On Tuesday, 29 October, the primary Telegram channel of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network has been banned in the US, Canada, and some European countries, following the sanctions imposed on Samidoun by the United States and Canada.
The attempt to silence Samidoun on Telegram is part and parcel of the attack on the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and the Palestinian resistance. It comes hand in hand with attacks that aim to suppress Resistance News Network, media outlets and all organizations confronting Zionist/imperialist genocide and upholding the resistance!
This ban comes after baseless sham accusations by the US, Canada, Netherlands, and zionist entity, all aimed at silencing the liberation movement and scaring other organizers. Framing Samidoun’s activities in support of Palestinian prisoners for the last 13 years “terrorism” is part of an increasingly aggressive stance that seeks to criminalize Palestinian solidarity, undermine grassroots mobilization, and obscure the injustices and genocide faced by the Palestinian and Arab peoples, especially the prisoners’ movement.
We urge all to resist censorship and silencing of the movement for Palestinian liberation! Join our new channel and also follow the channels below for important information and updates on the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
On Saturday, 26 October, the liberated prisoner and resistance fighter Islam Jamil Odeh, one of the leaders of the Ezz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, in Palestine, in Tulkarem, was martyred after fighting with a besieging force of the occupation army for over 10 hours. US-backed Zionist occupation forces attacked his apartment in the Al-Salam neighbourhood of Tulkarem, shooting missiles and shells at the building as he held them off with his handgun, fighting until his last breath for the defense of Palestine.
The occupation forces stormed the besieged building after targeting it with more than 20 Energa missiles, setting it on fire, destroying parts of it with bulldozers, and firing heavily, as Odeh fought back with his handgun.
This type of assassination raid and attack targeting resistance fighters and leaders — often liberated prisoners themselves — often overlaps with “arrest raids” targeting the Palestinian people. The attack on Islam Odeh mirrors many such assassination raids against fighters who refuse to surrender themselves to the occupation or to return to Zionist prisons, such as the cases of the “engaged intellectual” and freedom fighter Basil al-Araj, Ibrahim Nabulsi, Mohammed al-Azizi, Abdel-Rahman Soboh, Saleh Barghouthi, Ashraf Na’alwa, and Moataz Washaha, to name only a few of the recent targets of the current generation of resistance.
Islam Odeh, 29, was an engineer and a leader in the Al-Qassam Brigades, a graduate of Kadoorie Technical University in Tulkarem, where he was active in the Islamic Bloc as a student activist. As they besieged and attacked the building where he was staying, genocidal occupation forces abducted his mother and father, interrogating his parents and attempting to use them to attempt to force him to surrender and return to Zionist prisons. Despite this, amid his deep love and respect for his parents and family, Islam Jamil Odeh decided to fight the colonial army until his last breath, with which he affirmed his testimony of faith in God.
Later, the occupation soldiers were seen storming the house and then kidnapping the body of the martyr from inside the residential building. The occupation forces routinely kidnap the bodies of the martyrs in order to hold them hostage in an attempt to extort concessions from the Palestinian resistance in a prisoner exchange and to impose a form of collective punishment on the martyrs’ families.
Odeh was a former prisoner of the occupation and had also been detained by the security services of the collaborationist “Palestinian Authority.” In fact, in the past week, the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security Service attempted to arrest Odeh, after raiding his home more than once, under their “security coordination” with the Zionist occupation. The PA “security” forces also summoned his father and detained him for hours several days prior to his martyrdom.
The martyr Odeh assumed leadership of the Qassam Brigades in Tulkarem after the martyrdom of the previous commander of the Qassam Brigades in Tulkarem, Zahi Yasser Awfi and the leader of the Al-Quds Brigades in the camp, Ghaith Radwan, along with fighters from the resistance factions and multiple Palestinian workers, in a massacre carried out by a US-made Zionist occupation fighter jet that targeted the Tulkarem camp on 3 October. The martyrs of the assault on a cafe in Tulkarem include: Ayman Khaled Tanja (the brother of prisoners Walaa Tanja and Mohammed Tanja “al-Zanklouni”), Asim Nu’man Qawzah, Basil Mahmoud Nafi’, Anwar Mohammed Misimi, Omar Nimer Fayat, Ahmed Jamal Obeid, Muhammad Mamoun Anbas, Athir Mazen Hussein Lawisi, Majdi Jamal Salem, Mahmoud Nasser Khreish, Rawan Jawad Musa Ghanem, Mohammed Tahsin Khalil, Rakan Bilal, Issam Qawzah, Mohammed Abu Zahra, Saja Nasser Khreish, Mohsen Ghazi Dabaya and the children, Karam and Sham Abu Zahra.
Islam Odeh carries the body of the martyr Zahi Awfi in his funeral following the Tulkarem massacre.
Mahmoud Mardawi, a leader in the Hamas movement, saluted the martyr and his fellow resistance fighters in an interview with Al-Mayadeen, praising “the performance of the heroes of the resistance in Tulkarem and its camps, who are confronting the occupation’s incursions with a high fighting spirit full of defiance, courage and daring, and are inflicting heavy losses on its soldiers…Our people know the path to their freedom and dignity, and the resistance in the West Bank today has become unbreakable despite the daily raids, confrontations, and arrests, and despite the great sacrifices made by our heroic resistance fighters in all the West Bank governorates.”
The assassination raid on Islam Jamil Odeh echoes the stories of many martyred Palestinian resistance fighters, particularly former prisoners who refuse to return to the dungeons of the occupation. His battle and courage echo those of the resistance fighters from Gaza to Lebanon and everywhere throughout the region, of the prisoners who fight with their bodies behind bars, of the Palestinians who insist to remain on their land confronting a genocidal Zionist regime and its imperialist sponsors. Despite the massive array of US-made and -provided weaponry arrayed against him by the genocidal occupation regime, he struggled heroically until his last breath, resisting for his people, his land and their liberation.
Victory to the Resistance! From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
On 28 October 2024, the Zionist occupation regime issued 100 administrative detention orders in one day against Palestinians jailed by the occupation. Administrative detention — imprisonment without charge or trial, on the basis of a “secret file” denied to both the detainee and their lawyer — is indefinitely renewable. Individual detention orders are issued for up to six months at a time, but they are indefinitely renewable — meaning that Palestinians routinely spend years in jail at a time, never knowing when they may be released or even why they are being held.
Administrative detention was first used in Palestine by the British colonial mandate and then adopted by the Zionist regime; it is now used routinely to target Palestinians, especially community leaders, activists, and influential people in their towns, camps and villages.
There are currently approximately 3500 Palestinians jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention, out of over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners — not to mention the thousands of Palestinians kidnapped from Gaza and subjected to extreme torture and abuse in Zionist detention camps, such as the notorious Sde Teiman. Administrative detainees include children, Palestinians from occupied Palestine ’48, student activists, women’s organizers and land defenders.
Administrative detention orders are issued by the military and approved by military courts on the basis of “secret evidence”, denied to both Palestinian detainees and their attorneys. Hundreds of Palestinians have gone on hunger strike to win their liberation from this form of arbitrary detention, which is not only illegal under international law but a form of psychological torture and collective punishment targeting Palestinian families and communities, as detainees are unable to predict or plan for their release.
