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.
—————————————————————-
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.
The following call to action is supported by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, the Palestinian Youth Movement and Within Our Lifetime – United for Palestine. Please join us to take action and stand with Somaya!
Palestinian Ph.D. student, researcher and activist Somaya Falah is currently being held under house arrest, banned from accessing electronics or the Internet, and subjected to repeated interrogations — all because she is accused by Israeli occupation forces of communicating with Palestinians in diaspora about the student movement. Somaya, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, is facing an all too common form of persecution targeting Palestinians in occupied Palestine ’48.
On Tuesday, 25 January, the Haifa Magistrate’s Court extended her house arrest for seven more days. She was interrogated once more for 10 hours on Monday, 24 January. Her lawyer noted that there is no actual evidence or charges against her. Instead, this is part of the political repression directed against Palestinians in occupied Palestine ‘48, which has escalated intensively since the Palestinian upsurge of May 2021.
We urge all supporters of Palestinian rights, and all Palestinians — wherever you are — to stand with Somaya and demand an immediate end to the persecution of Palestinian connection and communication!
Who is Somaya Falah?
Somaya Falah is a Ph.D. student and researcher at the Technion from Arab al-Hib and an activist with Herak Haifa, a Palestinian youth-led movement working to defend Palestinian rights and identity. One day before a protest in solidarity with Palestinian hunger striker Hisham Abu Hawash, Israeli police invaded her home, seizing her mobile phone and computer and taking her to interrogation. On Thursday, 20 January, an Israeli court imposed house arrest on her and banned her from entering the city of Haifa for 1.5 months and from using electronics or digital media until March.
A Ph.D. student whose research focuses on environmental science, Falah’s work has exposed the harms caused to the environment in Palestine by Israeli industries, such as the fertilizer industry. Meanwhile, her university, the Technion, has refused to say anything about the targeting of their student.
This attack on Somaya is happening at the same time that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) is ramping up its ongoing colonization policies in occupied Palestine, particularly in al-Naqab. The JNF’s “forestation” campaigns have been a mechanism to force Palestinians from their land and to import unsuitable Western trees to replace and uproot indigenous agriculture and village life.
According to Israeli media reports, Somaya is specifically being targeted for silencing because she attended the Masar Badil conference in Madrid in October-November 2021, and because she talked with Palestinians about the student movement inside occupied Palestine ’48. We can defeat these bogus charges and attempts to intimidate Palestinians by making it clear that, around the world, we stand with Somaya and we will not allow this case to go unnoticed!
The Criminalization of Palestinian Communication
Somaya is not alone in facing these attempts to criminalize Palestinian life and communication at the hands of the Israeli regime. Palestinian citizens of Israel — those from occupied Palestine ’48 — have been particularly subjected to this campaign of criminalization and harassment. One year ago, Muhannad Abu Ghosh, an activist and artist, was arrested for “contacting foreign persons and agents” — the same allegation directed at Somaya. In December 2020, Majd and Ward Kayyal were arrested for the same reason. This term is used to label primarily Palestinians in diaspora – in other words, the indigenous people of Palestine being labeled “foreign agents” by the colonizer.
Global Palestinian outrage led to the launch of the Mutawassiloun — “we will continue to connect” — campaign, affirming that despite 100 years of colonialism and 73 years of ongoing Nakba, Palestinians in occupied Palestine ’48, in Jerusalem, in the West Bank, in Gaza, and in exile and diaspora around the world, will continue to communicate with one another about society, politics, culture and everything that makes a people, a nation and an identity that has not been crushed through decades of displacement.
The purpose of these arrests, interrogations and charges is to terrorize Palestinians inside occupied Palestine ’48 and to attempt to impose the “Israeli Arab” identity that has been widely rejected. Instead, as was seen in April-June 2021, Palestinian unity is stronger than ever before, and Palestinians continue to talk with, share with and communicate with one another. Right now, Palestinians in the Naqab are defending their land from JNF colonization and facing mass arrests and violent repression. Israel wants Palestinian citizens to be blocked from connecting and organizing with their people everywhere and to face their colonization alone. We will not allow this to pass!
