All Palestinian prisoners jailed by Israel are political prisoners, jailed for being Palestinian – existing and resisting against Israel’s ethnic cleansing and military occupation of Palestine.
We will stand in support of the nearly 6000 Palestinians security detainees and prisoners being held in Israel Prison Service (IPS) facilities, including 310 from the Gaza Strip. Over 200 are Palestinian children.
This is also in response to a call from Samidoun for a week of international demonstrations on the 10th anniversary of the Israeli sentencing of Ahmad Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Sa’adat was sentenced to 30 years in prison, convicted in an Israeli military court of leading a prohibited organization and “incitement.” He has stood strong as a major Palestinian liberation leader from Israeli jails, as have many others before him.
He stands alongside nearly 6,000 fellow Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails on the front lines of the liberation struggle. As such, he is a symbol of Palestinian, Arab and internationalist resistance to capitalism, racism, apartheid and colonization.
Supported by Manchester Palestine Action Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign Manchester Jewish Action for Palestine University of Manchester BDS Campaign
Join the Manchester protest called by Manchester Boycott Israel Group – Victory to Palestine! and Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI) Manchester as part of an international week of action called by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
“The Palestinian people are determined to continue the intifada for all of the national rights of our people. This position is naturally consistent with the struggle of all progressive global forces confronting global imperial arrogance and struggling for independence, self-determination and liberation, for social justice, equality and socialism, based on a fair distribution of the wealth and human principles of peace, rejection of war, imperialism and all forms of oppression and exploitation…” – Ahmad Sa’adat
Today, we remember the 10th anniversary of the Israeli sentencing of prominent Palestinian national liberation and international left leader Ahmad Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. We urge you to join us for an International Week of Action between 15 and 22 January 2019 to free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners!
On 15 January 2019, we will mark the 17th anniversary of Sa’adat’s arrest by the Palestinian Authority in the context of “security cooperation” with the Israeli occupation. After a violent attack on the PA’s Jericho prison in 2006, where Sa’adat was held under United States and British guards, Ahmad Sa’adat and his comrades are serving lengthy sentences in Israeli prisons. Sa’adat was sentenced to 30 years in prison, convicted in an Israeli military court of leading a prohibited organization and “incitement.”
Sa’adat is a leader in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and the Palestinian national liberation movement. He is a figure of international importance and political clarity, targeted behind bars in an attempt to isolate him from his political role. He stands alongside nearly 6,000 fellow Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails on the front lines of the liberation struggle. As such, he is a symbol of Palestinian, Arab and internationalist resistance to capitalism, racism, apartheid and colonization.
The case of Ahmad Sa’adat also clearly highlights the complicity of international powers in the occupation and colonization of Palestine. He and his comrades were held for years under U.S. and British guards in a Palestinian Authority prison – and those guards moved away in a prearranged agreement to allow the Israeli occupation army to attack Jericho prison in 2006. The support of the United States, Britain, Canada, the European Union, Australia and others for the Israeli colonial project continues to perpetuate its impunity as it carries out land confiscations, home demolitions, mass imprisonment, extrajudicial executions, the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, the siege on Gaza and further crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The Palestinian Authority kidnapped Sa’adat under false pretenses and imprisoned him for four years before its prison was attacked by the Israeli occupation. This is part and parcel of the policy of “security coordination” that has led to the repeated imprisonment of Palestinians for their political involvement by the PA. Despite critical words, the policy remains firmly in place – with devastating and deadly consequences for Palestinians, as seen in the case of Basil al-Araj.
On 15-22 January 2019, join us in a collective call for the freedom of Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian Prisoners. Join us to build the global grassroots campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions from Israel and complicit corporations. Join us to fight for an end to aid and support for the Israeli occupation that has been confiscating land and lives for over 70 years.
We urge you to organize events, actions and protests in cities, campuses, communities, towns, campuses and all other public spaces. When we raise our voices, we can help to break the Israeli isolation of Ahmad Sa’adat and his fellow Palestinian prisoners. Free Ahmad Sa’adat! Free all Palestinian Prisoners! Free Palestine!
January 15 to 22 is an international week of action for the immediate release of Ahmad Sa’adat – general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – and all Palestinian prisoners. Sa’adat was arrested by the Palestinian Authority on January 15, 2002 and imprisoned under American and British surveillance. After a violent attack in 2006, he was abducted by the occupation forces. He is currently serving a sentence of 30 years in an Israeli prison.
We call for a demonstration and open mic in front of the Obelisco in Buenos Aires. At the same time, we will denounce the growing link between the national government and provincial governments with the Israeli terrorist state, in support of its genocidal policies towards the Palestinian people and the adoption of its program, methods and armaments for use in the internal repression against our peoples.