The use of administrative detention has become so widespread and massive that this 100-order day does not stand alone; on other recent days, 200 orders were issued at a time, on another occasion, 80 orders were issued.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network notes that the imperialist powers that continue to fund, arm and provide military, diplomatic and political cover to the occupation are fully complicit in the mass imprisonment of the Palestinian people, as they are in the ongoing genocide targeting Palestinians, particularly in Gaza. We urge all supporters of Palestine and mobilized Palestinian communities to take action, mobilize, demonstrate and organize direct actions to confront the imperialist-Zionist war machine and demand an end to administrative detention, the liberation of all administrative detainees, and the liberation of every Palestinian prisoner in Zionist, imperialist, PA and reactionary jails — part and parcel of the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
The list of 100 administrative detainees — 100 Palestinian lives — ordered jailed without charge or trial by the occupation today:
1. Ismail Ahmed Ismail Jibril – Qalqilya – 2 months
2. Haitham Majed Hussein Lawisi – Tulkarm Camp – 6 months
3. Hamad Mohammed Hamad Khaled – Jabal Al Shamali – 4 months
4. Muhammad Saeed Khalil Abdul Qader Qatanani – Nablus – 5 and a half months
5. Islam Mahmoud Ahmed Qunais – Bethlehem – 4 months
6. Jamil Ashraf Jamil Aqhash – Jenin – 6 months
7. Diaa El-Din Atef Mohammed Abbas – Zababdeh – 4 months
8. Saleh Mustafa Diab Nasser – Safa – 6 months
9. Majd Fikri Mohammed Hamid – Birzeit – 5 and a half months
10. Azzam Hani Yousef Kouberi – Ramallah – 6 months
11. Jamal Muhammad Ahmad Adi – Beit Ummar – 4 months
12. Abdel-Rahman Jamal Musa Abu Al-Jadayel – As-Samu – 4 months
13. Hamza Ayman Mahmoud Barham – Qalqilya – 6 months
14. Ali Rafiq Mohammed Shawahneh – Kafr Thulth – 4 months
15. Mohammed Sami Hassan Sabarneh – Beit Ummar – 6 months
16. Mahmoud Odeh Abdel-Salam Areikat – Abu Dis – 4 months
17. Khalil Haitham Khalil Ayyad – Al-Arroub – 6 months
18. Barakat Abdel-Karim Abdel Abu Sneina – al-Khalil – 6 months
19. Mamoun Abdel-Fattah Salim Dababneh – Tubas – 6 months
20. Sharaf Al-Din Adel Mohammed Abudayyeh – al-Khalil – 4 months
21. Mohammed Osama Ibrahim Matar – Bil’in – 6 months
22. Usaid Khalil Muhammad Ma’arouf – Safa – 5 and a half months
23. Mustafa Ashraf Mustafa Salah – Al-Khader – 6 months
24. Bahaa Saeed Abdul Karim Al-Abbasi – Jenin – 3 months
25. Fouad Walid Kayed Salibi – Beit Ummar – 6 months
26. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Fawzi Bashkar – Nablus – 6 months
27. Mohammed Salim Shaaban Hindi – Beit Ummar – 6 months
28. Mohammed Mahmoud Amin Alawneh – Jaba – 6 months
29. Mohammed Atef Hussein Abu Aliya – Al-Mughair – 4 months
30. Ezz El-Din Mahmoud Mustafa Sabaaneh – Qabatiya – 6 months
31. Faisal Ibrahim Abdel-Rahman Sabaaneh – Qabatiya – 6 months
32. Omar Iyad Montaser Mansour – Jabal al-Shamali – 3 months
33. Raafat Rafiq Jamal Qandeel – Beit Surik – 4 months
34. Abdullah Abdel-Salam Hussein Sawalha – Asira al-Shamaliya – 6 months
35. Marwan Mohammed Abdel-Qader Abu Farra – Surif – 3 months
36. Kamal Faisal Suleiman Abu Seriyah – Nablus – 6 months
37. Kayed Fawzi Yousef Abu Al-Rish – Nablus – 6 months
38. Jamil Khaled Jamil Daris – Beitunia – 6 months
39. Ibrahim Youssef Dheeb Al-Sayis – Kafr Ni’ma – 6 months
40. Thaer Mohammed Mahmoud Matar – Idhna – 6 months
41. Shaher Hassan Shaher Arouj – Bethlehem – 6 months
42. Shadi Hazem Attia Al-Asakreh – Bethlehem – 4 months
43. Ali Omar Hamed Sholi – Asira al-Shamaliya – 6 months
44. Abdullah Abdel-Salam Hussein Sawalha – Asira Al Shamaliya – 6 months
45. Muhammad Mustafa Hussein Hasaniya – Al-Fawwar Camp – 4 months
46. Baraa Iskandar Hussein Abdo – Kafr Ni’ma – 6 months
47. Ahmed Nader Mahmoud Al-Kalbiyeh – Bethlehem – 4 months
48. Mohammed Mohsen Raja Shahadeh – Nur Shams camp – 6 months
49. Mohammed Ibrahim Yousef Abdel-Qader Awad – Beit Ummar – 4 months
50. Ahmed Nader Mahmoud Al-Kalabiya – Bethlehem – 4 months
51. Mohammed Walid Fayez Qatash – Jericho – 4 months
52. Moatasem Samih Mohammed Tamimi – Nabi Saleh – 6 months
53. Anas Ahmed Abdullah Injas – 6 months
54. Hashem Sami Hashem Houh – Nablus – 6 months
55. Karam Bani Zaid Saleh Shehadeh – Tulkarem – 6 months
56. Omar Ramzi Mohammed Nakhleh – Jalazone Camp – 6 months
57. Yasser Mohammed Saeed Abdel-Rahman Hammad – Qalqilya – 4 months
58. Muhammad Fayez Talal Dibsi – Aida Camp – 4 months
59. Fares Ihab Madi’ Abbas – Jenin – 4 months
60. Ibrahim Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim Hmeid – Bethlehem – 3 months
61. Nassar Jamal Jamil Ja’ar – Tulkarem – 6 months
62. Basem Mohammed Mahmoud Bisharat – Tammoun – 6 months
63. Mohammed Ibrahim Hamdan Al-Zawahreh – Deheishe Camp – 3 months
64. Abdullah Salam Jamal Desouqi – Barqa – 4 months
65. Omar Abdel-Rahim Mohammed Radi Hanbali – Jabal al-Shamali – 4 months
66. Raed Saed Ibrahim – Jericho – 6 months
67. Majdi Abdel-Qader Mahmoud Oweidat – Jericho – 4 months
68. Wadih Waher Muhammad Oweidat – Aqabat Jabr camp – 2 months
69. Ali Ahmed Abdel-Rahim Al-Jadaa – Qalqilya – 6 months
70. Abdel-Rahman Iyad Muhammad Al-Barajneh – Aqabat Jabr camp – 6 months
71. Aref Marwan Muhammad Shehab – Nur Shams camp – 6 months
72. Qusai Ramadan Abdel Abu Kwaik – Al-Amari camp – 6 months
73. Mohammed Bashir Mohammed Younes Halwani – al-Khalil – 5 and a half months
74. Baraa Burhan Farid Sa’adeh – Tulkarem – 6 months
75. Fadi Rajab Sobhi Musa – Khirbet Al-Misbah – 4 months
76. Bakr Nidal Abdel-Raouf Fuquha – Sinjil – 4 months
77. Sanad Diab Muhammad Jabarin – Beitunia – 6 months
78. Mohammed Omar Ismail Mujahid – Wadi Karam – 6 months
79. Rida Hossam Mustafa Hamamra – Bethlehem – 6 months
80. Sand Ali Ahmed Shawahin – Yatta – 6 months
81. Ahmed Saeed Hammad Araysha – Balata Camp – 3 months
82. Al-Baraa Saad Al-Din Mohammed Shweiki – Beit Sahour – 6 months
83. Ubadah Abdel-Salam Mohammed – Beita – 6 months
84. Jamil Munir Qasim Aqhash – Jenin – 6 months
85. Muhammad Saeed Hashem Salameh – Al-Am’ari – 6 months
86. Saleh Odeh Saleh Hureimi – Bethlehem – 4 months
87. Issa Ibrahim Ahmad Akhlil – Beit Ummar – 4 months
88. Mohammed Nizam Shahdah Akhlil – Beit Ummar – 6 months
89. Rashad Zaki Khalil Halayqeh – Shuyukh – 6 months
90. Nael Akram Hamed Sammouh – al-Khalil – 6 months
91. Anis Mashhour Mohammed Kouk – Turmus Ayya – 6 months
92. Ahmad Salim Mohammed Soufan – Ramallah – 6 months
93. Mohammed Yahya Ahmad Hardan – Ramallah – 6 months
94. Suhaib Khalil Atiya Al-Hamamreh – Bethlehem – 6 months
95. Ihab Abdel-Moneim Fayez Masoud – Ramallah – 6 months
96. Ahmed Fathi Mohammed Najjar – Yatta – 6 months
97. Muhammad Adel Ali Abu al-Rab – Qalandia Camp – 6 months
98. Kamal Suhail Abdel-Hadi Abu Ghuwaila – Qalandia Camp – 6 months
99. Mohammed Nidal Ali Arman – Ein Yabroud – 6 months
100. Khaled Omar Hussein Ba’irat – Kafr Malik – 6 months
In the latest assault of the leaders of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement — and of the Palestinian resistance behind bars — Marwan Barghouti, a member of the Central Committee of the Fateh movement serving five life sentences plus 40 years in Zionist jails, and a widely recognized leader of the prisoners’ movement whose release is a high priority in a prisoner exchange with the resistance, was beaten by occupation forces on 9 September 2024.
While the assault took place nearly two months ago, the news was revealed only on 27 October. Marwan Barghouti, like other leaders of the prisoners’ movement, is being held in isolation in Megiddo prison, where he was transferred as part of the attack on the prisoners following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation and as the Zionist regime carries out a genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. He has been held in isolation in various prisons, including two prisons in the Ayalon-Ramla prison complex, Ohli Kedar and Megiddo prisons.
Marwan Barghouti and Yahya Sinwar.
