#and actively working with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which is one of the groups involved in October 7

[infiniteglitterfall]

Please be aware that Within Our Lifetime explicitly supports what Hamas did on October 7. That's what it's referring to when it says "uplift the Palestinian people resisting by any means necessary."

That's why it's on October 7. The rally is specifically to celebrate and show support for this:

And that when it says "supporting Palestinians resisting genocide by any means necessary since 1948," it's genuinely claiming that Israel has been committing genocide continuously since 1948.

Even when every surrounding country invaded in 1948. Even during the 19 years that Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan occupied the West Bank. Even when Palestine declared independence in 1988 and went through years of peace negotiations with Israel. Even when Israel destroyed all settlements in Gaza in 2005, pulled out all troops, and ended all Israeli administration of it.

Most of all, please understand that this is NOT "standing with the people of Gaza!"

The people of Gaza have had SO MANY protests against Hamas over the past year. They did not want any of this.

His tweet continues:

Just look at Hamas’ October 7th—after a year of hyping up that atrocity in the name of "resistance," what are their demands now? Not even a return to the day before, but something that’s a disaster far worse than October 6th, 50 years ago. And the best part? Not even the most extreme Zionist could’ve dreamed up a plan as disastrous as the one Hamas has unleashed on Gaza. But sure, go ahead and accuse the Zionists—while the “resistance” ends up doing more damage to its own people than their assumed enemy could ever imagine.

Gazan activist Hamza Howidy writes:

We Gazans attempted several times to remove Hamas from power. In 2019 and in 2023, the people of Gaza held peaceful marches against Hamas; for this crime, we were brutally assaulted by Hamas militants. Hamas imprisoned over 1,300 protestors at each protest. I was one of them. I was personally imprisoned by Hamas and tortured twice, because I participated in these protests. So I know firsthand that when ordinary Gazans like myself protested against Hamas, there was no media attention. No human rights organizations demanded the release of prisoners held for months in Hamas prisons, not to mention those who were tortured by Hamas, and even killed by Hamas—like Issam Al-Saaffein, who was killed under torture in Hamas's jails.

It's long past time for the pro-Palestinian movement to center and support the activists of Gaza.

🇵🇸 On Monday October 7th Flood New York City For Palestine, stand with Gaza and uplift the Palestinian people resisting genocide by any means necessary since 1948. Call out of work and school, take to the streets and join us throughout the day 🌊

Confront the forces of imperialism and zionism and let the world know that NYC stands with our people’s heroic struggle in the face of annihilation. Share widely, travel to NYC from wherever you are and join us in the streets on 10/7.

GATHERING POINTS: 1:00 PM Wall St (NYSE) 2:30 PM City Hall 3:30 PM Washington Sq. Park 4:00 PM Union Square 5:00 PM Grand Central 5:30 PM Times Square 6:00 PM Columbus Circle

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) holds the occupation responsible for starving our people

The Popular Front holds the occupation responsible for starving our people. It warns war merchants, mercenaries and exploiters against their involvement in increasing the suffering and aligning themselves with the occupation’s plans.

In light of the unprecedented deterioration of the humanitarian situation and the aggravation of the daily suffering of our people in the Gaza Strip due to the war of genocide waged by the zionist occupation, in addition to the policies of starvation and systematic siege, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine holds the zionist occupation fully responsible for this catastrophic situation, and denounces the international partnership in this crime, and the shameful international silence and complicity in the face of the policies of mass starvation and daily war crimes committed against our people, and even the involvement of several International Institutions in covering up and concealing the crimes of the occupation.

The Front also stresses that war merchants and mercenaries have played and continue to play a major role in exacerbating the repercussions of the occupation's policies on our people and increasing their tragedy and suffering. The Front affirms that the role of these formations, which practice policies of monopoly and sabotage, and use gang methods of thuggery, looting and monopolizing goods, constitutes a complement to the terrorist policies of the occupation.

While the Front continues to demand and work for a unified national leadership for the battle in all its aspects, including the existence of a national administration and policies to support the steadfastness of our people, alleviate their suffering, and confront the occupation policy and the treacherous role of war merchants, today it, like all the national forces and free people of our people, is obligated to escalate its role and struggle to protect our people.

In light of this catastrophic situation, the Popular Front announces its decision, along with the forces and free people in Gaza, to lift the organizational cover from anyone involved in these destructive practices that only serve the occupation and contribute to starving our steadfast people. The Front stresses that it will confront with all its strength anyone who dares to violate the dignity of the citizens or contribute to deepening their crises and suffering.

The Front also renews its full support for the peaceful popular movements that stem from the will of the street and express just demands to provide the most basic elements of dignity and a decent life in the face of the policies of the occupation and its agents, the merchants of death, the thieves and those who benefit from raising prices, stressing that protecting these movements is a joint national responsibility that falls on the shoulders of all forces keen on the safety of our people.

The Front calls again for activating the popular protection committees to stand firmly against the encroachment of these gangs that attack the dignity of our people and seek to starve and oppress them, and to tighten popular control over the markets and combat the policy of raising prices and monopolizing goods, and to thwart any attempts to create chaos and undermine the unity of the national ranks.

At the end of its statement, the Popular Front affirms that it, along with all national forces, will not hesitate to defend the dignity of our people and will not allow any practices that increase their suffering to pass. It will continue to struggle and confront with all firmness anyone who tries to exploit the crisis to achieve personal gains at the expense of the dignity of our people and their steadfastness in the face of the occupation.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Central Media Office November 8, 2024

[secular-jew]

A Dose of Clarity on the Palestinian Storyline

~~ By Valerie Sobel

Whenever Western media, Western governments, Israel, or anyone draws an intentional disconnect between the Palestinians and Hamas, a myriad of lies and warped presumptions are activated.

The political correctness machine, invented by liberals but operated by everyone today with respect to the current war in the Middle East guarantees 100% detachment of the poor Palestinian and his cause from terrorist Hamas. But the cost of this on-going theatre is egregious intellectual corruption; a complete reversal of truth and entire revision of Middle East history.

