The following report, by Samidoun Toronto, illustrates part of the political education work that has been so important to the development of Samidoun and the development of a strong revolutionary movement in support of the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation, return and self-determination from the river to the sea.
One of the ways we at Samidoun Toronto act in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners’ movement is through political education, both internal and external. On 17 July, Samidoun Toronto held an internal educational discussion on Part 1 of the Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, the foundational document of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Published in 1969, the document outlines the Front’s classic Marxist-Leninist analysis of the Palestinian struggle. The Front identifies the friends and enemies of the struggle– the latter being the Zionist entity known as Israel, the Zionist movement, world imperialism, and reactionary Arab regimes.
The Front also outlines its class analysis of Palestinian society, analyzing the role of the Palestinian bourgeois, petit bourgeois, and working classes in revolutionary action. The Front identifies armed resistance and protracted people’s war as the only way to liberate Palestine. As an organization grounded in the traditions and politics of the Palestinian revolutionary left, we at Samidoun Toronto discussed and reflected upon how we can apply the lessons learned from the Front in 1969 to our own local solidarity organizing.
Recently, Samidoun NY/NJ held a similar study session of Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, which Zionists met with threats, intimidation, and harassment of Samidoun as well as the Mayday Space in Brooklyn which hosted the event. Zionists have been relentless in their attempts to silence, suppress, and criminalize Samidoun, with big tech corporations like Meta and imperialist states protecting their class interests. Far-right publications and racist organizations including “Israel Now” (formerly the JDL) slandering us and attempting to stifle any and all support for the Palestinian struggle, and, in particular, the steadfast Palestinian Resistance, many of whom are incarcerated in Zionist dungeons including PFLP General-Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat and leader Khalida Jarrar, among Palestinian prisoners of all resistance forces and movements.
“Israeli” Security Agency Chief Ronen Bar recently reported to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir that 21,000 Palestinians are currently incarcerated in Zionist jails, over 10,000 more than previously reported. We must meet the Zionist entity’s escalated targeting of Palestinian Resistance leaders with our own escalated solidarity, including uncompromising support for resistance by any means necessary. Our support terrifies imperialists from occupied Palestine to NY/NJ to Toronto, the latter where TPS arrested a protester for waving the Front’s flag at a rally. This relentless criminalization demonstrates the urgency of studying the Strategy and learning from the PFLP’s materialist analysis of what it means to be in popular struggle, including in the heart of the imperial core.
Our Network’s mission is to achieve freedom for all Palestinian prisoners in the Palestinian liberation movement. Now more than ever must we politically educate ourselves and raise our consciousness through the study of the texts of those who are subjected to and who struggle against Zionist violence and incarceration.
Despite the onslaught of hatred and censorship from imperialist governments, corporations, and Zionist organizations, Samidoun remains dedicated to the Palestinian struggle, Palestinian prisoners, and the Palestinian Resistance. We will continue to educate in unwavering solidarity and apply the lessons learned to our own revolutionary lesson in the fight for a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
The following statement/article, by Samidoun Paris Banlieue, was published first in French. The English translation is below: https://samidoun.net/fr/2024/07/la-question-carcerale-dans-la-colonisation-de-la-kanaky-a-la-palestine/. Kanaky, called New Caledonia by the French, is a French colony (“overseas collectivity”) where, this year, after widespread protests and demonstrations, French military forces targeted demonstrators, imposed a countrywide ban on TikTok, and have now seized multiple political prisoners from the Kanaky independence movement, who have been taken to mainland France. Samidoun urges their immediate liberation and stands in solidarity with the Kanak people’s struggle.
Deportation as penalty
On Friday, July 5, France announced the continued provisional detention on mainland France of 5 Kanak defendants, out of the seven pro-independence “leaders” who had been deported on June 23. The subsequent announcements of the arrest of 11 pro-independence activists, including 9 provisional detentions (including Joël Tjibaou and Gilles Jorédié, incarcerated in Camp-Est) and 7 incarcerations in mainland France (Christian Tein, Frédérique Muliava, Brenda Wanabo-Ipeze, Dimitri Tein Qenegei, Guillaume Vama, Steve Unë and Yewa Waethane), more than 17,000 kilometers from their lands, revived the mobilizations that had begun a month earlier as part of the fight against the plan to “unfreeze” the Kanaky electoral body. Suspended after Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly, this project actually aims to reverse the achievements of the Noumea Accords signed in 1998. It is part of the strategy of strengthening French colonialism in Kanaky by extending the ability to vote on local matters, including independence referanda, to an even greater number of settlers, making the indigenous Kanaks a de facto minority at the ballot box.
On July 11, ten Centaure armored vehicles, fifteen fire trucks, a dozen all-terrain military armored vehicles and numerous army trucks were landed by boat in Kanaky, where the population remains under curfew to this day. This entire sequence bears witness to the manner by which France, through its colonial administration, deploys a repressive security arsenal that on the one hand protects the settlers on the land and their reactionary militias, and on the other, attempts to destroy the country’s Kanak independence movement. Imprisonment and incarceration are a weapon of choice in this overall colonial strategy.
Imprisonment is one of the key weapons of choice in colonial strategies to try to stifle independence and national liberation struggles, from the Zionist regime in Palestine to allied imperialist countries and colonial empires such as France. While the figures are incomparable due to differences between the populations and conditions, in the West Bank, according to Stéphanie Latte Abdallah, one in three Palestinians has experienced one or more incarcerations during their life since 1967, or 35% of the population, while in Kanaky, the Noumea prison, known as Camp-Est, is populated by 95% Kanaks, while they represent only 39 to 43% of the Caledonian population.