Organized by ILPS Argentina
Del 15 al 22 de Enero- En el marco de la semana de acción internacional por la inmediata libertad de Ahmad Sa’adat- secretario general del Frente Popular de Liberación de Palestina, arrestado por la autoridad palestina el 15 de enero de 2002 y encarcelado bajo vigilancia americana y británica. Después de un ataque violento en 2006, fue secuestrado por las fuerzas de ocupación. Cumple actualmente una pena de 30 años en una prisión israelí – y por la libertad de todos los presos políticos palestinos!! , convocamos a una concentración y radio abierta frente al obelisco en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Al mismo tiempo , denunciaremos el creciente vínculo entre el gobierno nacional y gobiernos provinciales con el estado terrorista israelí , en el apoyo a sus políticas genocidas para con el pueblo palestino y la adquisición del programa, métodos y armamento sionista en la represión interna contra nuestros pueblos.
** Please note, we have an evening event on 13 January as well, Palestinian Prisoners and the Struggle for Liberation, at 6 pm at Reuterstr. 15 in Berlin, and we hope you will be able to join us for both. We will also have postcards to distribute about Ahmad Sa’adat and the Palestinian prisoners at the LLL-March as well as a large banner for the prisoners as part of this block! **
Palästina im Internationalistischen Block wir treffen uns zur LL-Demo vor dem Laden Humana um 9:45 gemeinsam und entschlossen erheben wir unsere Stimmen gegen den Faschismus, so wie es unsere beiden Genoss*innen Luxemburg und Liebknecht vor uns taten. فلسطين في الكتلة الأممية أمام متجر Humana الساعة 9:45 صباحا نرفع معا أصواتنا ضد الفاشية ، تماما مثلما فعل رفاقنا لوكسمبورغ وليبكنشت من قبلنا
Palestine in the Internationalist Block We meet for the LL demo in front of the shop Humana at 9:45 Together and resolutely we raise our voices against Fascism, just as our two comrades Luxemburg and Liebknecht did before us.
Special projection of a film that highlights life in Gaza through images and drawings, including occupation violence and the courage of the Palestinian people.
Tickets: single admission for 5 EUR (+1 EUR for the organizers)
Discussion after the screening led by Hisham Abu Shahla, a political scientist who conducts research on Palestine and was part of the film’s work team.
Description: In the rural outskirts of Gaza, the Samouni family is about to celebrate a wedding. This is the first party since the last war. Amal, Fouad, their brothers and their cousins ??have lost their parents, their homes and their olive trees. The neighborhood where they live is under reconstruction. They replant trees and plow fields, but a more difficult task still lies with these young survivors: rebuilding their own memoy. Through their memories, Samouni Road has a portrait of this family before, during and after the event that changed their lives forever.
Projection unique d’un film unique qui évoque en images et dessins la vie à Gaza, la violence, le courage des Palestiniens. Billet: tarif unique à 5€ (+1€ pour les assoc’ organisatrices)
Samouni Road, un film de Stefano Savona (Prix du Meilleur documentaire au Festival de Cannes 2018) France, Italie – 2018 – durée 2h08 – VOSTFR
?? Débat, à l’issue de la projection, animé par Hisham Abu Shahla, chercheur en sciences politiques qui effectue ses recherches sur la question palestinienne et a fait partie de l’équipe de travail du film.
Dans la périphérie rurale de la ville de #Gaza, la famille Samouni s’apprête à célébrer un mariage. C’est la première fête depuis la dernière guerre. Amal, Fouad, leurs frères et leurs cousins ont perdu leurs parents, leurs maisons et leurs oliviers. Le quartier où ils habitent est en reconstruction. Ils replantent des arbres et labourent les champs, mais une tâche plus difficile encore incombe à ces jeunes survivants : reconstruire leur propre mémoire. Au fil de leurs souvenirs, Samouni Road dresse un portrait de cette famille avant, pendant et après l’événement qui a changé leur vie à jamais.
The experiences of revolutionary strugglers behind bars constitute one of the most important sources of moral strength from which peoples’ movements and liberation forces derive a renewable source of indestructible revolutionary energy, both inside and outside the prison walls. They constitute a revolutionary school of both politics and ethics, from which spring creativity and inspiration. The stories and experiences of these strugglers affect the entire society, as their words and messages escape prison in those secret messages smuggled into open space, reaching the squares, streets, schools, alleys and cafes, from the cells that were intended to serve as narrow boxes of silence and isolation.
In the olden times, it was said: Ideas have wings, they cannot be locked in iron cages and they do not need a passport!
