“Remembering Samah Idriss: An Organic Intellectual and his Subversive Literary and Socio-Political Paths” included analysis of his literary and political contributions, memories of his life in struggle, and visions for future organizing presented by speakers, Prof. Rabab Abdulhadi and Prof. Rula Jurdi.
The event was co-sponsored by Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies, Fondation Canado-Palestinienne du Quebéc (FCPQ), Palestinian-Canadian Academics and Artists Network (PCAAN), I Am Free Youth Organization (Ana Hurr), Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Canada Palestine Association, Palestinian Youth Movement, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Within Our Lifetime – United for Palestine
“What binds me to her is something that I could not explain exactly,
although perhaps it is her deep roots in that heroic and oppressed class,
thrown into the misery of the fields, that class in the midst of which I have lived and
with which I still live. I live, although I can’t say to what extent I live for her.”
Ghassan Kanafani, A Palestinian Trilogy. Um Saad. Asturias: Hoja de lata, p. 177
In recent months and thanks to the committed work carried out by the Collectif Vacame(s) Films, responsible for the production of the documentary “Fedayin: Georges Abdallah’s Fight,” as well as the activists of the Collectif Palestine Vaincra and Samidoun all over the world who organized screenings of this film in numerous theaters in various countries, hundreds of activists and a diverse public from civil society were able to find a space for reflection on the historical notion of internationalism. This forces us to recognize the active role that we play as civil society in the country where we live and to recognize our ability to influence the geopolitical context around us. The documentary is, without a doubt, an ode to the freedom that we still have, as communal subjects, to transform the world, no matter how big and monstrous it may seem.
The visual projection of the story of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese communist of Christian origin who has been imprisoned in France for 38 years for dedicating his life to achieving the liberation of Palestine from the colonial yoke, invites us to revisit the question that many asked themselves, before leaving for unknown countries, becoming hundreds of thousands of women and men who, from all over the world, put their bodies at the service of the liberation of multiple peoples and communities ostensibly foreign to them. It is about the following question: “Why should I get involved in the struggle for the liberation of another people or give my life in another country that is not mine? Is it empathy? Universal love? Brotherly solidarity? commitment? or maybe madness?” The truth is that the triumph of liberation movements such as the Vietnamese or the Cuban movements in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as their impact and influence on other anti-colonial struggles, is not generated solely from a contagious emotionality, nor from the example of the superhuman daring of a few men and women.
As activists for the total decolonization of Palestine from the colonial structure that is Israel, as well as for emancipation from the neoliberal yoke in our countries of origin, we are convinced of the importance of reflecting upon and clarifying categories such as “internationalism” that, although often unnoticed, govern our daily political practice at the international, national and local levels. In the lines that follow we will try to explain the theoretical and practical reasons that lead us to the following affirmation: internationalism is not only a merely emotional question of international solidarity, historical memory or universal brotherhood and, although we understand the friendly and profoundly ethical intentionality behind these explanations, it is necessary to move beyond these slogans if we want this concept to become operational in defining a direction for successful political action.
In what follows we will highlight an aspect of internationalism that has more to do with a collective project of national and international emancipation than with almost heroic acts carried out by select individuals whose iron will and unparalleled level of empathy carry their memory into the annals of history.
Internationalism, a political practice and a project of national and international emancipation
In order to answer the question that begins our article, and whose answer is the engine that drives the internationalist’s determination, we will say that what moved Abdallah to give his body for Palestine was a profound understanding of the interrelationship between the political and economic crisis in Lebanon and colonialism in Palestine. Undoubtedly, all of this was affected by the broader Arab collective consciousness that, especially in those years, moved Arabs from all regions to join the action of the popular liberation commandos, the fedayeen, established mainly in Jordan and Lebanon.
It is not, therefore, about the action that a specific individual from a specific country exercises abroad, giving everything for a cause that is foreign to him and with which he feels solidarity. It is, instead, an action motivated by the deep understanding that in the suffering of two apparently different peoples there are common culprits and that, when we seek those responsible for the misery, hunger and death of our communities, we find that they are the same forces that are killing the popular classes of different countries. So internationalism from this perspective becomes a collective political action made up of heterogeneous subjects who understand their deep interdependence to achieve their freedom. That is to say, when in our countries, cities or neighborhoods, we ask ourselves who is responsible for reducing our lives to mere survival, we find that the strength of the enemy lies in the fact that their political agenda operates and feeds on dispossession in multiple places and that, therefore, to defeat them we need to build an alliance equal to or stronger than theirs.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine already detected in 1969 in the text of the Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine the overlap between the Palestinian national struggle with the international struggle of other popular movements against imperialism and capitalism. In the European context, Gramsci carried out numerous reflections on the relationship between the national and the international, especially on the need to internationalize the national question and nationalize the international perspective. This does not mean anything other than understanding that every internationalist militant starts from the circumstances and political problems of his own territory and that every national problem, in turn, experiences its fate on the world geopolitical chessboard.
If we have used Abdallah’s story as a paradigm, it is, among other reasons, because he understood very well that getting involved in the Palestinian liberation struggle was fundamental to ending the Lebanese sectarian regime that, hegemonized by the political forces of fascism represented by sectarian Phalangism, in alliance with Zionism and US and European colonialism, turned Lebanon into a private preserve for financial capital, whose most voracious expression was and is found in investment funds and tax havens. Abdallah understood that the Lebanese political order was a project dependent on the interests that the European states, the US and “Israel” had in the region. Abdallah sharpened his gaze and saw clearly that what the Zionist movement was doing in Palestine was signboarding the project devised for the entire Arab world. For this reason, defeating Israeli colonialism meant breaking the pretense of establishing a world order whose priority was unlimited economic growth at the cost of the poverty and dispossession of the majority of the world’s population.