Camp Est Prison in Nouville, on the outskirts of Noumea
Nicknamed “the island of oblivion” by the prisoners, the Camp Est prison locks up many young Kanaks excluded from the economic, educational and health systems, and symbolizes the French colonial continuum, especially as the building partly occupies the space of the former French penal colony imposed there. Very few studies exist of this over-incarceration of the Kanak population, and as Hamid Mokadem reminds us:
“The silence of sociologists and demographers on ethno-cultural inequalities is inversely proportional to the chatter of anthropologists on Kanak customs and culture.”
The incarceration rate is significantly higher than in mainland France, so much so that a new prison has been built, the Koné detention center, and a project to replace Camp-Est was announced in February 2024 by the Minister of Justice. He promised a 600-bed facility (compared to the 230 cells available at Camp-Est) that would emerge after a construction project estimated at 500 million euros. This is the largest investment by the French state on Kanak soil, a deadly promise that at the same time reaffirms France’s imperialist project in the Pacific, driven by its financial and geopolitical interests to retain its colonial properties there. While waiting for this large-scale prison project, new cells have been fitted out in containers on which a double mesh roof has been installed, many without windows, and where the conditions of incarceration are even harsher than in the other sections of the prison, including those for men, women and minors, pre-trial detainees and those who have been convicted and sentenced.
The over-representation of the Kanak population has only increased, since incarceration has been one of the mechanisms through which the French government attempts to stem the movement against the plan to unfreeze and expand the electoral body, with 1,139 arrests since mid-May. Local detention was supplemented by another penalty directly inherited from the Code de l’Indigénat: the penalty of deportation. On June 23, after the announcement of the arrest of 7 Kanak independence activists in metropolitan France, the population learned that they were going to be deported 17,000 km from their homes. A plane was waiting to transfer them to metropolitan France during their pretrial detention, all seven of them dispersed across the prisons of Dijon, Mulhouse, Bourges, Blois, Nevers, Villefranche and Riom. This deportation of activists in the context of pre-trial detention directly recalls the events of 1988, and more broadly the way in which prison and removal were used in a colonial context.
From the 19th century and the deportation of Toussaint Louverture of Haiti to France, the thousands of Algerians arrested during the uprisings against the French colonization of Algeria at the same time as the detention of the prisoners of the Paris Commune in 1871, the Vietnamese of Hanoi in 1913, deported to Kanaky or other colonies such as Guyana. More recently, the Algerian revolutionaries, massively incarcerated in metropolitan colonial prisons. From a principle inherited from the indigénat, and although today we have moved from an administrative decision to a judicial decision, the practice of deportation remains the same.
Particularly used in the context of anti-colonial resistance movements, the deportation of Kanak prisoners to metropolitan colonial prisons has been used on this scale since 1988 in Kanaky, when, after the massacre of 19 Kanak independence fighters who had taken police officers prisoner in the Ouvéa cave, the activists still alive were imprisoned, then deported, then released as part of the Matignon-Oudinot Accords. 26 Kanak prisoners came to populate the prisons of the Paris region while they were still in preventive detention, that is to say awaiting their trials and therefore presumed innocent, as is the case today for the CCAT activists currently incarcerated. In the 1980s, French prisons were shaken by major revolts, particularly against the racism of the guards, who were mostly affiliated with the then-nascent FN, and more broadly against the penal policy of the Mitterrand left and the massively expanding length of sentences imposed at the time. In 1988, as former prisoners wrote afterwards, some made a point of showing their solidarity with the Kanaks by sharing their clothes and food with them.
Because many of the activists were transferred in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, in trying conditions, with their hands cuffed during the 24-hour journey, underhanded repression techniques of the Prison Administration that are still in force (similar deportation conditions were described by Christian Tein, spokesperson for the CCAT incarcerated in the isolation wing of the Mulhouse-Lutterbach Penitentiary Center), so that the shock of incarceration is all the more violent. Added to this is the pain of the forced separation of parents and children, which is found not only in the current situation in metropolitan France but also in Palestine, as is the great difficulty in finding loved ones, in attempting to find out which prisons they are in, or even if they are currently detained, continually encountering administrative violence, the absence of information and the cruelty of official figures. All this is orchestrated so that the psychological impact, in the long term, aims to induce the prisoners and also their families to stop fighting.
At the time of the events in Ouvéa, the uprooting of independence strugglers from their lands to lock them up in mainland France was commonplace, and the Kanak detainees joined those from the Caribbean Revolutionary Alliance such as Luc Reinette and Georges Faisans, incarcerated in Île-de-France during the 1980s alongside Corsican and Basque prisoners. Since then, this had only happened once, in the context of the uprisings in Gwadloup in 2021, where several local figures, mostly community activists, had been deported and then incarcerated in mainland France and Martinique in an attempt to stifle the revolts in which a large number of Guadeloupean youth were mobilized.
Here again, we could draw a parallel with Palestine. As Assia Zaino points out, since the 2000s, the incarceration of Palestinians has systematically been synonymous with being torn away from their families and loved ones. Zionist prisons, located within the Palestinian territories colonized in 1948, “are integrated into the civil prison system […] and entry bans on Israeli soil are frequently imposed on the families of detainees for security reasons,” which in fact aims to attack the relatives of detainees and destabilize the national liberation struggle.
