In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful…

We, the students of Gaza, salute the students of Columbia University, Yale University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and dozens of universities across the United States who are rising up in solidarity with Gaza and to put an end to the Zionist-U.S. genocide against our people in Gaza. As we remain under the bombs of occupation, resisting Nazi genocide, grieving for our martyred colleagues and faculty, and witnessing the destruction of our universities, we welcome the examples of solidarity offered by students facing arrest, police violence, suspension, eviction, and expulsion in order to demand that their universities end their complicity in the Zionist-U.S. genocide and renounce their support for the occupation and the war profiteers that arm it.

We have seen hundreds of students arrested across the United States as they work to transform their universities into “Popular Universities for Gaza.” Students, faculty, and staff are disrupting university operations and making clear that while universities in Gaza are being bombed, university business cannot continue as usual in the United States. These actions come as university administrations collaborate with members of Congress to discredit conscientious student activists and faculty, expel students, ban events, shut down student organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine, and condemn activists working to end the Nazi genocide. At the same time, these same universities invest in the same companies that profit from the continued sale of weapons to the Zionist regime to continue its genocidal offensive.

Our students – and our educational system as a whole – in occupied Palestine are subjected to ongoing genocidal aggression: our universities destroyed and bombed, our student organizations banned, and our student leaders subjected to torture, assassination and mass imprisonment. However, in Palestine and around the world, the student movement has always been a driving force of our struggle for liberation. When we see videos and images from American universities today, we are reminded of our history of student struggle as well as the student uprisings of 1968, which challenged imperialism from Vietnam to Palestine and reshaped the face of Europe and the United States. Now, in 2024, the student movement is once again leading the way.

From here in Gaza, we see you and salute you. Your actions and activism matter, especially in the heart of the empire, in the United States. As members of Congress agree to provide $26 billion in additional weapons to bomb our people and continue the Zionist-U.S. genocide, you are taking meaningful action to shut down the war machine on your campuses. It is clear that a new generation is rising that will no longer accept Zionism, racism and genocide, and that stands with Palestine and our liberation from the river to the sea.

Your global student solidarity is breaking boundaries, and it is time to smash the US imperialist war machine. From Gaza to Columbia, to Ann Arbor and Berkeley, our hands are joined to end Nazi genocide and achieve our collective liberation.

Student Frameworks Secretariat

• ⁠Islamic Bloc – Islamic Resistance Movement
• Student Unity Bloc – Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• ⁠Union of Student Struggle Committees – Arab Liberation Front
• Union of Palestinian Student Struggle Committees – Palestinian Arab Front
• Islamic League – Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine
• Fatah Youth – Fatah movement
• Al-Mubadara Student Gathering – the Palestinian National Initiative Movement
• Student Action Front – Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• Palestine Liberation Youth – Palestine Liberation Front
• Al-Istiqlal Student Bloc – Palestinian Democratic Union Fida
• Student Struggle Bloc – Palestinian Popular Struggle Front
• The Land and Man Bloc – Popular Front (General Command)
• Progressive Student Union Bloc – Palestinian People’s Party

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network stands together with our Europe Coordinator, Mohammed Khatib, and urges the broadest expressions of solidarity and support against the targeting and repression he is facing. We note that this is not only an attempt to target Mohammed as an individual and Samidoun as an organization. It is primarily an attempt to silence the growing, massive voice of the people standing together with Palestine against genocide. It aims specifically to silence the movement to liberate Palestinian prisoners and to uphold the legitimacy and justice of the Palestinian resistance, especially the armed resistance, as part of the international, Arab and Palestinian global intifada. 

• Sign on to support the campaign to defend Mohammed, Samidoun and Palestine

On 15 April 2024, Nicole De Moor, Belgium’s Secretary for Asylum and Migration, announced in a public statement that she was calling on the Belgian immigration agencies to withdraw the refugee status of Mohammed Khatib. Mohammed, born in Ain el-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon, has been a refugee his entire life, denied his right to return to his home and homeland in Palestine, from which his family was forcibly displaced in the Zionist conquest of the Nakba in 1947-1948. De Moor’s statement is, in essence, an attempt to once again displace a Palestinian refugee who has already been displaced multiple times due to colonialism, imperialism, war and exploitation.

The Growing Movement for Palestinian Liberation

De Moor labeled Mohammed a “hate preacher,” in the latest example of the utter inversion of reality practiced by European, US and Canadian officials. There is currently a genocide being carried out by the Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinian people in Gaza, a genocide that is sparking intense global outrage against the Zionist regime, leading to protests that have taken the streets in Belgium for over six months involving tens and hundreds of thousands of people; direct actions targeting banks and arms manufacturers; a burgeoning student movement for Palestine paralleling that seen on US campuses like Columbia, Rutgers, Yale, the University of Michigan,and elsewhere; and wide-scale mobilization among the Palestinian population in Belgium. 