Hundreds of Palestinian students in the West Bank are routinely detained by the Israeli occupation, especially those who are part of student organizations involved with campus political life. Palestinian students in occupied Palestine ‘48 — Palestinian students in Israel — are subjected to ongoing, systematic harassment and discrimination, including bans on student groups and prohibitions on demonstrations and protests.
Further, Palestinian and Palestine solidarity student groups internationally are targeted for campaigns of defamation, organization bans and administrative repression, with these efforts officially and unofficially supported by the Israeli government and pro-apartheid lobby organizations around the world. All the while, Palestinian refugee students are denied their right to return to occupied Palestine.
Palestinian students have been seized by Israeli occupation forces and abducted for their participation in the student movement in their homes, at their workplaces and on their campuses.
In Somaya’s case, the Israeli regime is specifically attempting to persecute her because she allegedly discussed the student movement in occupied Palestine ’48 with fellow Palestinians in diaspora. Indeed, it comes just as the Masar Badil announced a Palestinian student conference in Brussels in November 2022. The attack on Somaya is an attack on all Palestinian students.
Attempts to Silence Palestinian Academics
Somaya’s research and academic work is imperiled by the bar on her access to electronics and digital media. This is also part of an ongoing and calculated attack on Palestinian achievement and scholarship in all areas of academic study. Fellow Palestinian scientist in the West Bank, Imad Barghouthi, has been repeatedly subject to political imprisonment — typically under administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial, alongside fellow academics like Ahmad Qatamesh.
Like the attack on Palestinian students, the war on Palestinian academia is not limited to occupied Palestine. Palestinian scholars are subjected to organized campaigns by Zionist organizations and Israel lobby groups in an attempt to block them from continuing their research and work. On 22 January, newly appointed Palestinian lecturer Shahd Abusalama was suspended from teaching at Sheffield Hallam University due to a harassment campaign by Zionist organizations. Steven Salaita was fired from his tenured position at the University of Illinois due to similar harassment campaigns, while Rabab Abdulhadi at San Francisco State University continues to confront academic silencing and attempts at criminalization.
The digital ban imposed on Somaya is an attempt to suppress not only her communication, but her research and academic future. Palestinian academics must be defended!
Palestinian Women Confronting Zionism
Palestinian women on the front lines of organizing, scholarship and activity are especially targeted by Israeli occupation forces. Khitam Saafin, president of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, is currently imprisoned by the Israeli occupation because of her work organizing Palestinian women.
Inside occupied Palestine ’48, poet Dareen Tatour was subjected to imprisonment, house arrests and electronics bans for her poetry about Palestine. Khaled Mahajna, Somaya’s lawyer, said: “The allegations against Somaya Falah could have been practiced by any of us within the framework of Palestinian activity. The intelligence services have been trying … to prosecute Palestinian national frameworks and movements that exercise their political role and activism toward the issues of their people. In recent weeks, dozens of cadres of these movements have been arrested, interrogated and prosecuted, especially among the women activists…By leaking information and details against the case, they are searching for any way to fabricate charges against her,” noting that even though there is no meaningful evidence, they are trying to undermine her academic and professional future.
Now, Somaya is facing the same kind of silencing and targeting, backed by the full force of the Israeli state, armed, funded, provided with preferential trade deals and economic agreements by the United States, Canada, the European Union, Australia, the UK and other imperialist powers.
Somaya is being singled out because of everything she represents — a Palestinian woman organizing, researching and connecting with her people, inside and outside Palestine. However, her case reflects systematic regimes of repression and a collective struggle for return, justice and liberation from the river to the sea.
Support Somaya!
We urge all organizations and activists in support of Palestine to take action to support Somaya.
