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The Friends of Palestine Against Imperialism and Zionism Movement demands that Ahmad Sa’adat and his fellow 4500 Palestinians be released/freed from Israeli prisons. This illegitimate state’s captives include 160 children and some 450 Palestinians who have never faced any charges or trials, held under a Zionist practice called the “administrative detention,” which is obviously contradictory to even the internationally accepted basic principles of law.

Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), is sentenced to 30 years by the Zionist occupiers on 25 December 2008, after being violently abducted from the Palestinian Authority’s Jericho prison in 2006, where he had been held under U.S. and British guard.

What a historical moment that marvellously draws a bold line between the oppressors and the oppressed! The imperialists, Zionists and their puppet regime on the one side, the Palestinian communist resistance on the other.

Comrade Sa’adat fought against capitalism, racism, apartheid and colonization, as a member of his organization. Although his captivity is an outrage for all Palestinians, today, his comrades are carrying the flag of emancipation restlessly. The Zionist losers are clearly aware of the fact that they must imprison every single Palestinian in order to stop the glorious struggle of Palestinians.

Today, we join the call of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and once again call for Sa’adat’s immediate release from the Zionist prisons, as did we many times before. We also do stress a sine qua non of a real friendship with the Palestinian people and a real support to the Palestinian captives: An effective boycott of the Zionist entity, including a full ban on trade with Israel and an immediate end to all military & intelligence relations with it. A sine qua non that Turkish governments never fulfil! 

Fight Zionism and imperialism, for the freedom of Sa’adat and other Palestinian captives!

Fight the traitor collaborators called the Palestinian Authority, for the emancipation of the Palestinians!

Fight the reactionary Arab regimes, for the will of all peoples of the region to become the reality!

Fight for a free, democratic, secular and socialist Palestine from the river to the sea!

We held a demonstration in front of the so-called Israeli Consulate in Levent, Istanbul, in order to protest the Israel’s U.S-backed plan to annex up to 30% of the West Bank. We marched from the Levent underground station to the consulate building with slogans and a long banner saying “side with the intifada, not with imperialist aggression and the Zionist annexation!”.   

We also carried placards both demanding immediate release of Georges Abdallah, a Lebanese communist imprisoned in France who called for solidarity with the Palestinian people, and featuring the Al Fatah-issued Palestinian identity card of a Turkish revolutionary, Deniz Gezmiş, who had fought against Israeli army. 

Approaching towards the Consulate building, we appealed to the people for supporting the Palestinian cause. The during-march propaganda exposing the crimes committed by Zionism and the U.S imperialism, and the collaborationist politics of the AKP drew attention from the people around.  

It was seen that the Consulate, which was conscious that the annexation plan would be a cardinal crime perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people and all oppressed nations, had requested the Istanbul police to take large security measures such as security lines, riot police and water cannons.

We exposed the hypocrisy of the AKP government, which, on the one hand, has feigned opposition against Zionist aggression and, on the other hand, has dropped the Mavi Marmara case alongside strengthening its trade relationship with Israel and negotiating with Israel on the Palestinian gas fields.

We demanded the expulsion Israeli ambassador, and all commercial, military and political relations be severed. We called academics, sportspersons, artists and the relevant organizations to support the boycott movement and to cut off all their ties with Israel.

We reiterated our call for rejecting all sponsorships offered by ARTISRAEL, an organization that has played an important role in whitewashing the crimes of Israel. We also called on the Göztepe Football Club of Izmir to terminate its contract with Puma, which has sponsored Zionism.  

See below for the text of the press release read out by our spokesperson Naz Şakar:

Dear reporters, and friends of Palestine,

We have asserted persistently since the first day of our campaign that the Zionist Israeli state should be destroyed.  

We have also emphasized that the plan of a “two-state solution” should be rejected.

Zionists having been emboldened by Trump’s “deal of the century” now make preparations to announce that they are annexing some parts of the Jordan River Valley and of the West Bank that they had failed to usurp in 1948 and 1967.

We declare in our manifesto that Israel is a cancerous cell that should be prevented from spreading, that is, it should be torn down!