Ahmad Saadat, Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh and their comrades in detention – date and location unknown
From prison, the struggle continues
This mass incarceration is confronted by the powerful presence of prisoners as symbols of courage and resistance. We know that in Palestine, as during the Algerian war of national liberation, incarceration is an opportunity to learn from one’s people, to forge national revolutionary consciousness but also to continue the struggle, very concretely, by mobilizing against incarceration. Because the Palestinian prisoners’ movement has transformed the colonial prison into a school of revolution: each political party has a prison branch whose political bureau or leadership is made up of imprisoned leaders. These branches have real weight in the decisions taken outside the walls, and they are the ones responsible for leading the struggle in the colonial prisons, in particular by declaring collective hunger strikes and developing alliances of struggle that can mobilize several thousand prisoners, but also for organizing the daily life of revolutionaries in prison. It was this movement of prisoners that played a major role in driving the Palestinian resistance groups to unite under a unified command with the total liberation of historic Palestine as their compass, and to overcome internal contradictions. Historically, the prisoners also constituted a significant part the most radical elements of the Palestinian revolution, notably by massively refusing any negotiation with the Zionist state at the time when the disastrous Oslo Accords were being prepared. Resistance in colonial prisons can also take cultural forms, as illustrated by the very rich Palestinian prison literature, composed of literary works written in secret and smuggled out by prisoners to bear witness to the outside world of the vitality of their ideals, their struggle and the conditions of detention, like those of Walid Daqqah, a renowned writer and one of the longest-held Palestinian prisoners, who was martyred on April 7 2024, during his 38th year of detention in colonial prisons.
In short, from the children and adolescents who wear courageous smiles as they leave their trials surrounded by soldiers, to the women of Damon prison who heroically stand up to their jailers, to the resistance of the prisoners who fight by putting their lives and health at risk while having a central role in the Resistance outside, it is the daily struggle of the prisoners’ movement that makes detention a place where resistance to the colonial regime is organized, continuing even inside detention.
As Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s international coordinator, said:
“Despite the intention to use political imprisonment to suppress Palestinian resistance and derail the Palestinian liberation movement, Palestinian prisoners have remained political leaders and symbols of steadfastness for the struggle as a whole.”
In Kanaky, it was the announcement of the incarceration of CCAT activists on June 23 that relaunched the movement, who became the driving forces behind this new round of mobilization. Furthermore, on May 13, while the population was setting up roadblocks on the main roads of Noumea, a mutiny broke out in the Camp-Est prison in reaction to the plan to unfreeze the electoral body. The prison was therefore directly part of the mobilization, and three guards were taken hostage on this first day of struggle. They were quickly released after the RAID (French national police tactical unit) intervened, but during the night of the 14th to the 15th, another revolt took place in the prison, rendering no fewer than 80 cells unusable.
It is therefore in this context of uprising and intifada throughout Kanaky, both in prisons and outside, that the announcement of the deportation of the 7 Kanak leaders took place. But in addition to these highly publicized deportations, there are also dozens of similar cases of transfers from Camp-Est. Completely ignored by the government, these took place both before May 23 and during the month of July, including participants in the prison uprisings as well as long-term prisoners transferred to relieve congestion in the Kanak prison. Silence which masks the scale of these colonial deportations only intends to make the task of the families and political supporters of the Kanaks even more difficult in their attempt to show solidarity with the prisoners.
Furthermore, upon their arrival on mainland France, the CCAT activists were separated into 7 different prisons, directly recalling the policy of dispersion already at work in Spain at the end of the 1980s against ETA prisoners, in reaction to the effectiveness of their prison organizing. Today as yesterday, the colonial power dispatches prisoners throughout the mainland to prevent a collective counter-offensive. The prisoners’ connections with one another, but also with the outside, are consequently largely hampered. This isolation directly aims to break the movement by tearing off its “head” and preventing any form of common struggle against this confinement. We therefore know that the momentum of struggle outside seems to respond to a hardening of detention conditions inside prisons, as evidenced by the isolation in which the CCAT activists are kept.
Likewise in Palestine, where since October 7, mass arrests have escalated to the development of military concentration camps characterized by inhumane conditions of incarceration where severe torture is a daily, routine occurrence. Currently, both for the more than 9,300 Palestinian prisoners detained in the 19 Zionist colonial prisons, and for the thousands of prisoners from Gaza arrested during the genocidal offensive of the occupying forces on the Strip incarcerated in military camps, the conditions of detention have deteriorated significantly. If in the colonial prisons Palestinian prisoners suffer hunger, collective isolation, overcrowding, violence and physical and psychological torture, conditions which have led to the martyrdom of at least 18 prisoners since October 7, in the military detention camps the situation is even more extreme. The thousands of prisoners from Gaza held there are handcuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day, forced to kneel on the ground, motionless for most of the day, raped and sexually assaulted and tortured daily, which leaves the released prisoners with enormous trauma. Sick prisoners are crammed in naked, equipped with diapers, on beds without mattresses or blankets, in military airplane hangars and warehouses and without any medical care. In all cases, isolation reigns, in prisons as in military detention centers, and the Zionist regime aims to cut off the Palestinian prisoners — and their collective movement — from the outside world.