In clear contrast the Zionist insistence on categorizing the struggle against them as a race war fueled by Judeophobia, whose ambition would be to annihilate every Jewish person, Abdallah recognized the Palestinian liberation movement as an anti-colonial, democratic and progressive liberation movement that considered the existence of the state of Israel illegitimate, as it was and is a “military, political and economic establishment based on aggression, expansion and organic connection with imperialist interests.” The Palestinian liberation movement, while seeking to establish a democratic national state in Palestine in which all citizens live with equal rights and duties, where sovereignty rests with the people and the interests of the popular masses, won the adherence of Abdallah, who gave the most precious years of his life to strengthening the anti-colonial struggle because he knew to recognize that the achievements made in Palestine would have repercussions in his country of origin and would serve as an example for the establishment of progressive and democratic societies throughout the world. It is for this reason that his political practice did not understand pseudo-contradictions and was always attentive to the systemic interdependence between local and international politics.
In order to demonstrate that the case of the Lebanese feda’i is not foreign to us, citizens and activists in the Spanish state, and that we have more than enough reasons to embody a position that embraces this interconnection between our political activity at a local and international level, we will illustrate the positions theoretical exposed through the case of the real estate investment trust of Israeli origin VBare (VBA Real Estate), a company dedicated to real estate speculation that has been operating in Spain for six years and that today is one of the 20 largest owners in the entire country. country. This company is currently involved in the eviction of families in 26 different homes in the city of Madrid. Its biggest shareholders? Israeli war criminals responsible for crimes against humanity in Palestine.
Internationalism, from national territory and local work: the case of VBare in the Spanish State
The problems that our neighborhoods, towns and cities face do not have uniquely local causes or stem from the particular idiosyncrasies of Spanish politics, but rather respond to a complex combination of political and economic operations on an international scale. That is, of transnational political agendas. This combination acts together with the neoliberal policy carried out by the neocolonial axis headed by the United States, the European states, Israel and reactionary Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia. The financial capital of these powers operates through their banks and companies in our closest geographical spaces, plundering our families, friends and neighbors.
Now, the speculative interests that operate in our State are connected to the extensions of the Israeli Zionist regime, one of its arms being that of the Israeli real estate investment trust VBare (VBA Real Estate), a company that, through blackmail, threats and a tax regime that allows tax exemption for this type of corporation, operates in Spain with complete freedom. VBare is currently responsible for the imminent eviction of the residents of the Vallehermoso 94 block, in the Madrid neighborhood of Chamberí.
Upon investigation, we found that the shareholders of VBare are investment funds headed by Israeli soldiers, war criminals, arms manufacturers, cybersecurity and espionage businessmen, such as Nir Barkat, Dan Ramoni and the Wertheim family, including Moshe Wertheim, who in his youth served in the Palmach group, one of the armed Zionist militias responsible, among many others, for the ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians in 1948. Later, this terrorist group would be included in the army of Israeli occupation. Moshe Wertheim later joined Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service responsible for the persecution, espionage, torture and killing of thousands of Palestinians as a routine practice.
Do we now understand the system of interdependence with respect to the international context in which our political activism and the daily struggle in our neighborhoods takes place?
The funds that the Israeli real estate investment trust VBare extracts from speculating on our homes and evicting our neighbors not only finance the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, but it is also the profits obtained from colonial theft that allows this company to establish itself as one of the largest real estate speculation companies in the Spanish state. So the concern is twofold: We should care about what happens in Palestine insofar as it is a war crime and insofar as it has repercussions on the impoverishment of our popular classes.
We understand, therefore, from this point of view that local and grassroots activism must raise and direct its gaze towards the international context, since the only way to properly guide our action is through an adequate analysis of the factors involved in the impoverishment of our lives. . Moreover, it is not that the perspective should be international, but that it must be internationalist.
Following Gramsci, it is important to emphasize the need to always start from local roots, that is, from the pavement of our streets in internationalist activism. All of us who are militant internationalists and who dedicate the best of ourselves to strengthening anti-colonial popular liberation movements come from and are in contact with the social strata of our own country. Among others, one of our objectives must be to always win over more people in commitment to the anti-colonial struggle. For this, speeches haranguing about internationalism in an exercise of sentimental euphoria are not enough. In order to develop political subjects who are aware of and actively committed to the internationalist struggle, we must present the material realities that show the obvious links, despite their differences, between our misery and theirs. Only in this way will an internationalist political action become sustainable, with the capacity to influence and transform society nationally and globally.
The feeling of abstract humanist connection can be exhausted in a long and draining struggle such as those of the peoples’ liberation movements, but the political conviction that comes with the certainty that the problems of life in your neighborhood will not be solved if it is not accompanied by the defeat of the enemy that murders Palestinians on a daily basis. This understanding allows you to withstand years of protracted struggle against colonial forces. No one is obligated to remain in the struggle for years if it is entirely external to one’s own situation, and no one is forced to become involved if it is not considered relevant to the daily lives of people.
We consider that internationalism is a project that must be part and parcel of our grassroots work in our own country, which must appeal to our communities and their specific situations, because they have many more things in common than they may know with colonized peoples elsewhere in the world, and because addressing these urgent issues of life necessarily require the defeat of colonialism elsewhere.
