Today, Monday 17 January, Samidoun Deutschland, along with comrades from the Freedom for All Political Prisoners Network, organized a rally in front of the French Embassy in Berlin, Germany, to demand the freedom of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the Lebanese Arab struggler for Palestine who has been jailed in French prisons for 37 years.
Participants carried Palestinian flags and Samidoun banners, as well as signs calling for the immediate release of Georges Abdallah. They chanted slogans and gave speeches in support of the Palestinian resistance in Al-Naqab fighting back against land confiscation and colonization by the Israeli state and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and called for the freedom of Nasser Abu Hmaid, severely ill Palestinian prisoner subjected to Israeli medical neglect. This event was organized as part of the International Week of Solidarity to free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners.
Samidoun’s speech
Today, Georges Abdallah, your comrades are here! We have come together as part of the International Week of Action to free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners.
Today, outside the doors of this embassy, we reaffirm loud and clear that resistance to imperialism and Zionism is legitimate!
The resistance is legitimate; like the resistance led by the leaders and fighters of the Palestinian revolution: Georges Habash, Ghassan Kanafani, Wadie Haddad, Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, Abu Ali Mustafa and the tens of thousands of fedayeen who sacrificed their lives for this cause!
Resistance is legitimate; like the resistance put up by the 4,600 Palestinian prisoners from the dungeons of the Zionist occupation. To Ahmad Sa’adat, Khitam Saafin, Israa Jaabis, Walid Daqqa and all Palestinians who continue to resist behind bars: Your determination and courage are an example!
Today we want to commemorate the hundreds of martyrs and thousands of wounded who fought for return and liberation. We also greet Nasser Abu Hmaid, a leader of the prisoner movement who has been held in Zionist prisons for more than 30 years and, after brutal medical neglect and a battle with cancer, has been in a coma for 13 days after a bacterial infection reached his lungs. We also salute today our staunch Palestinian people of Bir Al Sab’ (Al-Naqab) who have been fighting Zionist ethnic cleansing projects for decades and who now defy heavily armed Zionist troops and settler mobs with nothing more than their will and love for their country to hold fast to their land.
Resistance is legitimate, as is the resistance offered by our comrade Georges Abdallah from the prisons of French imperialism. For 37 years they have tried to silence him and he resists!
37 years later, Georges Abdallah remains true to what he is: an anti-imperialist fighter and a committed Arab communist.
We end our speech with an excerpt from Georges Abdallah’s message on the International Week of Solidarity for the Liberation of Ahmad Sa’adat:
“It is necessary to seriously consider how international solidarity can play its role in acting to liberate our fellow prisoners. Undoubtedly, the task of liberating the prisoners of the Palestinian revolution remains more than ever the gateway to building a comprehensive Arab resistance front to confront the crisis-ridden bourgeois regimes and imperialist propaganda.
Greetings and appreciation to the leaders of the Palestinian revolution, our steadfast and heroic prisoners, at the forefront of which is our comrade and leader Ahmad Sa’adat, General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Yes to building a comprehensive Arab resistance front to confront normalization in all forms!
Glory and eternity to the martyrs! Victory to the masses and the struggling peoples.
Down with imperialism and its agents, the Zionists and Arab reactionaries!
Best regards to all of you.
Your friend,
Georges Abdallah”