If Hamas is, indeed, a rogue terrorist regime under which the poor Palestinian is suffering, are we to erase all irrefutable knowledge and evidence of the following?

1. Palestinians elected Hamas as their ruling government in the year 2007 by an overwhelming majority. In their charter, Hamas boldly states aspirations to wipe Israel of the face of the earth in not one but 36 separate articles.

2. Before Hamas, Palestinians produced one Yasser Arafat who founded the art of terrorism and airplane highjacking. No amount of concessions and negotiation with this father of terrorism, for decades, convinced the Palestinians to adopt a two-state solution for peaceful co-existence.

3. Before Yasser Arafat, Palestinians produced another leader, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem who actively worked against the UN’s two-state solution platform of 1948, led the 1920 Nebi Musa riots against the Jews in the very Jewish Palestine, and established himself as an ally in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. During World War II he collaborated with both Italy and Germany by making propagandistic radio broadcasts and by aiding the Nazis recruit 25,000 Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS. The more Jews killed the better for this Palestinian also. On meeting Adolf Hitler, he demanded Hitler opposes the establishment of a Jewish national home in Jewish Palestine.

4. Since the failed Oslo Accords of the 1990s, more 2400 Israelis have been killed or wounded in terror attacks by the Palestinians.

5. Beside popular Hamas membership, Islamic Jihad, The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Fatah, Tanzim and Muslim Brotherhood -all made up of “innocent” Palestinian citizenry.

6. Palestinian children, from nursery age are systematically taught to regard Jews as the infidel enemy who took their land. Schools employ maps where Israel doesn’t exist. Children are instructed to kill Jews, join ISIS and Hamas for the glory of Islam. This is proudly exhibited to the world as a moral duty for young Palestinians.

7. Palestinian children are also reared for martyrdom by their parents and families. Islam’s promise of eternal life with 72 virgins and the favour of Allah is the goal of life, not life itself. Highest honor is given to families of martyrs who execute Jews.

8. Palestinian families are paid a monthly stipend for life by the Palestinian Authority when a family member is martyred in the duty of slaughtering Jews. It is estimated out of 2000 Gazan terrorists who came into Israel on October 7th to behead, burn alive and kidnap - one half (1000!) were Palestinian citizens who were promised 17,000 shekels and up for broken limbs, rapes and savage killings. For every person kidnapped, they were promised an apartment.

9. Kibbutz Kfar Azza was entirely penetrated and terrorized by scores of Palestinians on foot, on bicycle and motorcycle for the job of massacring babies, children and anything that moved. This was documented in vivid color by a CNN reporter, Hassan Eslaiah.

10. Maps of Sderot police station (first venue of slaughter), homes, businesses and everything inside, including what the family dog looks like and where the safe rooms are….information all meticulously collected by 20,000 regular Palestinians entering Israel on permits to work daily. Without these details provided by everyday Palestinians allowed to enter Israel on goodwill, Hamas had no way to execute the massacres.

11. For as long as the Palestinians have invented themselves as Palestinians to illegitimately lay claim to Jewish ancestral land Romans called Philistine…they have publicly cheered and celebrated every Jewish death. Whether it’s candy distribution or singing and dancing or setting the Israeli flags on fire. The elation at Jewish suffering is generational and feverish and has nothing to do with Hamas origins.

12. Palestinians are first and foremost Sharia Law Muslims of the Quaran. They are no different than the 22 Arab states surrounding Israel that share no love loss for Israel simply because it exists. For Islamic law, the very existence of Israel is diametrically opposite to Quran’s instruction of slaying Jews “wherever you can find them”. Or Qurans’s 177 instructional statements that Jews are “descendants of apes and pigs” and must be slayed.

13. Every sign of millions of Palestinians on the streets of Europe and America today that reads “from the river to the sea” is from the Palestinian charter of driving Israel into annihilation. Every mouth that utters it is calling for the explicit desire for Jewish extermination.

What’s happening today is simple; this is a religious war. It is NOT terrorism. It is certainly no land dispute. It is Jihad in the name of Allah. And every government of the western world knows it.

So why the continued farce of separating and detaching the Palestinians and their “cause” from known history, from Hamas, from Islamic Jihad, from Fatah, from PLO, from Tanzim and PFLP, all Palestinian groups aiming at Israel’s annhialation?

Because an admission of truth will, perish the thought:

a) Delegitimize the UN at its core

b) Force European nations and the US to admit utter failure of decades of foreign policies

c) Force a myriad of civilized countries to quit financial aid to the Palestinians, hence admitting billions of dollars of taxpayer theft.

d) Elucidate the fallacy and fraud of that two-state solution, which was invented by the west (prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948) in order to appease the 22 Arab states. But more importantly…

e) Will immediately unite the Arab world, including nuclear Iran, in a war against the west. This very real and justified fear of Islam and its 2 billion followers who believe in the supremacy of the sword, in beheadings, rapes, massacres and annihilation of western civilization in the name of Allah is palpable. This very basic of human emotions, fear, is the catalyst for every lie, for all the theatre, for all the fraud around the fabricated Palestinian victimhood. It will continue to the end of time until Islam’s demographical strength reaches a critical mass for the destruction of an entire society of Judeo-Christian culture. And then, and only then, truth will be allowed, Islamophobia will be understood not as racial discrimination but as a rational fear rooted in evidence and posing an immediate threat to our existence. And finally, that survival-of-the-fittest meter will begin ticking.

As for Israel and the Jewish plight - the sacrificial lamb, the Jews will continue to repeat “Never Again!”through every atrocity, every raging antisemitic-crime statistic, every American campus pro-Hamas rally with “Kill The Jews” signs, every Jihad war, every Palestinian stabbing and every missile launched at Tel Aviv…until the end of time. Mindlessly parroting something that has never been true, because there is simply no other hope.