Post on social media! Post with the hashtag #ISupportSomaya and #WeSupportSomaya. Take a video of yourself or a photo of yourself holding an “I support Somaya” sign and post it on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. Tag us at @samidounnetwork (Instagram), @SamidounPP (Twitter), @SamidounPrisonerSolidarity (Facebook) to ensure we see it!
Protest at the Israeli embassy or consulate in your area, or at a public square or other central location! Bring this information about Somaya and a sign demanding her release. Organize with other groups to raise Somaya’s case at public events and actions.
Issue a solidarity statement! Use this information to issue a statement from your solidarity group, trade union or student organization in support of Somaya and Palestinian students facing repression. If you have any questions, email us at samidoun@samidoun.net
Protest the JNF! The Jewish National Fund’s colonization of Palestine and its attacks on the Naqab come hand in hand with the persecution of Somaya. Protest at your local JNF office or headquarters.
Pressure your government to stop aiding, supporting and defending Israeli occupation, colonization and apartheid. Call your member of Congress or Parliament, organize a call-in day or send letters to call for freedom and justice for Somaya and the Palestinian people.
Boycott Israel! This includes study abroad programs and Israeli universities, which, like Somaya’s university, are complicit in the ongoing repression of Palestinian students — and the colonization of the entire land of Palestine. From consumer boycotts to academic and cultural boycotts, you can take action to affirm that it is the occupier that will be isolated and not Palestinians!
There are two important cases in France for the Palestine movement that will be heard on Thursday, 27 January. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network released this international video to support Georges Abdallah and Olivia Zémor, and to express our global solidarity with their ongoing struggles for justice and a liberated Palestine.
TEVA and the case of Olivia Zémor
Samidoun expresses its strongest solidarity with Olivia Zémor, chair of CAPJPO-EuroPalestine. On 27 January 2022, Zémor will once again go to court in Lyon, France, to defend the right to boycott Israel and Israeli products. Major Israeli pharmaceutical corporation TEVA — backed by two far-right Zionist organizations — sued Zémor for publishing a 2016 protest in Lyon calling for the boycott of TEVA, whose tax revenues to the Israeli state contribute to the Israeli occupation, its war crimes in Gaza and ongoing violations of Palestinian rights.
Zémor won the case on 18 May 2021 after the judges hearing the case ruled in her favor, dismissing TEVA’s attempt to silence grassroots activism. However, now TEVA and its far-right supporters are appealing the judgment, once more seeking to silence the call to boycott Israel in France.
TEVA is one of the largest manufacturers of generic drugs in the world. It also provides millions of dollars in tax revenue to the Israeli colonial and occupation regime and its military. TEVA’s profits have been accumulated on the back of the colonization and exploitation of the land and people of Palestine. TEVA seeks to use the mechanisms of the French state — with their extensive legacy of colonialism and ongoing imperialism throughout the Arab region and Africa — to aggressively seek to shut down and silence those who expose and challenge corporate complicity and profiteering from the Israeli occupation regime.
We express our solidarity with Olivia Zémor and call for people of conscience to boycott TEVA and boycott Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for justice, return and liberation.
Georges Abdallah’s lawyer challenges the French Interior Ministry
On the same day, 27 January, Georges Abdallah’s lawyer will appear before an administrative tribunal in Paris. Georges Abdallah, a Lebanese Arab Communist struggler for Palestine, has been imprisoned in France for over 37 years. Despite being eligible for release since 1999, he has remained imprisoned by the French state, with the complicity and involvement of the United States and Israel.
During this time, he has appealed for release eight times, one of which was finally accepted in 2013. However, as his comrades and family awaited his return in Lebanon, his release was blocked as Manuel Valls, then Minister of the Interior, refused to sign the document necessary for him to return to his homeland, Lebanon.
Abdallah’s lawyer filed a request with the administrative court to compel the Interior Minister to stop blocking his return to Lebanon and order him to sign the necessary documents. Pending since November 2020, the appeal will be heard in Paris on this day.
