wielded by police officers during the anti-corruption mobilization at Mendiola in Manila on September 21, 2025. The same weaponry that slaughtered Palestinians is now utilized to terrorize Filipinos, and deployed against Lumad schools, farmlands, and indigenous lands under the ruse of “counterinsurgency.”
Into the bargain, the Philippines has turned into a calculated US outpost in Asia because of military pacts like the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) and the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). Despite not being in a declared war, the country is being plunged into a dispute as US war-mongering in the West Philippine Sea heightens grave tensions with China.
Like the Philippines, the largest sector in Palestine is composed of peasants—farmers, fisherfolk, and agricultural labourers who produce nearly all of the nation’s food. Nonetheless, both of our agricultural sectors continue to be the most impoverished, and industry unemployment rates are escalating. Privatization, neoliberal agricultural programs, and laws that embolden land grabs are causing starvation among our peasants.
Be it Palestine or the Philippines, our situations are manifestations of imperialist plunder—exposing the enormity of the horrors that these Western superpowers perpetrate to maintain the status quo and class rule at gunpoint. As hundreds of thousands of Filipinos are plagued by starvation and poverty, the current administration wastes billions on sham flood control projects and military agreements that fund state violence within the nation and bloodshed overseas.
The Palestinians cannot be expected to embrace their plight and bear the strain of systemic erasure and illegal occupation. Our nation did not achieve independence by being on amicable terms with Spain. For the Philippine government to fall for the Zionist deceit is a deliberate act of regressive diplomacy.
The worldwide movement gains momentum as we become more conscious as individuals and as a society of the structures, processes, and concrete acts that call for accountability from fascism. To turn indignation into pressure and pressure into tangible results, sustained participation and grassroots mobilization are hence crucial to confront and dismantle imperial domination in all its forms.
Standing and fighting for an emancipated Palestine is not a political convenience—it is basic empathy. Beyond longitudes and religious beliefs, empathy transforms history into solidarity and geography into kinship writ large. It is to ensure that Palestine will never be relegated to a fleeting news headline, but instead continues to be an ongoing fight for justice that permeates our everyday decisions and political commitments.
“Free Palestine” is to struggle with all people who have been silenced and deprived of their rights—reclaiming our shared humanity from all the machineries of oppression.
Editor’s Note: This article was first issued in the December 2025 First Semester Newsletter of Atenews.