No colonial entity is invincible, and neither are any of its prisons and detention centers:
Beyond the heroic prison uprisings, many stories of escapes from colonial prisons also fuel resistance and demonstrate the resilience of prisoners. In Palestine, to cite a recent example, we recall the “Freedom Tunnel” operation, where six Palestinian prisoners freed themselves from the Zionist-occupied Gilboa high-security prison by digging a tunnel using a spoon. The six Palestinians – Mahmoud al-Ardah, Mohammed al-Ardah, Yaqoub Qadri, Ayham Kamamji, Munadil Nafa’at and Zakaria Zubaidi – became Palestinian, Arab and international symbols of Palestinian resistance and the will for freedom. While they were all rearrested, their escape exposed the weaknesses under the colonial myth of “impenetrable Israeli security”, plunging the occupation’s prison system into an internal crisis.
In France, the CRAs (Administrative Detention Centres) represent an ultra-violent manifestation of racism and the management of exiles. People are locked up in terrible and therefore deadly conditions. Thus, faced with colonial management of populations, particularly from former French colonies, resistance is being organized. For example, on the night of Friday 21 to Saturday 22 June 2024, 14 people held at the CRA in Vincennes managed to escape (only one person has been re-arrested since). This follows the escape of 11 detainees in December from this same place of confinement! However, these detention centres are often recent and very well equipped.
From Palestine to the Hegaxone and the colonial prisons in Kanaky, the resistance fighters fight day by day within the prison system itself, and the escapes and uprisings in the prisons are events that weaken the colonial propaganda and its myth of invincibility and total superiority!
“Glory to our martyrs and freedom for our prisoners”
Despite the tightening of detention conditions and the security arsenal that is deployed against liberation movements, it is clear that the resistance is not stopping and that, on the contrary, organizing is becoming even more vigorous. In Kanaky, new blockades in solidarity with the prisoners have spread well beyond Noumea since 23 June, demanding their immediate release and repatriation to Kanaky, since “touching one of them is touching everyone”. In mainland France, numerous gatherings have also taken place since Monday at the call of the MKF (Kanak Movement in France), and among others led by the Collectif Solidarité Kanaky in front of the Ministry of Justice in Paris, and also in front of the prisons where the activists are still incarcerated. Their prison numbers have been made public so that it is possible to write to them and so that broad and massive support can be communicated to them in order to provide them with the strength necessary for this fight from metropolitan France. From now on, tributes to the Kanak martyrs who fell under the bullets of the colonial militias and the French State are joined by banners for the freedom of the prisoners.
Marah Bakir, a representative of Palestinian women prisoners, arrested at the age of 15 by the colonial army and imprisoned for 8 years, made these comments during her first interview given upon her release on 24 November 2023:
“It is very difficult to feel freedom and to be liberated in exchange for the blood of the martyrs of Gaza and the great sacrifices of our people in the Gaza Strip.”
Stéphanie Nassaie Doouka, 17, and Chrétien Neregote, 36, shot in the head on 20 May by a business manager
Djibril Saïko Salo, 19, shot in the back on 15 May by loyalist settlers at a roadblock
Dany Tidjite, 48, killed by an off-duty police officer who tried to impose a roadblock
Joseph Poulawa, 34, killed on 28 May by two bullets in the chest and shoulder by the GIGN (the elite police tactical unit of the National Gendarmerie of France)
Lionel Païta, 26, killed on 3 June by a bullet to the head by a police officer at a roadblock
Victorin Rock Wamytan, known as “Banane”, 38 years old, father of two children, killed on 10 July by a shot in the chest by the GIGN on customary lands
In Kanaky, the names of these martyrs, just like the 19 of the Ouvéa cave, will remain forever in the memory of the activists and people, and as one could read on another banner in Noumea: “The fight must not cease for lack of a leader or fighters, this direction remains forever. Kanaky”
From Kanaky to Palestine, Glory to the resistance and glory to the martyrs!
On Saturday, July 13, 2024, members and former members of Samidoun chapters across Europe participated in a webinar organized by the Anti-Repression Committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement. Comrades from Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Catalonia and the Netherlands discussed examples of state repression targeting the Palestinian liberation movement, especially the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and the Masar Badil, and in particular open political support for the Palestinian armed resistance.
The conversation addressed various local examples of repression as well as common reasons and strategies for challenging repression. The conversation was led by Thomas Hofland of Samidoun Netherlands; Zaid Abdulnasser, formerly of Samidoun Germany (prior to the ban imposed on Samidoun) spoke about the severe repression targeting Palestinians in Germany, while Mohammed Khatib, coordinator of Samidoun in Europe, discussed the situation in Belgium as well as his own case, as he has been targeted by the Belgian minister of immigration, attempting to remove his asylum status (despite being born a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon) due to his political activity.
Adel of Samidoun Paris discussed the battle against various forms of repression in France and the popular mobilization there, while Judit of Samidoun in the Spanish State and the Masar Badil discussed multiple situations in Spain, connecting repressive actions to the arms trade with the Zionist regime. Mariam of Samidoun Barcelona spoke about repression in Catalonia, including the surveillance and arrest of multiple activists, while Lyra of Samidoun Netherlands spoke about the increasing right-wing repression in the Netherlands, especially the attacks on the student encampments for Palestine.
A lively discussion followed their initial presentations, about the reasons and interests behind this repression, their connection to repression against other movements, and how we can build a movement to confront and challenge it as part and parcel of our organizing for the liberation of Palestine.
