Tuesday, 30 March 2021
7:00 pm
Alfonso X El Sabio Pedestrian Street
to Cardinal Beluga Square
Murcia, Spain
Join this march to commemorate Land Day on 30 March, with a demonstration through Murcia followed by a gathering with the reading of statements and a speak-out.
COVID protocols will be followed with face masks and social distancing.
Organized by Samidoun Espana – Region de Murcia, Palestina Libre and the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine
The Unified Campaign for the Liberation of Georges Abdallah organized a rally in Paris, France, on Saturday, 27 March demanding freedom for Abdallah, jailed for over 36 years in French prisons. The demonstration came one week after Georges Abdallah received a visit in Lannemezan prison from the Lebanese Ambassador to France, this time accompanied by the Lebanese Minister of Justice.
At the time, the Unified Campaign welcomed this meeting but denounced the silence of the French authorities, emphasizing that France continues to imprison this Arab struggler for Palestine as he nears his 70th birthday.
Many collectives and campaigns working for Abdallah’s liberation emphasized that French officials must immediately sign the order for his deportation necessary for his release and return to Lebanon. While French courts authorized his release in 2012, the Interior Minister at the time, Manuel Valls, refused to sign the deportation order necessary, ensuring that Georges Abdallah has remained imprisoned as Europe’s longest-held political prisoner.
Over 50 activists joined the Paris demonstration organized by the Unified Campaign, gathering in front of the French Interior Ministry to demand Georges Abdallah’s immediate release. This crowd gathered despite the fact that multiple demonstrations for just causes were scheduled on the same date in Paris. In a statement, the Campaign thanked participating organizations, including ANC, CAPJPO-EuroPalestine, DIP, Partizan, Rete Comunisti, AFPS Paris Sud and Collectif Ni guerre ni état de guerre.
Throughout the protest, demonstrators chanted, many of their slogans addressing French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin: “Darmanin, we will not give up!” “Darmanin, Darmanin, you must sign!” “Down with, down with state vengeance!” “Life imprisonment is barbarism!” “37 years in prison is a lifetime of struggle! Free Georges Abdallah!”
The following article was largely translated from the original French at Collectif Palestine Vaincra:
Throughout the month of March, the exhibition “Inspiring women, Remarkable women,” mounted by the city in Toulouse, France, presents over 600 portraits of women throughout the city center. The exhibition is part of the events marking March, Women’s Month.
Collectif Palestine Vaincra completed this exhibition with the images of Palestinian feminists imprisoned by the Israeli occupation, Khalida Jarrar and Khitam Saafin. Their faces drew the attention of many passers-by curious to learn more about the lives of Palestinian women under Israeli occupation.
Khalida Jarrar is a Palestinian parliamentarian, feminist, leftist and national leader. She was sentenced to two years in Israeli prison on 1 March 2021 on the basis of her public political activities, after being imprisoned by the Israeli occupation since 31 October 2019. Jarrar was arrested in 2019 only eight months after her release from 20 months in Israeli administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial – after her last arrest by occupation forces in 2017.
Khitam Saafin is the President of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees. Saafin is a leading Palestinian feminist and women’s organizer and a well-known international advocate for Palestinian women and freedom and justice for the Palestinian people. She has spoken around the world about the struggle of Palestinian women, including at the World Social Forum, and served as chair of the World March of Women Palestine. She is imprisoned without charge or trial under admiistrative detention; the military order imprisoning her was renewed on 25 February 2021.
They are among approximately 36 Palestinian women in Israeli jails, among 4,500 Palestinian political prisoners.
Thanks to photographer Ben Art Core for the photos!
Friday, 26 March
10 am Pacific – 1 pm Eastern – 6 pm central Europe – 7 pm Palestine
Register to join: https://tinyurl.com/plwsocal
Organized by Students for Justice in Palestine SoCal as part of Palestine Liberation Week
A presentation and panel discussion about the impact of abolition and political prisoners on the national movement.