Without false dichotomies, there are no contradictions
Until now we have only talked about the links between the national and international horizons from the perspective of those that Fanon called “the wretched of the earth”, subjects who inhabit all corners of the planet despite their imposed invisibility and oppression. But there are other aspects for which we must not fail to point out the interrelationship. Among these is the issue of the democratic nature of our institutions, whose radical transformation we aspire to achieve.
Who are we trying to deceive by cloaking in the guise of democracy those institutions whose foreign relations are fueled by political, economic and military alliances, agreements and treaties with colonial entities such as Israel? Do we perhaps believe that such institutions protect the interests of the popular masses they claim to represent? It is well known, or rather it should be known, that democracy as a philosophical and political concept is incompatible with its partial application. The democratic quality of a state is linked to a multitude of factors which we do not address here, but when we point out that our institutions lose democratic quality in their relations with colonial states, we do not simply refer to the tarnishing of their image, but rather to the fact that the internal functioning of these institutions is corrupted, and they cease to serve the popular interests, which, deprived of mechanisms by which to demand accountability from their institutions, lose all sovereignty.
There is a general tendency among political parties on the progressive spectrum and even among our popular movements to speak about “hegemony.” We are aware that taking away the monopoly of the construction of ideology from the far-right and neoliberal forces necessarily involves the construction of a popular hegemony that challenges all the political and community frameworks on the right. However, it seems that this notion of hegemony has a merely national space for action. We ask ourselves: Does hegemony not have a fundamentally internationalist aspect? Do we believe that the construction of popular hegemony is carried out without fighting the international forces that aim to impose a purely economic rationality in all areas of our lives? Building awareness and democratic institutions that serve and obey popular interests entails fighting a type of governmentality that, through multiple international agents, imposes political agendas in our countries that degrade the lives of our popular classes.
The construction of the dichotomy that turns the national level into the primary horizon on which to intervene, undervaluing and postponing the international significance of our daily concerns is a false antagonism that obscures the causes of our suffering, and, therefore, slows down and hinders our ability to eradicate these problems. Phrases like: “How are we going to worry about what happens in other countries if we are overwhelmed here?” are logics that are inserted in the political field by the neoliberal forces, whose fundamental strategy is to individualize suffering that is in reality collective and to disintegrate resistance actions that should be collective. It would seem from this dichotomous logic that those militants who take both levels into consideration in their activism always find themselves split in the contradiction between the local and international plane. However, we salute all those who give their time and their bodies to actively participate in the problems of their community, but also to internationalist practice.
It is the work done in common under the blue skies of many shades from different lands that gives the necessary encouragement for the long march and that accumulates the small daily victories that weaken the hundred-headed dog that is the enemy. It is a clear and rigorous analysis of the causes of the deterioration of our lives, and not emotional but empty slogans, that provide the political conviction that will allow us to carry out a long-term strategy of resistance, and it is the recognition of our interdependence with other diverse communities, which will allow us to remain united on the path to achieving lives worth living, avoiding the abandonment of our militants at the first dissent or obstacle encountered.
In this sense, from Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, we recognize the latent potential in the union with the neighbors of Chamberí who, organized through the Chamberí solidarity network, are committed to give a collective response and resist the attacks by the Israeli real estate company VBare. We consider the collective work between both groups not as a conjunctural, strategic or temporary union, but as the beginning of the progressive construction of a network that it intends to build, from the local struggle and from the urgent and daily problems of ordinary people in the Spanish state, an increasingly broad and growing front that expands in parallel and points out those responsible, the common enemies who are strong enough to operate with impunity in the Spanish state thanks to the dispossession and systematic theft of Palestine. And who, in turn, are able to extend the colonial crime in Palestine thanks to the economic benefits they obtain from the exploitation and plunder of the working classes in our country.
For this reason, from Samidoun Spain, we give our most sincere thanks to the residents of Chamberí who are fighting for the right to decent housing. Thanks to them for considering the thread that unites them with the struggle of millions of Palestinians who risk their lives daily to build a home in which to live with dignity.
We hope that the story of this common experience will serve as an example for an efficient and influential internationalist and local political praxis that is capable, from the closeness of the land that dusts our shoes, to find the common ground from which we rise.
An internationalist and local practice understood in its radical nature allows us to break the solitude and isolation in which we usually find ourselves thrown, facilitating the construction of solid alliances capable of confronting the multiple and complex enemy that renders our lives expendable.
Judit Rodríguez Fernández ( @aiiitormenta ) is an activist in Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a member of the United Left and a philosophy student at the Complutense University of Madrid.
On Saturday, 22 January, the Jeunes Communistes 13 (Young Communists of Bouches-du-Rhone, France, with the central city of Marseille) organized a screening of “Fedayin: Georges Abdallah’s Fight” with a presentation by a member of the Collectif Palestine Vaincra, a member organization of the Samidoun Network that plays a leading role in organizing for the liberation of Georges Abdallah. This initiative took place within the framework of the International Week of Action to free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners. On this occasion, several dozen people took part in this event, held in the premises of the Jeunes Communistes in the heart of downtown Marseille.
After the screening, the evening with discussion solidarity with Palestine and the anti-imperialist dimension of the Palestinian cause. Several trade unionists from the CGT underlined the importance of challenging and boycotting the Zionist trade union federation, the Histadrut, and calling on the trade union structures to take a stand on this matter. A representative of the CRI (Coordination Against Racism and Islamophobia), an anti-racist organization recently dissolved by an order of the government, stressed the importance of waging a common struggle against the repression targeting the Palestine solidarity movement. This initiative ended with a photo of solidarity by the JC organizing team and people in solidarity displaying posters calling for the release of Georges Abdallah, for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, for the boycott of Israel, all under a banner by Samidoun calling for freedom for Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned Palestinian leftist leader and General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
On Saturday, 29 January the JC 13 organized their annual event marking their commitment to a year of struggle and resistance in 2022. In a convivial gathering, different organizations participated in this collective sharing of experiences, including Ligne Rouge, the JC Alpes-Maritimes, the CGT and the Struggle Committee of the University of Aix en Provence. International organizations were also invited to share messages of solidarity, underlining the resolutely internationalist and anti-imperialist commitment of the JC.
