PFLP organized a demonstration in the besieged Gaza Strip on Thursday August 22nd for hunger-strikers and other political prisoners in Israeli occupation captivity.
SOURCE: @plespost
Friday, August 23, 2019
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
In memoriam: Ghassan Kanafani, Palestine's most famous novelist and political activist killed by Israel
In memoriam: Ghassan Kanafani, Palestine's most famous novelist and political activist killed by Israel
If Mossad hadn't assassinated Ghassan Kanafani on July 8, 1972, when he was just 36 years old, this year would have been his 83rd birthday.
Kanafani was a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); he was also a famous journalist, committed to various political and social causes. But above all, he was a writer, one of the most important in modern Palestinian literature.
"I became politically committed because I am a novelist, not the opposite," he once stated. As a novelist he felt compelled to write about what he saw around
him, more or less symbolically.
Ghassan Kanafani was born in 1936 in city of Acre, in Palestine. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the consequent creation of the state of Israel (known as the Nakba, "the catastrophe" to Palestinians), his family was forced into exile.
At first they stayed in Lebanon, hoping to be able to return soon to their homeland, but later they moved to Damascus, Syria, living there as refugees along with many other Palestinians.
He studied in Damascus, concluding his secondary school and enrolling in the Arabic Literature faculty at university, and worked as a teacher in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools for Palestinian refugees. This was a very important and formative period for him. It oriented his interests and solidified his commitments to the "Palestinian cause".
However, because of his affiliation with MAN (the Movement of Arab Nationalists), he was expelled from University before being able to graduate and experienced his second exile, this time moving to Kuwait. There he became interested in Marxism and began his career as a journalist.
In 1960 he moved to Beirut, becoming even more involved with MAN and editing its newspaper al-Hurriya. Two years later he took over the editorial responsibility of another newspaper, al-Muharrir (The Liberator).
Demonstrating not only that he was a journalist but also a talented writer, in 1963 he published his novel Men in the Sun to widespread praise. Along with A World that is Not Ours, published two years later, it is one of the most representative and famous works of his "first period", written symbolically and characterised by pessimism, when he could not see a solution for his people.
He was also the first to talk about the so-called "resistance literature", written by a group of Palestinian writers about a people expelled from their land, displaced by the Occidental colonialism. They wrote to awake Palestinians' consciences and to criticise the ruling class.
In 1964 the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) was founded, with the aim of liberating Palestine through armed struggle. This influenced Kanafani hugely, and he was an active member of this movement, along with many other Arab writers of the period.
The 1967 War and Israel's victory against an Arab coalition including Egypt, Jordan, and Syria was a shock for the Palestinian people and disillusioned many. It also marked a turning point for Kanafani and his literary career.
In 1967 his "second period" began, and almost paradoxically, he left behind his pessimism for an optimism oriented toward change through active struggle, not waiting passively for change to happen. He became more politicised and paid more attention to history, starting to believe a social revolution in the Arab world was the only way to free Palestine. This new turn in Kanafani's political thought was influenced by George Habbash, founder of the PFLP.
In 1967, Kanafani became the PFLP's spokesman. In 1969 he started al-Hadaf (The Target), the movement's newspaper, working for it until his death.
On May 30, 1972, three members of the Japanese Red Army, recruited by a group inside the PFLP, attacked the airport, killing 26 people. Days later, a picture of Kanafani together with one of the attackers was published, and on the 8 July he was killed by a bomb in his car, along with his 17 year old niece. He left behind a wife and two children.
He had already written 18 books: four completed novels, three unfinished; four collections of short stories, a total of 57 stories; four plays; and three literary essays (like Resistance Literature in Occupied Palestine 1948-1966 and In Zionist Literature). He had published hundreds of articles about culture, politics and struggle of the Palestinian people.
His works were translated into as many as 17 languages, published in more than 20 countries.
As a leading novelist of his generation, considered one of the most important Palestinian writers of the Arab World, he was awarded with the Lotus Prize for Literature by the Conference of Afro-Asian writers.