Until the west finds its balls against Islam, nothing changes. Western governments’ and media’s established theatre of lies and fraud narratives for the Palestinians and their cause …IS the very manifestation of real justified Islamophobia. Until the west feels an immediate threat to its survival, no matter how many times Israel screams “You’re next!”, nothing changes.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jessica Costescu

Columbia University is distancing itself from a new faculty group that hosted an anti-Israel doctor who has praised terrorists, including a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) cofounder who helped plan an Israeli airplane hijacking and a Hamas leader suspected of masterminding a rabbi's murder.

The doctor, British-Palestinian surgeon and University of Glasgow rector Ghassan Abu-Sittah, spoke Tuesday evening at Columbia University Health Sciences for Palestine's (CUHSP) inaugural event "Gaza: Public Health in Crisis." The group is composed of Columbia University Irving Medical Center faculty and staff working to "bring attention to health justice in Palestine."

CUHSP's advertisement for the online panel included Columbia's logo and noted that it was cosponsored by "SPIRIT Initiative and the Certificate Program in Global Health, Mailman School of Public Health [and] Columbia University Medical Center."

A Columbia spokeswoman, however, denied that the anti-Israel group was affiliated with the university.

"Columbia University Health Sciences for Palestine is not a recognized Columbia group and is not authorized to hold an event using University resources," she told the Washington Free Beacon. "The group has been reminded of this and told to remove any Columbia logos from their materials."

She added that the certificate program has since removed its affiliation and that the flyer has been updated. But CUHSP's original advertisement was still active on social media as of Wednesday evening.

The spokeswoman didn't respond when asked if CUHSP's members or the initial cosponsors would face consequences.

Regardless, CUHSP proceeded with its event.

During the online panel, which more than 200 people attended, Abu-Sittah accused Israel of intentionally creating a famine in Gaza. He called the Jewish state the "tip of the genocidal iceberg" and said the United States, Britain, and Germany were part of the "genocidal project" for supplying Israel with arms, intelligence, and "boots on the ground." None of those nations have deployed troops to Gaza.

Abu-Sittah, who volunteered in Gaza hospitals, said "Israel was unable to provide a shred of evidence" that Hamas leaders operated in tunnels underneath hospitals. But U.S. and Israeli intelligence dispute that claim. Intelligence also shows that the terror group used Al-Shifa Hospital for cover, weapons storage, and hostage detention and destroyed electronics and documents while evacuating.

[the-light-of-stars]

Another news item:

The german government is currently in the process of creating laws for the prohibition and judical persecution of members or sympathisers of not just hamas but a palestinian organisation called Samidoun, a "network for solidarity with palestinian prisoners" and is considering to outlaw more pro-palestinian organisations, including BDS, calling them extremist terrorist organisations.

here some excerpts from the second article, detailing three organisations that are deemed "antisemitic terrorist organisations" , which the german state either is currently in the process of outlawing with threat of prosecution in courts of law or deportation, or whose outlawing it is currently considering :

" Samidoun: Chancellor Scholz has announced a ban of activity for this group as well [context: the other group he announced a ban for is hamas itself] . According to the Security Bureaus Samidoun does not have solid structures in Germany. The group is a network for support of imprisoned palestinians and developed as part of the marxist-leninist PFLP, the popular front for the liberation of palestine.

Samidoun reacted "scandalized" to the announced ban. On its website the network speaks of a "racist hate campaign" of the german press "against palestinian and arab youth in germany and especially against the Samidoun-network" . [According to the network] the german state is a partner in the defamation and dehumanisation of the palestinian people as well as a partner of "the murderous war crimes and crimes against humanity of the occupational regime"

"PFLP: The popular front for the liberation of palestine, in short: PFLP, exists since 1967 and caused Fear and Horror in the 1970s , among other things via multiple airplane hijackings - among those the bloody highjacking of the Lufthansa-plane "Landshut" in the year 1977. Until today it is committing attacks in Israel. The EU lists it as a terror-organisation since 2002.

In germany the PFLP has not been outlawed so far, since according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution it is not "terroristically active" here. However, so the Report on Protection of the Constitution for the year 2022 says, former terrorists are enjoying great recognition among its followers and "are specifically getting invited into germany for indoctrination purposes".

The PFLP counts roughly 100 members in germany. It follows a marxist-leninist ideology, wants a socialist palestinian state and denies Israel's right to existence."

"BDS: BDS stands for "Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions" and is an international palestinian movement that exists since 2005 and has an active following even in germany. The movement calls for science and students not to work together with israeli universities and institutions. Cultural institutions in Israel are supposed to be boycotted as well.

It also is directed against companies, who BDS claims support "Israel's politics of occupation, colonialism and apartheid" and calls for international sanctions against Israel. The BDS movement has not only palestinian followers but has followers in Germany as well, even in the so called civil milieu [context: they mean middle and upper middle class academics and other civilians] . According to the ARD-capital city studio and SWR's informations [two state sponsored news channels] the movement is being watched by the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution and is listed as "an extremist suspect".

The german federal parliament accepted a comprehensive proposal by CDU/CSU [conservatives], SPD [social democrats] , FDP [liberals] and large parts of the Greens [progressives] , in which the BDS movement is described as an "allencompassing call for boycott" and gets condemned heavily. With this proposal the federal government, so it is said, is decidedly standing against any form of antisemitism even in its beginning stages.

Projects that support the BDS movement must not be allowed financial support, so it was said. BDS activists have sued against this proposition in front of the Berlin high administrative court, without success.

Currently BDS is organising demonstrations and "vigils for palestine" in all of germany, which in parts have been prohibited."

[eretzyisrael]

MAJOR UPDATE - November 8, 2023

Canary Mission can now confirm that Rashida Tlaib is connected to 6 Hamas-linked activists who all served as fundraiser co-hosts for her 2018 congressional campaign.

This update identifies 3 activists in addition to the 3 identified in an October 2023 report.