Today, July 16, 2024, Samidoun’s Europe coordinator, Mohammed Khatib, has been called for a hearing before the Belgian asylum office, after he – a Palestinian refugee born in Ein el Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon – has been targeted for political repression, with the Belgian Minister of Immigration, Nicole de Moor, seeking to withdraw his refugee status in the country due to his activism and organizing for Palestinian liberation.
Of course, Mohammed’s case is not unique – there are dozens of cases in neighbouring Germany, where Palestinians and supporters of Palestine face daily police violence, severe repression, political bans, and numerous attempts to strip residency status or impose deportation, often times upon Palestinian refugees who, like Mohammed, have been denied their right to return to their homeland, Palestine, since birth.
The asylum office has refused to provide Mohammed and his lawyer with evidence and documentation as to why the asylum office is seeking to withdraw his residency and status, despite numerous requests and filings with the court. Instead, the Belgian government has insisted that they do not need to turn over the files from the “state security” office, creating a form of “secret evidence” akin to that used to hold Palestinians under administrative detention in occupied Palestine. 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.”
The allegations against Mohammed read like Zionist propaganda or a statement from NGO Monitor or the Zionist ambassador to Belgium, showing no regard for fundamental principles of human rights or international law and instead seeking to criminalize Palestinian existence, resistance and organizing.
They include his status as the European coordinator of Samidoun, citing that the Zionist regime labels Samidoun a “terrorist organization,” something that has no legal status or meaning in Belgium. Further, they target his role in the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, labeling it an “extremist organization” because of its clear position on the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea and the legitimacy of the Palestinian armed resistance forces.
They cite his public speeches and activities about Palestinian armed struggle – a right recognized by the United Nations for people under colonization and specifically the Palestinian people – as a reason to strip him, a stateless Palestinian refugee, of his protection in Belgium. Perhaps most egregiously, they state, on the basis of no evidence at all, that he “calls to target Jews around the world,” despite the fact that Mohammed has never spoken of “Jews” as the enemy but only Zionism, imperialism and colonialism, and they are unable to produce even a single statement to back up this charge, which relies entirely on the conflation of Judaism and Zionism.
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.
Mohammed has received widespread support in Belgium and internationally. Over 250 academics wrote an open letter denouncing the targeting of refugee status on the basis of political activity: “In this case, Nicole de Moor’s announcement is targeted at delegitimizing the Palestinian struggle and support for Palestine in Belgium. In Belgium, everyone, refugee or not, Palestinian or not, must be free to express themselves and to organize, must be free to defend the Palestine cause, the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their land, or to denounce the genocide in Gaza.”
The Plate-forme Charleroi-Palestine declared, “These attacks should seriously worry all those who carry out militant political and social work, who oppose imperialism and challenge capitalism; all those who fight for new rights or the defense of acquired rights; all those who oppose austerity. These attacks against Samidoun today are part of the current and future attacks against all these social movements, they carry the violence of censorship, and aim to make us accept resignation as normality.”
Bruxelles Pantheres issued a strong statement in solidarity with Mohammed calling for escalating the movement for Palestinian liberation in order to confront repression. Een Andere Joodse Stern (Another Jewish Voice) issued a statement, No to the political silencing of Palestinian refugees! In the statement, they note that Mohammed’s case presents a “template for racial discrimination against refugees” and note that it seems to be responsive to the comments of the Israeli ambassador to Belgium amid the genocide in Gaza.
The Union des Progressistes Juifs de Belgique issued a statement in support of Mohammed, noting that “This smear campaign does not only target him personally; it endangers freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of association for everyone in Belgium.” The Association Belgo-Palestine penned an open letter to de Moor noting that the attack on Mohammed is an attempt to criminalize solidarity with Palestine.
LABO vzw, the Centre for Critical Citizenship, issued a statement of support for Mohammed: “Currently Israel is committing genocide in Palestine. It is crucial that we can continue to express our support for Palestine in Belgium and organize for it. These rights must be protected. As LABO, we therefore condemn the application to revoke Mohammed Khatib’s refugee status and express our support for Mohammed and Samidoun.”
Belgium wants to strip refugee status from Palestinian political leader Mohammed Khatib
Born in the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon, Mohammed has been a refugee his entire life. Recently, on April 15th, 2024, Belgoum’s Secretary for Asylum and Migration, Nicole De Moor,… pic.twitter.com/T7kixBhK75
Lotta Basel in Switzerland released a statement in support of Mohammed, who was nearly simultaneously targeted by Swiss authorities, who issued a 10-year travel ban against him, seemingly at the request of the Zionist regime. Over 20 Swiss organizations issued a joint statement denouncing this form of silencing targeted at the entire Palestinian movement in Switzerland and Europe.
The Front d’action revolutionnaire issued a statement in solidarity with Mohammed and Samidoun, labeling the attacks as ones upon “the entirety of the revolutionary camp.” Leiden for Palestine urged support for Mohammed drawing attention from the Netherlands to this disturbing action in Belgium.
Mohammed participated in and spoke at student encampments for Palestine throughout Belgium and the Netherlands following the announcement by de Moor, refusing to be silent alongside his comrades in Samidoun Brussels, Samidoun Belgium, the Plate-forme Charleroi-Palestine, ZIN TV, the Popular Committee for Palestine, the Masar Badil and other organizations and movements subjected to repression.