Georges Abdallah’s case is an international symbol of Palestinian resistance and struggle behind French bars. He is recognized by the Palestinian prisoners’ movement as part of their struggle, and has participated in multiple occasions in collective hunger strikes from French prison. His ongoing imprisonment, with the complicity of France, the United States and Israel, speaks to the alliance of imperialism and Zionism against the Palestinian cause.
We once again demand Georges Abdallah’s immediate release. The growing movement for his freedom brought over 1,000 marchers outside the prison walls where he is held in 2021 — we must build the movement until he returns home as a leader of the Palestinian, Arab and international liberation movement.
Text of the Samidoun video
We stand with the struggles for justice in Palestine taking place in France!
On January 27, Olivia Zemor, president of EuroPalestine, will once again face a legal complaint from TEVA, the massive Israeli pharmaceutical company, backed by far-right Zionist organizations.
TEVA is appealing because she already defeated this attempt to silence advocacy for Palestine and the boycott of Israel in court last year. TEVA is bringing Olivia Zemor to court again because she posted a call for the boycott of TEVA.
TEVA provides millions of dollars in tax revenue to the Israeli colonial occupation regime and its military.
Supporting Olivia Zémor is supporting the right to boycott Israel and fighting back against the criminalization of the Palestine solidarity movement in Europe.
On the same day, the French administrative courts will also hear an appeal in the case of Georges Abdallah. The appeal aims to force the Minister of the Interior to stop obstructing George’s release to Lebanon.
Georges Abdallah, a Lebanese Communist struggler for Palestine, has been imprisoned in France for over 37 years.
From the Naqab to Jerusalem to Gaza, the Zionist state continues to intensify its brutal policies of racism, colonization, apartheid, mass imprisonment, land confiscation, and siege. We must take action and boycott Israel!
We stand with Georges Abdallah and demand his immediate release.
We stand with Olivia Zémor and the right to boycott Israel.
We stand with the Palestinian resistance until return and liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Mobilizations in France are already taking place in Toulouse, Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux! Around the world, we can and must support these important struggles for Palestinian rights and Palestinian liberation.
We urge supporters of Palestine around the world to deliver a letter of protest to the French embassy or consulate near you or take a solidarity photo with the posters below and share it on your social media. Send us a link or your photo at samidoun@samidoun.net!
Internationalt Forum KBH invites you all to the premiere in Denmark of the movie Fedayin – Georges Abdallahs fight. Fedayin means ‘freedom fighter’ and the movie tells the story about the Lebanese freedom fighter Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. He joined the Palestinian struggle for freedom with his organization the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF). In 1984 he was arrested and has been imprisoned in France for more than 37 years, in spite of the fact that he was eligible for release in 1999 and was granted parole in 2003. This parole was withheld after intervention by the USA.
The documentary lasts 1 hour and 20 minutes and takes us through the struggle of Georges told by his brother, activists from Samidoun Palestinian prisoner solidarity network and other political prisoners. It tells the story about Abdallahs struggle and the antiimperialist struggle, with the Palestinian cause in the center. The documentary is told mostly in Arabic and French, and there will be English subtitles.
After the screening there will be a zoom conversation with Collectif Palestine Vaincra, the local Palestine solidarity group in Toulouse, close to where Georges Abdallah is imprisoned, who are amongst the leading voices in the Free Georges Abdallah campaign.
Program:
6–7 pm: The café is open
7-8.20 pm: Screening of the movie
8.20-9 pm: Zoom discussion with Collectif Palestine Vaincra
Tickets cost 75 kr. and should be bought in advance via mobilepay “IF Kbh Cinema”, MobilePay number: 4161NA. Write you name + Fedayin when paying, e.g.: “Anne Hansen Fedayin”.
