Palestine in the spotlight at festival to support Revolutionary 1 May in Brussels

As part of the festival in support of Revolutionary May Day in Brussels, held this Saturday, April 26, several dozen people participated in a roundtable discussion on the Palestine solidarity movement in Europe. Several anti-Zionist activists, including a member of AJAB, as well as a member of Samidoun and anti-imperialist activist Tom Martin, spoke at the event.

The Samidoun representative highlighted the current situation of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. In this context, she strongly denounced Mahmoud Abbas’s recent statements against the Palestinian resistance and called for renewed efforts to support the resistance in its fight against more than 76 years of settler colonialism. She then addressed the criminalization of the Samidoun network in Europe, such as in Germany and North America, as well as the repression in Belgium, where Mohammed Khatib, the network’s European coordinator was recently arrested overnight. Finally, she called for continued solidarity with the Palestinian national liberation struggle, particularly by building broad campaigns in support of Palestinian prisoners who represent the vanguard of the Palestinian resistance.

An anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist activist in France, Tom Martin spoke to remind us that the ongoing genocide is being carried out jointly by the Zionist state and Western imperialism, which continues its political, economic, and military support for what must be considered its outpost in the Arab world. He also explained how Macron’s recent statements on the “recognition of the Palestinian state” were just another attempt to guarantee the stability of the Zionist project and imperialist domination in the region by attempting to impose a surrender on the Palestinian people’s resistance movement. In this context, he emphasized that the repression against the solidarity movement also aims to hinder the self-organization of Palestinian and Arab communities in Europe who challenge European colonial and imperialist policies.

The AJAB representative reiterated the importance of combating antisemitism, like all other forms of racism, and firmly denounced its exploitation by the Belgian authorities and their allies. In particular, she revisited the issues surrounding the IHRA definition of antisemitism, of which seven out of eleven examples concern Israel, as a tool aimed at criminalizing anti-Zionism.

Finally, an anti-Zionist activist from Brussels spoke about the authorities’ growing repression of pro-Palestinian protests. She noted that these protests take many forms and highlighted their Islamophobic dimension. She also called for support for upcoming initiatives, particularly the nightly protests at the Bourse, as a space for self-organization and mobilization.

Finally, the meeting ended with a call to commit, act and organize for the liberation of Georges Abdallah, an Arab communist imprisoned in France for more than 40 years for his involvement in the Palestinian resistance, as a symbol of the unity of our struggles here and there against imperialism and Zionism.