Charlotte Kates, the international coordinator of Samidoun, sent a video message highlighting: “Today, Palestinian prisoners are not only on the front lines confronting Zionism, occupation and colonialism throughout occupied Palestine, they are also on the front lines confronting imperialism. We can see this in the case of Georges Abdallah as well as in that of Ahmad Sa’adat. Imperialist powers such as the United States, France and the United Kingdom participated in the imprisonment of Ahmad Sa’adat in a Palestinian Authority prison, then in his abduction to an Israeli occupation prison, just as France continues to imprison Georges Abdallah today with the full complicity of the United States and Israel. So when we fight for the freedom of Palestinian prisoners, we also fight together against imperialism, the main enemy facing the peoples of the world today.”
This ceremony ended with the reaffirmation of the commitment of the JC 13 in support of the Palestinian people by affirming: “The fight for a free Palestine from the river to the sea is a revolutionary, anti-imperialist fight. It is the legitimate struggle of a people deprived of its basic rights and its sovereignty over its own soil by colonialism and imperialism for more than a century.”
Samidoun salutes this necessary and important work by the JC 13. Let us continue to organize to ensure that our common, collective efforts will continue to strengthen solidarity with Palestine in France and internationally!
The film traces the life story and struggle of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a tireless struggler for Palestine and an Arab Communist revolutionary, imprisoned in France for over 37 years. “Fedayin” travels with Georges from the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, where his political consciousness was formed and developed, to the international mobilization for his release. Today, he is one of the longest-held political prisoners in Europe.
The film is available with appropriate subtitles in French, Arabic, English, German, Italian, Catalan, Castilian Spanish and Turkish. If you want to show Fedayin in your area, email us at samidoun@samidoun.net and contact the directors at vacarmesfilms@gmail.com. We will help you to get your screening organized, and the directors are available to attend your events in person or to join your in-person events via video link.
Visit the Fedayin film website for the most up-to-date list and detailed information about upcoming screenings! Some of the screenings below have full location info, while others will be updated throughout the month at the official site.
· Teruel (Spain) · Thursday, February 3 at 7 p.m. Screening organized by the Centro Social At Ixena C. del Carrel, 35, 44003 Teruel
· Cartagena (Spain) · Saturday February 5 at 6:30 p.m. Screening organized by Iniciativa Comunista and Samidoun La Montana Magica Libreria, C/ Pintor Balaca, 34 (Cartagena)
· Lille (France) Saturday February 5 at 2 p.m. Screening organized by the Georges Abdallah Lille Solidarity Committee and the Palestinian Resistance Support Collective, followed by a debate with a member of the Collectif Vacarme(s) Films Cinéma L’Univers, 16 rue Georges Danton, 59000 Lille Facebook event
· Barcelona (Catalonia) · Wednesday 9 February at 7 p.m. Screening organized by Sodepau and the Cineclub del Cercle. Reservations: zootrop.bcn@gmail.com Carrer Arcs 5, 08002 Barcelona
· Barcelona (Catalonia) · Thursday 10 February at 7 pm Screening organized by the Associacio Catalana per la pau, Palestina Batega and Sodepau. Zumzeig Cinema, Carrer de Béjar, 53, 08014 Barcelona
Espai (Catalonia) Thursday February 10 at 5:30 p.m. Screening organized by Sodepau Center Espai Escenic De Castellterçol, Carrer del Racó, 8, 08183 Castellterçol
· Montpellier (France) · Thursday February 17 at 7 p.m. Screening organized by the BDS France Montpellier and Carmagnole Campaign followed by a debate with a member of the Collectif Vacarme(s) Films La Carmagnole, 10 Rue Haguenot, 34070 Montpellier
· Paris (France) · Thursday, February 17 at 6 p.m. Screening organized by the Ciné-Palestine Festival and presented by the Collectif Vacarme(s) Films, followed by a debate with PMN Editions and the United Campaign for the Liberation of Georges Abdallah. The Dissident Club, 58 rue Richer, 75009 Paris
· Saint-Denis (France) · Thursday February 17 at 8 p.m. Screening followed by a meeting with Saïd Bouamama (author of the book “The Georges Ibrahim Abdallah affair”) and a member of the Collectif Vacarme(s) Films Cinéma L’ Ecran of Saint-Denis, 14 Passage de l’Aqueduc, 93200 Saint-Denis
· Cahors (France) · Friday February 18 at 6:30 p.m. Screening followed by a discussion with the Association France Palestine Solidarité 46 Cinema Le Grand Palais, Place Bessières, Rue Pierre Mendès France, 46000 Cahors
· Amsterdam (Netherlands) · Tuesday, February 22 More info to come.
· Maastricht (Netherlands) · Wednesday, February 23 More info to come.
