[News] Uphold Palestinian struggle in all its forms

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/content/uphold-palestinian-struggle-all-its-forms/30951
Uphold
Palestinian struggle in all its forms

Khaled Barakat <https://electronicintifada.net/people/khaled-barakat> - 13
August 2020
------------------------------
[image: Man holding Palestine flag grabs barbed wire fence near Israeli
soldiers]

Israel and its allies have never accepted any form of Palestinian
resistance.
ActiveStills

Fifty years ago, Palestinian intellectual Ghassan Kanafani
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ghassan-kanafani> put forward a clear
position about the boycott of Israel. Kanafani was, at the time, not only
an esteemed novelist and short story writer. He was also one of the leading
spokespeople of the Palestinian armed revolution, representing the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/pflp>.

“Our boycott of Israel is not based on an emotional position, but rather,
it comes from the nature of our confrontation against this enemy. Boycott
is in itself a statement,” Kanafani wrote.

His remarks came in response to a debate between Israeli and Palestinian
students hosted in Cyprus by the BBC. “Sitting with the enemy – even in a
TV studio – is a major mistake in the battle, and we should not consider it
a minor issue,” Kanafani said. “We are in a state of war, and at least for
Palestinians, it is a matter of life and death.”

Kanafani’s words were featured in *Palestinian Affairs Magazine* in August
1972 following his assassination
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/second-life-ghassan-kanafani/21051>
by the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. His own life reflected
a complementary approach to Palestinian resistance: armed struggle,
cultural work, international solidarity and boycott activity flowing
together toward the goals of justice, liberation and return.
Unitary vision

Understanding that historic vision of comprehensive liberation may provide
important lessons to help today’s activists for justice in Palestine
confronted by new repressive attacks.

This unitary vision of Palestinian resistance has come under sustained and
vicious attack by Israeli propaganda organs such as its Ministry of
Strategic Affairs
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ministry-strategic-affairs>. Until
earlier this year, this ministry had been led by Gilad Erdan
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/gilad-erdan>, the right-wing Likud
politician also credited with detaining the bodies
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-court-approves-use-palestinian-bodies-bargaining-chips>
of slain Palestinians and cutting the water rations
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/israel-worsen-conditions-palestinian-prisoners-190102151619953.html>
of Palestinian prisoners in his sideline role as minister of internal
security.

Erdan is now slated to serve as the latest war criminal representing Israel
as its ambassador
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/missouri-oklahoma-pass-anti-bds-laws-during-pandemic>
to both the United States and the United Nations.

The claims made by these propagandists are often baseless
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/whats-al-jazeeras-undercover-film-us-israel-lobby/23496>,
poorly researched and ludicrously conspiratorial.

The strategic affairs ministry has escalated its attacks
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/smear-campaign-targets-palestinians-working-icc>
on Palestinian human rights groups cooperating with the International
Criminal Court, suggesting that they are front groups for banned political
parties like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Israel’s allies in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, themselves with
their own long histories of racist colonialism, settler-colonialism and
present-day imperialism, have responded positively to these propaganda
campaigns.

Palestinian resistance in any form at all – even the simple expression of
the right to boycott and refuse trade and interaction with and exploitation
by a colonial power – is smeared as unacceptable, bigoted and potentially
criminal.

For example, the European Union has imposed new conditions on funding
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-palestinian-rights-groups-reject-eu-funding-conditions/30621>
provided to Palestinian nongovernmental organizations. These conditions
require groups to affirm that individuals, employees and partners involved
in their projects are not associated with any of the major Palestinian
political organizations designated as “terrorist groups” by the EU – all
while the EU rewards Israel
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/eu-ramps-rewards-israels-crimes>
for its crimes.

These attempts come hand in hand with efforts to criminalize the boycott of
Israel.

