The following is a slightly updated version of the article originally published on 17 June 2017 by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. The living legacy of Fouad Hijazi, Atta al-Zeer, Mohammed Jamjoum and the Buraq Revolution is deeply relevant today, especially as extremist Zionist forces engage in “flag marches” designed to declare full colonial control over all of Palestinian Jerusalem while chanting slogans like “Death to the Arabs.” A very similar march sparked the uprising of 1929. The close ties between Zionism and British colonialism – which would eventually imprison 900 Palestinians and execute 20 for participating in the revolt – today mirrors the strategic partnership between the Zionist state and U.S. and other Western imperialist powers. Nearly 90 years on, the Palestinian revolution continues, until liberation and return. 

17 June marks the anniversary of the execution of three of the earliest martyrs of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement – Fouad Hijazi, Atta al-Zeer and Mohammed Khalil Jamjoum – by British colonial occupiers, in Akka prison.

The execution of these Palestinian strugglers has remained for years an ongoing story of resistance that continues to inspire strugglers through 100 years of resistance to colonization and occupation. Indeed, the song written to commemorate Hijazi, al-Zeer and Jamjoum, “From Akka Prison,” today remains one of the most well-known and powerful poems of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.

Hijazi, al-Zeer and Jamjoum were seized by the British colonizers for their role in Al-Buraq Revolution of 1929, named for the al-Buraq Wall in Jerusalem. The uprising was sparked after Zionist groups came to the wall and planted Zionist flags, declaring that “This wall is ours.”

In Jerusalem, Haifa, Yafa and Safad, Palestinians rose up against British colonization and the declared Zionist plans to colonize Palestine and declare it a “Jewish state.” Hundreds of Palestinians were seized by British forces and 26 sentenced to death by hanging; there was such an outcry by the Palestinian people that most of these sentences were converted to life imprisonment, with the exception of Hijazi, Jamjoum and al-Zeer.

Fouad Hijazi was 26 years old, from Safad; Mohammed Jamjoum was 28, from al-Khalil, as was Atta al-Zeer, 35.

Born in Safad in 1904, Hijazi received his primary education in his hometown; his university education was completed at the American University of Beirut. He actively participated in the Buraq Revolution and wrote a message to his family the day before his execution, which was published in the newspaper on 18 June 1930. In the message, he said, “On 17 June of each year, this should be a historic day in which speeches are made and songs are sung in the memory of our blood spilled for the sake of Palestine and the Arab cause.”

Mohammed Khalil Jamjoum was born in 1902 in al-Khalil; like Hijazi he attended university at the American University of Beirut. Atta al-Zeer was born in al-Khalil also, in 1895. Throughout his life he worked as a farmer and a manual laborer and was known from his earliest days for his courage and physical strength.

On 17 June 1930, Palestinians organized a general strike throughout Palestine as large crowds gathered in major Palestinian cities across the country – in Yafa, Haifa, al-Khalil and Nablus. After the executions, their bodies were handed to the men’s families, who had been denied the right to bury them in their home cities. Thousands of Palestinians streamed through the streets of Akka in honor of Jamjoum, Hijazi and al-Zeer, figures and symbols of Palestinian resistance to British and Zionist colonization. The three revolutionaries were executed on that day, but their anti-colonial message and commitment has continued to resonate through generations of Palestinian struggle for national liberation.

Abu Maher al-Yamani, co-founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestinian labor leader and historical leader of the Palestinian national movement, left his village of Suhmata for the first time at the age of six with his father. There, he “was surprised to encounter the execution of three Palestinian martyrs by British colonial authorities on that day, June 17, 1930 – Fouad Hijazi, Mohammed Jamjoum and Atta al-Zeer. The awareness of the child Ahmed al-Yamani was awakened, viewing the executions and the bodies of the martyrs in the gallows of the courtyard of Akka central prison; this incident greatly affected him and remained an image in his mind that could not be forgotten.”

Their story has been embedded as well in the Palestinian culture of resistance. Palestinian poet Ibrahim Tuqan’s poem, “Red Tuesday,” commemorates the three, noting “their bodies in the homeland’s graves/their souls in the reaches of heaven.”

The popular song, “Min Sijjin Akka,” or “From Akka Prison,” continues to be sung and celebrated throughout Palestine. The origin of the poem is not precisely clear; some say that it was written on the walls of Akka prison by a revolutionary named ‘Awad, himself awaiting execution by the British colonial rulers. Other scholars note that the poem was likely composed by a working-class popular poet and in Haifa, Nuh Ibrahim, perhaps the most famous Palestinian poet of his time and carrying his own legacy of resistance. “He was not a poet of the elite and he did not write poetry for social occasions or holidays. Instead Ibrahim is known for composing for the 1936-1939 Palestinian Revolt and to peasants working their grapevines, orchards and wheat fields. He spoke and wrote in everyday language, as a provocateur and broadcaster for the revolt, in which he also participated as a fighter,” wrote Samih Shabeeb.