Other Key Findings:

Guest of Honor Linked to Terror Group: One of Rashida Tlaib’s guests for her January 2019 swearing-in was Fatah activist Mazen Dola. He is the cousin of a terrorist who lured an Israeli teenager online for a date and then murdered him in cold blood, in 2001. Two and a half years before attending Tlaib’s swearing-in, he attended the release of his cousin from an Israeli jail along with armed members of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

PFLP Connections: The Black4Palestine activist group that Tlaib co-founded in 2015 worked publicly with terrorists from Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) no less than 7 times from 2016 to 2020.

Hamas-Linked Fundraiser Host: One of Tlaib's 2018 fundraiser hosts, Mwafaq Jbara, met with a Hamas co-founder while in a maximum security Israeli jail. He called for the death of Jews and praised the terrorist who killed U.S. Army veteran Taylor Force.

BREAKING NEWS - October 25, 2023

Canary Mission can confirm that Rashida Tlaib has extensive fundraising ties to Hamas supporters. She employed no less than three Hamas-linked activists to fundraise for her 2018 election campaign, one of whom spent 8 months in prison for his alleged connections to Hamas.

Tlaib additionally used a pro-terror Facebook page, PAC-USA, to raise funds for her 2018 Congressional campaign. Tlaib gave the founder of PAC-USA the position of Chairman of the Finance Committee for Rashida Tlaib for Congress. He used it to promote 12 fundraisers in 8 states, entirely with her support.

In 2015, Tlaib co-founded the Detroit-based, anti-American, anti-Israel and pro-terror hate group, Black4Palestine. A co-founder used the group to conduct activism with members of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

[agentfascinateur]

Hollywood call for withdrawing Bisan Owda's Emmy Nomination - DENIED

Creative Community for Peace, a pro-Israel nonprofit organization, called for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to rescind an Emmy nomination for Bisan Atef Owda, a Palestinian journalist. Owda was nominated by NATAS in the Outstanding Hard News Feature Story: Short Form category, for the series “It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive.” They allege that Owda has documented ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a United States-designated terrorist organization. The letter, was signed by More than 150 entertainment industry leaders, including the likes of Debra Messing, Selma Blair, Sherry Lansing, Rick Rosen, Haim Saban, and Michael Rotenberg, among others.

Thank you for your letter of August 19, 2024, concerning the nomination of “It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive” for a 2024 News & Documentary Emmy Award. The News & Documentary Emmys have recognized excellence in television journalism for nearly half a century. The honored programs and reports have taken viewers to the front lines of every world conflict, probed political and cultural divides, and sought to illuminate even the darkest circumstances. Some of these works have been controversial, giving a platform to voices that certain viewers may find objectionable or even abhorrent. But all have been in the service of the journalistic mission to capture every facet of the story. In every case, submissions to the News & Documentary Emmys are judged by experienced journalists from across multiple news organizations, serving in an independent, volunteer capacity. NATAS does not intervene in or countermand the judgment of these journalists except when competition rules have been violated, nor does NATAS determine the eligibility or ineligibility of news reporting based on the political views represented. “It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive” was reviewed by two successive panels of independent judges, including senior editorial leadership from each significant U.S. broadcast news network. It was selected for nomination from among more than 50 submissions in one of the year’s most competitive categories. The piece was also recognized for journalistic achievement by the Peabody Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Awards, each administered by processes and organizations wholly separate from and independent of NATAS and the News & Documentary Emmys. NATAS is aware of reports, cited in your letter and initially surfaced by a communications consultant in the region, that appear to show a then-teenaged Bisan Owda speaking at various PFLP-associated events between six and nine years ago.  NATAS has been unable to corroborate these reports, nor has it been able, to date, to surface any evidence of more contemporary or active involvement by Owda with the PFLP organization. Most critically, the content submitted for award consideration was consistent with competition rules and NATAS policies. Accordingly, NATAS has found no grounds, to date, upon which to overturn the editorial judgment of the independent journalists who reviewed the material. Thank you. I appreciate your courtesy in sharing our response with your cosigners. Sincerely, Adam Sharp, NATAS President & CEO

[post-leffert]

Anarchists Against Counter-Revolution

9/5/2024

There has been a disturbing trend within anarchism in the last few years. It could be called the right wing of anarchism, liberal anarchism, anarchism in name only, or reformism. Whatever it is called, people who believe that they are anarchists have taken positions that side with colonizers, nation-states, and western hegemony.

The most glaring of these positions are: 1) the Resistance in Palestine should not be supported or should only be partially supported because Hamas is not sufficiently 'anarchist.' 2) Money and solidarity should be sent to 'anarchist' battalions in Ukraine which fight alongside fascist battalions and under the direction of the Ukrainian State and the United States. 3) Armed struggle against the US is a foolhardy endeavor.

Let's look at each of the three examples in more detail to explore their specific contradictions.

The Resistance in Palestine:

While once the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was one of the strongest Resistance factions in Palestine, Hamas has become the most prominent. This marks a shift from leftists at the forefront of the Resistance to a group that is known for its focus on Islam. Islamic Jihad (PIJ),“a national Palestinian Resistance movement which is rooted in our people’s faith, culture and belief, namely Islam,”i bridges the gap between leftism and Islam. Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi of PIJii has explained that this transition was not imposed, but rather rose out of a desire from the people. During this transition period, Palestinians were looking for Islamic groups to play an active role in the Resistance and when they did not initially find recourse through the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups. Groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas arose to fulfill the need. Despite the differences in ideology, all of the Resistance factions (from the PFLP to Islamic Jihad to Hamas and others) have committed to working together in Al Aqsa Flood.

The Palestinian struggle is a massively significant struggle against one of the most egregious colonizers in the region, an agent and ally of the US and the west. The entire takeover of the region and creation of the Zionist entity was facilitated by the original colonization of the area by England. Armed settlers of the area come predominantly from the US and Europe and are highly visible Western agents of its hegemony. People in struggle are literally fighting the right-wing neighbors of those of us who live in the west.

