This short documentary presents the reflections of North American delegates participating in the Solidarity with Nicaragua Delegation that coincided with Nicaragua’s general elections in November 2021.
This delegation coincided with Nicaragua’s 2021 general elections and participants were accredited as part of 200+ internationalists to accompany the electoral process on November 7th.
The Solidarity with Nicaragua Delegation was comprised of a group of 12 North Americans and accompanied by members of the ATC (Nicaragua) and international peasant movement CLOC-Via Campesina from Honduras, Dominican Republic, and Venezuela.
Participants include Michelle Munjanattu, a Samidoun New York/New Jersey activist and a union member.
On Thursday, 2 December, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra, a member organization of the Samidoun Network in Toulouse, France, organized an information booth at the University of Mirail in Toulouse as part of the international campaign in support of Palestinian students imprisoned by the Israeli occupation. This campaign brings together more than 350 organizations around the world who have united their voices in support of Palestinian youth confronting the criminalization of their organizations and mass imprisonment.
For over two hours, the participants distributed hundreds of flyers and conducted many discussions with the students. They were outraged to hear about the Israeli occupation military raids taking place regularly on Palestinian campuses, such as Birzeit University. Moreover, many people did not know that hundreds of Palestinian students were imprisoned in Zionist jails each year.
On this occasion, dozens of students wrote messages in French and Arabic to the families of the imprisoned students. These cards will be directly transmitted to the families thanks to the work of Samidoun in occupied Palestine, which regularly visits the families of Palestinian prisoners. Among the many cards received, a young student concluded her solidarity message with: “We support your cause. I hope all Palestinians will be free one day! We think of you from Toulouse in France.” Another wrote: “Much courage to you from a student in Toulouse,” while another young person ended his message with: “You are in our hearts every day. Keep faith, joy will come. Palestine will win.”
Every month, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra organizes stands in different parts of the city to support campaigns for the Palestinian people and their resistance for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. Contact the Collectif to get involved, or reach out to Samidoun Network to get involved in your local area outside of France.
Tom Martin, of the southern French city of Toulouse, is wildly unopular with French Zionists. They claim that anyone who protests the Israeli government’s policy of apartheid against the Palestinians is anti-Semitic.
Tom Martin, 35, is shaking his head.
“We are facing strong forces that argue that because you are against Zionism, you are — in their eyes — automatically anti-Semitic,” he said to Arbejderen during a visit to Denmark.
Tom Martin is a member of one of France’s most active and visible solidarity groups, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra, which in May was the driving force behind very large demonstrations in Toulouse against Israel’s war against Gaza. Thousands of young people attended.
Collectif Palestine Vaincra means, “Palestine Will be Victorious Collective.”
Anti-Semites?
“The Zionist lobby in France, which supports Israeli apartheid, deliberately links anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and accuses us of being racists, even though we are in fact anti-racists,” Tom Martin says.
Anti-Semitism can be described as prejudice against or even hatred of Jews as a group.
Zionism is the term for the state of Israel’s underlying ideology that Jews constitute a people entitled to their own religious state in Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. In practice, it means controlling as much Palestinian land as possible and the presence of as few Palestinians as possible.
The Collectif Palestine Vaincra, founded in 2019, calls for, among other things, a boycott of Israel, and it provides information about the history and rights of the Palestinian people.
The Zionists in France were infuriated when, in the days leading up to Christmas last year, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra put posters on JC Decaux bus shelter advertisements, taking photos and sharing them on social media, where they were viewed hundreds of thousands of times. They carried slogans like “Boycott Israel” and “As a Christmas present, I want a free Palestine.”
The accusations of anti-Semitism came quickly — for example from the BNCVA, which defines itself as a national bureau to combat anti-Semitism, as well as from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the CRIF, the Representative Council of Jews in France.
Calls to Prohibit Collectif Palestine Vaincra
This led to parts of the Zionist lobby in France proposing a ban of the Collectif Palestine Vaincra.
