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<font size="1"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/uphold-palestinian-struggle-all-its-forms/30951">https://electronicintifada.net/content/uphold-palestinian-struggle-all-its-forms/30951</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Uphold Palestinian struggle in all its forms</h1>
<p class="gmail-node__submitted">
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/khaled-barakat">Khaled Barakat</a></span> <span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publisher">-</span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">13 August 2020</span></span> </p>
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<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2020-08/main_image16240_cqhreeamto.jpg?itok=El892NHg×tamp=1597282581" alt="Man holding Palestine flag grabs barbed wire fence near Israeli soldiers" title="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="452" height="301"><p>Israel and its allies have never accepted any form of Palestinian resistance.</p><small>
<span>ActiveStills</span></small><p>Fifty years ago, Palestinian intellectual <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ghassan-kanafani">Ghassan Kanafani</a>
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 <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/pflp">Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine</a>.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>Kanafani’s words were featured in <em>Palestinian Affairs Magazine</em> in August 1972 following his <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/second-life-ghassan-kanafani/21051">assassination</a>
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.</p>
<h2>Unitary vision</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This unitary vision of Palestinian resistance has come under
sustained and vicious attack by Israeli propaganda organs such as its <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ministry-strategic-affairs">Ministry of Strategic Affairs</a>. Until earlier this year, this ministry had been led by <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/gilad-erdan">Gilad Erdan</a>, the right-wing Likud politician also credited with <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-court-approves-use-palestinian-bodies-bargaining-chips">detaining the bodies</a> of slain Palestinians and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/israel-worsen-conditions-palestinian-prisoners-190102151619953.html">cutting the water rations</a> of Palestinian prisoners in his sideline role as minister of internal security.</p>
<p>Erdan is now slated to serve as the latest war criminal representing Israel as its <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/missouri-oklahoma-pass-anti-bds-laws-during-pandemic">ambassador</a> to both the United States and the United Nations.</p>
<p>The claims made by these propagandists are often <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/whats-al-jazeeras-undercover-film-us-israel-lobby/23496">baseless</a>, poorly researched and ludicrously conspiratorial.</p>
<p>The strategic affairs ministry has <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/smear-campaign-targets-palestinians-working-icc">escalated its attacks</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>For example, the European Union has imposed new <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-palestinian-rights-groups-reject-eu-funding-conditions/30621">conditions on funding</a>
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 <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/eu-ramps-rewards-israels-crimes">rewards Israel</a> for its crimes.</p>
<p>These attempts come hand in hand with efforts to criminalize the boycott of Israel.</p>
<p>Examples include the German parliament’s <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/riri-hylton/german-parliament-smears-quest-palestinian-rights-anti-semitic">anti-BDS resolution</a> as well as the additional funding restrictions in <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-denmark-says-will-tighten-conditions-for-financial-aid-to-palestinian-ngos-1.5629446">Denmark</a>, the <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/dutch-parliament-calls-for-stripping-bds-groups-of-state-funding-1.5397464">Netherlands</a> and elsewhere that specifically bar grants to Palestinian organizations advocating for boycott, divestment and sanctions.</p>
<p>This repressive campaign aims to criminalize Palestinian resistance
and political organization. It also seeks to redirect Palestinian
priorities, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/smear-campaign-targets-palestinians-working-icc">threatening the financial lifeline</a> of groups that, for example, pursue Israeli war crimes at the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/international-criminal-court">International Criminal Court</a>, challenge ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, or defend Palestinian political prisoners from torture, abuse and unjust detention.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>From the <a href="https://www.wrmea.org/1988-november/destroying-the-network-of-palestinian-collaborators.html">collaborationist “Village Leagues”</a> to the Palestinian Authority’s <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/will-mahmoud-abbas-really-stop-pa-collaboration-israel">“security coordination”</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Upholding all resistance</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>One example of this is found in the <a href="http://www.badil.org/en/publication/press-releases/90-2019/5033-pr-en-301219-65.html">Palestinian campaign to reject conditional funding</a>; organizations have refused grants of millions of dollars in order to remain clear on these principles.</p>
<p>Another example is found in Lebanon. Samah Idriss, founding member of the <a href="http://boycottcampaign.com/">Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon</a>,
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.”</p>
<p>The potential momentary relief found by distancing from or disavowing the armed resistance is fleeting at best.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The legitimacy of armed struggle to liberate a people from colonial and foreign domination is moreover <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-un-telling-palestinians-protect-their-occupiers">well recognized</a>
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 <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40EU_commission%20mandela&src=typed_query&f=live">celebrates</a> Nelson Mandela, an unapologetic practitioner of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">armed struggle</a>.</p>
<p>Sweden’s present-day <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Sweden_2012.pdf?lang=en">constitution</a>
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 <em>only</em> to those occupied and colonized by Israel, other than the racist approval of such oppression?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>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.</em></p><br>
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