There are exceptional examples, in which prisoners become daily workers who carry on their shoulders the national cause, and also carry the burden of their roles as icons, symbols and “generals of patience.” Those who are imprisoned for lengthy periods of years and decades, become in the eyes of the people models of a moral compass that points to the value of freedom and the virtues of steadfastness, sacrifice and altruism.
The names and experiences are numerous; they are not limited to Nelson Mandela, Mumia Abu Jamal, Larbi Ben M’hidi, Georges Abdallah, Oscar Lopez Rivera and Ahmad Sa’adat, or the imprisoned struggler Karim Younis, who today enters his 37th year in the prisons of the Zionist colonizer.
“The prisoners are part of the resistance struggle,” says former prisoner Ahmad Abu Saud. “They do not spare any chance or opportunity to communicate with each struggler to provide them with the means and knowledge to continue the struggle. Today, for example, the struggler Karim Younis enters his 37th year in occupation prisons. He has not stopped one day from continuing his cultural, revolutionary and academic pursuits. There is no limit to the studies, lectures and cultural contributions produced by this leader in the education of the imprisoned strugglers over his years and decades behind bars.”
Charlotte Kates, international coordinator of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network believes that “the imprisoned leaders in Israeli jails, like Karim Younis, Khalida Jarrar, Ahmad Sa’adat, Nael Barghouthi and many other fighters against Zionism and occupation, have an influence that extends throughout the Palestinian and Arab movement and beyond, to the international struggle against colonialism, imperialism and racism. They are revolutionaries and leaders in an international movement struggling for a global alternative, for social justice and national and social liberation.”
In the beginning, the word was “freedom”
Each prisoner has a story to tell, and each story is another stone in the construction of the castle of the experience of struggle of the prisoners’ movement. The lessons learned by these prisoners converge and interact within the framework of the national liberation movement and in confrontation of a common enemy, like streams of water that come from all sides and flow together toward the river. From the first moment inside the prison, the fighters enter a new battlefield that affects their life, that of their family and that of their village, neighborhood, factory, camp and city.
The documented writen word of the creative strugglers, the writers and intellectuals behind bars, remains a witness to the history and struggles of the Palestinian people. Their literary, cultural, political, academic and artistic contributions are highly important on the “outside,” especially for the front ranks of the active Palestinian youth. This is especially true if their works of creativity and innovative concepts are made available, taken seriously and exposed to criticism outside the prison, beyond the appeal of sympathy or formal solidarity.
From within the colonial British prisons which have become the Zionist prisons, the poem “From Akka Prison,” written in charcoal on the walls of the cell, has been engraved with its timeless words in the memory of the people. The Palestinian and Arab library today includes dozens of novels, short story collections, poems, cartoons, visual art pieces, political studies, translations and important articles that have been issued from inside the prisons. There, these strugglers had the opportunity to study the colonial entity closely and learned its language, conditions and contradictions.
The novel, “The Secret of Oil,” issued last year by the prisoner Walid Daqqa, aroused the anger of the Zionist security agencies, who met his creative production with punishment and solitary confinement. This novel has been widely distributed among children and youth and is a living example of the need to move beyond the “symbolic relationship” with iconic prisoners to a deeper, closer relationship between the reader and the writer. The prisoner in this case is a creative human first and also a writer and a struggler.
Palestinian memory has cherished the martyrs of the prisoners’ movement since the martyrs of Akka prison in the 1920s and 1930s to the martyr Ibrahim al-Rai, who manifested the slogan “confession is betrayal” into a position written in blood. It is an example of the combination of the combination between consciousness and will in the dungeons of torture. The story of Al-Rai, who decided to stand firm until his last breath, is astonishingly similar to the experience of the Algerian fighter and martyr Larbi Ben M’hidi, in their resistance, sacrifices and extraordinary challenges presented to the colonial torturers and murderers. They became a revolutionary compass and a shining page in the history and conscience of their people.
Samidoun Gothenburg proudly presents an audio recording of our panel talk ”Imperialism and International Solidarity”. The panel was organized on September 15 2018 as part of the radical book fair ”Radikal Bokmässa” in Gothenburg, Sweden, hosted by the local radical book shop and popular educators Syndikalistiskt Forum. Participating in the panel are Charlotte Kates from Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and Torkil Lauesen from Internationalt Forum. Aside from the efforts of individual comrades in the struggle, the panel was made possible through the support of the international solidarity organization Emmaus Björkå.