The lyrics of the song are known today throughout Palestine and continue to be sung at national events, weddings and cultural celebrations. Ibrahim himself died struggling for Palestine eight years later, as a fighter in the movement of Izzedine al-Qassam in the 1936-39 revolution in Palestine. After being imprisoned in Akka prison himself, he was killed by the British colonial army in a battle in the Westen Galilee.

Today, over 200 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli occupation prisons since 1967. 72 of them were killed as a result of Israeli torture, including three hunger strikers, Izhak Maragha, Ali Ja’afari and Rasim Halawa, killed by torturous forced feeding in 1980. The Israeli state constantly threatens the reimposition of the death penalty, while putting it into practice in reality, with escalating extrajudicial executions – particularly against Palestinian youth; “arrest raids” that are in fact assassination raids as in the targeting of Basil al-Araj  and Moataz Washaha; and the policy of “slow death” of medical neglect and mistreatment inside occupation prisons.

On this anniversary, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network remembers and honors the martyrs of 1930 and their ongoing legacy and role as a symbol of resistance and anti-colonial revolution that reverberates through generations to defend Palestinian land and Palestinian rights, in Jerusalem and throughout occupied Palestine, from Zionism, imperialism and colonization.

(The following letter was sent today to Canada’s Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and called on “the Canadian government to stop legitimizing the crimes of apartheid…and suspend all instances of Zim-operated ships docking and unloading in Canadian ports.”. This action is part of the growing demand that Canada must hold Israel accountable, through economic sanctions and a bilateral arms embargo.)

June 15, 2021

Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra
Ottawa, Ontario

In recent weeks, people of conscience in Canada watched in horror as the Israeli regime ruthlessly targeted Palestinians from all regions of historic Palestine. What started as a popular movement to #SaveSheikhJarrah residents from further ethnic cleansing expanded into a broad unity of Palestinians from Jerusalem to Gaza to Haifa to Toronto and Vancouver all sending the same message. Palestinians will no longer accept the status quo of Israeli apartheid.

As part of this burgeoning movement, Palestinian-Canadians and their supporters have actively participated in rallies, pickets and #BlockTheBoat actions. The latter refers to the efforts to stop Zim-operated ships from either docking in, or unloading, at U.S., Canadian and other international ports.

Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd is Israel’s largest and oldest cargo shipping company, dealing in Israeli manufactured military technology, armaments and logistics equipment, as well as consumer goods.

The Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) and a large coalition of all major Palestinian workers unions and professional associations have called on fellow trade unions and workers worldwide to boycott Israel and businesses that are complicit with its apartheid regime. They specifically urge “refus[ing] to handle Israeli goods” and “supporting [union] members refusing to build Israeli weapons.”

Last month, and in response to the above appeal from Palestinian trade unions, South African trade unions refused handling cargo from an Israeli ship in Durban. Dockworkers in Italy have also successfully blocked a recent shipment of munitions and armaments destined for Israel.

At Canada’s largest port in Vancouver, there was a successful community picket on June 8 that tied up both the Port entrance and a busy intersection; activists from a diverse range of groups stated clearly – “Israeli Apartheid Not Welcome in Vancouver Ports”. (The same message was also delivered on June 14 at the Prince Rupert Port.)

Port Authorities in Canada fall under the Ministry of Transport. As such, Mr. Alghabra, allowing and enabling such Israeli apartheid profiteering makes both the ports and the Canadian government further complicit in the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinians. Both B’tselem and Human Rights Watch have been clear in exposing the system of Israeli governance as apartheid. We, the undersigned organizations, expect the Canadian government to stop legitimizing the crimes of apartheid, and to refuse to give economic incentives to such abhorrent behaviour.

Your ministry is already mired in controversy for refusing to cancel a contract with Elbit Systems to purchase one of their drones. Who would have imagined that the Canadian Ministry of Transport would be so entangled with Israeli apartheid? We call on you to observe your government’s alleged respect for international law and human rights and suspend all instances of Zim-operated ships docking and unloading in Canadian ports.

Popular protest is not going to stop as long as Palestinians are not free.

c.c. PM of Canada, Justin Trudeau
Vancouver Fraser Port Authority

Signed:

BDS Vancouver-Coast Salish Territories
Canada Palestine Association
Palestinian Youth Movement Vancouver
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

Endorsed by:

Anti-Imperialist Alliance, Ottawa
BAYAN Canada
Canadian Peace Congress
Communist Party of Canada
Gabriela BC
Independent Jewish Voices Vancouver
Just Peace Advocates
Niagara Movement for Justice in Palestine Israel
OPRA – Oakville Palestinian Rights Association
Palestinian Canadian Community Centre – Palestine House
Poetic Justice Foundation
Regina Peace Council
Sulong UBC
West Coast Coalition Against Racism Society