Let us be clear: No matter what the decision of the asylum office hearing on July 16, Mohammed Khatib and Samidoun will not stop nor silence our work for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners, and to build the widest possible for support for the struggle of the Palestinian people, led by the armed resistance, until liberation and return.
TAKE ACTION:
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.
Sign on to the campaign in support of Mohammed.Click here or use the form below to add your support!
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.
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 [email protected] to plan an event.
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.
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.
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The following article is republished from Monsour Owolabi, a New Afrikan prisoner being held in Texas, which has been laid out into a zine for easy republishing.
“International solidarity must not cease or slacken, even in prisons, because a ceasefire is not even the tip of the iceberg in bringing a solution to this conflict.”
#LongLivethePalestinianPeople
#FreePalestine
—Monsour Owolabi
Ferguson Unit
Texas “Department of Correctional Justice”
When thinking about the connections between amerikkkan prisons and the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people at the hands of ‘israel,’ there’s a list of parallels that come to mind.
Both the ‘israeli’ occupation of Palestine and the human rights violations that fuel prison resistance and abolitionist praxis are fueled by gigantic industrial complexes [the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex]. These complexes and their profitability prevent human decency and human interests in equality and justice
from taking precedence over corporate and capitalist-imperialist interests.
The role of the police and military, i.e. prison guard or “security force” as an occupying army. A mad-dog, militarized force utilized to be sicced on oppressed people, confined people, unbroken people, exploited people, and anyone on the wrong side of imperialist hegemony.
The usage of these agents of repression to instill terror in the people is the same in both instances.
In both instances, the enemy has demonized struggle, and de-regulated and criminalized self-defense. ‘israel’ screams, “Defend ‘israel’s’ right to exist,” and many run with that notion, never understanding that under international treaties and standards a nation does NOT have the right to defend itself against the attacks by a nation or people it is currently occupying or colonizing. In amerikkkan prisons, and on amerikkkan streets, a person cannot defend themselves from police attack, and in events where state agents attack the people, official law protects those agents with “qualified immunity.”
In a Texas town, police attempted to kill a man after his legal advocacy not only helped get one man off death row but exposed deliberate corruption in the local police force.
When an officer of that same police force went to kill this man, he happened to wrestle the weapon from the officer and shot his would-be assassin. The man who defended his life was arrested and sentenced to fifty years in Texas prison. That man has spent the last two decades in a u.s. torture chamber. He is political prisoner Alvaro Luna Hernandez, aka Xinachtli, a person denied the right to defend his right to life, similar to the denial of the Palestinian resistance as a legitimate liberation movement defending millions of lives.
In Florida, Othal Wallace is fighting the empire’s “legal” killing machine (death row) after courageously defending himself when an officer attempted to shoot him. After a quick tussle Othal “Ozone” Wallace killed the officer in self-defense. His defense of his life is considered illegitimate, much like those countless Palestinians who’ve lost life, liberty, limb, and safety at the hands of settler-colonialism prior to October 7th. To those people who
support ‘israel,’ those people do not matter. The Palestinian people are now fighting death row at the hands of ‘israel’s’ “legal” killing machines.
Those captive in u.s. prisons and the Palestinian people are stateless human beings with no instrument of governance in existence that maintains, protects, or provides basic rights. Neither can vote for people who make decisions each day that dictate their lives. Both are second-class citizens at best. Both experience a separate and unequal existence in comparison to the rest of the amerikkkan/‘israeli’ populace.
In both experiences the power structure maintains a monopoly on the propaganda and thus warps the public opinion in its own favor.
Gaza has often been called an open-air prison. Palestinians there understand the meaning of a confined existence. They understand being born a suspect. They know what it means to be designated a “security threat group” or “terrorist.”
They understand the reality of living under constant surveillance. They know how it feels to be abducted from your community, held captive, and ripped apart from your family. They also know the “fire inside” that rages and plots victory over one’s enemies.
If observing the Palestinian struggles against ‘israeli’ domination doesn’t inspire you as a revolutionary, you may be another species other than human. I listened to a woman learn of her husband’s death, and begin to exclaim and shout as if a miracle had happened. She was proud. She was joyful. Her understanding of the liberation struggle of her people made her proud that her husband died for such a worthy cause. She could not bring herself to selfish self-pity.
Instead, in the midst of enemy onslaught, she compelled her neighbors, her friends to join her to break bread, sharing what would have been her husband’s portion. What a person! What a fighter!
When taking mental notes of the Palestinian liberation war I am being reminded of our need over here to intensify the struggle, intensify the contradictions. I am reminded there
is no commonality between the imperialists and the people, between the enemy state, between the empire and its revolutionary subjects.
International solidarity must not cease or slacken, even in prisons, because a ceasefire is not even the tip of the iceberg in bringing a solution to this conflict.
May the fighting spirit of the Palestinian people become the fighting spirit of freedom fighters everywhere.
We recommend checking out the zine collection at True Leap Press for more zines to print for your event, including this one — as well as Our Narrative, by the Palestinian Resistance on 7 October — and many more.
Saturday, July 13 8 pm Robson Square, south side Vancouver Art Gallery
** Note: We are gathering at 8 pm to reach a new crowd downtown and to provide some relief from the heat. We urge all to come and make this a MASSIVE evening march for Palestine. We also plan to conclude the evening with a night vigil for the martyrs of Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and all those who struggle for liberation.