Barghouti’s cell, and that of several prisoners also held in the isolation section, was invaded by the repressive forces of the occupation, which beat him on the head, ears, ribs and limbs. He was bleeding from his right ear and injured in the right arms and ribs, chest and back. He has since endured suffered from ongoing complications with his ear — including an infection caused by a blood clot — as well as severe pain, limited mobility and open, untreated wounds, particularly as he was denied proper medical care after the attack.
In an interview with Al-Mayadeen, Arab Barghouti, Marwan’s son, emphasized that “My father confirms to the Palestinian people and the world that he is steadfast in the face of the occupation, and his only concern is to unify the people,” noting his full confidence in the Palestininan resistance to complete a prisoner exchange, affirming that “the prisoners will be outside the jails, including my father.” He emphasized that despite his father’s physical pain, he came to see his lawyer with his head held high and that his morale was not affected.
This is the latest assault on the leadership of the prisoners’ movement, a series of attacks that can only be interpreted as an open threat — and a potential attempt – of assassination against some of the longest-serving and most prominent Palestinian prisoners.
On 20 July 2024, family sources reported that Abdullah Barghouti, the longest-sentenced Palestinian prisoner with 67 life sentences or 5,200 years in prison, was severely beaten in isolation in Shatta prison. He was then transferred from Shatta prison to an unknown and undisclosed location, rather than receiving treatment for the severe assault. Abdullah Barghouti, a leader and engineer in the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, is also one of the prisoners with a very high priority in a prisoner exchange — and one of the leaders that the occupation has repeatedly refused to release.
In May 2024, Adeeb Mustafa Samoudi, a released Palestinian prisoner who had been held in Gilboa prison prior to his liberation, spoke out about a brutal assault by repressive forces on fellow Palestinian prisoners’ movement leader and prominent Al-Qassam Brigades struggler, Ibrahim Hamed. Ibrahim Hamed is serving 54 life sentences in occupation prisons and like both Marwan and Abdullah Barghouti, is a key priority in a prisoner exchange for the Palestinian resistance.
Samoudi said, “Hamed was assaulted in Gilboa prison, and no part of his body is free from bruises, scratches or injuries, and he lost a lot of blood from a head injury. After the guards raided our cell, he was unable to stand and his health condition is very critical. Even if I try to describe the condition in which I left prisoner Hamed, it would not be enough to describe how much his life is in danger due to the violence of the beatings he and other prisoners received in Gilboa prison.” Ibrahim Hamed, one of the most prominent military leaders of the Palestinian resistance of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was held in solitary confinement for 7 years and is serving the second-longest sentence in Zionist jails, after Abdullah Barghouti.
The full propaganda piece, from Ofer Concentration Camp, as aired on Israeli TV, on Channel 13. Now with subtitles.
Psychopath propagandist Yossi Eli doesn’t even try to hide the satisfaction he gets from watching abducted Palestinians in Israeli torture camps, being beaten and… https://t.co/pGTsEdrYTzpic.twitter.com/NH457x3R5U
On 7 October 2024, on the anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation — which, of course, held the liberation of Palestinian prisoners through an exchange of captives with the Resistance as one of its objectives — occupation forces engaged in widespread assaults against captive Palestinians and published photos of their inhuman treatment under the direct supervision of the notorious fascist Zionist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“We affirm that broadcasting these scenes in conjunction with the first anniversary of the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7 is a failed attempt to erase the humiliation and defeat that the occupation has suffered at the hands of our courageous resistance.
The escalating abuse of prisoners, depriving them of their rights, and the continued aggressive policies against them will not break their resolve and iron will. The darkness of the prison will soon give way to the dawn of freedom. Our people and resistance remain loyal to the brave prisoners, no matter the cost.”
In addition to the publicly filmed propaganda assaults, openly using torture and abuse to promote Zionist officials for fascist popular support, repressive units invaded the solitary confinement section of Ramon prison on 7 October and brutally beat and assaulted multiple prominent leaders of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, including Hassan Salameh, Muammar Shahrour, Ammar Mardi and Mahmoud al-Ardah. All four were then transferred to solitary confinement in Nafha prison.
Hassan Salameh, born in 1971 in Khan Younis in Gaza, is a Palestinian refugee from al-Kheima, Ramla. A leader in the Al-Qassam Brigades, he is serving the third-highest sentence in Zionist prisons, with 48 life sentences, following only Abdullah Barghouti and Ibrahim Hamed. Like his fellow prisoner leaders, he has been isolated since 7 October 2023, and he previously spent 13 years in solitary confinement, only returned to his brothers and comrades among the Palestinian prisoners after the Karameh hunger strike of 2012.
Muammar Shahrour, from Tulkarem, was also among those attacked in Nafha prison. Sentenced to 29 life sentences plus 20 years in prison, he is a representative of the Hamas movement to the prisoners’ leadership and representation committees. He comes from a long line of resistance through his family, who have contributed to all of the streams of historical and present-day Palestinian resistance to colonialism and occupation. His grandfather, Hajj Sharif Shahrour, was arrested by the British and served 4 years in prison for his role in the 1936-1939 revolution in Palestine; his uncle, Shawqi Shahrour, established PLO military bases and organized fedayeen brigades transporting ammunition, weapons and fighters between Jordan and Palestine. He served 18 years in Zionist prisons, and young Muammar visited him from an early age. His other uncle, Bassem Shahrour, was martyred in Tunis when the Zionist forces bombed the PLO headquarters there in 1985. He participated in the great popular Intifada as a child from the age of 8, and as a young man joined the resistance with the Al-Qassam Brigades. He was seized by the occupation forces in 2002 after an ongoing battle as he refused to turn himself in; he had previously been pursued by both the Zionist forces as well as the Palestinian Authority “security” forces under their “coordination” with the occupation.
Ammar Mardi, 43, from Ramallah, is, like Marwan Barghouti, a representative of the prisoners of the Fateh movement inside the Zionist prisons, and played an important role in the collective hunger strikes of 2022 and 2023. He served as the Coordinator of the National Higher Committee of the Prisoners’ Movement directing these actions and bringing together all Palestinian forces. He was seized by the occupation on 9 June 2002, while still a political science student at Birzeit University, and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 20 years in prisons. As an influential prisoner and a leader in coordinating with all Palestinian prisoners, he has been held in solitary confinement since 5 November 2023.
Mahmoud al-Ardah, 48, from Arraba, Jenin, is the leader of the Freedom Tunnel operation, in which six Palestinian prisoners escaped from the occupation’s high-security Gilboa prison in September 2021. He and his comrades have been held in solitary confinement since their re-arrest following their escape. A leader in the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, he was first arrested by the occupation in 1992 and was released in 1996. Eight months later, he was arrested again for shooting an occupation military officer invading Salfit and sheltering Saleh Tahayneh, one of the military leaders of the Jihad movement, who had himself escaped from the occupation prisons.
He was sentenced to 99 years in prison, and attempted to escape on multiple occasions, in 2001, 2011, and 2014, before being held in solitary confinement. In 2021, he led the Freedom Tunnel escape, together with Mohammed al-Ardah, Yaqoub Qadri, Ayham Kamamji, Munadil Nafa’at and Zakaria Zubeidi; they were assisted by Iyad Jaradat, Mahmoud Abu Shreim, Ali Abu Bakr, Mohammed Abu Bakr and Qusai Mara’i, all 11 are held in isolation or solitary confinement. Al-Ardah and his fellow Freedom Tunnel prisoners, are like their fellow prisoners’ movement leaders, high priorities for the Palestinian resistance in a prisoner exchange.
Fellow Palestinian prisoners’ movement leaders, like Ahmad Sa’adat, imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, serving a 30-year sentence in Zionist jails, and Khalida Jarrar, Palestinian leftist and feminist held in administrative detention, have also been transferred to isolation and solitary confinement as a form of disruption of the prisoners’ movement and collective resistance, as well as a form of torture and abuse aimed at breaking the will of the prisoners.
Of course, all of these attacks come alongside the various manifestations of the genocidal Zionist program in occupation prisons, including the documented martyrdom of 41 Palestinian prisoners inside the occupation jails, with prisoners being beaten to death and deliberately denied medical treatment, from Omar Daraghmeh to Walid Daqqa. This number does not include the multiple reported martyrs who were kidnapped and forcibly disappeared from Gaza and taken to torture and detention camps such as the notorious Sde Teiman.
Over 5,000 Palestinians have been kidnapped from Gaza, where they have been subjected to severe beating, various methods of physical and psychological torture, sexual assault and rape, sleep deprivation, starvation and other forms of abuse and inhuman treatment. They join over 10,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Zionist jails, whose testimonies — as well as the marks on their thin, emaciated bodies — bear witness to the systematic abuse imposed upon them by the Zionist jailers.