In March of this year, politician Patrice Perrot asked the Home Secretary to ban and dissolve the Collectif Palestine Vaincra.
Patrice Perrot is a member of the National Assembly representing the La Republique en Marche! Party, led by French president Emmanuel Macron.
This politician is close to the extremely Zionist and right-wing organization NGO Monitor, which aims to suppress the Palestine solidarity movement around the world.
The demand to ban the very active French group came in the wake of the Israeli government officially branding a number of Palestinian NGOs as “terrorist organizations.”
“The very strong pro-Zionist lobby is trying to use its connections to French politicians to introduce interventions against us using the judicial system and the laws. The goal is to silence forces that support the Palestinian people,” Tom Martin says.
He says that France’s pro-Zionist lobby has not only allied itself with the French government but is also aligning with U.S. policy on Israel and the Palestinian cause.
“These three components are merging more and more, adapting to the extremely aggressive policies of the United States,” Tom Martin says.
Is it illegal to boycott Israel in France?
“No, but the Zionists and their supporters are trying to make people believe that. The Zionist organiations are trying in various ways to make ordinary people believe that it is illegal, which it is not. We stand with the movement here in France calling for the boycott, including the BDS campaign.”
Building the Boycott Campaign
Tom Martin emphasizes that the Collectif Palestine Vaincra supports the boycott of Israel as one of the means by which people can fight the colonial Israeli state.
The Collectif is working together with the BDS campaign in the south of France as well as other Palestinian and Palestine solidarity groups.
“We support economic, cultural, sporting and academic boycott campaigns,” Tom Martin says.
Among other things, there were protests against the Israeli cycling team, “Israel Start-Up Nation,” during this summer’s Tour de France cycling race.
He says that in recent years, there have been various accusations, allegations and lawsuits against activists who support the boycott of Israel in France, most recently against the leader of the solidarity group EuroPalestine, Olivia Zémor, who is of French Jewish descent.
She was acquitted by the Lyon City Court in May of this year for calling for a boycott of the Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva.
“This kind of court victory happens even though the French Ministry of Justice issued a circular last October to prosecutors and officials throughout the country condemning calls to boycott Israeli products as equivalent to inciting discrimination against Israel on the basis of nationality,” Tom Martin says, shaking his head again.
He added that the European Court of Human Rights in June of last year upheld the right of French activists to call for a boycott of Israeli products, ruling that prosecutions against them would violate their freedom of expression.
Free and democratic Palestine
Tom Martin says that many Zionist groups in France want to ban the Collectif Palestine Vaincra because the group openly advocates for a liberated and democratic Palestine for all, without Zionism, racism and hatred and with justice for all.
The group also upholds the inalienable right of return for all Palestinian refugees displaced from their land.
These are not the only reasons why several Zionist groups in France are calling for a ban on the Collectif Palestine Vaincra. They are also outraged that the group supports the Palestinian struggle to liberate all of historic Palestine, from the river to the sea.
The Collectif Palestine Vaincra refers to the growing number of Palestinian groups, especially among young people, who with the words “river to the sea” indicate the borders of the original historic Palestine as the goal of the liberation struggle. Historic Palestine includes present-day Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip). The river is the Jordan River, which runs east of Palestine, and the sea refers to the Mediterranean Sea to the west.
This demand was raised by tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Palestine and around the world in May of this year during major protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza.
During the protests, some Israelis also supported the demand for a democratic Palestine.
“We support a free, diverse and democratic Palestine, liberated from imperialism and Zionism. By diverse, we mean a country where traditions, religions and languages are a personal choice and people can live in freedom,” Tom Martin says.
“We see Israel as a colonial and racist entity, an outpost of Western imperialism in the region. We condemn and fight France’s support for the Zionist entity,” he says.
Increasing awareness
Tom Martin says that the message of a united, free Palestine is well received by many residents of Toulouse.
“People notice us, and more and more people are becoming aware that the so-called two-state solution, and especially the so-called peace process of Oslo and Madrid, is a big lie, and that a democratic Palestine is a real solution,” he says.