· Lausanne (Switzerland) · Wednesday, February 23 at 7:30 p.m. Screening organized by the Pôle Sud, socio-cultural center of the Union Syndicale Vaudoise Socio-cultural center of the Union Syndicale Vaudoise, av Jean-Jacques Mercier 3, 1003 Lausanne Facebook event
Film Screening of Revolution Selfie: The Red Battalion Sunday, February 6 at 7 PM Pacific time (10 pm Eastern time), on Zoom *RSVP to friendsinstruggle@gmail.com for the Zoom link* Hosted by Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle – Vancouver, CST
REVOLUTION SELFIE expands the horizons of documentary storytelling while broadening our understanding of the lesser-known fronts in the global “War on Terror.” Filmmaker Steven de Castro sets out to discover what is going on in the Philippines that has led the CIA to declare war on to a revolutionary army growing in the countryside for almost 50 years – and why the CIA dubs the NPA a “foreign terrorist organization”.
Filmmaker Steven De Castro takes us up close and deep into the lives of the young soldiers of the 48-year-old Maoist guerilla army in the Philippine hinterlands.
But rather than simply presenting interviews and images in a traditional journalistic manner, this film weaves fantasy elements and web-based camera techniques into the documentary form to disrupt our matrix of widely held beliefs that underpin the discussion of terrorism, poverty, and the motivations of the warriors who fight in a revolutionary liberation war.
Thursday, February 3rd, 2022
3:30pm PT / 6:30pm ET
Online Event: Register on Zoom
In conversation with Camila Saab, wife of Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab, kidnapped by the United States. We ask for the immediate release of the Venezuelan diplomat.
The webinar will be in have Spanish-English interpretation.
En conversación con Camila Saab, esposa del diplomático venezolano, Alex Saab, secuestrado por Estados Unidos. Pedimos la liberación inmediata del diplomático venezolano.
El seminario web tendrá interpretación español-inglés.
Alex Saab is a Venezuelan diplomat the US government has illegally seized and imprisoned for what the US considers “violation” of the illegal US economic warfare on Venezuela. He was in fact assisting Venezuela in legally working around the US blockade on his country by finding the means to import food, medicine, and materials for the Venezuelan oil industry. The US is seeking to coerce Alex Saab into disclosing the methods Venezuela uses to circumvent the US-Canadian-European sanctions with the goal of further tightening the economic blockade and suffering on the Venezuelan people. These sanctions are illegal according to the United Nations. His seizure by the US violates long-standing international law for one country to arrest and imprison a diplomat of another country. Alex Saab’s next trial date will be in Atlanta the week of April 4 – anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King.
Special Guest-Oscar López Riverais a Puerto Rican activist and militant who was a member of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), a clandestine organization devoted to Puerto Rican Independence. Oscar Lopez Rivera is a hero of the Puerto Rican independence movement.
Roger Harris is with the Task Force on the Americas and on the executive committee of the U.S. Peace Council. He was on the emergency international delegation to Cabo Verde in June 2021, where Alex Saab was held prisoner
Sara Flounders is an American political writer active in progressive and anti-war organizing since the 1960s. She was also on the emergency international delegation to Cabo Verde in June 2021. She is a Contributing Editor to Workers World Newspaper, as well as a principal leader of the International Action Center.
Tony Jeanthenor, chairperson of Veye-yo, longtime grassroots organization of Miami. Supporting all human rights causes, the right of the popular of the Haitian population to choose and live with their elected leader.
Alliance for Global Justice, Task Force on the Americas, International Action Center, Chicago ALBA Solidarity, Asociación Americana de Juristas, The Canada Files, National Lawyers Guild International Committee, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Friends of Latin America, Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC), Friends of Irish Freedom, Cuba Inside Out, Massachusetts Peace Action, Popular Resistance, United National AntiWar Coalition, Chicago Anti-War Coalition, Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice, Frente Hugo Chavez para la Defensa de los Pueblos- Canada, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, International Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal, Code Pink, AntiConquista, Orinoco Tribune, Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle, Center for Political Education, La Troika, Committees of Correspondence or Democracy & Socialism, Winnipeg Venezuela Peace Committee, Louis Riel Bolivarian Circle Toronto, Center for Global Studies – Purdue Northwest, African Awareness Association, Southsiders for Peace (Chicago), Just Peace Advocates, Committee to Stop FBI Repression, Samidoun NY/NJ, La Voz de los de Abajo, Sanctions Kill Coalition, US Peace Council, Pacific NW Latin America and Caribbean Task Force, LELO/A Legacy of Equality Leadership and Organizing, Portland Central America Solidarity Committee, Rochester Committee on Latin America, Casa Baltimore/Limay, Solidarity Committee of the Americas (Women Against Military Madness), Frente Independentista Boricua, Hostos Community College Puerto Rican Student Organization, El Maestro, Inc., NY Free Puerto Rico movement, Círculo Bolivariano de Miami Negra Hipólita, La Peña del Bronx, Struggle/La Lucha, Haiti Liberte, PECOA, Fuerza de la Revolución, Holyrood Episcopal Church ~ Iglesia Santa Cruz, National Boricua Human Rights Network, International US-Cuba Normalization Conference Coalition, NY—NJ Cuba Si Coalition, Family Action Network Movement
May 15, 2021 – In Toulouse, hundreds of people gathered at the Capitole metro in support of the Palestinian people and their resistance. A tightly packed, determined crowd chanted their support for the boycott of Israel, for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, and for the release of Palestinian prisoners and Georges Abdallah, the Lebanese struggler for Palestine imprisoned in France for over 37 years.. The twinning of Toulouse with Tel Aviv was also widely denounced. – Photo: Collectif Palestine Vaincra
An interview with Tom Martin, spokesperson for the Collectif Palestine Vaincra.
January 28, 2022 – The Collectif Palestine Vaincra, a very active and visible organization in France in the Palestine solidarity movement, has been under attack for several months by pro-Israeli organizations.