When people in the west (purportedly as part of a liberatory movement) evaluate Hamas based on their own narrow definitions of what is the right and wrong way to build a movement, they are ironically bringing a western measuring stick to a struggle against the west. They form the second tier of colonization: measuring and categorizing a people's struggle to judge and decide if it is worthy of their solidarity. This process reinforces differences between us. It is the same process of 'othering' that creates acceptance for colonization within civil society to occur in the first place. The colonized people are designated as the 'other,' a concept the allows for a process of dehumanization: to use the differences of culture as a wedge that forces them out of our shared humanity and into a new category that allows for exploitation. If people are different from us, should they be colonized? Any anarchist would adamantly say, no! The people of Palestine want to fight back against torture and attempted genocide and out of this desire groups like PIJ and Hamas were born.

As anarchists it is our duty to understand why our politics are not the unique driving force behind oppressed people as it once was. In Palestine, while having some adherents to traditional revolutionary left politics, in PFLP and DFLP, the left has generally faded as the main oppositional ideology. If we want to become relevant again, our role, as anarchists, is to understand how Hamas has become so relevant to people there and what role Islam plays in the Resistance.

Furthermore, withholding support while the Resistance factions are being bombed and shot at does not put your movement in a strong position to make suggestions after the war. The strongest bonds are forged through struggle and the connections between those who fight side by side will continue after the fighting is over. There is a reason Aaron Bushnell'siii likeness is spread throughout the Resistance areas. His action speaks loudly over the din of naysayers critiquing the Resistance and with his action he has brought anarchism to the forefront of the struggle by showing unequivocal solidarity. May he rest in peace.

Russia-Ukraine War:

Contradictorily, while now questioning the legitimacy of Hamas, liberal anarchists had been rallying support for the Resistance Committees of Ukraine, which were nominally anarchist battalions that fought with the Ukrainian military and even within fascist battalions.

What was clear from the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict was that the pressures and overtures of the west had pushed the Russian state to its breaking point. Since the end of Cold War, the United States promised Russia that NATO, an aggressive military alliance, wouldn't move past Germany. Since then, there have been several expansions of NATO, under Clinton and then Bush. The red line for Russia was always the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine in NATO. In 2008 at the Bucharest Summit, the US announced that Georgia and Ukraine would join NATO - a direct provocation. In 2014 the Maidan uprising occurred in Ukraine, with protagonists being funded on one side by the United States and on the other by Russia. Simultaneously a conflict was brewing in the Donbas region, between Russian separatists and the Ukrainian State. Some Ukrainian anarchists joined the state in fighting against the separatistsiv. Anti-fascists from Europe arrived to fight on the side of the Russians. This area became the center point of the conflict, as Russia sought to bring it back within its fold and Ukraine, with the support and at the bidding of the West, fought to keep the region.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, anarchists from Ukraine took a nationalist position that they needed to fight Russia in tandem with the Ukrainian state. This put them under the direct control of the Ukrainian military, and thus the United States. The Ukrainian military has received training and billions of dollars from the US since 2014v. This year a direct arms ban against the fascist Azov Battalion was lifted by the US Congressvi. Azov is among many fascist battalions that had heeded the call to combat and had already been fighting in the Donbas region. Even beyond it's association with the US and the many far-right battalions, the entire Ukrainian military has a fascist bent, with soldiers wearing patches of and commanders sitting beneath the portrait of Stepan Bandera, the former fascist leader of the radical militant wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Ukrainian anarchists have been fighting shoulder to shoulder with fascists and many eventually directly joined Azov battalionvii.

The result was the absurd situation of having so-called anti-fascists on both sides of the conflict, fighting each other alongside fascists and at the bidding of and for the ends of State actors. Despite this contradiction, anarchist groups all over Europe and the US beat the war drum for the fighters, encouraging solidarity and cash donations. One anarchist group raised over 100,000 Euros for fighters on the side of the USviii. The justification for this bizarre alliance was that the anarchist community should put its concerns aside and follow the lead of local anarchists and that they were fighting 'imperialism.' Yet what good is listening if one cannot see the broader context? And is there one type of imperialism that is better than another?

This point is not to argue in any way that Russia is a good choice of the two and that the military regime of Russia will be any more liberatory than NATO. There is no good choice in this conflict. In an ideal situation anarchists would be able to create a third front and take advantage of the melee to take their own territory. Unfortunately the capacity for this does not exist. And, unfortunately, it never will if the movement doesn't strengthen anarchist projects that are committed to anarchist principles. The result is a half-hearted bumbling down a path towards liberalism. In the end liberalism always strengthens fascism.ix

Whereas the Palestinian Resistance is clearly fighting western colonialism, Ukraine is fighting on the side of the US and the west. It must be asked: why can western so-called anarchists overcome the contradiction of anarchists fighting alongside the US military and with fascists, but cannot accept that Hamas is a legitimate fighting force for the Palestinians? The answer is probably more complex than they themselves can answer, but it does appear suspiciously pro-west, leading this author to wonder if they are subconsciously harboring nationalistic sentiments. Furthermore, the overtones of racism cannot be ignored.

The Critique of Taking Up Arms Against the US State:

At the same time that these reformists in the west have been beating the war drum for NATO and denying solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance, they have been taking a stance against armed struggle against the US state.

This hypocrisy was explained and well-documented by the authors of the text 'No War But Class War: Against State Nationalism and Inter-Imperialist War in Ukraine: “A concerning and not-unrelated double standard has also developed among some US/NATO-aligned anarchists, with regard to anarchist and anti-racist/anti-fascist struggle in the US. In August 2020, on the heels of the George Floyd Uprising, anti-fascist Michael Reinoehl shot and killed fascist Aaron Danielson, a supporter of the far right group Patriot Prayer in Portland, OR. Before anyone knew the details of what had happened, CrimethInc. and their allies at Ill Will Editions and the Vitalist International (two projects that include 'Tiqqunists' who have flirted heavily with the far right) denounced what they assumed had happened by calling on comrades 'not to be drawn into grudge matches…[or] seek revenge in symmetrical warfare.' They lamented, 'The escalation to lethal force is tragic for all.'”x

Sadly and misguidedly, these groups were not referring to the actions of the State, which gunned Michael Reinoehl down in the street. They were referring to the actions of the comrade himself. This was a clear denunciation of using arms to stand up against homegrown fascism in the United States.