The much-publicized Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 purported to form a roadmap that was supposed to lead to Israel evacuating the settlements and withdrawing its occupying forces, and finally leading to a Palestinian state.
However, Israel continued to build settlements and did not withdraw. And there has not been a Palestinian state.
Every month, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra sets up a stand in the center of Toulouse, providing information about the boycott, Palestine and the rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people.
“It is a space and a meeting place where we can discuss with hundreds of people. There is also an opportunity to hoist the Palestinian flag in public space,” said Tom Martin, adding that the group’s mere presence evokes strong reactions from groups that support the “extreme Zionist right wing,” as he puts it.
Against imperialism
Tom Martin explains that the Zionist forces in France are also infuriated because the Collectif Palestine Vaincra views the Palestinian people’s struggle as an integral part of anti-imperialist resistance throughout the world.
“The struggle is anti-imperialist, internationalist, anti-racist and anti-colonialist at the same time,” Tom Martin says.
In southern France, many activists from the social protest movement, the Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes), have taken part in demonstrations organized by the Collectif Palestine Vaincra, most recently in the demonstration that drew over 1,000 participants in solidarity with Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese Communist and resistance struggler who has been imprisoned for 37 years in the Lannemezan prison not far from Toulouse.
BDS France Toulouse, local branch 31 of the CGT Education trade union, the French student union (UNEF)’s Toulouse branch and others participated, together with Attac Toulouse and political parties like the NPA and the French Communist Party, PCF.
“The French state is an imperialist and colonialist state. The comrades from the Yellow Vests joined our demonstrations because they could easily recognize the repression of the French state against Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. They themselves have been subjected to the repression of the police and courts,” Tom Martin explains.
Terror label
Tom Martin is not worried when Zionist forces and bourgeois media call the Collectif Palestine Vaincra the PFLP in Europe.
The PFLP stands for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is the second largest Palestinian resistance organization in the PLO.
The PFLP is fighting for a free Palestine that is not under Israeli control. The purpose of the PFLP is to create a secular, socialist democratic state where Muslims, Christians, Jews and others can live in peace.
Tom Martin smiles at the claims of being the PFLP in Europe.
“Yes, they are trying to label us as terrorists and compare us to what they call terrorist organizations. But we continue to support the Palestinian resistance and its legitimacy. And yes, we respect Georges Abdallah, as well as Ahmad Sa’adat and Khalida Jarrar, who are political leaders of the PFLP.
Tom Martin considers the PFLP to be one of the Palestinian liberation movements.
Young people’s growing involvement
Internationally, Collectif Palestine Vaincra cooperates with the International Forum in Denmark and with the Palestinian prisoner solidarity organization Samidoun, of which the French group is a member.
Collectif Palestine Vaincra is also part of the organization of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian alternative revolutionary umbrella movement, which held conferences in Beirut, Madrid and Sao Paolo at the same time in October and November this year.
“The conference renewed contacts between Palestinian organizations, Arab groups and international groups and is a step towards regrouping the resistance. There was strong agreement that the Oslo agreements are a thing of the past, forgotten and buried.”
“We were thrilled that a large number of young people attended the conferences, especially young Palestinian women. They are from a generation that was born after the Oslo Accords were signed. But the young people have experienced precisely that those agreements have hit them hard, as they have the Palestinian resistance struggle as a whole,” says Tom Martin.
Tom Martin and the Collectif Palestine Vaincra are optimistic about the youth of Palestine and their resistance struggle against Israeli occupation.
“We strongly believe that the ‘revival’ and renewed resilience we experienced during Israel’s recent attack on Gaza will mean that a common front will gather to liberate all of historic Palestine. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were on the streets in Gaza, in the West Bank, in refugee camps outside Palestine and in all places of exile,” he says.
“I am very optimistic, not least because of the many activities of young people,” Tom Martin concludes.
The theme is “Free Our Prisoners”, who are politicized in struggles against colonialism and imperialism, and are central to liberation movements. Mass incarceration is a tool used to subjugate people’s civil rights and crush dissent and protest.