The abuse, beating and torture of Palestinian prisoners — and the targeting of leaders of the prisoners’ movement who are widely identified as prominent leaders and symbols of the Palestinian resistance whose release is a high priority in a prisoner exchange — is part and parcel of Zionist genocide and an attempt to continue the assassination policy inside prisons, a policy that has already taken the lives of Sheikh Khader Adnan, Walid Daqqah, Nasser Abu Hmeid, Bassam Sayeh, Ibrahim al-Rai, Saadia Farajallah Matar and over 200 fellow prisoners. The systemic torture and assault of Palestinian prisoners has failed to break the will of the prisoners’ movement and of the Palestinian resistance — and all of the forces of resistance in the region — over decades of Zionist colonialism and, before that, British colonialism.
We urge all supporters of Palestine and the Palestinian cause to speak out actively and take action through demonstrations, mass actions and direct actions to confront the abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including Marwan Barghouti and fellow Palestinian leaders. The imperialist powers, like the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, that continue to arm, support and provide cover for the Zionist genocide in Gaza and its assault on Lebanon, are fully implicated in these inhuman actions.
Indeed, repressive acts by imperialist powers — such as the US’ and Canada’s sanctions on Samidoun on 15 October — are meant to deprive the Palestinian prisoners’ movement of external support and solidarity, to hide the crimes being committed against them and prevent the perpetrators from being held accountable, and to limit, chill and suppress the growing movement for the liberation of Palestinian prisoners as part and parcel of the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. They especially seek to repress this movement as the Palestinian resistance has made clear that it insists upon and is committed to a proper prisoner exchange with dignity to release Palestinian leaders and all Palestinian prisoners in the Zionist jails. The repression in the imperial core is also meant as a mechanism of pressure against the Palestinian people, their prisoners and their Resistance.
Our entire movement must respond collectively to such repression by organizing even more loudly, clearly and effectively to shut down the imperialist-Zionist war machine, to support the Palestinian resistance and all forces of resistance in the region, and to ensure that the Palestinian prisoners are not now and will never be isolated from the Palestinian people, the Arab, Islamic and regional liberation causes, and the international movement for justice.
Freedom for all Palestinian prisoners in occupation jails! Victory to the Resistance!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
We are republishing the following article, which has been translated from Arabic to English for open publication online, by Fairouz Salameh, the liberated Palestinian prisoner, activist and journalist who is currently hosting the “Prisoners of War” series on Free Palestine TV, interviewing fellow released Palestinian prisoners. This is an article of particular importance to all those involved in the student movement for Palestinian liberation. Much thanks to the translator for their important work!
Between Two Fields: Jihad Mughniyeh, the Student Fighter
by Fairouz Salameh
“Any thought without power remains theories eroded by books, and any power without thought remains a reaction without continuity and impact.” [1]
As the Zionist genocidal war on the Gaza Strip continues, which came in response to the resistance’s breakthrough in the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7, 2023, the question “What is to be done?” opens as an inquiry into the role of various components of Palestinian society in this war and their position on it. This is especially true for students in Palestinian and Arab universities, coinciding with the extension of the confrontation with Zionist colonialism to university campuses around the world at the present time. This question leads us to an Arab figure who addressed it through both thought and action on the campus of the Lebanese American University in Beirut: the martyr Jihad Mughniyeh. From the moment he joined the university, Mughniyeh set out to define the role of the university student in confronting the Zionist enemy, wherever it exists and has established itself, without resorting to idle talk or theorizing. In academic circles, including the university Mughniyeh attended, the prevailing view treated resistance work and study as separate pursuits. Mughniyeh, however, strove to connect and balance these two aspects, ensuring neither overshadowed the other. There is no resistance work without effective education, and no effective education without resistance work.
Without Introductions
Jihad Imad Mughniyeh was born on May 2, 1991, in the town of Tair Debba, Tyre district, southern Lebanon. He is the son of the martyr commander Imad Mughniyeh (known as Hajj Radwan) who was martyred on February 12, 2008. Mughniyeh Jr. enrolled in the Lebanese American University in Beirut (LAU) in 2009 to study business administration. His goal for university education was clear and specific. The martyr Mughniyeh possessed a unique mindset that set him apart from his peers, due to the influence of the Islamic Resistance movement on his development which contrasted sharply with the conventional atmosphere at the Lebanese American University.
Mughniyeh’s choice of business administration likely stemmed from the leadership and organizational qualities prominent in his personality. This specialization also offered an opportunity to refine his leadership skills for a future role in field work. Throughout his time at university, Mughniyeh constantly reflected on the role of university students in resistance activities and how to deepen their involvement. Unlike his peers, who were primarily concerned with course registration and adapting to the new social environment during the transition from school to university, Mughniyeh’s focus was broader. He strived to balance his commitment to academic pursuits with his dedication to the national and religious duty of resistance, while also recognizing the educational role of the university. Mughniyeh viewed the university as a crucial arena for action and influence within the framework of liberating resistance thought. Consequently, he leveraged his presence to serve as a networking link between two worlds: the arena of academic study and the arena of jihad.
Movement in the University Arena: Mobilization and Spreading Resistance Thought
Mughniyeh began his work in the Lebanese American University a year after enrolling. He established a student association affiliated with the Islamic Resistance Movement in Lebanon – Hezbollah. This association comprised several committees, each addressing a different facet of university life: political work, cultural activities, and student clubs. Each committee had its own student representative. Jihad himself took on the role of overseeing these committees’ activities, both on and off campus, working in direct coordination with the resistance’s educational mobilization apparatus.
Mughniyeh’s enrollment marked a qualitative shift in student activism at the university, establishing a representative presence for the Islamic Resistance and creating for it a student base that had previously been absent. Leveraging his unique position as the son of a martyred resistance leader and the connections he inherited, Mughniyeh networked with students to catalyze change. He focused on building a student base at this university because of its unique demographic: students from elite social circles, often connected to prominent figures or wealthy businessmen, who had little to no prior engagement with resistance ideology or its programs. These students typically prioritized spending summer vacations in European countries and pursuing careers abroad after graduation. Mughniyeh saw an opportunity to connect this group with the resistance movement, viewing their potential role as university students as a qualitative addition to the cause. He believed these students, armed with knowledge, argumentation skills, and evidence, could become conscious elements within the resistance. Mughniyeh was firmly convinced of the need for awareness, understanding, and commitment to the resistance’s principles based on rational conviction rather than mere emotion. In this way, he envisioned student fighters who could actively contribute to shaping the daily discourse of resistance and confronting narratives of surrender and submission.
The prevailing Lebanese popular discourse about the resistance (Hezbollah) celebrates it as a strong and victorious force, and allegiance to it often stems from this image of success. Mughniyeh, however, diverged from this narrative in his interactions with students. He emphasized that university students should support the resistance not merely for its strength or victories, but because it represented the only viable path to genuine freedom. Mughniyeh cultivated this rational perspective among the youth he recruited for the resistance. He was dedicated to developing students both politically and culturally, aiming to transform their journey from one of apolitical academic achievement across various disciplines to one where they applied their knowledge and expertise in service of a society embracing resistance. Mughniyeh often stated, “If we could elevate every youth group in every neighborhood to an elite status, we would be able to engage with all societal segments, thanks to students’ capacity for both horizontal and vertical interaction within their communities.” This statement reflected the martyr’s conviction that students constituted society’s elite and could provide crucial support to the resistance and its base.
The university was a necessity for him, and his perception of its role is clear in his statement: “There is an abundance of weapons, but the problem is in the person who will stand behind it; the battle today is a battle of minds, weapons, and technology. If we are not educated, who will carry the weapon? Who will develop this weapon and who will develop and keep up with technology? And who will represent the resistance in conferences and on media platforms? As resistance and liberation movements, we need individuals from various fields, just like those who fight with weapons on the front, so being in university is part of my mission in the liberation movement I belong to, whether the Islamic Resistance or others.”
Mughniyeh embodied the unity of words and actions, living out the principles he espoused. His call for “educated people who work” was not mere rhetoric; he led by example, excelling both in his studies and in resistance activities. He frequently reminded his peers, “I’m not telling you what you should do, but what we all must do. And I’ll be the first among you to do it.” This consistency set Mughniyeh apart and drew others to him, as his relationships were built on a foundation of fraternal camaraderie.