We will follow the public Covid restrictions and recommendations, so make sure to have corona passports and wear face masks while standing. If the event should get cancelled due to Covid restrictions, you will get your tickets refunded.
The movie is produced by the french collective Vacarmes Films, and is part of a broader campaign to free Georges Abdallah.
On Sunday, 23 January, campaigners in Montreal gathered on a snowy day outside the Israeli consulate to call for justice and freedom for Palestinian political prisoners. The demonstration, organized by Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU), the Canadian Palestinian Federation of Quebec and Canada Sanctions Israel, came as part of the international Week of Action to Free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian Prisoners.
Watch the seven videos taken by videographer Robin Edgar below:
The demonstration urged the liberation of Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was jailed 20 years ago this week by the Palestinian Authority at the behest of Israel, and in 2006 was kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces from Jericho prison. Today, he is serving a 30-year sentence in Israeli jails and is a leader of the Palestinian national movement.
Participants also gathered to express support for Nasser Abu Hmaid, Palestinian prisoner who is suffering from cancer and a lung infection and has been largely comatose for weeks. After suffering from medical neglect inside Israeli jails for years, his life is now at severe risk. His family continues to be denied visits to him, even as he lays unconscious in an Israeli hospital.
The demonstrators urged the liberation of Sa’adat, Abu Hmaid, and their over 4,650 fellow Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons. The organizations in Montreal that convened this mobilization will be organizing further actions to free Palestinian prisoners and build the boycott of Israel.
Palestinians and supporters of Palestine rallied for freedom for Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the heart of New York’s Palestinian and Arab community, on Saturday, 22 January. Part of the international week of action to free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners, the action drew the largest crowds in recent memory for a New York protest in support of the liberation of jailed Palestinians.
The rally met with an enthusiastic response from the community and passers-by. As the security team prepared for the protest, a man identified himself as a liberated Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails, bringing coffee for the organizers and activists preparing for the demonstration. Passers-by also joined the demonstration, chanting for liberation for Palestinian prisoners and justice and liberation for the Palestinian people.
The demonstration opened with a statement from Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a Palestinian national leader. Sa’adat is currently serving a 30-year sentence in Israeli occupation prisons, after he was kidnapped in 2006 from a Palestinian Authority prison. The week of action commemorates the 20th anniversary of Sa’adat’s arrest by PA security forces as part of its “security coordination” with the Israeli occupation — and its later imprisonment of Sa’adat under U.S. and British guard.
Joe Catron, Samidoun’s U.S. coordinator, spoke on behalf of the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat, presenting a statement issued by Sa’adat from Israeli occupation prisons on the importance of internationalist struggle and collective solidarity against imperialism:
How can we, Palestinians, not be internationalist? Connecting struggles and recognizing the common chains of our oppressors is not merely a political choice for our struggle. The reality is unmistakable: we face not only a local oppressor, the Zionist regime, but an international ruling class: the imperialist powers and the reactionary regimes that profit from doing their bidding. This is clear for us in occupied Palestine and for movements around the world whose struggles for justice, human dignity and the future of the planet itself regularly confront imperialist interventions and coups, relentless assaults on sovereignty and the domination of the institutions of global capital such as the IMF.
How can we, for example, fight against the dungeons, jails, prisons and incarceration systems of our oppressors? Is this the task of the prisoners alone? How can we combat injustices inflicted on women globally – is this the task of women alone? The same principle applies to struggles for social liberation or the struggles of the indigenous nations for self-determination, sovereignty and survival itself.
Key struggles take place daily in prisons, schools, factories, popular neighborhoods – from the “slums” of Soweto to the refugee camps of Lebanon to the “projects” in the U.S.
In order for us to accomplish our goals, to achieve our liberation, we must build an international popular front confronting imperialism. This is, was and always will be a task for all revolutionaries around the world. We stand together in one camp confronting common enemies: capitalism, imperialism, Zionism, racism and reaction.