As the global movement in support of Palestine, the Palestinian people, and their Resistance has grown across borders and continents, bringing millions to mobilize in the heart of the imperial core, it has been faced with severe repression from the same states that are arming and funding the Zionist genocide in Gaza. This is not the only attack in Belgium; demonstrations organized by Samidoun in Brussels have been canceled and banned by the police. ZINTV, an independent collective, hosted an event organized by Samidoun on repression in Europe targeting Palestine in October 2023; since that time, they have been threatened by the local government and then, months later, in March 2024, subject to a sudden police raid and investigation into “terrorism financing” as retaliation for hosting this public political event. 

Repression Targeting Palestinian Organizing in Europe 

In Germany, perhaps the most extreme example, Palestinian organizations, including Samidoun, have been banned. Activists like Zaid Abdulnasser and Musaab Abu Atta have been subjected to political bans – followed shortly thereafter by prominent international figures, including Salman Abu Sitta, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, and Yanis Varoufakis. Demonstrations and conferences have been forcibly shut down and dispersed by German police, who have beaten demonstrators on the streets of cities throughout the country. Hundreds of people have been arrested. Police raids have swept into the homes of Palestinian and Palestine solidarity activists amid government-backed media smear campaigns. Dozens of Palestinians are facing procedures to withdraw their residency, block their citizenship applications and deport them from the country. Organizations, including Jewish organizations, that stand against the genocide, have had their bank accounts shut down. The extreme level of repression in Germany comes at the same time that the German government has upped its arms exports to the Israeli regime 10x since 7 October 2023. 

While Germany is likely the most extreme example of repression in Europe, it is not alone. In France, which has already sought to dissolve or ban Palestine solidarity organizations like the Collectif Palestine Vaincra and the Comité Action Palestine, over 628 cases have been opened by prosecutors seeking to investigate or prosecute people for making statements in support of the Palestinian resistance, while officials and extreme right wing politicians and media threaten to dissolve Samidoun Paris Banlieue, CAPJPO EuroPalestine, Urgence Palestine and other mass movements. Demonstrations are now taking place across France, but this was only possible after mass participation pushed back the attempt to ban demonstrations for Palestine across the country in October and November 2023. In Spain, the Netherlands, and other European countries, related attacks on organizers for Palestine are continuing. Of course, some of the most extreme examples are the political prisoners for Palestine in European jails, including Georges Abdallah, jailed for nearly 40 years in France; Amin Abu Rashed, jailed for over 300 days in the Netherlands; and emerging cases in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and other states.

In the Netherlands and Switzerland, particularly, multiple attempts have been made by the Israeli embassy and Zionist organizations to shut down events where Mohammed is speaking. These attempts have failed – largely because Mohammed is already a Belgian resident. The Israeli ambassador to Belgium has repeatedly issued demands to ban Samidoun and silence our events. It is difficult to see these latest attacks as anything other than an attempt to placate the same Zionist regime currently killing over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and bombing hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, residential buildings and refugee camps.

The Attack on Mohammed Khatib is an Attack on All of Us

The attack on Mohammed Khatib and the threat against his refugee status are part and parcel of this repression. It is meant as a threat to every other Palestinian and every other recognized refugee in Belgium that if they speak out – especially if they speak out loudly and clearly on Palestinian liberation and resistance – they will be targeted with the loss of their residency and their livelihood. The minister does not even attempt to allege that Mohammed and Samidoun have done anything other than organize demonstrations, protests, mass mobilizations and political education events for Palestine in Belgium – thus, the “threat level 3 out of 4” identified by unspecified “security agencies” is related to the “threat” posed of the growing movement for Palestinian liberation in Belgium. All of this is made even more outrageous by the note by Belgian public broadcaster VRT in an interview with Mohammed Khatib that “the security services mainly estimate that the organization [Samidoun] can damage Belgian international relations with Israel.”