Mughniyeh built his relationships on a solid foundation of trust and honesty, building enduring bonds rather than passing acquaintanceships during a temporary stage. He dedicated most of his time to students, engaging with them both on and off campus, during and after class hours. His goal was to forge a sustained movement rather than just an administrative framework for student activism. While many of his university peers were solely focused on academic pursuits, Mughniyeh centered his efforts on the resistance cause, particularly the Palestinian struggle. Palestine was a constant theme in every gathering or discussion he held with his peers. During a 2011 session with students, as Mughniyeh mourned his father with tears, he realized he was mourning in the wrong way. He understood that true mourning and loyalty were not expressed through grief alone, but through actual fieldwork, of which he saw student activism as one of its noblest forms. Mughniyeh often shared this personal story with his fellow students, using it to strengthen their connection with those who had become martyrs, whether they had a direct relationship to them or not. His message was clear: honoring the martyrs meant activating their role within the resistance movement for which the martyrs had made these sacrifices.
From Individual Salvation to Collective Salvation
Mughniyeh recognized that resistance work encompassed multiple dimensions extending across various fields. He understood that the resistance movement required fighters on diverse fronts: engineers to develop weapons, media professionals capable of conveying the cause, politically savvy administrators, and programmers to keep the resistance technologically competitive on a global scale. Consequently, Mughniyeh strove to strengthen the connection between students from various disciplines and political issues, particularly those concerning the oppressed. His aim was to make this engagement an integral part of their future professional lives, rekindling a sense of social responsibility among them. Mughniyeh’s approach was rooted in what he termed a “collective societal inclination” – his belief that people are inherently inclined to support the oppressed, but often need guidance from a leader who is close to them and can initiate change. In the student environment, Mughniyeh emerged as such a leader, addressing his peers in rational, scientific language that could accommodate their differences while building on their shared experiences. During that period, Lebanon’s political landscape was not as sharply divided as it is today, and opposition to the Zionist entity was largely uncontested. The discourse of resistance was prevalent, and Mughniyeh leveraged these commonalities.
Mughniyeh’s impact on student field work changed student’s orientations from individual concerns to the broader issues of resistance and realizing their role in its continuity and success. The university environment became an effective and influential base in both the political and scientific paths. What was once absent from campus life became indispensable, with the youth of the Islamic Resistance and their activities serving as a model for the broader student body. During his time at university, Mughniyeh successfully established a foothold for the Islamic Resistance, which was once a distant dream. He reshaped student perspectives, moving them beyond mere theoretical understanding to a viewpoint that merged theory with practical action; thus, he was able to bring new groups of students closer to the thought and path of resistance.
A Chapter Completed and Another Still Open
From Jihad as a “name” to Jihad as a “verb”; during Mughniyeh’s study at the university, he did not leave the military jihadist work but reconciled both paths. At the time he was urging students to act, he was, in an undeclared manner, completing chapters of his jihadist work outside the university. During 2012, some circumstances emerged in this arena that forced him to join the training ranks in the arena of jihad. This forced him to postpone his last semester, which he intended to complete after finishing his training and preparation mission. However, during 2015, specifically on December 18, Mughniyeh was in Quneitra with a convoy of mujahideen, when they were targeted by a Zionist air raid, and all were martyred. Jihad Mughniyeh was buried next to his father in the Ghobeiry area in the southern suburb in the Rawdat Al Shahidain cemetery.
With Mughniyeh’s ascension as a martyr, the university chapter remained open, not completed with his graduation from the university grounds where he began his jihadi journey. Jihad did not depart as a young man who chose the path of jihad as an alternative to the academic educational path. Rather, his academic path was part of his jihadi path, which he intended to complete after finishing his mission. However, the treacherous Zionist raids completed his chapter with martyrdom in jihad, rather than university graduation. Jihad ascended before he could climb the graduation stage and deliver his final graduation speech.
The martyr Jihad, a young Lebanese university student who achieved these accomplishments by embracing this mission and working within the framework of his society and environment, became an icon in the minds and hearts of many Arab youth after attaining martyrdom. Mughniyeh was a dynamo for resistance work, with Palestine as its central focus. It was present in his words, lectures, and conscience, not as a mere detail in the course of his work, but for him, it was the resistance itself.
“We will show the entire world how freedom is forged and how victory is crafted with blood.” [2]
“We pride ourselves on being the fruit of those that opened an eye to jihad with choice and sincerity, and closed an eye to martyrdom with will and passion.” [3]
[2] From a speech by the martyr Jihad Imad Mughniyeh on 16-3-2013. https://rb.gy/pvxl4f
[3] From a speech by the martyr Jihad Imad Mughniyeh on 16-3-2013. https://rb.gy/pvxl4f
[4] The article is based on a remote interview conducted by the researcher on May 9, 2024, with a friend and colleague of the martyr at the Lebanese American University.
On 26 October 2024, over 4,500 people marched in the largest-ever demonstration in Lannemezan, calling for the liberation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the Lebanese Communist struggler for Palestine jailed in France for 40 years. The annual march proceeds from the Lannemezan train station to the prison, where Georges is held. The demonstration also called for an end to the genocide, solidarity with the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine, and the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
A wide array of organizations participated in the action, including the Collectif Palestine Vaincra, the Unitary Campaign for the Liberation of Georges Abdallah, Samidoun Paris Banlieue, Spain, Basque Country and Sweden; Secours Rouge, labour unions like the CGT, collectives across France for the liberation of Georges Abdallah, Palestine solidarity organizations like Urgence Palestine and the AFPS, political parties and organizations like the NPA, Revolution Permanente, and many others, including parliamentarians from La France Insoumise; antifascist and anarchist groups; Lebanese, Palestinian and Arab communities, Kanak solidarity organizations, leftist Turkish and Kurdish organisations, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle, youth and student groups including Ligue de la Jeunesse Révolutionnaire, Jeunes Révolutionnaires, and Fédération syndicale Étudiante; and many, many others.
This marked the first major action since the passing of Suzanne Le Manceau, lifelong activist and committed struggler for Georges’ freedom. The massive turnout was a tribute to her work — and to the growing, widespread movement for Georges’ release, especially as Lebanon confronts the Zionist war machine and as a growing international movement stands together for an end to genocide, occupation and colonialism in Palestine. A new request for his freedom — the 11th — was made on 7 October 2023, and the court is expected to rule on 15 November. While Georges Abdallah has been eligible for release since 1999 and several of his requests for release have been approved, they have been repeatedly blocked by French officials, working hand in hand with U.S. officials, who, from Condoleeza Rice to Hillary Clinton, have continued to demand his ongoing imprisonment.
Georges Abdallah issued the following statement to the demonstration, which was read out to widespread cheers and salutes from the crowd:
Dear comrades, dear friends,
Years, very long years, behind these abhorrent walls, yet the same determination and enthusiasm always echoes in your solidarity-driven mobilization…
Knowing you are gathered here today, confronting these barbed wires and watchtowers just a few meters from my cell, fills me with strength and warms my heart. Yet, what emotion, comrades, friends, to see that, for the first time in so many years, it is not our tireless Suzanne reading this short statement. As you know, our dearly beloved Suzanne passed away a few weeks ago. Certainly she lives on forever in our hearts and memories as a vibrant flame, especially in such circumstances.
Dear comrades, dear friends,
Your solidarity-driven mobilization leaves no one here untouched; you see, the atmosphere in these dismal places, this entire prison environment, changes when the echo of active life strikes the lifeless routine of a deadly prison existence… Thus, some social fellow prisoners discover, as if by magic, even if only for a brief moment, the beauty and strength of inherently selfless human relationships, solidarity despite so many years behind bars… survivors in cultural and emotional deprivation, without real contact with society for years, this awakening of enthusiasm and humanity does not go unnoticed; it is seen in their eyes and revealed in their often sincere yet fleeting spontaneous comments.
Comrades and friends, the echo of your slogans, your songs, and everything else, passes beyond these barbed wires and watchtowers, it resonates in our minds and transports us far from these bleak places.
Dear comrades, dear friends,
At the dawn of this forty-first year of captivity, finding you here, in the diversity of your commitment, offers a resounding rebuke to all those who counted on the waning of your solidarity momentum. It underscores that the shift in the balance of power in favor of incarcerated revolutionary protagonists always depends on the solidarity mobilization on the field of anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist struggle.
Thus, we can say without the slightest hesitation that the most meaningful support we can offer our imprisoned comrades is rooted in real engagement in the ongoing struggle. Only by embracing solidarity on this ground does the imprisonment of our comrades start to weigh heavier than the potential threats tied to their release.
Comrades and friends, in this time of global capitalism’s crisis and the exacerbation of all its contradictions—this era of war, large-scale massacres, repression, fascism, propaganda and manipulation, of great struggles and mobilization, and especially of the inspiring surge of active youth amid the inherent barbarism of dying capitalism… for the first time in human history, millions of people are actively witnessing an ongoing genocide. For over 380 days, the genocidaires continue to wreak havoc in Gaza and the West Bank, now expanding their war to Lebanon with the active support of the main imperialist powers in the West. Yet, thanks to the heroic resistance of the Palestinian popular masses and their fighting vanguards, and thanks also to the massive solidarity mobilization around the world, Palestine resists and, more than ever, reclaims its rightful place at the forefront of the international scene.
