I’d claim Hakim has the correct take here, and Day’s is a vulgar materialist view that ignores the interplay of faith and material conditions.

I mean no, it’s not. The main anti-colonial group left in Gaza, which is massively popular, is an organization whose primary driving force is Islam. Religion is an incredibly important cultural force that is a key driving factor for Gazans and other Palestinian people in this fight. That is a materialist analysis of the situation lol because that is what the Palestinians themselves are saying. Just look at the wording used by the people there: the dead aren’t the dead but ‘martyrs’, and this isn’t just a conflict but a ‘jihad’ (righteous fight).

Hakim is very correctly noting the obvious here in that a vast majority of the Palestinians are Muslim and that their faith is a primary driver of this conflict for them. Painting in broad strokes isn’t denying that there aren’t any secular Palestinians, but talking about how Palestinians are fighting back and resisting in aggregate / at a zoomed out level.

There’s a case to be made that their religion has become very ingrained with their day to day lives to the point that it’s indistinct from any other type of social organization they have. In that case the faith, religious ideology, and texts are a little secondary to things like their family structures, social infrastructure, support networks, and locations where they can organize. So in that sense their religion has become very material, which is often what happens. Religious belief can often be made very manifest in the world, reified through things like very tight social groups. Islam in much of the world, including Palestine, is as much a political organization as it is the more spiritual side of things.

Although I’d criticize Hakim for characterizing all Palestinians as Muslim, or saying that Islam is the primary thing that’s motivating them. Rather, it’s more the case that political Islam is the most organized game in town due to historical factors of the region. If it weren’t Islam, then people who want liberation would have something else, like how many Irish Republicans are Catholics. It is true though that 98% of Palestinians are Muslim, but that 2% who aren’t will probably also want liberation.

Latent Islamophobia tbh

they don’t have anything else to be strong outside of hope of religion

This doesnt seem right to me. Palestinian people resist and persist because they are colonized people wanting liberation, self determination and through their will to live. Just like the Koreans did, just like the Vietnamese did, just like the Haitians or Algerians did. Just like hundreds of millions did under as bad or worse colonial or imperial opression. Palestinian resistance is admirable but it isnt something historicaly unique that needs the “hope of religion” or the “importance of islam” in order to exist or be explained. At best those are of symbolic importance and manifesting due to the particular superstructure in Gaza but the actual struggle and anti-colonial martyrdom and bravery is something that has been replicated again and again across massively different religious and cultural contexts.

Palestinian people persist and would have persisted just as much in the absense of Islam. If they were cristian , atheist or buddhist. As tens if not hudred sof thousands of non Muslim palestinians do and did. The Quran no matter how beautifuly written doesnt actualy provide any insight for a marxist in the analysis of how and why Palestinians persist and reading the biography of the Prophet and some book by a white dude that converted to islam are anything but foundemental in understanding or interpreting the palestinian struggle and neither are they particularly usefull for building or expanding any other struggle, neo-colonial or otherwise

Palestinians have everything most other opressed and colonized people had in order to be strong. And they are strong and would be strong outside of the “hope of Islam” .