Liberation Cafe will feature cultural performances and food, including conversations on different prisoner movements from Palestinian and Chilean prisoners to Turtle Island and more. There will be several different tables which you can move to over a span of a few hours, meet and greet different organizations, and snack on some home-cooked traditional meals!
Masks are required. This event is taking place on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish Nations.
Participating Organizations from the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS):
The Palestinian Youth Movement-Vancouver, SPHR UBC, and Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network – Vancouver planned a film showing of Fedayin: Georges Abdallah’s Fight for Thursday, December 2nd, but it was postponed by the university administration on Wednesday, December 1 after a complaint was made about the film by an external, national right-wing Zionist organization.
While the university says that it is conducting a “risk assessment” for “security and safety” on campus, the reality is that its actions mean that a film presenting the Palestinian narrative, and the life and struggle of Georges Abdallah, is not being shown tonight on campus because an official of a Zionist organization sent an email opposing the political content of a film. This film has been screened in multiple venues and university campuses across Canada and around the world and has been selected by multiple prestigious film festivals for screening. UBC is the only venue where such an incident of silencing and suppression has occurred.
During the May 2021 uprisings in Palestine and abroad, academics, labour unions, artists, musicians, journalists, and the international community published statements in support of Palestinian liberation and against the Israeli settler colonial regime. For too long, institutions have been succumbing to Zionist pressure and censoring Palestinian speech. No external Zionist pressure should take importance over the community and Palestinian organizers.
This is a clear threat to academic freedom and an example of discrimination and anti-Palestinian racism. External pressure from a national lobby organization is treated as if it is a higher priority than the well-being of students on campus, particularly Palestinian students and allies of Palestine. University officials did not reach out to Palestinian students and inquire about their well-being or need for support after being targeted by a national right-wing lobby group. Instead, they postponed the film screening to “determine risk.”
We expect that the University of British Columbia will expeditiously complete its risk assessment review and that we will soon announce a new date for the screening. We further expect the university to live up to its obligations to its students and as a centre for higher learning by appropriately dismissing these complaints made by a lobby organization that does not want the Palestinian histories to be told at UBC.
In addition, we expect that the administration provide support to Palestinian students on campus and facilitate the screening of “Fedayin” rather than allowing anti-Palestinian racism to delay, suppress and silence our expression. We will announce the new date for the film at UBC as soon as possible, and we will not stop organizing.
We encourage organizations to screen the film in your local areas, campuses and communities in order to hear the narrative that Zionist lobby groups want to silence: that is, the narrative of the Palestinian people – denied their humanity for over 73 years of ethnic cleansing, yet continuing to struggle for justice, freedom and liberation.
The university taking 30 days to complete a risk assessment is a statement in itself. They chose to listen to Zionist pressure instead of allowing the film screening to proceed and discuss it with the organizers involved.
If you would like to screen “Fedayin: Georges Abdallah’s Fight” in your organization, community or campus, email us at samidoun@samidoun.net or the filmmakers at vacarmesfilms@gmail.com. We look forward to facilitating your screening!
Use the hashtag #FreeIssam for all of your posts during the action!
Dr. Issam Hijjawi Bassalat is a Palestinian activist and doctor who was arrested by the British authorities in August 2020 on trumped-up charges stemming from an infiltrator sent to spy on political meetings. On Friday, 3 December, Dr. Issam will appear in the High Court as he and his attorneys appeal the latest denial of his bail application.
Dr. Issam is in a very poor health condition. He has suffered a heart attack and gone through surgery already behind bars. Despite this, British authorities have refused to release him on bail, even though he has now been imprisoned for over a year and there is no indication that his case will soon come to trial.