With Mohammed Khatib of Samidoun and Lara Kiswani of Critical Resistance and AROC.
Please note — you must register to be approved to join the event!
The following text is translated from the original French at Collectif Palestine Vaincra. The entire Samidoun Network extends its strongest and most vigorous solidarity and support to our comrades in the Collectif. We are certain that this malicious attack on Palestinian rights will be defeated.:
On Tuesday, 23 March Patrice Perrot, a French National Assembly deputy representing La République En Marche! (LREM), the party of Emmanuel Macron, addressed a parliamentary question to Gérald Darmanin, French Minister of the Interior, calling for the government to dissolve Collectif Palestine Vaincra.
The fundamentally slanderous and false text is based on the recent designation of the Samidoun Network, of which the collective is a member organization, as a “terrorist” organization by Israel, in order to demand a ban on our collective. The request is a cut-and-paste of a press release from the far-right Israeli organization NGO Monitor, which aims to suppress the Palestine solidarity movement around the world.
Obviously, this request is unfounded and the activities of our collective are public and have not been the target of any ban. Along with the international Samidoun Network, we are carrying out awareness-raising, information and agitation campaigns in support of the Palestinian cause, an anti-colonialist, anti-racist cause. The only terrorists here are the State of Israel and its supporters. Moreover, the International Criminal Court has just opened an investigation of Israel for war crimes during its military assault on Gaza in 2014.
This call for dissolution comes against a background of increased repression of the movement in support of the Palestinian people, most notably in the attempt to criminalize the boycott of Israel. This comes despute the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights last June, condemning France for obstructing freedom of expression following its prosecution and conviction of activists who called for the boycott of Israel.
Moreover, the pro-Israel lobby seeks to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in order to neutralize any challenge to its apartheid policies. In this context, the municipalities of Nice and Paris have adopted the “new definition of anti-Semitism” promoted by the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), which includes numerous examples designed to consider anti-Semitic any questioning of the State of Israel as a colonial and racist state. On Monday, 22 March, this scandalous maneuver aimed at instrumentalizing the legitimate struggle against anti-Semitism was rejected by the municipality of Strasbourg, governed by the Green Party.
Since its foundation 2 years ago in Toulouse, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra has systematically been subjected to numerous attacks (intimidation, threats, false allegations, announcements of legal complaints) linked to its various activities in support of the Palestinian people and their legitimate resistance. These attacks are taking place because the pro-Israel far right does not accept the development of an anti-colonialist and anti-racist voice in support of the Palestinian people and their fundamental rights. By calling for the dissolution of the collective, Patrice Perrot and the supporters of Israel demonstrate once again that they are ardent defenders of Israeli apartheid.
But beyond the Collectif Palestine Vaincra and organizations defending the rights of Palestinians, the succession of demands for the dissolution of anti-racist organizations, Muslim associations, syndicates and unions poses a worrying threat for all people committed to freedom of expression, equality and justice. These various attacks are the symptoms of a reactionary and racist offensive which must inspire us to intensify our solidarity with the Palestinian people and build a strong, united and consistent response to these intimidations and threats.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network activists joined with the Canada Palestine Association and BDS Vancouver – Coast Salish Territories in a delegation to deliver a letter of protest to the French consulate in Vancouver, Canada, on 16 March 2021 in solidarity with Olivia Zémor. Zémor, president of CAPJPO-EuroPalestine, faced a trial in Lyon, France, on the same day over her publication of a call to boycott TEVA, the Israeli pharmaceutical company.
The delegation carried Palestinian flags, banners and signs reading “Boycott Teva! Boycott Israel!”, “Boycott Teva! Solidarity with Olivia Zémor!” and “Boycott Teva! Apartheid is Bad Medicine.”
They also carried signs calling for the liberation of Palestinian political prisoners, including Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for over 36 years in France, along with their letter of protest.
Pro-Palestine activist Olivia Zemor is going on trial in France after leading a boycott campaign against Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva pic.twitter.com/ENtpjlLG2I
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) March 16, 2021
They delivered the letter (below) to the French consulate, along with the statement of the Canadian BDS Coalition in support of Zémor. All three organizations are members of the Coalition.