In discussing imperialism and international solidarity, the panel is an attempt at contributing to a vital debate on the why and how of liberatory struggle. Topics covered include: Imperialism as the contemporary capitalist world system and the imperialisms of capitalist social formations on national and international levels; neoliberal globalization as a phase of imperialism; relations of contradiction and identity between neoliberal imperialism and the insurgence of chauvinism and fascism; war and superexploitation as the two faces of imperialism; imperialism and the state; migration and imperialist extraction of resources, commodities, labour power and value; racism and the labour theory of value; local and global social struggles and imperialism; the history of radical international solidarity; the case for a global perspective on imperialism and for international solidarity as possibilities and necessities for radical organizing; the Palestinian struggle for liberation and Palestine solidarity as examples of the possibility and necessity of radical international solidarity; anti-terror laws, militarization and migration restriction and possibilities for anti-imperialist organizing; the ”anti-imperialism” of reactionaries; the significance of the question of strategy for radical organizing; the future of imperialism and international solidarity.
Click the following link for a rough transcription of the panel talk: tinyurl.com/ycw326qg
On January 15, 2019, we will mark the 17th anniversary of Sa’adat’s arrest by the Palestinian Authority in the context of “security cooperation” with the Israeli occupation. After a violent attack on the PA’s Jericho prison in 2006, where Sa’adat was held under United States and British guards, Ahmad Sa’adat and his comrades are serving lengthy sentences in Israeli prisons. Sa’adat was sentenced to 30 years in prison, convicted in an Israeli military court of leading a prohibited organization and “incitement.”
Sa’adat is a leader in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and the Palestinian national liberation movement. He is a figure of international importance and political clarity, targeted behind bars in an attempt to isolate him from his political role. He stands alongside nearly 6,000 fellow Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails on the front lines of the liberation struggle. As such, he is a symbol of Palestinian, Arab and internationalist resistance to capitalism, racism, apartheid and colonization.
The case of Ahmad Sa’adat also clearly highlights the complicity of international powers in the occupation and colonization of Palestine. He and his comrades were held for years under U.S. and British guards in a Palestinian Authority prison – and those guards moved away in a prearranged agreement to allow the Israeli occupation army to attack Jericho prison in 2006. The support of the United States, Britain, Canada, the European Union, Australia and others for the Israeli colonial project continues to perpetuate its impunity as it carries out land confiscations, home demolitions, mass imprisonment, extrajudicial executions, the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, the siege on Gaza and further crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The Palestinian Authority kidnapped Sa’adat under false pretenses and imprisoned him for four years before its prison was attacked by the Israeli occupation. This is part and parcel of the policy of “security coordination” that has led to the repeated imprisonment of Palestinians for their political involvement by the PA. Despite critical words, the policy remains firmly in place – with devastating and deadly consequences for Palestinians, as seen in the case of Basil al-Araj.
On January 15, 2019, join us in a collective call for the freedom of Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian Prisoners. Join us to build the global grassroots campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions from Israel and complicit corporations. Join us to fight for an end to aid and support for the Israeli occupation that has been confiscating land and lives for over 70 years.
Join Existence is Resistance In celebrating 10 years of existence! Special guests include participants of our tours who will be flying in from all over as well as folks who have supported our work and movement consistantly throughout the years.
The night will include speakers: Marc Lamont Hill Rosa Clemente Charles Barron Sekou Odinga Pam Africa Teresita Lah Tere Ayala Comedian Stevie J (Steven Johnson )
Performances by: Mazzi Behi Hasan Salaam Logic (UK)
DJ’s: Vega Benetton Padraic Mccroudi (DJ Snuff) Christie Love Oja Soundtwista
On January 13, join us for an important discussion and presentation on the struggle of Palestinian prisoners during LLL Weekend!
This event will include: * Discussion on the case of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who has been jailed for 34 years in French prison. French organizers with the Campaign to Free Georges Abdallah and Coup Pour Coup 31 will be speaking about the campaign and the importance of international solidarity with Georges. * Discussion of the case of Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, jailed since 2002 by the Palestinian Authority and then since 2006 by the Israeli occupation. * Further information on Palestinian political prisoners, including jailed feminist and leftist leader Khalida Jarrar, and the intensified repression faced by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
This evening of solidarity with Palestinian revolutionary prisoners will also include video clips on these cases and other important issues relating to the Palestinian liberation movement. It is organized as part of the International Week of Action to Free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners.
في اطار ” الاسبوع الأممي للتضامن مع القائد الوطني الأسير أحمد سعدات ” و بالتعاون مع ” حملة تحرير المناضل العربي والأممي جورج عبد الله ” المعتقل في السجون الفرنسية ، تدعوكم شبكة صامدون للدّفاع عن الأسرى الى ندوة حوارية في برلين ( الأسرى والنضال من أجل التحرير ) يوم الاحد الموافق 13 يناير / كانون الثاني 2019 في تمام الساعة السادسة مساءً .