With this in mind, dear comrades, dear friends, it may be useful to remember that active international solidarity is proving to be a an indispensable weapon in the fight against the ongoing settler colonialism in Palestine and the genocidal war deeply inherent to it. It is always through this active solidarity that we can participate in changing the balance of power here, in the belly of the imperialist beast, and elsewhere in building the “Historical Bloc,” a global framework and potential subject of the Palestinian national liberation movement.
Dear comrades, dear friends,
Of course, it is urgent to do everything possible to counter and stop the Zionist barbarism under way in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. The fact remains, however, that despite the genocidal, large-scale aggression against Gaza these days, in which tens and tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded have been added to the terrible widespread destruction of Gaza’s entire living space, the resistance remains unshakeable, protected and endorsed by the Palestinian popular masses.
Gaza will never raise the white flag of surrender. Neither the Zionists nor any other criminal force will ever succeed in breaking the will of the resistance in Gaza.
Shame on all those who, in the face of genocidal Zionist barbarism, call for us to look the other way!
May a thousand initiatives flourish in support of Palestine and its glorious resistance!
Capitalism is nothing but barbarism; honor to all those who oppose it in the diversity of their expressions!
Together, and only together, we will win!
Palestine will live, and Palestine will certainly win!
To all of you, comrades and friends, my warm revolutionary greetings.
Fares Hazem Abu Kamel, 23, the son of liberated Palestinian prisoner Nisreen Abu Kamel, was martyred in Gaza on 17 October 2024, when ”israeli” warplanes targeted a house belonging to the Al-Halou family in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza as part of its genocidal bombing campaign. After Nisreen and her children were separated for six years, only reunified in 2021, Fares’s life was taken, alongside those of tens of thousands of Palestinians, by the genocidal Zionist assault on Gaza.
Nisreen Abu Kamel, married to her husband Hazem Abu Kamel and the mother of seven children, was abducted by the occupation on 15 October 2015. She was abducted from the “Erez” crossing after she had traveled to Haifa — where she was born — to visit her family. At the time of her arrest, her youngest son was only 8 months old and her older daughter just 11 years old.
The Zionist regime accused Nisreen of “espionage,” with the occupation intelligence claiming that she had filmed the Haifa port in order to gather information for the resistance. She was sentenced to 6 years in prison.
Hazem, her husband, said that he and his sons set a “calendar” for Nisreen’s last 100 days in prison, and every morning they marked off what had passed. “They were slow days, but they passed with all their bitterness, and now we are waiting for Nisreen to reunite us”.
During her six years in Zionist jails, Nisreen and her family were consistently denied visitation, like many Palestinian prisoners from Gaza. After her 2021 release, Nisreen was originally denied access to Gaza for multiple days, even as her husband, children and loved ones awaited her. Image 5 above depicts the moment her daughters saw their mother for the first time in 6 years.
Nisreen and Hazem lived in Gaza for the entire 20 years of their marriage until her arrest. When the occupation initially refused to allow her to return to her family, Nisreen said: “I have been married in Gaza for 20 years, and I have the right to go back to my home and be reunited with my husband and children… I waited for the days and counted the hours until I returned to them.”
Nisreen affirmed her complete rejection of the occupation’s decision, declaring that she would sit in front of the Beit Hanoun “Erez” crossing, which leads to the Gaza Strip, until she would be allowed to return to her family.
The next day, Nisreen returned to Haifa, where she was greeted by activists of the “Haifa Movement” and Tala’at, a women’s movement. They all sang Palestinian national songs and chanted “Nisreen, we are with you… Freedom is yours.”
Nisreen’s return to her family and loved ones in Gaza was joyous and celebrated as a victory for the Palestinian people. She said: “I say to the occupation, I entered Gaza in spite of you and broke your power, and I salute the resistance that stood with the prisoners at all times.”
Upon her release, Nisreen carried a message from the Palestinian women prisoners, urging support for them against the mechanisms of “israeli“ persecution they face on a daily basis. She urged that the women prisoners be included in any future prisoner exchange with the resistance, calling for an escalation of the popular struggle to support them. During her time in prison, 3 women prisoners, Mona Qa’adan, Shatila Abu Ayad and Amal Abu Kattah started a hunger strike in protest of the deliberate medical negligence practiced routinely against the prisoners, which also affected Nisreen.
Our deepest condolences to Nisreen and Hazem Abu Kamel, their family, and the Palestinian people, on the martyrdom of their beloved Fares.
One year after the launch of the intensified new phase of genocide against the Palestinian people, we see how people of conscience within the Spanish State continue to stand up against injustice and barbarism. The escalating violence and oppression by the Zionist entity towards the Palestinian people and other peoples in the region runs parallel to the alarming escalation of repressive measures against the international solidarity movement with Palestine, in which Spain is no exception.
Toa dvance and protect its colonial project in Palestine, the Israeli entity not only seeks to exterminate the Palestinian people in Gaza and throughout Palestine, but also to silence the voices of millions everywhere who continue to believe in and fight for a free Palestine. To that end, the occupation regime has, through Zionist lobbying organizations and its alliances with reactionary governments and political forces, deployed all available resources to silence, demobilize, marginalize, and eradicate the voices of the people’s movement.
Alongside many Palestinian and pro-Palestinian collectives and individuals worldwide who have been subjected to some or all of these repressive tactics, Samidoun is currently a direct target of the Zionist-reactionary alliance. On 15 October, Canada and the United States launched a coordinated campaign to sanction Samidoun, following the example of Germany or the French Ministry of the Interior’s attempt in 2022 to dissolve the Collectif Palestine Vaincra. In all cases, these bans have stemmed from political decisions that have not bothered to substantiate their accusations through legal processes that require meaningful evidence.
It is ironic that the imperialist countries and reactionary forces most supportive of Israel’s genocidal military machinery would list grassroots Palestinian groups like Samidoun, which oppose Israeli terror and that of its allies, as “terrorists.” This is part of a strategy to criminalize political opposition and weaken the growing social movements that not only oppose Israel’s genocidal project in Palestine and across the Arab Levant but also the Atlantic imperialist axis’s project to impose a new world order, whose first victims will be the peoples of the region.
This repressive context has already reached Spain, where state institutions, together with reactionary movements, have taken a further step by targeting Samidoun activists. In collaboration with reactionary political forces and the Israeli lobby, they seek to prosecute us simply for explaining to society why anticolonial resistance is legitimate, even under current international law, and for defending the rights of all Palestinian political prisoners. Alongside these investigations, other repressive strategies we have seen in international settings are also being implemented, such as:
Using legal frameworks and opening procedures to restrict freedom of expression and political action in the name of counterterrorism, public security risks, or combating antisemitism.
Instrumentalizing bureaucratic repression and economic violence to stifle activists, imposing administrative sanctions during protests to demobilize and financially exhaust them.
Smearing activists and media pressure as a form of collective and individual targeting and creating false narratives, through massive dissemination and distortion by the Zionist lobby and the far right.
Monitoring and tracking activists in their political activities and private lives as a form of psychological pressure and intimidation.
Censoring the organization’s communication channels and the closure of Samidoun’s social media accounts.
In the face of this unprecedented offensive in the recent history of the Palestine solidarity movement, we reiterate that Samidoun is an independent, self-managed collective rooted in social movements and based on building grassroots solidarity with Palestine. Samidoun receives no public funding of any kind and is not part of the structure of any Palestinian or international party or faction. From this position, we speak of the Palestinian people’s cause, their political prisoners, and the right to defend, resist, and liberate themselves from occupation and colonialism.
Now more than ever, we call for solidarity and unity among social movements, specifically Palestinian and pro-Palestinian organizations, against repression.
The attacks on any group working for the liberation of Palestine should be a concern for all those engaged in emancipatory political work. Beyond slogans, history has forcefully shown us that, indeed, when they come for one of us, they come for all of us. Therefore, we encourage all friendly and supportive organizations of the Palestinian cause to endorse this statement, to express their rejection of this wave of repression aimed at silencing anti-Zionist political action.
In Arabic, the word Samidoun means “those who stand steadfast.” We use this idea to refer to Palestinian political prisoners, who are fighting for freedom from behind bars. Today we affirm that we must stand firm and committed to the Palestinian people until victory, return, and liberation.
On 29 October 2024, two activists in the Palestine liberation movement are being called to a first hearing at the Spanish High Court, which is investigating an alleged crime of “glorification of terrorism” on the basis of a complaint from far-right political party VOX.
The accused activists will make a brief statement to the media following the hearing, along with Amnesty International and the Palestinian Community of Madrid.