This sentiment was further solidified in this group's text, 'Against the Logic of the Guillotine.'xi They couch it softly by first admitting that, “self-defense is necessary” but modify this statement with, “but wherever we can, we should take the risk of leaving our adversaries alive.” Yet later in the text they pull back the cover entirely to show their true feelings and state point blank, “We don’t want to exterminate our enemies.” The absurdity of this statement is apparent in the modern day chain gangs in Alabama, migrant detention camps, the poisoned waters of Flint, Michigan, systemic raping by prison correction officers, and the list goes on. But the author separates themselves from these realities to show their class and privilege when they explain how they had come to this conclusion: “As for our immediate adversaries...[h]owever selfish and rapacious they appear, at least some of their values are similar to ours...” And because they seem to identify so closely with fascists and agents of the US state, they giddily assert that the struggle of their revolutionary project should be for their benefit: “When we are compelled to use coercive force, the only possible justification is that it is a necessary step towards creating a better world for everyone—including our enemies....”

This same group of so-called anarchist-journalists were the first recipients of Aaron Bushnell's footage of and statement about his self-immolation for Gaza. He entrusted them with this content, believing that they were conscientious actors who would treat his final moments with the gravity and respect they deserved. According to CrimethInc., Bushnell emailed the group: “Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people. The below links should take you to a livestream and recorded footage of the event, which will be highly disturbing. I ask that you make sure that the footage is preserved and reported on.”

While not a direct armed confrontation with the US, this is a powerful action by a sober and politically driven comrade who intended to make the ultimate sacrifice to bring attention to the martyrs and civilians of Gaza who were being bombed and gunned down relentlessly. Instead of honoring his sacrifice, CrimethInc. wrote a text passing many judgements on the deceased.

They wrote: “Many things that are worth doing entail risks, but choosing to intentionally end your life means foreclosing years or decades of possibility...” And with even more scorn towards his actions, they proselytize, “It is not willingness to die that will sway our rulers.” They even go so far as to say he should not be considered a martyr.xii

It is difficult to comprehend and bear the weight of a young comrade taking such a final and meaningful action only to be judged harshly by the very group he entrusted with publicizing it. Instead of focusing their piece on the actions and thoughts of Aaron Bushnell, CrimethInc. chose this moment to reflect on their role as journalists, and the effect and power they might have by publishing this action. They were worried they would inspire others to follow suit. It is strange to see such a phenomenon displayed so brazenly: that the reflection of themselves outweighs their responsibility to a comrade, his sacrifice and his desire to draw attention to Gaza.

This may be the key to understanding why this reformist tendency has taken root in the United States in particular, and why this group would be so horrified by a revolutionary sacrificing their life. These reformists are so focused on their own overblown role in the movement, they cannot see the bigger picture: the colonial role of the United States, the war on black and brown people in the US itself, and certainly not the humanity and self-determination of people from the global south. They are deeply ensconced in the conception that their thoughts and considerations far outweigh those of other people – yet another hallmark of western superiority.

The final point of this heartbreaking episode is that it is clear that while reformists anarchists write eulogies of people who fought with the Ukrainian State, and promote articles about the Resistance Committeesxiii - including the armed branch - of Ukraine, they are critical and skeptical of an action for Gaza on US soil.

In this last section I have referred to the journalist-'anarchists' CrimethInc. exclusively but they are merely a public representation of a broader tendency and set of beliefs. It is clear from their popularity that in espousing these positions, there are many who are anarchists in name only, unwilling to jeopardize their comfortable position within the US and therefore not fully dedicated to the end of colonization and the destruction of nation-states (especially when it is their own).

They have essentially become a mouthpiece for US state propaganda: trafficking in Islamophobia, pushing the west's agenda in Ukraine, and fear mongering against living up to an anarchist's greatest responsibility: to fight the nation-state where they reside.

These three positions are miles away from the original intentions of the anarchist movement. Anarchism has always been based on 1) building a society of federated communes 2) fighting against the nation-state where you reside 3) fighting colonial powers 4) creating counter-narratives to State propaganda 5) fighting fascists and against fascism 6) operating with an international purview in a borderless struggle 7) standing and fighting on the side of the oppressed.

When you consider the clear tenets of anarchism as a political and social movement, it is hard to imagine how any of the deviations I have detailed here could occur. Yet there is another facet to consider. The fact is that anarchists do not have as strong a pole in the world as we once did. In the heydays of the Spanish Civil War, Emiliano Zapata, Nestor Mahkno, and the Shinmin Prefecture, there was a widely understood definition of the anarchist position, regions functioning based on anarchist principles and militant battalions defending these regions and launching attacks against imperial and colonial forces.

Despite the movement being at such a low point, it is not time to give up and settle into the values of a colonial society. Instead it is up to those of us who call ourselves anarchists to rebuild the movement to not just it's former status, but, having the ability to reflect on the successes and failures of former initiatives, to use our hindsight to destroy the States that have wreaked colonial havoc on the world for so long, create long lasting liberated territories and form a foundation from which to truly support the liberation of all people.

To have success, we must have a look at the situation and take into account important considerations. The first is to look very deeply and concertedly at what anarchism is as a revolutionary movement: to study former examples of anarchist movements and societies. The second is to bring a stronger understanding of the current situation in global politics to bear. For example, to understand the bloody and fascistic role of the United States in Central and South America, to understand the history of colonization in West Asia, to study and understand the fights of the Polisario Front and West Papua. That is to say, anarchists must have an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist understanding of the world. To support this perspective, we must learn to decipher the propaganda of the State and differentiate between that what we stand for.