From the battles against repressive forces and isolation here in Ramon prison to the fight to defend indigenous land and popular movements in Brazil to the movement for peasant and worker justice in the Philippines, we are labeled “terrorists” because we work to protect our land and our people; in reality, we face the same forces of terror and domination that extract our wealth and resources and exploit our people in the most brutal of circumstances.
The goal of every struggling revolutionary prisoner, whether in the prisons of the U.S., the Philippines, Turkey or the Zionist jails in Palestine, is to obtain freedom, not a momentary amelioration of torture. We are not simply seeking to moderate or reform the social and economic conditions of our people. We must be clear: we are struggling for socialism, for an alternative world – and in order to achieve victory, we must struggle together.
Ahmad Sa’adat
General Secretary, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Ramon Prison, Occupied Palestine
Speakers from a number of organizations conveyed strong messages in support of Palestinian liberation. Aton spoke on behalf of Jewish Voice for Peace and Hassan on behalf of Samidoun NY/NJ. Tamar of Palestinian Youth Movement spoke about the role of Palestinian youth in organizing to struggle against imperialism, Zionism and colonialism, including joint struggle to resist capitalism, racism and settler colonialism in the U.S.
Nerdeen Kiswani, chair of Within Our Lifetime – United for Palestine spoke about the Palestinian struggle to defend land in Sheikh Jarrah, al-Naqab and throughout occupied Palestine. Souphe spoke on behalf of Al-Awda NY, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, and Rabbi Weiss spoke for the Neturei Karta, the Orthodox Jewish anti-Zionist religious group, which had a strong presence at the mobilization.
Hassan’s statement for Samidoun NY/NJ urged broader mobilization for Palestinian prisoners and for return and liberation for Palestine:
Photo: William Bozian
Today we’re here to highlight the struggles of Palestinian prisoners, in particular Ahmed Sa’adat and to draw attention to the ongoing struggles in Sheikh Jarrah and Al Naqab.
These two things are intricately connected. The right to resist occupation is contingent on the rights of Palestinian prisoners and vice versa. We know from experience that if we resist genocide we will be called terrorists and criminals and aggressors. We know that in the zionist dungeons our people and especially our leaders are isolated tortured and abused.
We also know that the popular masses are on our side when we say that zionists are the real terrorists criminals and aggressors. They are on our side when we fight back against zionist abuse by any means necessary. That is our court and our jury. Theirs is the verdict that Ahmed Sa’adat and others like him await when they are accused of crimes by the Zionist entity.
With every flare-up of israeli aggression there are new prisoners and new martyrs. Our continued support for the prisoners, the martyrs and their families shows future militants that they will not be left behind. It shows every prisoner in Palestine that we are with them, that all the good people of the world will always be with them and we will never believe the lies the colonizers say about them.
Every prisoner in Palestine is there because of their steadfast refusal to accept racism, imperialism, and settler colonialism. Ahmed Sa’adat has been in prison for 20 years because of his refusal to roll over and accept genocide. Because of his dedication, inside and outside of prison, to Palestinian national liberation.
To quote Ahmed Sa’adat:
the Palestinian prisoners’ movement represents a living witness to the continuation of our people’s resistance to the Zionist settler colonial project.
We need to stand with them and support their struggle against the zionist criminals whether it’s in Al Naqab, in Jericho, or in Sheikh Jarrah. And we need to have the steadfastness, the sumoud, to continue our agitation and solidarity not just when Palestine is trending, not just when the voices have gotten too loud to ignore but every single day until soon when Palestine is liberated from the river to sea.
The demonstration was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace – NY, Palestinian Youth Movement, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and Within Our Lifetime – United for Palestine and endorsed by dozens of organizations.
Samidoun NY/NJ will be organizing actions and events in support of Palestine and the Palestinian prisoners’ movement in the coming period. To get involved, please contact Samidoun NY/NJ on Instagram or on Twitter.
Tuesday, 25 January