Repression Targeting the Prisoners and the Resistance

The attack on Mohammed and on Samidoun is specifically intended to silence support for Palestinian prisoners. There are currently over 9,500 Palestinian prisoners inside the Israeli occupation jails. Thousands of additional Palestinians from Gaza have been kidnapped by the Zionist regime, especially health care workers and civilians in areas targeted for invasions by the Israeli occupation army. These Palestinian prisoners are being subjected to severe torture, starvation and abuse by the Israeli prison system. At the same time, the Palestinian prisoners are leaders of the Palestinian cause, targeted for their role in resisting occupation, from organizing students and workers to leading the armed struggle. The liberation of the Palestinian prisoners is precious to the Palestinian people and a whole and to their resistance. The Israeli regime wants to isolate them from their people and from our international movement – and this is the key reason why they attack Samidoun and label us “terrorists.” We are committed to amplifying ever more loudly and broadly the demand to liberate all Palestinian prisoners. 

Further, it is also an attack on the Palestinian Resistance. Increasingly, people everywhere in the world have made it clear that they recognize the illegitimacy and racism of Zionism, the need for a free Palestine from the river to the sea, and the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance, particularly the armed struggle. Despite all of the attempts to smear and criminalize Palestinian resistance organizations, including listing them as “terrorist organizations” in the United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada, the people of the world – and even the imperial core – recognize that it is the Palestinian resistance (and their allied resistance forces in Yemen, Lebanon and throughout the region) who are defending humanity from genocide. Not only is the Palestinian right to resist by all means enshrined in international law, it is a fundamental and natural right of any people subjected to occupation and colonization. These attacks are, once again, not only aimed at Mohammed and at Samidoun but are an attempt to criminalize and repress the burgeoning support for the resistance in all of its forms, especially the armed resistance, in Palestine.

Anti-Palestinian Racism, Imperialism and the Right to Remain and Return

We also must emphasize that this attack comes as part and parcel of the ongoing structural racism against migrants in Belgium, particularly against Black, African, Arab and other migrants of colour. Right-wing politicians like Theo Francken engage in electoral campaigns that primarily traffic in Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, while he holds up photos of Mohammed in the Belgian parliament and declares that the streets of Brussels demonstrating for Palestine “resemble Beirut or Gaza,” in what he considers a sign of “danger” and an insult to its residents. Palestinian children have been stripped of their Belgian nationality, while policing energies and violence are repeatedly targeted at communities of colour.

Of course, migration to Belgium is itself driven by colonialism and imperialism making life difficult to impossible around the world and imposing a form of forced migration upon the people of the global south while pursuing ever more wars, regime change, intervention and economic exploitation of the peoples of the south, their wealth and their resources. For Palestinians denied their right to return home for the past 76 years, they have lived through forced migration through forced migration, while being confronted with regimes of ongoing persecution, marginalization and exclusion, fighting simultaneously for the right to remain and the right to return to their homes and lands in Palestine. The struggle to defend Mohammed is a struggle against racism and repression in all of their forms. 

Stand with Mohammed. Stand with Samidoun. Stand with Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian resistance, and the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. 

TAKE ACTION:

1. The most important thing to do is to continue and escalate mobilizations, direct actions, encampments and all forms of organizing to bring an end to the genocide in Gaza and liberation for Palestine. Within that context, take a stand against repression and speak about this and other cases in your area. 
2. Sign on to the campaign in support of Mohammed. Click here or use the form below to add your support!
3. Issue a statement of solidarity. Organizations like Charleroi Pour La Palestine, LABO, UPJB, Bruxelles Pantheres, ABP,  have done so already. Issue your own statement and make it clear that Nicole de Moor does not speak for the people. 
4. Invite Mohammed to speak. Whether this is a local event in Belgium or elsewhere in  Europe or a virtual event, Mohammed can speak about his case and the broader struggle for liberation. Email us at supportmohammed@samidoun.net to plan an event.
5. Speak about the Palestinian prisoners and about the Resistance. Highlight the cases of Palestinian prisoners and their ongoing struggle for freedom and liberation. Emphasize the demands of the Palestinian people and their resistance for the liberation of Palestinian prisoners in a real prisoner exchange. Emphasize the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance in your demonstrations and actions. 
6. Demand to delist Palestinian, Lebanese resistance organizations from “terrorist lists” in the United States, European Union, Canada, Britain and other countries. These organizations represent the will and commitment of the Palestinian people to liberate their land from an illegitimate Zionist occupation. These listings are used not only to justify the ongoing Zionist genocide and imperialist funding and support but also to target Palestinian and solidarity activists and organizations.

SIGN ON:

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network rejects and denounces the racist campaign of intimidation and criminalization being waged in Switzerland against Samidoun, our Europe coordinator Mohammed Khatib and the Palestinian resistance and liberation movement as a whole. This racist campaign of intimidation is taking place while the Zionist regime in occupied Palestine is carrying out a genocide in the Gaza Strip that has already taken the lives of approximately 30,000 Palestinians and targeted all of the basic aspects of life, including schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, core infrastructure and residential buildings. To be clear, the campaign to prevent Mohammed Khatib and Samidoun from speaking in Basel on Friday, 2 December, is a campaign intended to support, justify, aid and abet the genocide currently being conducted by the Israeli regime in occupied Palestine. 