These false and dishonest attacks, which aim to undermine the entire solidarity movement with Palestine, are now relayed by members of the National Assembly and other prominent political figures, who go so far as to demand the dissolution of the organization.
These threats are not to be treated lightly, as evidenced by the current administrative dissolution procedure of Nantes révoltée, where the unspoken aim of the government in place is to leave the streets open primarily to the extreme right.
Palestine Chronicle wanted to give the floor to the spokesperson of the organization, Tom Martin, who agreed to answer our questions.
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Question: How did the Collectif Palestine Vaincra begin its work? What is its scope of action, its main campaigns?
Tom Martin: The Collectif Palestine Vaincra was founded three years ago, in 2019, and is the result of a decade of work in the Toulouse region, in support of the Palestinian people and, in particular, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
Our motivation for action is supporting the Palestinian people and their resistance. This is done through both awareness-raising and educational campaigns, for example on the fate of Palestinian prisoners, the situation in the occupied Naqab, the situation related to the blockade of Gaza or the colonization of the West Bank under occupation, or the reality of life in occupied Palestine ‘48.
But it is also a collective that is oriented towards concrete practice and action. Every month we set up information stands in the city center and in the working class neighborhoods of Toulouse.
We conduct awareness campaigns and promote the boycott of Israel, for example with a campaign to demand the end of the twinning between Toulouse and the city of Tel Aviv, the capital of Israeli apartheid. We lead campaigns to question political leaders and denounce their active complicity with Israeli colonization.
In short, we are a collective dedicated both to promoting a radical anti-Zionism, radical anti-colonialism, for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, and to normalizing these positions in the French political scene, which is unfortunately still too timid on these issues.
At the same time, we aim to be a collective anchored in a practice with the people, with regularity and consistency.
Q: The issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israel is obviously of particular importance to the Collectif Palestine Vaincra… What are the reasons for this?
T.M : The Collectif Palestine Vaincra is a member of the international Samidoun network, and we believe that support for Palestinian prisoners is central to the defense of Palestine.
It is obviously a support for the defense of basic rights, against torture, and against administrative detention, which are particularly barbaric practices.
But our support is above all a political support for Palestinian fighters, because for us, the Palestinian political prisoners embody the Palestinian resistance.
In fact, their imprisonment symbolizes the fact that the Palestinian people continue to fight tirelessly for their rights and liberation.
That is why, in our opinion, defending Palestinian prisoners is defending Palestinian resistance, and that is why defending prisoners is a central cause for us.
Q. How do you analyze the role of the Zionist state at the international level?
T.M: For us, Israel, the Zionist state, is obviously a colonial, apartheid, racist state, but more precisely, it is a Western settlement in this region of the world.
The Zionist state is a watchdog of Western interests, of imperialist interests, and it is therefore important to be anti-Zionist because fighting the Zionist state is also fighting our own imperialism: French imperialism and its interests in the Middle East.
When we say we support the Palestinian people and their resistance, it is a support for a common anti-imperialist struggle because the liberation of Palestine will have a considerable effect in the Arab world but also in the imperialist centers, including France.
Q. The Collectif Palestine Vaincra has been for several months in France the object of attacks in the written and spoken press – and even from parliamentarians – orchestrated by pro-Israeli pressure groups. The stated objective is to impose a ban on this organization. Can you summarize in a few lines the nature and the origin of these attacks?
T.M : The Collectif Palestine Vaincra supports the Palestinian resistance in all its forms and in the diversity of its orientations. Within this framework we advocate in favor of the progressive organizations that are part of this Palestinian resistance, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
However, the accusations of an organizational or structural link with this party are false. Let us remember that in Europe, hundreds of organizations and many European parliamentarians support the Palestinian resistance, and the smear campaigns launched by the supporters of Israeli apartheid will not silence us.
Furthermore, we denounce the classification of the primary organizations of the Palestinian resistance as “terrorists”. This particularly scandalous classification aims to silence solidarity with the Palestinian people and their resistance.
This resistance is legitimate, including in its armed component, as has been emphasized in numerous United Nations resolutions, according to which peoples who are victims of colonialism have the right to resist in order to free themselves.
Q. Attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement recur throughout the Western world, and the Israeli state has an active policy in this regard, with great financial resources. One of the most glaring examples is Great Britain, where solidarity has been officially criminalized. Do you see a similar evolution in France?
T.M : We see that the image of Israel has rapidly declined, because it is becoming more and more obvious to the world that this state is not a state like others, that it is a state that practices an apartheid policy, a segregationist, racist policy, which has been oppressing the Palestinian people for over 70 years.
In the face of this, the Israeli extreme right multiplies the campaigns of defamation and attacks against the supporters of justice in Palestine.
Of course, one must recall the attacks on the BDS movement, the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, since this movement is considered a strategic threat by the supporters of Israeli apartheid.
But this is just one aspect of the repressive campaigns, as one can also see the campaigns around the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which outrageously equates anti-Zionism – which is anti-racism – with anti-Semitism.
There are also attacks around the alleged accusations of terrorism that have concerned our Samidoun network, but which have also recently targeted six Palestinian NGOs that defend the most basic rights of the Palestinian people.
In short, all of these procedures aim to criminalize support for the Palestinian people, and we believe that we must not give in to intimidation and continue our anti-colonialist struggle.
Q: Has a new threshold been crossed after the multiple anti-BDS attacks that we have experienced in recent years and which have led to repeated trials?
T.M: There is indeed a threshold that has been crossed with a series of attacks, notably judicial attacks against the BDS campaign in France, but also in Germany, Austria, England, the United States, etc.