Therefore, as having been seen in the Madrid Conference in 1991 and Oslo negotiations in 1993, “diplomacy” is not a proper means to deal with that racist and aggressive state. Palestinian people have nothing left to negotiate. The only way to deal with the Zionist entity is to wage an all-out fight against it.

Dear reporters, and friends of Palestine,

We call on the laboring classes of Turkey to side with the Palestinian people because imperialism and Zionism that persecute the Palestinian people are also those that suck blood of the workers and laborers of Turkey. Therefore, the plan to annex the West Bank is also an attack against us.

The AKP government, on the one hand, has pretended to be anti-Zionist and, on the other hand, has dropped the Mavi Marmara case alongside strengthening its trade, military, diplomatic and intelligence relations with Israel and negotiating with Israel on the Palestinian gas fields.

As that illegitimate entity occupies the Palestinian territory, art organizations do not hesitate to receive funds from the ARTISRAEL.

AKP government approves the re-launch of Israeli cargo flights.

We are sure that they will soon begin to negotiate on the pipelines!

Today what those who are true friends of Palestine should do against prospective annexations is to end all their relationships with that illegitimate entity.

We, as Friends of Palestine against Imperialism and Zionism, will do whatever is required to stop the Zionist aggression.

We will turn their dreams into nightmares.

We will stand firmly against the Zionist expansionism.

We will support the Palestinian cause and fight against imperialism and Zionism until the day a free, secular and socialist Palestine is established!

Long live the Palestinian cause!

Down with the Zionist Israeli State!

Down with imperialism!

Friends of Palestine against Imperialism and Zionism

1st July 2020

On Sunday 21st of June, we organized a demonstration in front of the French honorary consulate in İzmir and protested the captivities of our two comrades, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah and Ahmad Saadat. Below, you may find our press announcement that we read there:

Dear reporters, and friends of Palestinian people,

Today we, Friends of Palestine against Imperialism and Zionism, are here to demand freedom, in the persons of our courageous comrades Georges Ibrahim Abdallah and Ahmad Sa’adat, for allmilitants who have been kept captive in the imperialist and Zionist prisons. 

Ahmad Sa’adat and Georges Ibrahim Abdallah have been deprived, respectively, by Israel for 18 years and by French imperialism for 36 years, of their freedom.

However, what those two revolutionaries have done cannot be treated as crime!

Those two socialist militants fought against the French-backed Zionism invading Palestine and Lebanon, 

as did the Kara Yılan (“Black Snake”, the assumed name of one of the heroes of the National Independence War who is immortalized in the Nazım Hikmet’s book “Kuvay-ı Milliye Destanı”)after French imperialism had occupied the province of Antep,

and as did Yörük Ali and Demirci Mehmet Efe after the English-backed Greek armed forces hadinvaded the province of Izmir!

Abdallah and Sa’adat incessantly struggled against the enemy and never sought reconciliation with imperialists. They refused to bow down to Zionism, which has expelled the Palestinian Arabs to establish a country that would serve as an imperial outpost in the Middle East. They fought to the end!

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah is a Lebanese communist revolutionary who has devoted his life to the fight against imperialism and Zionism. He has been kept captive since 1984 in France for allegedly being the founder of the organization called Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF). As the French- and US-backed Zionist Israel was occupying Lebanon, that organization both fought against the occupying forces, and expanded the war right into the heart of the imperialist countries by targeting those who have provided Zionists with military and monetary aid. Georges Abdallah is held culpable also for the killings of Charles R. Ray, the then U.S military attaché to France, and Yaakov Bar-Simantov, the then head of the French mission of the Israeli intelligence agency. He should have been released 22 years ago, however, France still keeps him captive.

Ahmad Sa’adat is the captive leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).  He has devoted all his life to the struggle against Zionism after he had joined the Palestinian Student Union in 1967. From the early 1970s to 1994 when he was elected as the head of the West Bank branch of PFLP, he has been detained many times by the Zionists. He undertook the leadership of the organization after Abou Ali Moustapha was martyred by Israel in 2001. In 2006,the Zionist thugs raided the prison where he has since 2002 been kept jailed by the so-called“Palestinian Autonomous Authority”, and abducted him.