As the Lancet released its study indicating that up to 186,000 people will be killed due to the effects of the Zionist genocide in Gaza; as UN experts declare that famine has spread throughout Gaza; as occupation forces invade and assault Tulkarem and Jenin; as they bomb and assassinate in the south of Lebanon; and, as the heroic people and resistance continue to struggle for a liberated Palestine and the defeat of Zionism….WE WILL NOT STOP. WE MUST NOT REST!
Join us to raise our voices in a mass evening rally, march and vigil for the martyrs in downtown Vancouver. Express your outrage at the massacre of children playing football in a school field in Gaza; stand together with fellow community members targeted for doxing and harassment; confront the Canadian government’s complicity with genocide, including their latest appointment of an extreme Zionist and their ongoing arms trade with the genocidal regime.
***ENDORSEMENTS WELCOME! Please email [email protected] with your group name and logo to endorse this rally.***
We know it has been nine months of genocide. Let us take this moment to come together, with our unity and our strength, inspired by the powerful steadfastness and resistance of the Palestinian people in Gaza, throughout Palestine and everywhere in exile in diaspora. Let us make it clear to all the politicians and complicit companies that our movement is bigger and stronger and clearer than ever. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
**
The amazing activists at @vanbike4palestine will be joining us this Saturday July 13 for the evening rally, march and vigil for the martyrs.
To join the bike rally, gather at 6 pm at Science World.
The #VanBike4Palestine ride will join us at 8 pm at Robson Square. Come out and join us!
WEBINAR: Repression against Palestine in Europe.
A deeper look into the repressive apparatus and strategies of confrontation (Languages: English and Spanish)
Ever since the 7th of October, repression against the pro-Palestine movement in Europe has taken new levels. From banning demonstrations in multiple countries, the prosecution of activists, the media smear campaigns, up to the criminalization of organisations and slogans. The “anti-repression committee” of the Alternative Palestinian Revolutionary Path Movement is organizing this panel, where activists from multiple European countries will share their experiences and analysis of how the repressive apparatus cracks down on the pro-Palestine movement, what goals they try to achieve, and how to fight back ✊🏾
Samidoun NY/NJ is set to study part 1 of the PFLP document “Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine” this Friday, July 5th. The purpose of the event is to examine the history and practice of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – which is the leftist, revolutionary arm of the Palestinian resistance. The document outlines the PFLP’s analysis of the colonization of Palestine, including an analysis of the enemies that threaten to eliminate the existence and resistance of the Palestinian people, in Palestine and abroad. The writing off of any organization that dares lift the veil of obscurity from the masses eyes as terrorists is a tired move that is played time and time again but will not shame us into admission. In the face of recent events, we urge everyone who can make it out to come and take part in the study of this foundational work.
Over the past few days, Zionists have unleashed a campaign of threats, intimidation, and harassment in response to our planned July 5th study of the PFLP’s Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine. These threats and accusations are coming from far-right-wing publications with ties to the notoriously racist organization, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League). Zionists have written articles about our planned study session, published violent threats against our members and community online, and sent dozens of emails to Mayday Space in Brooklyn, which is a community center and organizing space and a long-time partner and supporter of Samidoun. Their intentions are clear: to attempt to scare us into canceling our study session and deter us from organizing more educational sessions in the future. They have attempted to manufacture public opinion against Samidoun and falsely paint us as an arm of the PFLP, to mobilize violent Zionist provocateurs against our event, and to defame Mayday Space and intimidate them into ending their relationship with Samidoun. Unfortunately for them, it is too late. Over the past 10 months, the Palestinian resistance has proved to the world that the Palestinian people will not be defeated, and the Palestinian people and their supporters in the international community have shown that they will not stop fighting for liberation. The masses of people from New York to Palestine are on our side – and we are well on our way to liberation.
We are here to say that we will not be intimidated, we stand firmly on the side of the heroic Palestinian resistance forces. We are not going anywhere. Like all Zionist lies, these types of accusations will be remembered for what they are – a desperate attempt to crush any resistance against the murderous colonial regime – whether it is physical resistance or, in our case, ideological resistance.
Samidoun Network’s purpose is to campaign for the release of Palestinian political prisoners. Our primary tool is political education. Our work involves hosting teach-ins and study sessions in the New York/New Jersey area, to mobilize the Palestinian, Arab, and working masses in support of Palestinian prisoners, resistance, and liberation. As the Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton, famously said, “The first duty of a revolutionary is to learn.” Revolutionary learning has been our primary purpose as organizers, and we would not be able to carry out our work without the support of community partners like Mayday Space who provide us with the space and resources to share our message with the people of New York City. The Zionists are trying to punish Mayday Space for offering this critical support by harassing, intimidating, and mischaracterizing them.
We are asking all supporters of Samidoun and of the greater Palestinian liberation movement and prisoners movement to help us as we show our enemies that we will not stop organizing and studying Palestinian revolutionary theory and history and we will not fold in the face of threats and intimidation. Follow Samidoun NY/NJ on Telegram and twitter, follow @MaydaySpace on Instagram, and show up at Mayday Space tomorrow at 7pm, bring your friends and comrades.
On Monday, 1 July, Hadeel Shatara, Palestinian educator and an administrator of the graduate program at Birzeit University, was seized by occupation forces as she returned to Palestine from Jordan at the Karameh crossing. She is currently being held incommunicado under interrogation, and her family and lawyer have not been informed of her location. We raise our voices to say: Free Hadeel Shatara and all Palestinian prisoners now!