Join us in a hashtag campaign/Twitterstorm #FreeIssam for the release of Dr. Issam Hijjawi Bassalat on Thursday, 2 December (the day before the hearing) at 8:00 pm occupied Jerusalem time (6:00 pm London time, 7:00 pm central Europe, 10:00 am Pacific time, 1:00 pm Eastern time)
On 3 December at 12 noon British time (7 am Eastern time, 1 pm in central Europe, 2 pm in Palestine), Issam’s bail application will be heard. Just like when political prisoners go to court in person, it is important for people to show up in court to show their support and solidarity and make it clear that this case is the subject of national and international scrutiny.
Please write to us at samidoun@samidoun.net to receive the link to attend the virtual court hearing on Friday, 3 December. Note that during the court hearing, please keep your sound off and display your name, and do not make an audio or video recording of the hearing. Let’s make our voices heard on 2 December and virtually show up in court for the release of Dr. Issam Hijjawi Bassalat!
Who is Dr. Issam Hijjawi Bassalat?
Dr. Issam Hijjawi Bassalat is a Palestinian political prisoner in British jails. He has been targeted for his commitment to international solidarity and as a political means of repressing both the Palestinian and Irish movements.
Alongside his fellow detainees, the Saoradh 9, he was detained in “Operation Arbacia,” a series of political arrests carried out by British authorities. Today, he remains jailed in the Maghaberry high security prison, in the British-occupied north of Ireland. We call for the immediate release of Dr. Issam Hijjawi Bassalat and all political prisoners in British jails.
He was targeted by an MI5 infiltrator, Dennis McFadden, to attend a bugged meeting with members of Saoradh, an Irish republican socialist political party that advocates for an end to British colonialism and a united Ireland. He was detained on 22 August at Heathrow Airport on the same day that nine members of Saoradh were also arrested by British forces. Throughout the past year, his bail applications have been repeatedly denied, despite serious health issues and the damaging effects of incarceration on his and his fellow detainees’ well-being.
Dr. Hijjawi Bassalat, 62, came to the UK in 1995 to work as a doctor, and he is a well-known, respected member of the Palestinian community in Scotland and the father of four. He previously served as chair of the Association of Palestinian Communities in Scotland (today, the Scottish Palestinian Society) and has been active throughout Europe in advocating for Palestinian rights to return, freedom and justice, speaking frequently at meetings, conferences and events.
Infiltration and MI5 Attacks
“Operation Arbacia” sprang from the decades-long infiltration of Irish republican movements by MI5 agent Dennis McFadden, detailed in a Channel 4 News report. Issam was entrapped into a meeting with McFadden on false pretenses after he was told by British officials that he had to pick up his daughter’s passport renewal in Belfast instead of Glasgow. There, he was invited to what was presented to him as a Saoradh meeting to discuss international solidarity and the Palestinian cause; he had previously spoken to a Saoradh Ard Fheis (annual meeting) about Palestine, an open, public event.
Under the emergency laws still in effect in the north of Ireland, his case will be heard by a judge without a jury.
He is charged with “preparatory acts of terrorism” under the 2006 Terrorism Act, based on his attendance at this meeting engineered by MI5. Issam’s solicitor, Gavin Booth, has seen the transcript of the meeting Issam was compelled to attend, noting that “Everything that’s contained within the transcripts and the recordings is about Palestine, is about peaceful and democratic change. There’s nothing in the transcripts from Dr Bassalat that would support violence in any way.” Despite these facts and the presumption of innocence that is supposed to apply, he has been held on remand for a full year.
Dr. Issam’s Health Crisis
Dr. Issam Hijjawi Bassalat, Palestinian political prisoner in British jails and a medical doctor, suffered a heart attack inside Maghaberry prison on 9 October, only days before his most recent scheduled hearing on an application for bail. Despite his increasingly dire medical circumstances, he remains imprisoned. In fact, the judge hearing his case said that this was not an indication of “changed circumstances,” despite the risk to his life and well-being.
These delays have added yet more time behind bars to a process in which Dr. Bassalat’s lawyer already declared that the evidence will take him at least 63 weeks to review before a trial could be possible. He already experienced surgery while imprisoned after a hunger strike and repeated protests to spur medical treatment for his injured spine. He did not receive adequate space and time for exercise and physical therapy after his surgery, due to his continued imprisonment.