This action in Vancouver joined many mobilizations in France and around the world to support Zémor and expand the call to boycott TEVA, including the Palestine Stand organized by Collectif Palestine Vaincra in Toulouse, as well as mobilizations in Paris, Lille, Lyon and elsewhere.
Activists in Australia delivered a letter to the French consulate in Adelaide in support of Zémor, while organizers in London — including the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and Football Against Apartheid — delivered a protest letter with global signatures to the French embassy to the United Kingdom.
15 March, French embassy, London, @IJAN_Network joined @FAApartheid to hand in a letter to the ambassador in defence of Olivia Zémor president of @Europalestine1 facing charges in Lyon court tomorrow for publishing a call to #BoycottTEVA. Solidarity with Olivia! Free Palestine! pic.twitter.com/0aWjXRMzCQ
— Michael Kalmanovitz (@MKalmanovitz) March 15, 2021
In Belgium, the Plate-forme Charleroi-Palestine organized a solidarity gathering calling for the boycott of TEVA in the center of Charleroi on Saturday, 13 March.
EuroPalestine noted solidarity actions, videos and messages from Rome, Montreal, Tunisia, Denmark, Switzerland, Brazil and Palestine as well.
Letter from Samidoun, CPA and BDS Vancouver:
Dear Mr. Philippe Sutter, Consul General of France in Vancouver;
Dear Ms. Kareen Rispal, Ambassador of France to Canada,
We write today, appalled by the ongoing persecution and targeting of activists for Palestinian rights in France. Olivia Zémor, the president of CAPJPO-EuroPalestine association in France, is facing a trial in Lyon’s court today, 16 March. This case was brought by TEVA Pharmaceuticals in response to Ms. Zémor’s publication of a grassroots call to boycott its products on the europalestine.com website. It is an appalling example of a massive global multinational corporation, Israel’s largest by market value, attempting to use the costs and power of the court to shut down independent voices critical of corporate human rights violations.
TEVA Pharmaceuticals is a manufacturer of generic drugs. It is the largest such manufacturer in the world. As a massive Israeli corporation, TEVA is one of Israel’s largest contributors to its tax base, its military occupation of the land and people of Palestine. Now, TEVA is trying to silence justice advocates in France through the use of the courts to intimidate people and organizations and suppress calls for boycott of the company due to its links to and complicity with consistent Israeli violations of fundamental Palestinian rights.
The case against Ms. Zémor is clearly a corporate effort to silence popular dissent. It is outrageous and appalling. However, the French state itself is not innocent in this suppression of voices for justice in Palestine.
Despite the decision of the European Court of Human Rights upholding the right to boycott Israel and invalidating French official prosecutions of boycott activists for their work to support Palestinian rights, requiring France to pay compensation to the prosecuted activists, the French government has continued to encourage public prosecutions of people for calling for a boycott of Israel.
This comes in direct defiance of the ECHR ruling, violating the human rights of people in France at the same time that it evinces clear complicity with Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights.
Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti, in blatant violation of the decision of the ECHR, has distributed a circular to prosecutors throughout the country, urging them to prosecute activists for boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns and attempt to win convictions for their expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
TEVA’s pursuit of Olivia Zémor comes directly in line with this circular by Minister Dupond-Moretti. It represents a dangerous alliance of Israeli multinational corporations and the French state to silence and suppress Palestinian rights advocacy through the use of both public prosecutions and private lawsuits. The call for the boycott of Israel is backed by a broad consensus in Palestinian civil society and public discourse, inside occupied Palestine and in exile.
Palestinians face extrajudicial killings, land confiscation, mass imprisonment, home demolitions, the ongoing siege on Gaza and the incessant presence of military occupation, colonialism and apartheid throughout occupied Palestine. Palestinians in exile and diaspora have been denied their right to return home for over 72 years. In response, France is not acting to sanction the perpetrator — Israel — but rather to suppress all calls for a grassroots, popular boycott of Israel and demands for the implementation of Palestinian rights.