But we can see that this movement for BDS, for the boycott, is a movement that is growing, despite the intimidation. We have recently seen successes such as the withdrawal of Ben & Jerry’s from Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Ben & Jerry’s has yet to withdraw from all of occupied Palestine.
We have also seen it with the German court decision that rejected the anti-Palestinian policy of the city of Munich.
We saw it with the acquittal of Olivia Zemor in the first instance in the lawsuit brought against her by Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva, but also, and above all, with the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in 2020 which condemned France for hindering freedom of expression following the convictions of activists of the boycott campaign in Mulhouse.
So we see that the attacks are intensifying, but that solidarity is also intensifying, and this is what we are working for, to build greater links with the various organizations and components of the Palestine solidarity movement.
Q: The accusation of anti-Semitism seems to be particularly highlighted, and is clearly part of the arsenal exploited against the Palestine solidarity movement today. What is your response to this?
T.M : There is an very visible offensive that aims to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. We see this in particular through the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which in its examples equates anti-Zionism to a form of anti-Semitism, and this definition has been taken up by the National Assembly, the Senate, the council of the city of Paris and the city of Nice.
Clearly, what is at stake in the adoption of this resolution is to silence support for the Palestinian people and anti-Zionist positions.
Our response to this is to state unambiguously and firmly that we are anti-Zionist activists, that is to say, anti-colonialist and anti-racist activists.
We affirm loudly and clearly that Israel – a colonial and racist entity – is illegitimate, and that the only just and lasting alternative is a free and democratic Palestine from the river to the sea.
Q. Far-right forces are on the rise in many countries, and pro-Israeli pressure groups are like fish in water… In the French case, does this same context influence the smear campaign against you?
T.M : It is more and more obvious that there are close links between the international far right and the leaders of the Israeli state. We have seen, for example, Netanyahu very friendly with Brazilian President Bolsonaro, with Hungarian Prime Minister Orbàn, very close politically to Donald Trump etc…
In France, there has been a significant evolution of the traditional political parties which are progressively questioning the position that was until now the French position around the so-called “two-state solution.”
We see more and more parliamentarians, political figures, like Manuel Valls, Aurore Bergé, Sylvain Maillard, Eric Ciotti… defending the colonization of Palestine, from the river to the sea, defending an increased criminalization of support for the Palestinian people, defending a strategic alignment of the French state with the Israeli extreme right.
This political and ideological alignment reinforces the smear campaigns against us, but more generally, what is at stake here is the defense of democratic freedoms and the defense of the expression of anti-colonial and anti-racist voices in France.
Q: A ban on the Collectif Palestine Vaincra would be extremely serious for the whole solidarity movement, because it would open the way to a larger scale aggression. What are the first reactions around you and what would be the course of action for the whole solidarity movement with Palestine?
T.M : After the first announcements of the demand for our dissolution, we received a large amount of solidarity, which was expressed through many organizations supporting Palestine, such as the National Collective for a Just and Lasting Peace between Palestinians and Israelis, which brings together major French political parties and trade unions and the major organizations supporting Palestine.
This request for dissolution has also been widely condemned at the international level. There has therefore been an awakening.
Nevertheless, we would like to remind you that what is at stake in this attempt to criminalize the Collectif Palestine Vaincra is an attempt to criminalize support for Palestine in general.
Through the attacks against us, it is the whole Palestine solidarity movement that is attacked, it is the whole anti-colonialist and anti-racist movement that is targeted.
In the same way that we must stand together when BDS Montpellier is attacked by the prefecture and city officials who want to censor its activities, or when Olivia Zemor is facing lawfare and unjust lawsuits at the hands of Teva, while the call for a boycott of Israel is not only legitimate but also legal… we must stand together today against this campaign of defamation and attacks which aims to silence an anti-colonialist and anti-racist voice.
Interview by Claude Zurbach, for Chronique de Palestine
REMEMBERING SAMAH IDRISS: An Organic Intellectual and his Subversive Literary and Socio-Political Paths
Speakers: RABAB ABDULHADI & RULA JURDI
Saturday, February 5, 2022 11 am Pacific – 2 pm Eastern – 9 pm Palestine Register to join on Zoom: https://bit.ly/samahevent
This webinar will take place in English.
Organized by: Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (Masar Badil) https://masarbadil.org
Co-sponsors: Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies, Fondation Canado-Palestinienne du Quebéc (FCPQ), Palestinian-Canadian Academics and Artists Network (PCAAN), I Am Free Youth Organization (Ana Hurr), Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Canada Palestine Association, Palestinian Youth Movement, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Within Our Lifetime – United for Palestine
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes the revolutionary life of Badran Jaber, veteran of the Palestinian liberation struggle, upon his passing on 25 January 2022. Jaber, a leader and co-founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was a symbol of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. He was repeatedly arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the unsuccessful attempts of the Israeli occupation to break his will and commitment to liberation.
An icon of struggle for his refusal to confess and his resistance under interrogation, he participated until the last days of his life in demonstrations, gatherings and mobilizations for Palestinian prisoners and for justice and liberation for the Palestinian people. Only 15 days ago, he joined the solidarity actions for Nasser Abu Hmaid, demanding the immediate release of the ill Palestinian prisoner. He called for the liberation of Georges Abdallah, the Lebanese Arab Communist struggler for Palestine, imprisoned in France for over 37 years, as a part of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
In a 2016 interview, he said: “The official Israeli policy is to try to break the human spirit of Palestinians by refusing to recognize their human rights inside and outside of prisons…So what the Israelis need to understand about their detention policies is that prisoners become, first off, heroes of the national liberation struggle. These heroes form the base of a leadership that articulates the alternative to this close collaboration with the occupation.”