As he appealed for human rights groups to address his case, Dr. Bassalat said in a statement that “all the might of the British Government” has been used against him, “a single individual [who] dared to challenge the British historic role in creating the Palestinian plight through the Balfour Declaration and the 30 years of the British Mandate in Palestine ending in al Nakba – the catastrophe of the Palestinians in 1948.”
Targeting Issam’s Bank Account and Medical License
In addition to his ongoing, unjust imprisonment, pre-trial detention and denied bail, Dr. Hijjawi Bassalat has suffered further injustice. During his detention, his medical care was initially delayed, and then after he finally received necessary surgery, he was denied pain relief and proper therapy. Despite his condition, he continued to be denied bail.
His bank account was frozen, denying him access to funds and creating even more inconvenience and trauma for his family — again, all while he ostensibly retains the presumption of innocence. Issam’s licence to practise medicine was suspended by the General Medical Council (GMC) on 26 October 2020 after the charges filed against him, despite the fact that he has been convicted of nothing and that the charges in no way relate to his fitness to practise medicine or his treatment of his patients.
Issam is being targeted as a Palestinian in an attempt to justify the MI5 infiltration of public political parties and to smear both the Palestinian and Irish struggles through entrapment and misrepresentation. The presumption of innocence is being cast aside for political gamesmanship. We urge the immediate release of Dr. Issam Hijjawi Bassalat and all political prisoners, including the Saoradh 9, detained in British jails.
Today, join National Students for Justice in Palestine, the Palestinian Youth Movement, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and IDOC Watch for a day of action to free all Palestinian political prisoners and support those on hunger strike for freedom from administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial.
CALL TO ACTION: December 1st at 10:00 PT/12:00 CT/1:00 ET/ 8:00 Palestine
Take the salt water challenge! Gather with your comrades, organizations, colleagues and friends to sip salt and water (symbolizing the salt and water Palestinian hunger strikers rely on) together. You can even do it alone and post the video on your social media — or gather together for a protest action. CLICK HERE FOR A SAMPLE SCRIPT IN ENGLISH, ARABIC, SPANISH AND ITALIAN
Hisham Abu Hawash, 39, has continued his hunger strike for 106 days. He is jailed without charge or trial under Israel’s “administrative detention,” a systematic policy of imprisonment of Palestinians on the basis of “secret evidence.” Even their lawyers are denied access to allegations against them.
Administrative detention is one of Israel’s colonial weapons against the Palestinian people. Palestinians like Hisham are forced to fight back with their bodies and empty stomachs, putting their lives on the line in hunger strikes for freedom. We call for freedom for Palestinians on hunger strike — and an end to the systems of administrative detention, military imprisonment and colonialism in Palestine. We also call for an end to colonial incarceration from the US to Palestine
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 over 500 Palestinians jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention, out of 4,650 Palestinian political prisoners. These 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. Issued for up to six months at a time, they are indefinitely renewable, and Palestinians — including minor children — can spend years jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention.
Hisham Abu Hawash is on hunger strike for 106 because he is fighting back against this system. Today, we call for justice and liberation for all prisoners of colonialism.
On December 1st, 2021, National Students for Justice in Palestine, Samidoun, Palestinian Youth Movement and IDOC Watch call on all institutions and individuals committed to freedom, justice, and equality to take to social media in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike!
CALL TO ACTION: December 1st at 10:00 PT/12:00 CT/1:00 ET/ 8:00 Palestine
HOW YOU CAN TAKE PART:
Join the social media day of action on December 1st! Start Tweeting and posting on Instagram with the hashtag #FreeThemAll #Strike4Freedom at 10 am Pacific, 1 pm Eastern, 7 pm central Europe, 8 pm Palestine. CLICK HERE FOR THE SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLKIT
Take the salt water challenge! Gather with your comrades, organizations, colleagues and friends to sip salt and water (symbolizing the salt and water Palestinian hunger strikers rely on) together. You can even do it alone and post the video on your social media — or gather together for a protest action. CLICK HERE FOR A SAMPLE SCRIPT IN ENGLISH AND ARABIC, WITH SPANISH TRANSLATIONS COMING SOON
For more information, please feel free to reach out! See ya on social media.