Dear reporters, and friends of Palestinian people,

The struggle that has been carried out by Georges Abdallah and Ahmad Sa’adat bears tremendous importance for us in many respects. 

Those two socialist militants and leaders have always been conscious of the fact that Zionists and their imperialist collaborators would never bring prosperity to the laboring classes of those countries. That is why Abdallah is still in prison in France whilst the collaborator “Palestinian Autonomous Authority” is favored by European imperialism.      

Those two socialist militants and leaders have fought for a socialist, secular and democratic political program and against religious sectarianism. Their struggle shows that the Palestinian cause cannot be confined within the boundaries of political Islamism, and that the cause itself is a bannerof resistance under which the oppressed of all languages, countries and beliefs come together. 

We, Friends of Palestine against Imperialism and Zionism, stand in solidarity with those two comrades and embrace their struggle. Israel, which has touted itself as the only democratic country in the Middle East, and France, which has pretended to champion human rights, should immediately release our comrades. 

Down with French imperialism!

Down with American imperialism!

Down with the regimes in collaboration with imperialism and Zionism!

Down with Zionist Israeli State!

Free George Abdallah and Ahmad Sa’adat!

Friends of Palestine against Imperialism and Zionism

We, Friends of Palestine Against Imperialism and Zionism Platform, jointly with members of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (DIP) of Turkey, held a demonstration in front of the so-called Consulate General of Israel in Levent, Istanbul, in order to mark the 72^nd anniversary of Nakba Day, and to protest the decades-long Zionist oppression and occupation in Palestine. We emphasized in our press release that the Coronavirus epidemic has aggravated the plight of the Palestinian people. Zionists neither allow them to take measures necessary to stall the spread of Covid-19 nor let them receive proper treatment. And we urged that Turkey sever all military, diplomatic, cultural, academic and economic relations with Israel; and that the Israeli ambassador be expelled from our country.   

The epidemic of Covid-19 spreads quickly all over Palestine. That viral risk aggravates the plight of thepeople living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who have barely survived under Zionist occupation. The disease also threatens the lives of Palestinian captives jailed in the Zionists’ prisons. They have already suffered being held in overcrowded and insanitary dormitories. Six or seven or even more Palestinians are crammed into spaces suitable for maximum four persons whilst Jewish prisoners stay in dormitories with decent conditions. The former is deprived also of accessing to health services even if they succumb to cancer. Palestinian captives have protested the inhumane treatments at times by hunger strike. However, Zionists never cared about their requests. It is thus predictable that Zionists will not perform necessary measures to stave off the devastating effects of the epidemic when it begins to infect the prisons where Palestinians are kept.

Palestinian captives demand that their dormitories be sterilized urgently and regularly; that wardens wear protective clothes; that their body temperature be taken regularly (no measurement so far); that they access to health services; and that elderly, female and child captives be released.

While the Zionist entity turns a deaf ear to those demands, it imposes more restrictions on access to cleaning materials, fresh fruits and vegetables, and health services. Furthermore while Zionists decide to keep almost 500 Jewish prisoners under house arrest, no such a precaution is taken for any of 5000 Palestinian captives. That proves one more time the Apartheid-like racist and discriminatory characteristics of the Zionist entity.  Let alone taking protective precautions against the epidemic, Palestinian prisoners are denied even the right to consult with their lawyers. On the other hand, Zionist interrogators and torturers can “visit” them whenever they want.

It is reported that the captives have ceased to receive meals by March 26^th and prepared for a hunger strike. Many activist platforms, especially Samidoun, have drawn attention to the grave danger that Palestinian captives face, and called on the world to support their demands. Those honorable sons and daughters of the Palestinian people who have fought for a just cause are held captive by the most-illegitimate political entity in the world.  

Their captivity under those conditions becomes even more unbearable for all the exploited and oppressed worldwide. We, as the Friends of Palestine against Imperialism and Zionism, demand that all Palestinian captives held in the illegitimate Israel’s prisons and left unprotected in the face of Covid-19 be released immediately!