Jaber was born in al-Khalil in 1947. During his life, he was arrested over 20 times and spent around 15 years in interrogation cells and Israeli occupation prisons. He entered political activity in 1965 during the marches against former Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba in al-Khalil and Jericho, when he called for “compromise” and “gradual steps” against the Zionist occupation. The protests were led by the Arab Nationalist Movement and the Heroes of Return organization, and Badran Jaber became involved, officially joining the Heroes of Return shortly before June 1967 and the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.
He was involved with building the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine inside occupied Palestine as well as the student movement at the University of Jordan. After three and a half years of dedicated work, he was arrested by the Israeli occupation forces and subjected to severe torture under interrogation. He remained silent and refused to confess, even as his brother Fahmi was sentenced to life imprisonment and his family home was demolished by occupation forces.
Two years later, he was again arrested and accused of membership in the PFLP and developing the armed struggle in occupied Palestine. The group that he formed made not only political connections with progressive and revolutionary Jews such as the “Black Panther” movement, but also involved Jewish members in the armed struggle as part and parcel of the liberation movement.
1989: Three leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Abdel-Alim Daana to the right, Badran Jaber to the left and behind them is Rebhi Haddad in the middle, while two Israeli soldiers walk behind them in front of the Israeli High Court of Justice during one of their court sessions. Source: Palestinian Museum Digital Archive
Despite confessions against him, he remained steadfast under interrogation, even as he was transferred to multiple prisons and interrogation centers, including al-Khalil, Moskobiya, Akka, Damon and al-Jalameh, for three years. He was arrested twice more in 1980, again in 1985, again in 1987, and then again in 1998. For another five and a half years, he was subjected to house arrest in al-Khalil.
Not only did Israeli occupation forces attack him with physical torture; they also used psychological methods of torture in an attempt to extract a confession. He recalled one interrogation in 1985, where an Israeli interrogator showed him a forged document from the Red Cross declaring that his wife had died in childbirth. He had been under interrogation for a month and a half; he continued to refuse to confess or provide any information to the interrogators, and he later confirmed the health of his wife and newborn daughter.
In 1988, he was one of the first prisoners to enter the Negev desert prison immediately after it was opened by the Israeli occupation in response to the great popular intifada. Five of his children, Ghassan, Nasser, Fadi, Majd and Wadie, have been imprisoned by the Israeli occupation for various periods of time.
During the 2000s, he was arrested by Israeli occupation forces on multiple occasions and frequently thrown in administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial. Indeed, he was last released from administrative detention on 21 May 2020, after eight months of imprisonment without charge or trial, at the age of 72. During his time behind bars, he participated in multiple hunger strikes and prisoners’ resistance actions, as active in struggle as always.
He remained committed throughout his life to a revolutionary vision of Palestinian liberation, making clear that the path of Oslo was a disaster for the Palestinian people. He consistently and firmly denounced the Palestinian Authority and its policies of “security coordination” with the Israeli occupation, affirming the legitimacy and necessity of Palestinian resistance until return and liberation.
He laid out his political perspectives in the 2016 interview:
“From the first day that I began to read Marxist-Leninist thought as a philosophy to analyze the political, social and economic condition of the world. My readings brought me to the point where I realized a human is a human. And that societies are divided into two categories: the oppressor and the oppressed. I made the decision that I am with the oppressed — irrespective of identity, nationality, religion or geographical divisions. American, Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, Greek. The oppressed is oppressed wherever he is, and the oppressor is the oppressor wherever he is. Being from a poor family and living under subjugation and domination, I found myself a friend to all the oppressed….There is the idea that a nation that oppresses another nation is not free. I would say that in the case of Israel, even the beneficiaries of the occupation are not free….
At the international level it is well known that in 1969 we began building armed alliances in Lebanon and in Jordan. There were our international partners: Germans, Japanese, French, Spanish, Basque, Irish. They were with us in the training camps.
You can say that we did not start out in opposition to anything. We arrived at our positions through a dialectic. We never hated anyone who didn’t harass us. On the other hand, we welcomed anyone who was willing to join in our struggle for achieving self-determination on our land like every other people in the world.”
“Badran Jaber is a true revolutionary leader who spent most of his life fighting for the liberation of Palestine, despite the many years in Zionist dungeons and torture cells and the economic and social challenges he faced as someone who gave his life to the struggle, coming from the popular classes of al-Khalil. He fought relentlessly for the interests and the rights of the Palestinian working class,” said Khaled Barakat, Palestinian writer and activist.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network mourns the passing of Badran Jaber and salutes his life of struggle as an icon of steadfastness, revolution and commitment to liberation. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, comrades, loved ones, and the Palestinian people and the Arab and international strugglers. He was a leader of the student movement, the prisoners’ movement and the Palestinian revolutionary movement as a whole, and his vision continues to inspire us on the road to return, justice and liberation for Palestine, from the river to the sea.
BC Government: Stop Profiting off Israeli War Crimes
The British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch is complicit in violations of Palestinian human rights. Despite calls from multiple local organizations for a boycott of Israeli wines, many produced in occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, they continue to be sold in publicly owned BC Liquor Stores. Repeated appeals to the provincial cabinet ministers responsible for the Liquor Distribution Branch have seen no action and little response.
Israeli settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law. They are part and parcel of the systematic targeting of the Palestinian people for dispossession, occupation and apartheid.