Berlin’s Jewish Museum director Peter Schäfer forced to resign
In reality, with its resolution of May 17, Germany’s ruling grand coalition has adopted the policy of the AfD. It is utilising the resolution to undermine the democratic right of freedom of expression and association and repress leftist organisations and individuals.
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This was previously demonstrated by the case of the Palestinian journalist Khaled Barakat, who has Canadian citizenship and has lived in Germany for the past four years. Barakat had planned to speak on Donald Trump’s Middle East policy at the Sudanese community center in Berlin-Schöneberg on June 22, when he and his companion were stopped by police at the exit of a subway. The police handed him an eight-page document, which banned him from speaking at the meeting and also revoked his residency permit. Apparently, Germany’s intelligence agencies had informed the immigration authorities about the meeting in Berlin.
Barakat was accused of being an official of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an accusation he denies. Moreover, the PFLP is not banned in Germany. In a speech last year Barakat declared his support for the BDS campaign. “If you do not subordinate yourself one hundred percent to the official Israeli discourse, if you refuse to accept racism, colonialism and occupation,” Barakat said in an interview with the paper Junge Welt, “then you’re branded a terrorist, a savage, a barbarian, or an anti-Semite.”
MORE:
40 Palestinian administrative detainees to start hunger strike
Dozens of Palestinian administrative detainees in Israeli jails have decided to start an open-ended hunger strike on Monday.
About 40 prisoners affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine will join the ongoing hunger strike in Israeli jails on Monday in protest at administrative detention and in solidarity with the hunger-striking detainees.
The detainees have been calling for over a month on the Israel Prison Service to stop extending their administrative detention orders but in vain.
29 Palestinian prisoners have been on hunger strike for different periods in Israeli prisons in protest at their detention administratively without charge or trial.
Thursday, May 30, 2019
PALESTINIAN FORMER MK BASEL GHATTAS RELEASED FROM ISRAELI PRISON
Palestinian former MK Basel Ghattas, convicted two years ago of smuggling mobile phones to Palestinian political prisoners, was on Monday released from prison, local media reported.
Ghattas, a Palestinian citizen of Israel from the northern town of Rameh, served as a member of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) for Palestinian-majority party Balad until 2017, when he was imprisoned over the smuggling scandal.
The former politician was sentenced to two years in prison including time served, as well as a further 18 month suspended sentence and a 120,000 shekels ($32,890) fine, on charges of fraud, breach of trust, and providing "material support for the perpetuation of an act of terror" after smuggling a letter and cellphones to Palestinian prisoner.
He was also found guilty of "moral turpitude", a charge that in Israel carries economic sanctions, including the cancellation of state benefits to which former MKs are entitled, and a ban from public office for seven years.
That sentence came as part of a plea bargain in which Ghattas admitted to handing over phones and SIM cards to inmates, actions which he said were motivated by "humanitarian and moral positions towards prisoners".
He had initially denied the charges, describing his arrest as political persecution.
Shortly before entering prison, the former MK said: "I enter prison with my head held high and I will continue my battle for prisoners' rights."
Ghattas had requested an early release but was denied referral to a prisoner rehabilitation programme after Israel’s prison service accused him of being a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which Israel considers a terrorist organisation.
The former MK denies being a PFLP member.
Ghattas admitted two years ago to smuggling phones, SIM cards, chargers and a pair of headphones into a high security prison on the request of Walid Daka, a PFLP member who participated in the abduction and killing of IDF soldier Moshe Tamam more than three decades ago.
While Ghattas admitted to the charges, Palestinians say numerous other cases of fraud, money laundering and material support for terrorist organisations filed against Balad Party representatives are symptomatic of anti-Palestinian incitement and an ongoing campaign against the movement.
According to Israeli NGO B'tselem, there are currently 5,132 Palestinian "security" prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons, around a third of whom are held in administrative detention.
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