Jaldía Abubakra, one of the defendants and a leading activist in Samidoun, Alkarama Palestinian Women’s Mobilization and the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, declares categorically “those who should be taken to court are Netanyahu and Biden, who are carrying out a genocide in real time before the passive gaze of the so-called international community”.
Madrid, 28th October 2024
On the morning of 29 October 2024, two pro-Palestinian activists are being called to a first hearing in the Spanish High Court on the basis of a lawsuit filed by the Spanish extreme right-wing political party, VOX, for an alleged crime of “glorification of terrorism.” The complaint, which has ended up in Court Room number 6 of the Spanish High Court and which is still in the investigation phase, was filed in response to an event organised on 3 June 024 by Podemos in the Spanish Congress under the name “Defence of Palestine and criminalisation in Europe” where the two activists and the Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta spoke and presented analysis on the current situation and the repression of the Palestinian cause in Europe.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network in Madrid will hold a press conference at the Villa de Paris Square outside the Spanish High Court with the participation of Amnesty International, the Palestinian Community of Madrid, and members of the left in the Spanish Parliament.
This is yet another example of the use of “glorification of terrorism” provisions in Spanish law at the expense of freedom of speech and expression; previous such examples of these harmful effects include puppeteers hired by the Madrid City Council in 2016 being pursued under such a complaint, as were Cassandra Vera in 2013 for jokes on Twitter and comedian Facu Díaz, for jokes in a sketch in 2014.
The accused activists have rejected the accusation of “glorifying terrorism” and see this new lawsuit by the far-right-wing group as an attack on the freedom of speech and a manoeuvre to divert attention from the massacres and genocide that are being committed daily against the Palestinian people. Jaldia Abubakra, one of the accused activists and a Palestinian from Gaza, says: “Those who should be taken to court are Netanyahu and Biden, who are carrying out a genocide in real time before the passive gaze of the so-called international community.” She continues: “The lawsuit and the media smear campaign that we have been subjected to by the ultra-right party are a demonstration of the total collusion between the Israeli regime and reactionary movements in Europe.” She concludes: “It is nearly unbelievable that the defence of the Palestinian people takes you to court while certain politicians and journalists in this country trivialise and cheer on genocide”.
Samidoun, in a statement published on 27 October on social networks, denounces this as one more episode in an “escalation of the repressive climate” that is happening both internationally and in Spain. As the statement notes, “Samidoun is a direct target of the Zionist-reactionary alliance,” noting that, on 15 October, Canada and the United States of America sanctioned the organisation, thus joining the example of Germany, or to the attempt to dissolve the Collectif Palestine Vaincra in 2022 by the French Ministry of Interior. In all cases, the bans have come from political decisions that avoid or fail to provide meaningful evidence to sustain their accusations in an open legal process. Samidoun emphasizes that there is an international strategy to silence the voices of Palestinian activists through intimidation, censorship and bureaucratic repression by state institutions.
With this lawsuit, VOX shows its close relations with the Zionist lobby in Spain, which is expressed in a combination of associations and personalities from politics, journalism and the business world. There are many initiatives in which the right wing has unconditionally endorsed Israel’s interests. Now, after a year of intensification of the genocide –and the liberation struggle — in Palestine, this alliance is more dangerous than ever, making a qualitative leap and finding in the persecution and targeting of activists a new front for action.
As we write, the Palestinians of northern Gaza are confronting continuous siege and extermination. Despite its persistence in horror and massacres for over a year, the Zionist-imperialist regime has not succeeded in eliminating the Palestinian resistance, nor in cutting it off from its popular cradle. In northern Gaza, the Zionist genocidal army has been launching a new phase in its genocidal offensive. Entire families are gathered together, surrounded by tanks and soldiers, forcing them to flee at gunpoint and through checkpoints where they separate men and teenage boys from women and younger children. In just one emblematic case, a Palestinian woman was forced by the occupation army to flee from northern Gaza to the southern Gaza Strip. When she arrived at the Netzarim checkpoint, the occupation army shot her in the feet.
Those who refuse to abandon their loved ones are executed or massacred using U.S.-made weapons. The cowardly enemy is seeking to implement what it calls “the Generals’ Plan“, which calls for the complete extermination of the Palestinian population and the establishment of a Zionist “military zone” in the north of the Gaza Strip, as well as the reestablishment of Zionist colonies, which were forced to leave Gaza by the Palestinian resistance in 2005.
Scenes from the genocidal assault on Beit Lahiya
Jabalia refugee camp, a camp whose heart beats with the blood of resistance, the cradle of the great popular Intifada, with a long history of noble and fierce struggle against Zionist invaders, is under siege by the colonial army. The occupation forces are starving the population, blocking all humanitarian aid and intensifying its air strikes to forcibly displace our Palestinian people and the forces of our Resistance in the north, who remain steadfast and committed to true liberation and victory, from the river to the sea. A day ago, colonial army planes committed a new massacre by reducing 11 residential buildings in the camp to ashes, causing the martyrdom of 150 people in just a few hours. Just today, the occupation forces bombed five residential buildings in Beit Lahiya, killing dozens more martyrs. From Jabalia to Beit Lahia to Gaza City, every day comes with new horrors to report in the north of Gaza — massacre after massacre from aerial bombings with U.S.-made bombs and missiles targeting residential homes and shelters, aimed at the elimination of Palestinian families; roundups, strip searches and physical and sexual assault of civilians; field executions; and the mass abduction and enforced disappearance of hundreds of Palestinian men and boys.
The scene outside Kamal Adwan Hospital.
The situation at Kamal Adwan hospital — named, like so many Palestinian institutions, for a Palestinian political leader assassinated by the occupation in 1973 — and within the medical complex itself is catastrophic. The hospital has been under siege for two days by the Zionist army, whose vehicles and soldiers opened fire on the building, causing extensive destruction. They deliberately destroyed and confiscated medication necessary for life — another tool of genocide against the Palestinian people. Patients and medical staff were abducted by the soldiers, who burst into the hospital premises and took them to an unknown destination after stripping them to their underwear. Ibrahim Abu Safiya, the son of the hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who refused to leave his post, his responsibilities and his patients under the brutal assault, was martyred by the occupation. Even after several health care workers were released by the occupation, they returned to abduct Dr. Mohammed Obaid, head of the reconstructive surgery department at Al-Awda Hospital. Several children on life-support have been martyred by the Zionist army’s bombardment of the hospital’s oxygen supply. As in past Zionist assaults on hospitals, including Al-Shifa Hospital, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Al-Ahli Hospital, the Indonesian Hospital, and many others, doctors and health care workers were particularly targeted for assassination and abduction in a further attempt to deny medical care and support to the Palestinians of northern Gaza.
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya and other medical personnel being abducted by occupation forcesIbrahim Abu Safiya, the martyred son of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital
This comes hand in hand with the systematic assault and targeting of civil defense workers, social workers, municipal workers, security workers, mayors, aid coordinators and other Palestinians serving their community. Palestinian workers have been a specific target of the genocidal forces as they provide necessary services to their communities. This is a deliberate effort to prevent Palestinians from providing aid to one another, coordinating the distribution of international aid, and preserving the organization of their society amid a constant assault of genocidal bombing attacks.
Dr. Mohammed Obaid, head of the reconstructive surgery department at Al-Awda Hospital, abducted from Kamal Adwan Hospital
The Gaza Government Media Office denounced the role of international organizations in Gaza, which, rather than supporting Palestinians on the front lines providing health care, civil defense, aid, and other urgent needs, have been standing aside watching the genocide and allowing it to continue:
“These organizations have not made even the minimum effort to provide medical support to help hospitals, healthcare facilities, and medical staff withstand the brutal “israeli” occupation. They have not supplied the essential materials and medical equipment required, but rather watched the humanitarian catastrophe in North Gaza unfold without taking action. Additionally, they have failed to provide support to medical teams facing severe shortages of medicine, equipment, food, and water, leading to the accelerated collapse of the healthcare system in North Gaza.
International organizations have also failed to defend and protect human rights, nor have they played any practical role in addressing violations against civilians. They have shown themselves incapable of facilitating communication between families separated due to the genocide, particularly in cases of detention and displacement, where their role is non-existent. More than 250 individuals have been kidnapped by the “israeli” occupation, and thousands of families have been forcibly displaced without any meaningful response from these organizations.”
We cannot remain silent and allow the Zionist enemy and its imperialist partners and directors to normalize the terror and inhumanity they inflict on the Palestinians of northern Gaza and the whole of Palestine. Nor can we allow our enemies to normalize the kidnapping, torture and execution of Palestinians, particularly Palestinian men and boys, most of whom are generational Palestinian refugees since 1948 who have been denied the right to return to their homes in occupied Palestine for over 76 years. Both the mass popular Great March of Return and Breaking the Siege in Gaza in 2018-2019, and the heroic Al-Aqsa Flood operation both highlighted the struggle for return as central for the struggle for liberation.