Next, anarchists – particularly those in the west - must learn how to listen to people who have been colonized or oppressed. When a group of Marxists traveled to Chiapas to put their textbook left movement into practice, they were met with questions and the different perspectives of people in the region. After discussions and a melding of ideas, the current Zapatista movement emerged: a mix of leftism and indigenous concepts and traditions. It is in this melding of ideas that our movement will become relevant and much stronger. Anarchism's strength does not come from maintaining a rigid measuring stick to judge would be comrades, but from allowing a multitude of perspectives to co-exist simultaneously. However to be clear, there is no room or time to entertain right wing or fascist perspectives. These must be rooted out and crushed.

Finally, anarchists, particularly in the west, must establish militancy in their home terrains– not in the service of colonizers, but in the service of oppressed people. It is time for anarchists to turn the guns from fighting in the service of western interests, and point them at the perpetrators of so much grief and devastation worldwide. The armed struggle must fight fascism and weaken the State where they live. They must use their force to fight for the colonized, to challenge western hegemony, and to defend the type of society that anarchism stands for. The west is currently in a decline in terms of its global position, and anarchists have a political opportunity to stand on the right side of history, as well as the strategic potential of this moment. Many other armed groups are taking advantage of the changing global order and it is time for anarchists to step up.

It is only in this way that anarchists can avoid being a proxy of the very forces we are supposed to fight, to live up to the sacrifices of our predecessors, to hold up the torch of anarchism for the martyrs of the movement and its history, to stand on the side of those who have been thoroughly wronged by this global system and finally to become relevant again to everyone who struggles around the world.

-Friends of Russell Maroon Shoatz

i https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/oslo-is-over

ii ibid

iii Aaron Bushnell was an anarchist and servicemen in the US Air Force who set himself on fire outside the 'Israeli' Embassy in Washington DC to protest the attack on and ongoing colonization of Gaza. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation_of_Aaron_Bushnell iv Ukraine's Anarchist Militants Fighting neo-Nazis. 5:48: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ZLpFIsMH8&rco=1

v https://www.dvidshub.net/search/?filter[type]=news&filter[tags][]=jmtgu&...

https://theconversation.com/in-2014-the-decrepit-ukrainian-army-hit-the-...

vi https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-lifts-ban-azov-brigade-ukraine-ame...

vii https://www.anarchistnews.org/content/no-one-will-be-forgotten-new-losse...

viii https://abcdd.org/en/2022/03/23/update-donation-for-solidarity-with-anar...

ix The evidence of this can be seen both in the election of Donald Trump in the US and at the end of the Spanish Civil War

x https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2022/04/12/no-war-but-class-war-...

xi https://crimethinc.com/zines/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine

xii https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-this-is-what-our-ruli...

xiii https://crimethinc.com/2022/02/24/russia-and-ukraine-grassroots-resistan...

[milfstalin]

The October 7 Hamas-led military operations against Israel were events of world-historical importance. Palestine contains the world’s most active armed anti-colonial national movement. Israel is the world’s least consolidated settler state, forced into brutal, constant counter-insurgency to defend settler property rights and imperialist domination of the Arab working classes. [emphasis mine] Furthermore, the operation brought into explosive combination yet larger forces, outside the territory of historic Palestine: The United States and the US-allied neo-colonial states alongside Israel, against regional republicanism, mass-mobilizing popular militia, and Iran.

The Palestinian insurgency has brought the national question back to the table (Moyo & Yeros, 2011). As with other anti-systemic experiments, like Zimbabwe amidst agrarian reform, and Venezuela under Chavismo, it has polarized not merely its surrounding state system, where Palestine has been the compass orienting any resolution to the Arab national question, but the world system. Indeed, Palestine crystallizes nearly every contradiction within the current order. [emphasis mine] Although Zimbabwe and Venezuela confronted the racial distribution of world power, the Palestinian question spills far beyond questions of class and nation internal to historical Palestine’s boundaries. Amongst its myriad complexities: “one section” of the Palestinian people “exists under a racist, fascist entity,” namely Israel, supported by imperialist powers, while the latter also turns “feudalist, tribalist, reactionary and puppet regimes in the Arab world into mediators in the ongoing plunder of the Arab revolution and the Arab toiling classes.” Thus, “the issue of struggle against these regimes indirectly becomes a Palestinian front as well” and raises, beyond the puppets, the nature of struggles to deepen popular democracy and resistance capacity within those regimes’ enemies (Kanafani, n.d.; PFLP, 1969).

Moreover, the question of Palestine is not merely a question of national oppression, but poses Israel’s uniqueness: a condensation of Western colonial and imperial power, a world-wide symbol of Western perfidy, a state which physically cleaves Africa and Asia, a merchant and mercenary of global counter-insurgency, all melded in a manticore of death and destruction. Indeed, the harder and stronger Palestinians fight for liberation, the more, like lightning bolts of ever-increasing luminosity, they bring the relief of the world system into clearer view: the impotence of the United Nations; the imperialist contempt for international law; the complicity of the Arab neo-colonial states with Western capitalism; the fascist racism at the heart of modern European and US capitalism, as murderers and maimers operate in Western capitals; the neo-colonial structures of the Arab and Third World; and the hollowness of Western liberal democracy and its constellation of civil society institutions. [emphasis mine]

Max Ajl - Palestine's Great Flood, Parts I and II

[palestine]

Ghassan Kanafani: Voice of Palestine (1936-1972)

Ghassan Kanafani: Voice of Palestine (1936-1972)

Sep 4 2017 / 10:00 pm

Ghassan Kanafani. (Photo: File)

By Louis Brehony

2017 marks 45 years since the murder of Palestinian writer, activist and political leader Ghassan Kanafani by the Israeli Mossad agency. On July 8, 1972, while living in Beirut, a car bomb explosion killed him along with his 17-year-old niece Lamees. Kanafani was one of the most important figures in 20th century literature. He was also a refugee, a revolutionary Marxist and an internationalist. The Israelis claimed the assassination was a response to the Lod Airport attack two months earlier, although Kanafani had played no direct role in this. He was, according to the obituary in the Lebanese Daily Star, ‘a commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ball-point pen, and his arena the newspaper pages.’ Kanafani was at the time of his death the official spokesman of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the editor of its paper Al Hadaf. The organisation saluted ‘the leader, the writer, the strategist, and the visionary.’