Examples include the German parliament’s anti-BDS resolution
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/riri-hylton/german-parliament-smears-quest-palestinian-rights-anti-semitic>
as well as the additional funding restrictions in Denmark
<https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-denmark-says-will-tighten-conditions-for-financial-aid-to-palestinian-ngos-1.5629446>,
the Netherlands
<https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/dutch-parliament-calls-for-stripping-bds-groups-of-state-funding-1.5397464>
and elsewhere that specifically bar grants to Palestinian organizations
advocating for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

This repressive campaign aims to criminalize Palestinian resistance and
political organization. It also seeks to redirect Palestinian
priorities, threatening
the financial lifeline
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/smear-campaign-targets-palestinians-working-icc>
of groups that, for example, pursue Israeli war crimes at the International
Criminal Court
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/international-criminal-court>,
challenge ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, or defend Palestinian political
prisoners from torture, abuse and unjust detention.

Crucially, it also seeks to isolate both the international boycott movement
and the Palestinian armed resistance from broader international support and
from one another, attempting to drive a political wedge of disavowal
between the two in order to strike a combined blow against both.

>From the collaborationist “Village Leagues”
<https://www.wrmea.org/1988-november/destroying-the-network-of-palestinian-collaborators.html>
to the Palestinian Authority’s “security coordination”
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/will-mahmoud-abbas-really-stop-pa-collaboration-israel>
under the Oslo accords, Israel and its imperialist partners have repeatedly
sought to force Palestinian organizations and movements to remake
themselves in the image of the colonizer.

In this case, they demand that the boycott movement, civil society groups
and solidarity campaigns discard, reject and disclaim all ties to the very
movements and fighters that have kept the Palestinian people and their
cause alive.
Upholding all resistance

In order to effectively undermine this attack, it is necessary to not only
debunk false claims but to reject their very foundation. Association with
the Palestinian armed resistance and its political parties is not a cause
for shame or a justification for repression.

One example of this is found in the Palestinian campaign to reject
conditional funding
<http://www.badil.org/en/publication/press-releases/90-2019/5033-pr-en-301219-65.html>;
organizations have refused grants of millions of dollars in order to remain
clear on these principles.

Another example is found in Lebanon. Samah Idriss, founding member of
the Campaign
to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon <http://boycottcampaign.com/>,
notes: “Popular boycott is part and parcel of ‘total resistance,’ that also
includes armed resistance. Both forms of resistance, civil and armed, are
complementary and should not be viewed as mutually exclusive.”

The potential momentary relief found by distancing from or disavowing the
armed resistance is fleeting at best.

More significantly, it plays directly into the campaign to delegitimize,
criminalize and isolate those on the front lines of the Palestinian
struggle. Israel and its allies have never accepted any form of Palestinian
resistance, and boycott campaigns and popular organizing are not
alternatives to armed resistance but interdependent tactics of struggle.

Any meaningful defense of the Palestinian people must clearly uphold the
right to resist colonialism by all means, including armed struggle – and
support efforts to remove Palestinian resistance groups from lists of
“terrorist organizations.” Political and media campaigns for the
Palestinian cause must work consciously to uphold the legitimacy of and
normalize the armed resistance.

The legitimacy of armed struggle to liberate a people from colonial and
foreign domination is moreover well recognized
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-un-telling-palestinians-protect-their-occupiers>
in international law. Indeed, the same European states that now seek to
criminalize and delegitimize Palestinian resistance celebrate as heroes
their own World War II resistance fighters. The European Union also
officially celebrates
<https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40EU_commission%20mandela&src=typed_query&f=live>
Nelson Mandela, an unapologetic practitioner of armed struggle
<https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk>.

Sweden’s present-day constitution
<https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Sweden_2012.pdf?lang=en>
even explicitly obligates public officials to “act in the manner that best
serves the defense effort and resistance activities” in the event that the
country is occupied. What then is the basis for denying this right *only*
to those occupied and colonized by Israel, other than the racist approval
of such oppression?

Kanafani’s clear vision and exemplary life provide us with a meaningful
approach to confront repression and defend Palestine. The popular struggle,
the armed resistance, the Arab and international boycott movement and the
global mass movements and fights for liberation flow, like streams of
water, through different lands and along different routes, to come together
in the rushing current of a Palestinian revolutionary future.

*Khaled Barakat is a Palestinian writer and activist. He was subjected to a
political ban and excluded from Germany for his political activity and
expression on Palestine.*
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