We urge France to immediately end its violation of the ECHR decision and withdraw the Dupond-Moretti circular. Further, we urge France to uphold its own responsibilities under international law, not only to stop the persecution and silencing of Palestinian rights activists and the boycott movement, but to end its ongoing complicity with and support for Israel’s attacks on Palestinian rights.
With regards,
BDS Vancouver — Coast Salish
Canada Palestine Association
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
On 18 March 2021, the international day for revolutionary political prisoners, Samidoun Deutschland co-organized three demonstrations in Berlin, Frankfurt and Münster, demanding freedom for all Palestinian prisoners and political prisoners around the world in imperialist and reactionary regime prisons.
The signs, banners and speeches of Samidoun Deutschland highlighted the various mechanisms of oppression used by the Zionist occupation to target the Palestinian people, including the threatened ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, colonialist policing and violence in Umm al-Fahm, occupied Palestine ’48, to the imprisonment and repression of children and students and the jailing of political leaders. These combine with many other mechanisms that affect every detail of Palestinian life inside occupied Palestine and in exile and diaspora.
From Germany, we greet our struggling prisoners!
Freedom for our jailed Palestinian students in the occupation prisons!
Freedom for Ahmad Sa’adat, Khalida Jarrar, Khitam Saafin, Walid Daqqa and Abdullah al-Barghouthi!
Freedom for Georges Ibrahim Abdallah!
Freedom for all political prisoners!
Long live Sheikh Jarrah and long live Umm al-Fahm!
Long live free Palestine, from the river to the sea!
On 27 February, Revolutionaire Eenheid and Samidoun Netherlands put up a mural honoring Basil al-Araj, the Palestinian intellectual revolutionary who was martyred by Israeli occupation forces on 6 March 2017. As Samidoun we support all initiatives commemorating the life of Basil al-Araj.
Basil al-Araj was a widely known activist and youth leader in Palestine, who has been remembered as “the martyr of pen and bullet”.
During his life, Basil played an important role in connecting activists from all parts of Palestine. He gave historic tours of Palestine to hundreds of people, was a pharmacist, and organized and participated in hundreds of protests, clashes and boycott actions. He wrote about the need for a self-confident youth establishing a revolutionary alternative to the current status-quo.
As Revolutionaire Eenheid wrote in their statement commemorating al-Araj:
“Basil was the embodiment of the culture and morals of Palestinian society during the first intifada. Sacrifice and the collective, rather than self-serving and consumerism. His work criticizes the lack of morals and principles, the consequences of feelings of inferiority and colonized thinking that he observed in his environment.
Al-Araj argued that politics is not about getting a well-paid job, where you can also do something good for the world. Politics is about struggle and sacrifice. A struggle against the apartheid era, without compromising with the occupier.
Basil’s politics were not limited to words. When the occupier wanted to arrest him again, he fought back bravely. With a single weapon and an unlimited amount of courage, he fought for his life for over two hours.
Basil’s vision for a Palestine free from occupation, oppression, racism, Zionism, colonialism, and apartheid cannot be stopped by any army. Our global struggle continues, his vision becomes reality!”
The following statement from the Collective for the Liberation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah is republished below and translated from the original French:
On Friday, 19 March, Georges Abdallah, imprisoned for 37 years in French prisons, received for the third time a visit from Mr. Rami Adwan, the Ambassador of Lebanon in France. On this occasion, he was accompanied by Ms. Marie-Claude Najm, Minister of Justice of the acting Lebanese government.
Among other things, they brought him greetings from the Lebanese government and its president. The visit of the Lebanese Minister of Justice was conditioned on their being no statement made before or after the meeting.