In solidarity,
National Students for Justice in Palestine Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network Palestinian Youth Movement IDOC Watch
On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network reaffirms its commitment to solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners, and solidarity with the liberation of the land and people of Palestine, to achieve victory from the river to the sea.
The International Day of Solidarity, commemorated on 29 November by the United Nations, marks an infamous date in Palestinian history: 29 November 1947, when the United Nations adopted its Resolution 181, for the partition of Palestine. The partition of Palestine in order to create a Zionist state, over the clear rejection of the indigenous people of Palestine, served only the interests of European settler-colonialism and imperialism. While the UN stated that its own principles included universal human rights, opposition to colonialism, and support for the exercise of self-determination, its support for the partition of Palestine for a colonial project exposed the hypocrisy of such claims.
Rather than imposing requirements for reparations upon European fascist states and their collaborators responsible for Nazi atrocities, the partition plan instead continued existing policies of colonialism and imperial domination. It sought to partition and divide Palestinian Arab land to create a Zionist settler-colonial state in the region, fundamentally tied to imperialist interests in the United Kingdom, the United States, France and elsewhere.
From the announcement of the partition plan and before, as they had the Balfour Declaration in the past, the Palestinian people firmly and clearly rejected and resisted colonial plans for their land and people. By adopting this plan for colonial control, the United Nations was part and parcel of the creation of the Nakba, the Zionist assault on Palestine in which over 500 villages were destroyed and over 70% of the Palestinian people forced to flee their homes and lands. Millions of Palestinians remain refugees to this day, denied their right to return home for over 73 years.
In the years that followed, Arab peoples rose up for freedom from colonialism and Western-imposed kings, with revolutionary movements to control the resources of the region for the people of the region, rather than for imperialist powers and their corporate interests.
The Palestinian resistance to the Nakba, which was never suppressed or killed, continued to develop into the modern Palestinian revolution and to fight for return to Palestine and liberation of the land. This struggle was part and parcel of the anti-colonial movements sweeping the world, led from Asia, Africa and Latin America and representing a revolutionary vision for a coming victory over oppression and exploitation.
These movements, and the states and peoples breaking the chains of colonization, forced the recognition of 29 November as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. At the same time, however, the United Nations has never truly been held accountable or even officially recognized the crime committed against the Palestinian people not only by the occupation of 1967, the denial of Palestinian refugees’ right to return, the construction of settlements or the torture of Palestinian prisoners, but by the partition plan itself, which worked hand in hand with British imperialism and the Zionist movement to create the conditions for the Nakba of the Palestinian people.
On this International Day of Solidarity, there are 4,650 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons. Of those, over 500 are jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention. Palestinian prisoners are carrying out hunger strikes, resisting and organizing behind bars; their will to freedom has not been suppressed despite torture, denial of family visits, medical neglect and abuse, the imprisonment of children, and the countless violations imposed upon them by the occupier. Imprisonment is used as a colonial weapon to target Palestinian resistance — but it has failed to succeed in its goals.
Solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners is part and parcel of solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian people fighting for liberation from the river to the sea. The prisoners are a unifying symbol of leadership that represents a broadly embraced alternative to the so-called Palestinian Authority, the concessionary path of Oslo and the so-called peace process. These campaigns also provide an opportunity to develop mutual solidarity and joint struggle with other justice movements, from the Black liberation movement to struggles in the Philippines, Turkey, and Colombia, building collective struggle based on the leadership and liberation of imprisoned political leaders.