Indeed, the horrors of the assault on northern Gaza is only paralleled by the heroism of its resistance, targeting D9 bulldozers, armored personnel carriers and tanks, sniping genocidal soldiers and fighting back heroically to defend and liberate the land of Palestine from the genocidal colonial onslaught of the “Generals’ Plan.”
Patients and health workers forcibly abducted from Kamal Adwan hospital
According to Gaza government reports, over 200 Palestinian men have been forcibly abducted in recent days. Dozens of them were taken from the vicinity of the Kamal Adwan hospital, where at least 30 doctors, nurses and employees are currently in the hands of the Zionist army (see list of current names below). Several journalists are also among the people who witnesses have seen kidnapped by Zionist soldiers. These people are among the few whose disappearances are still documented by their colleagues, at the same time that at least six Palestinian journalists — Anas al-Sharif, Talal Aruki, Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ismail Farid and Ashraf Saraj — have been specifically targeted and threatened by name and photo as they refuse to abandon northern Gaza; and at the same time that the Zionist regime bombed first the Beirut studios of Al-Mayadeen and then a group of residences serving as a media base in Hasbaya, where journalists in southern Lebanon were staying to report on the battle against the invaders.
Palestinian prisoners from Gaza are subjected to even more torturous and severe conditions than the over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners held inside Zionist prisons. They are stripped and rounded up by occupation soldiers, abducted to the notorious Sde Teiman prison camp and similar facilities, subjected to severe torture, abuse, physical and sexual assault, starvation, stress positions and other forms of inhuman treatment. The testimonies of those Palestinians from Gaza released have only underlined the multiple reports documenting the horrors to which Palestinians from Gaza are exposed inside Zionist detention camps. In addition, their names are not released by the occupation, they are denied access to any kind of legal or medical support, and their families have no idea whether they are being imprisoned by the occupation or have been subjected to field executions.
The mass arrest campaigns carried out in Gaza by the genocidal Zionist army also target the dead. According to the Gaza government, since the start of its genocidal offensive, the Zionist entity has stolen 2,300 bodies from several cemeteries in the Gaza Strip and partially/completely destroyed 19 cemeteries. Some of these bodies, together with those of martyrs stolen by the occupation, are being returned in batches, in an advanced state of decomposition, often unidentifiable. Most of the bodies returned are mutilated, showing signs of organ removal and other post-mortem surgical operations. These desecrations are a common practice of the Zionist entity towards the bodies of Palestinian martyrs, and date back several decades before the start of the genocidal offensive in Gaza. Even before the aggression on Gaza over the past year, the occupation imprisoned hundreds of bodies of Palestinian martyrs, including martyrs of the prisoners’ movement whose lives were taken behind bars, as well as martyred resistance leaders and fighters whose bodies were stolen following battles where they confronted the invading occupation forces.
Let’s be clear: Israel is a genocidal regime operating with the full support and cover of the U.S. empire and its imperialist partners in Britain, France, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and others. Western media attempts to distort the facts and invent fictions about what is happening in northern Gaza are a tactic long used by imperialism. Western mainstream news channels and complicit journalists must also be seen as part of the many forces seeking to destroy the Palestinian cause and our struggle. Rather than commit to the principles of truth and integrity, these entities and individuals attempt to “pass off” the burning of people alive, the execution of women and children in cold blood, and the attempted displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes as legitimate and justified acts on the part of the Zionist entity.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network calls on all organizations and groups supporting the struggle of the Palestinian people to document and inform about the reality of the genocide in Gaza, to mobilize and escalate in support of the tens of thousands of Palestinian prisoners currently in the hands of the Zionist entity, and to organize actively in support of the resistance and the Palestinian and Lebanese people in this decisive phase of the national liberation struggle unfolding before our eyes today. Like the principle of Sinwar’s stick (Asa al Sinwar), we must take upon ourselves the duty to resist zionism and imperialism from wherever we are, however we can, to our very last breath, until the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, and the liberation of the region and the people of the world from imperialism.
Known names of detainees from the Kamal Adwan Hospital medical team:
Mahmoud Labad
Mahmoud Abu Amsha
Ahmed Radwan
Mohammed Assaf
Abdullah Al-Qattati
Hatem El Jammal
Mohammed Al Khatib
Jafar Abu Al-Moazah
Hatem Al Ajrami
Wissam Abu Nada
Abdullah Awkal
Samir Al-Ajrami
Abdullah Abu Rafie
Ahmed Shaheen
Dr. Mohammed Obaid
Dr. Hassan Al-Muqayed
Dr. Mohammed Zaher
Dr. Mosaab Ruwaished
Nidal Al-Muqayed
Mahmoud Al-Muqayed
Mahmoud Saleh
Abu Hassan Al Kurd
Mahmoud Hammad
Farouk Odeh
Maher Ahmed
Hussein Abed
Ahmed Nassar
Moataz Nassar
Hassan Nassar
Imad Al-Khatib
The Government Media Office published an update of the most important statistics of the genocidal war waged by the occupation on the Gaza Strip for the 385th day, Friday, October 25, 2024:
385 days of genocide.
3,738 massacres committed by the occupation army.
52,885 martyrs and missing persons.
10,000 missing.
42,885 martyrs who arrived at hospitals (Ministry of Health).
17,210 child martyrs.
171 infants were born and martyred in the genocidal war.
786 children were martyred during the war and they were less than one year old.
1206 Palestinian families, all of whose members were killed by the occupation and erased from the civil registry.
37 were martyred as a result of famine.
11,742 female martyrs.
1047 martyred health care workers (Ministry of Health).
85 martyrs from the Civil Defense
177 martyred journalists.
7 Mass graves were established by the occupation inside hospitals.
520 martyrs were recovered from 7 mass graves inside hospitals.
100,544 wounded and injured people arrived at hospitals. (Ministry of Health).
396 journalists and media professionals were injured and wounded.
69% of the victims are children and women.
197 shelters were targeted by the “Israeli” occupation.
35,055 children living without their parents or without one of them.
3,500 children are at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food.
171 days after the closure of all Gaza Strip crossings.
12,000 wounded people need to travel abroad for treatment.
12,500 cancer patients are facing death and need treatment.
3,000 patients with various diseases need treatment abroad.
1,737,524 people infected with or at risk of infectious diseases as a result of displacement.
71,338 cases of viral hepatitis infection due to displacement.
60,000 pregnant women are at risk due to lack of health care.
350,000 chronic illness patients are at risk due to the prevention of drug imports.
5,280 detainees from the Gaza Strip during the genocide war.
310 cases of arrest of health personnel (3 doctors were assassinated).
38 cases of arrest of journalists whose names are known.
2 million displaced people in the Gaza Strip.
100,000 tents are worn out and no longer suitable for the displaced.
205 government headquarters were destroyed by the occupation.
126 schools and universities were completely destroyed by the occupation.
339 schools and universities were partially destroyed by the occupation.
12,700 students were killed by the “Israeli” occupation during the war.
785,000 students were deprived of education by the “Israeli” occupation.
750 teachers and educational employees in the education sector were killed by the occupation during the war.
130 scientists, academics, university professors and researchers were executed by the occupation.
814 mosques were completely destroyed by the occupation.
148 mosques were severely destroyed by the occupation and need to be restored.
3 Churches targeted and destroyed by the occupation.
19 cemeteries were completely or partially destroyed by the occupation out of (60) cemeteries.
2,300 bodies were stolen by the occupation from many cemeteries in the Gaza Strip.
150,000 housing units were completely destroyed by the occupation.
80,000 housing units destroyed by the occupation are uninhabitable.
200,000 housing units were partially destroyed by the occupation.
85,500 tons of explosives were dropped by the occupation on the Gaza Strip.
34 hospitals were put out of service by the occupation.
80 health centers were put out of service by the occupation.
162 health institutions were targeted by the occupation.
132 ambulances were targeted by the occupation.
206 archaeological and heritage sites destroyed by the occupation.
3,130 kilometers of electricity networks were destroyed by the occupation.
125 Number of destroyed underground electricity distribution transformers.
330,000 linear meters of water networks were destroyed by the occupation.
655,000 linear meters of sewage networks were destroyed by the occupation.
2,835,000 linear meters of road and street networks were destroyed by the occupation.
36 athletic facilities, playgrounds and sports halls were destroyed by the occupation.
700 water wells were destroyed by the occupation and put out of service.
86% is the percentage of destruction in the Gaza Strip.
36 billion dollars is the direct initial losses of the genocidal war.