This campaign is being carried out in order to prevent the public in Basel, and especially the left and social movements, from hearing a clear, revolutionary left perspective on Palestinian liberation, the resistance in Palestine and throughout the region, and the role of Western imperialist powers in propping up the genocide. Mohammed Khatib, the Europe coordinator of Samidoun and a member of the Executive Committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, will be speaking at an event on Palestinian revolutionary struggle on Friday, 2 December. Much of this defamatory campaign is directly inspired by the fascist German campaign against Samidoun, the Palestinian community in Germany and the Palestinian people as a whole. Since the Palestinian resistance operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the launch of the Israeli genocide, the German state has increased its arms exports to the occupation regime tenfold, providing weaponry, bombs and bullets to slaughter an occupied and colonized population. In this context, we also note that Switzerland, despite its professed role of international neutrality, has “paused” UNRWA funding, a sharp divergence from its position in 2002-2004, when it halted arms sales to the Israeli regime.  

This has come hand in hand with the extreme German campaign of repression against the Palestinian population in Germany. Demonstrations for Palestine and against the genocide are routinely banned and attacked physically by police throughout the country. Palestinian refugees are being stripped of their residency and status because of their words about Palestine. Palestinian activists, solidarity activists and organizations have been subjected to early-morning raids by hundreds of armed police, and over 54 homes, mosques and community centres were raided by police in an attack on the Hamburg Islamic Centre. In this context of a campaign of state terror against the Palestinian and Arab communities in Germany in order to suppress the demonstrations of tens of thousands of people taking the streets in every major German city in support of Palestine, the German interior minister banned Samidoun. This is not an attack on an organisation alone, but part and parcel of a broad racist campaign, supported by the state alongside an array of fascist and Zionist groups, intended to marginalize and suppress the Palestinian people as a whole and deny their right to self-defense. 

Let us be clear — while we are outraged by Germany’s action, which tramples upon the rights of freedom of expression and association and other basic human rights of the population and especially those of Palestinians in Germany — we are not surprised. As when the Zionist regime labeled us a “terrorist organisation” in 2021, it is a badge of honour when the regimes engaged in a wholesale assault on Palestinian existence, resistance, and indeed, lives, target our work. We are pursuing a legal case in Germany to protect our rights and the rights of Palestinians and all peoples involved in struggle to organize, demonstrate and express their positions. Further, we note that the targeting of Samidoun is intended to serve two primary goals: to suppress support for the Palestinian prisoners, at a time when the 7,000 Palestinians held behind occupation bars (and an undisclosed number from Gaza more held in secret military prison camps) are suffering from severe torture and isolation and while the Palestinian resistance is seeking to liberate them in an exchange; and to silence the narrative and revolutionary position on the Palestinian people and, in particular, their resistance, including and centrally, the armed resistance. 

The German state and the Zionist movement have long instrumentalised the fight against anti-Semitism as a repressive tool against all who stand with the Palestinian struggle, and to shift the blame from Germany and its fellow European fascist powers, now imperialist states that are part of the U.S./NATO alliance, for their Nazi crimes upon the Palestinians and Arabs in Germany. It is the Palestinian liberation movement, an anti-racist, anti-colonial movement, that rejects the equation between Zionism and Jewishness. And it is, therefore, the Palestinian liberation movement that is fighting against anti-Semitism, fascism and all forms of racism. Zionism is a racist ideology and movement in the service of imperialism and colonization in the region, and all left forces must clearly and firmly reject it. Of course, this smear campaign is taking place in Basel, where in 1897, the launch of the Zionist movement was officially proclaimed. Let this event in Basel be clear – the reign of this form of racism, colonialism and imperialism has come to an end. 

In addition to the media campaign attempting to smear Samidoun, Mohammed Khatib, and our comrades in Basel hosting the event, Lotta and the Palästina Komitee Basel, venues hosting the event have been subjected to extreme pressure, physical threats and visits by the Basel police in an attempt to force the event to be cancelled. This event will take place. We will not allow our movement to be silenced and criminalized. Despite all smear campaigns and attempts at intimidation, we will come together to plan, strategize and speak out in support of the Palestinian people and their liberation struggle. We invite you to join us, and we encourage you to contact our comrades in Basel for the location and details of the event:

• https://www.instagram.com/lotta_basel/
• https://www.instagram.com/pkbasel/

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!