Free All Palestinian Captives!

Down with Zionist Israeli State!

Free Palestine from the River to the Sea!

The new-type coronavirus epidemic plaguing the world has now arrived in the Palestinian territory via two persons who entered the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, according to the statement released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health. What jeopardizes the lives of people in the Gaza Strip is, however, not only the spread of the virus, but also the Zionist blockade on the City which under the current circumstances will cause a horrendous catastrophe!

The City which has for years been suffering a suffocating blockade imposed by Israel with the help of Egypt faces great difficulties even in providing its people with potable clean water, let alone the products needed for personal hygiene. The blockade also causes the Palestinianpeople not to decent access to the health services. For example, medicines are confiscated at the borders or cancer-diagnosed patients are not allowed to leave the City for receiving treatment somewhere else. The Gaza Strip is also deprived by Israel of medical facilities and equipments that are required to cope with the epidemic. It has only 40 intensive care beds, 56 respiratory devices and 200 test kits for a two-million population!

It is clear that the blockade on the Gaza Strip which is now intertwined with the coronavirus epidemic cannot be understood properly without considering how unwilling both states and capitalists are to finance and enhance antiviral measures. As people around the world still diedue to inadequate number of respiratory devices, two million Palestinians who have lived in an open-air prison for 13 years now suffer being deprived both of respiratory devices and even of basic medical tools, and are left to mercy of the Zionist Israel!  

There is only one way to avert the imminent calamity: lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip!An international campaign should be organized immediately to force the Zionist Israel to do so. The City would otherwise turn into a mass grave. The former is undoubtedly something desirable for Israel. Both the blockade itself and Israel’s atrocious attack with live ammunition against the unarmed people who joined the “Great Return March” already showed the true colors of Zionists. It is therefore unsurprising that nowadays they discusshow to repel Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip if they flock to the border to survive the viral epidemic, with a majority in favor of shooting them.

Hence it is an indispensable duty for all friends of Palestine to prevent the Zionist entity from committing such a mass decimation by leveraging the Covid-19. The way to force the Zionist Israel to lift the blockade is to sever diplomatic relations with that “state”. We, as the Friends of Palestine against Imperialism and Zionism, thus call on Turkish government to expel all Zionist diplomats; to unilaterally terminate all commercial relations; and to impose sanctions on any companies that have interest in the blockade. “Condemnations” released by theTurkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on its website are futile attempts and nothing going beyond paying lip service to appease the public reactions. We warn in advance that shrinking from taking steps aforementioned above will mean being accomplice once again –alongside dropping the Mavi Marmara flotilla case for the sake of purchasing natural gas, and maintaining military and economic cooperation even during the Gaza Strip being shelled- in persecution of the Palestinian people!

We, as the Friends of Palestine against Imperialism and Zionism, held a demonstration in front of the US Consulate in Istanbul, in order to protest the so-called “Deal of the Century” plan declared by Trump.     

The 180-page document drafted by imperialists and Zionists, which have tormented the Middle East under the auspice of the former, cannot be called as “deal”. It is nothing but a list of political impositions aimed at making the Palestinian people and its resistance organizations kneel down. If that document is put in effect, it will scrap the Palestinian people’s historically-gained rights.    

The document is also a political maneuver devised in a well-timed manner by Trump and Netanyahu to boost their credibility, as the former is in need of receiving support from Zionist lobbies to be reelected, the latter is indicted for corruption charges.   

For we felt that that imperialist and Zionist attempt should be condemned immediately, we organized a demonstration in front of the US Consulate the day after the “deal” was announced. We first gathered at a historically important location, former Kavel factory, whose workers led the struggle for the right to strike, and then marched towards the Consulate. During the march, we have chanted the slogans “Down with Zionist Israeli State!”, “US Hands off the Middle East!”, “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea!”. After informing the awaiting reporters about our protest, we read out our press release (available in Turkish on our website). The declaration is a clear sign that imperialists and Zionists will escalate their assaults. It is then time to increase our efforts for the victory of Palestinian people, and the defeat of imperialism and Zionism.