On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, we join the calls for action of the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (Masar Badil) in its letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, which highlights both the responsibility of the UN to implement Palestinian rights and the complicity of the unrepresentative Palestinian Authority with Zionist colonialism:
“The Palestinian Authority leadership is an illegitimate substitute for the actual representatives of the Palestinian people, dominating Palestinian institutions by force through their relationship of dependency on the Zionist occupation system. They represent a corrupt sector that monopolizes political decision-making, tortures detainees in its prisons, targets the Palestinian resistance, the student movement and Palestinians with critical perspectives. All of this takes place within the context of the Palestinian Authority carrying out its “security coordination” with the Zionist occupation, against the will and interests of the Palestinian people.
The United Nations must take meaningful action to redress the wrongs done to the Palestinian people through its actions, particularly the approval of the partition of Palestinian land for the creation of a colonial project. We urge that United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted in the 30th General Assembly on 10 November 1975, recognizing Zionism as a form of racism, be re-adopted. This resolution was revoked in 1991 in the context of the Madrid negotiations. As stated, the Madrid negotiations have served solely to undermine rather than implement Palestinian rights. This is very clear 30 years later, as are the catastrophic crimes carried out by the Israeli state in order to implement its racist policies and ideology of Zionism, including settlement construction, the siege on Gaza and the further entrenchment and expansion of apartheid, occupation and colonization. Zionism is indeed a form of racism and racial discrimination and a form of European settler-colonialism that has done great harm to the Palestinian people, the Arab people and the people of the region generally.
Further, we note that on 12 November 1974, apartheid South Africa was suspended from the United Nations. When the United States, United Kingdom and France vetoed the full expulsion of the apartheid regime in the United Nations, the General Assembly took action to prevent the representatives of apartheid from taking seats, over the opposition of these same imperialist powers. It is time for the United Nations as a body to act once again to expel Israel from the United Nations and associated international institutions.
In addition, the racist representative of the Israeli regime, Gilad Erdan, is a war criminal representing an illegitimate apartheid settler-colonial regime. He should be arrested and tried for crimes against the Palestinian people rather than welcomed as an international representative, particularly for his torture of the Palestinian prisoners, repression of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and international campaigns of harassment and rights violations of Palestinian human rights defenders during his term as Minister of Internal Security, which immediately preceded his post at the United Nations.
On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, it is time for the crimes against the Palestinian people to come to an end and for the United Nations to take responsibility for its illegitimate attempt to partition Palestinian land in the interests of a colonial, racist project in 1947 and all of the ensuing and ongoing crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people. Rather than inviting the Palestinian Authority to speak for the Palestinian people, the United Nations must act to implement all of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people from the river to the sea, throughout occupied Palestine. The Palestinian people will not rest in our liberation struggle until justice is obtained.”
Freedom for all Palestinian prisoners; return for all Palestinian refugees! Victory and liberation for Palestine, from the river to the sea!
Read the full letter to the UN Secretary-General by the Masar Badil:
Please join us this Friday December 3rd at 6pm for a short presentation on the situation of political prisoners in Palestine and the Philippines, followed by a letter writing workshop!
We are hoping to educate each other and attendees about the deeply related settler-colonial and semi-colonial oppression of Palestinian and Filipino people, and the centrality of the fight to free all political prisoners in both of their national-liberation struggles.
The workshop is intended to encourage people to take action in solidarity with these prisoners by writing them with letters of support. We want to show them that they are not alone in their struggles and have support from all around the world. We will provide information on the prisoners we will be writing to and will provide any guidance or support you need to help you write your letters.
We will be specifically focusing on the imprisonment of land defenders in Palestine and the Philippines, which is deeply intertwined with the repression of Indigenous land defenders on whose lands we will be writing on. We recognize the struggle of Indigenous nations to reclaim their lands from so-called “Canada” is deeply interlinked with the struggles for land in Palestine and the Philippines.
This event is being organized by Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Anakbayan Toronto and Canada Philippines Solidarity Organization (CPSO). We hope for this to be the start of an ongoing series of letter-writing workshops.
Video premieres on Tuesday, 7 December
Sunday, 5 December