The abduction of Hadeel Shatara is part and parcel of the systematic attack on Palestinian education by the Zionist occupation regime. She joins six Birzeit University women students – Yara Abu Hashish, Layan Kayed, Shahd Owaida, Mona Abu Hussein, and Wafa Nimr – and hundreds of Palestinian male students – seized by the occupation. Students, particularly throughout the West Bank of occupied Palestine, have been subjected to mass arrest, while Palestinian student blocs are labeled “illegal organizations.”
In Gaza, every single university has been systematically destroyed by the occupation forces as part of their genocidal assault on every aspect of Palestinian life and society. University administrators have been targeted for assassination and kidnapped with fellow civilians, especially health care workers, and subjected to extreme forms of torture and abuse in the concentration camps for Palestinians from Gaza operated by the occupation forces.
This attack on Hadeel Shatara and Palestinian education is happening as university students are rising up around the world in a global student intifada to confront the genocide and resist Zionism and imperialism. Around the world, and particularly in the United States – the heart of the imperial core and the co-sponsor of the genocide, supplier of billions of dollars in bombs and weaponry to the Zionist regime – students have been beaten and arrested by police in an attempt to suppress this growing international movement with the liberation of Palestine at the core.
We urge all to demand freedom for Hadeel Shatara and all Palestinian students and educators – and all of the over 10,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Zionist jails – and to include the liberation of the prisoners in all campaigns for Palestinian liberation and an end to the genocide. We further emphasize the urgency of a complete academic boycott of all Zionist institutions, which are fully complicit in the all-out assault on Palestinian education and 76 years of genocide targeting the Palestinian people as a whole.
Free Hadeel Shatara and all Palestinian prisoners! Defend Palestinians’ right to education! From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network reiterates our strongest solidarity with Muslim Abuumar, the Palestinian scholar who was deported from Brazil with his family despite holding a valid visa to visit his brother, who has lived in Brazil for many years. This case is particularly concerning because it involves the interference of the U.S. Embassy, and reportedly the U.S. State Department, in Brazilian policing and immigration systems.
The Palestinian resistance organizations are neither criminalized nor labeled as “terrorists” in Brazil, and yet the U.S. has, once again, sought to apply its domestic repressive legislation and “terror list” on the international scene. Of course, the U.S. is also providing billions of dollars in funding to the Zionist regime currently carrying out a genocide in Gaza, and has always served as the long-term imperialist sponsor of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine. We condemn in the strongest terms this U.S. interference in Brazilian and Palestinian affairs and urge Brazil to reverse this decision and immediately welcome back Muslim Abuumar and his family, as well as to cut all diplomatic, military and trade ties with the Zionist regime.
*Press Statement on the Unfortunate Decision of the Brazilian Federal Police to Ban Me from Entering the Country*
I have just arrived at my home in Kuala Lumpur after an unsuccessful family trip, to visit my brother in Brazil, that was unfortunately hindered by Zionist intervention, clearly due to my academic activities in support of the Palestinian struggle.
This arduous journey included an unjust decision by the Federal Police to prevent my entry into Brazil issued upon the orders of an imperialist foreign country that actively sponsors the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. Upon my arrival at Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo on Friday (June 21, 2024) evening, several police officers approached me at the entrance of the airport and took me, together with my family, for interrogation. The questions centered on my political views and academic activities in support of the Palestinian cause. I was questioned about speaking at international academic conferences on Palestine, my participation in international forums organized by international think-tanks, and my views on the ongoing war in Gaza. I was very clear in stating that as an academic, and as a Palestinian, I believe Israel is an apartheid regime that is committing a genocide in Gaza and should be brought to justice, and that this goes in line with international law and the position of the Brazilian government itself.
After the interrogation session, in which no lawyer nor translator were provided, the security officials at the airport informed me of the Federal Police’s decision to prevent me and my family from entering the country and to immediately deport us abroad.
I rejected the deportation order and asked for clarifications on the reason of the ban, especially since I have a valid multiple-entry visa, and I have visited the country previously without any problems. Furthermore, I have never broken any Brazilian laws, and I know well that the Brazilian government does not view Palestinian resistance as a terrorism. By then it was very clear the orders have come from outside the country, from a foreign imperialist power that has a long dark history of meddling in other countries’ affairs.
Over the next 48 hours, with the help of esteemed Palestinian activists, especially the head of the Brazil Palestine Institute, Dr. Ahmed Shehada, I fought a legal battle against the unjust police decision. Meanwhile, several Brazilian parliamentarians and activists fought a tough political and media battle against the influential Zionist lobby in Brazil. This war of narratives is still on.
The 48-hour-period included our forced detention inside the airport hotel, and the issuance of a hastily prepared judicial order confirming the police’s ban and immediate deportation outside the country. The police had submitted a set of fabricated allegations of supporting terrorism, due to my academic activity in support of the Palestinian cause and my clear position in support of Palestinian rights and denouncing the terrorist Zionist occupation of Palestine.
Unfortunately, my defense lawyer was not given enough time to refute these baseless accusations and allegations, which simply violate the Brazilian Constitution itself, which stipulates that Brazil respects international law, and the Brazilian law which does not view Palestinian resistance as terrorism.
For me and the Brazilian activists who support Palestinian rights, the battle is not over yet, and we will continue the legal pursuit to nullify this unjust decision and demand apology and compensation. I am absolutely certain that justice will prevail in the end.