We remember that at other times, during the many requests for release made by our comrade, the French prosecution openly stated their fears that the return of Georges Abdallah to his country would be celebrated and that he would, therefore, be hailed at the height of his popularity:
“An emblematic figure of the anti-Zionist struggle, his release [of Georges Abdallah] would undoubtedly be an event in Lebanon. He will probably be celebrated as a hero on his return to his country, and also by various movements engaged in revolutionary struggle.” (July 2007)
In other words, if Manuel Valls had deigned to sign the expulsion document, upon which the release of Georges Abdallah was conditioned in the ruling of the sentencing court on 21 November 2012, he should have been required to land in his own country silently, according to the will of the French state!
Georges Abdallah, revolutionary communist, detained for 37 years in French jails without ever renouncing his anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist political commitment and his dedication to a free Palestine, is certainly a model of resistance, courage and determination who should be greeted as he deserves, especially in these times when the struggle against Zionism and the colonization of Palestinian land is once again threatened and/or judged by French courts.
We salute the approach of Ms. Najm and Mr. Adwan, who, in a most delicate Lebanese political context, had the courage to meet their compatriot who has suffered for so many years the vengeance of the French justice system.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is an endorser of the following statement issued by the Palestinian Feminist Collective.
In honor of International Women’s Month, the Palestinian Feminist Collective calls on all people of conscience to pledge their commitment that Palestine is a Feminist Issue.
This Women’s History Month, we, the undersigned, join the Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC), a U.S. based network of Palestinian and Arab women and feminists, in affirming Palestine as a feminist issue. Alongside the PFC, we build upon the history of Palestinian women and their co-strugglers who have worked to end multiple forms of oppression. We reject all appropriations of feminist and queer rights discourses that are used to dehumanize Palestinians, justify ongoing Zionist settler-colonization of their homeland, and repress their political activism. In doing so, we commit to resisting gendered and sexual violence, settler colonialism, capitalist exploitation, land degradation and oppression in Palestine, on Turtle Island, and globally.
For decades, Palestinian feminists have resisted Israel’s masculinist and militarized siege of Palestinian land and life. Since its inception, the Zionist settler colonial project has hinged on the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and land, creating generations of landless Palestinian refugees. Zionist violence continues to dominate Palestinian lives in intimate ways. Throughout the homeland, Israel demolishes Palestinian homes, subjects Palestinian prisoners of conscience to systematic sexual and physical abuse and torture, and polices Palestinian bodies, sexualities, reproductive rights, and family life. Palestinians continue to affirm life in the face of the enduring Nakba (catastrophe), which takes place through deadly closure in the Gaza Strip, military occupation in the West Bank, legal designations of second-class citizenship in the settler state, exile in refugee camps and across the shatat (global diaspora), and denial of the right to return home.
We uphold the legacies of solidarity between Palestinian, Black, Indigenous, Third World feminist, working class, and queer communities who have struggled side-by-side within larger anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist movements in the US and globally. This stands in contrast to liberal feminist traditions in the U.S. that continue to weaponize feminist discourses against Palestinians and other marginalized communities by failing to confront the structural forms of gendered and sexual violence inherent to settler/colonialism, imperialist wars, racial capitalism, and global white supremacy. Liberal and Zionist feminisms rely on Orientalist discourses to silence and undermine the collective aspirations of Palestinian women and their co-strugglers, contributing to intensified political repression that criminalizes free speech on Palestine and Palestinian liberation.
In the interest of advancing a truly intersectional and decolonial feminist vision for the United States, Palestine and our world, we hereby pledge to:
Our commitment to the liberation of Palestinian lands and people is rooted in love, which is at the heart of all projects of decolonization. Our values grow out of embodied cultural wisdom and justice to transform our communities. We are committed to ending the greed, domination, and fragmentation so deeply entrenched in capitalism, colonial extraction, and US empire. We are re-imagining and re-creating a world free from systems of gendered, racial and economic exploitation that commodify human life and land. Ours is a vision for a radically different future based on life-affirming interconnectedness, empowering the working classes, and love for each other, land, life and the planet itself. For these reasons, we pledge, today and everyday, to recognize Palestine as a Feminist Issue and to uphold this commitment in our daily lives and organizing praxis.