Ghassan Kanafani spent the early years of his life in the port city of Acre, where he was born in 1936. At the time of his birth, Kanafani’s father and other family members were participants in the national revolt against the British occupation of Palestine and its facilitation of Zionist colonisation. Acre was the site of a British occupation jail and of the executions of leading Palestinian activists. The epic song ‘From Acre Prison’ (Min Sijjn Akka) protests against their killing and remains an anthem of the Palestinian struggle. Prior to 1948, Acre had around 15,000 Palestinian inhabitants and no Zionist settlements. The Zionist attacks in the Nakba led to the expulsion of all but 3,000 Palestinians. 12-year-old Ghassan and his family became refugees in the town of Zabadiya, central west Syria, joining the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians exiled from their homelands.

After studying at university in Damascus, Kanafani became a teacher and journalist, working in Syria, then in Kuwait before ending up in Beirut. It was while working in refugee camps that Kanafani began writing his novels; his later interest in Marxist philosophy and politics came while living in Beirut. He was clear that:

‘My political position springs from my being a novelist. In so far as I am concerned, politics and the novel are an indivisible case and I can categorically state that I became politically committed because I am a novelist, not the opposite.’

Short Stories, Novels and Poems

The themes of Kanafani’s writing were inseparably connected to the struggle of the Palestinian people over the course of his life. The Nakba is depicted vividly in works like The Land of the Sad Oranges (1963):

‘At Al-Nakura, our truck parked, along with numerous other ones. The men began to hand in their weapons to their officers, stationed there for that specific purpose. When our turn came, I could see the rifles and guns lying on the table and the long queue of lorries, leaving the land of oranges far behind and spreading out over the winding roads of Lebanon.’

‘After that day, life passed slowly…We were deceived by announcements…we were stunned by the bitter truth…Grimness started to invade the faces, your father found it difficult to talk about Palestine or the happy days in his orange groves…’

The refugees are central to his narrative. In the harrowing tale Men in the Sun (1962), a group of Palestinians are smuggled in the burning heat across Iraq and into Kuwait. They make it across the border but suffocate to death in the back of an oil tanker. The story is symbolic of the state of paralysis experienced by the refugees, where access to documentation could determine basic survival.

But Kanafani’s works were not tales of despair and hopelessness. Looked at collectively they speak of the problems and solutions of those expelled from their homes. In Return to Haifa (1970), he emphasises that ‘The greatest crime anybody can commit is to think that the weakness and the mistakes of others give him the right to exist at their expense.’ In other works he draws on the rising armed struggle for Palestinian liberation. The central figure of the short novel Umm Saad encourages her son to fight along with the guerrillas. According to Anni Kanafani, Ghassan’s wife, ‘Umm Saad was a symbol of the Palestinian women in the camp and of the worker class… it is the illiterate woman who speaks and the intellectual who listens and puts the questions.’

Activist-Intellectual

In the years during which these literary classics were written, Ghassan had become an active member of the Arab Nationalist Movement, inspired by Gamal Abdul Nasser’s ideas of national independence and defiance of imperialism. But by 1961, the attempt at unification between Egypt and Syria (under a unified United Arab Republic) had failed, and the still firmly capitalist economy faltered. In the 1967 war, Israel dealt a heavy defeat on Egypian-led resistance. The decline of Nasserism took place alongside the rise of explicitly communist leadership in the anti-imperialist struggles then taking place throughout the world – Cuba, Mozambique and, with growing international significance, Vietnam. During these years Kanafani, along with his comrade George Habash, began to make a more serious study of Marxism, arriving at the conclusion that the political crisis in the Arab world and the ascendancy of imperialism and Zionism could only be solved by turning the anti-imperialist struggle into a social revolution.

As a PFLP leader, Kanafani turned his pen to overtly political questions, reflecting the urgency of developing the Palestinian national liberation struggle by the end of the 1960s. He increasingly dedicated his time to publishing work on the historic struggles of the Palestinian people, resigning from a well-paid job at the Nasserist magazine al Anwar to edit the PFLP newspaper Al Hadaf (The Target). The 1969 document Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine was co-authored by Kanafani and applied a Marxist analysis of class to the forces involved in the revolutionary movement, discussing its prospects and political strategy. The Resistance and its Problems, a pamphlet written by Kanafani and published by the PFLP in 1970, is a critical discussion on leadership, Marxist theory and practice, in the national liberation struggle.

In the pages of Al Hadaf, Kanafani called for ‘all facts to the masses.’ Perhaps his most important overtly political work was his detailed analysis of the 1936-39 Palestinian revolt. Kanafani wrote of the 1935 martyrdom of Sheikh Iz Al Din Al Qassam in an influential article first published in an early PLO magazine Palestinian Affairs (Shu’un Falastiniyeh) and later distributed as a pamphlet on armed struggle by the PFLP. In The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, finished in the year of his death, Kanafani details the structure of Palestinian society, the rise of Zionism, the failures of the left and, perhaps most crucially in the run-up to 1948, the weakening of the revolutionary movement by the ruthless British imperialist regime. Its violence was ‘unprecedented’, and ‘it was during the years of the revolt – 1936-1939 – that British colonialism threw all its weight into performing the task of supporting the Zionist presence and setting it on its feet.’ In this work he spares none of the reactionary Arab regimes from his ruthless criticism.

Anti-imperialism

Kanafani played a major role in raising consciousness of this period in anti-imperialist struggle and was an uncompromising internationalist:

‘Imperialism has laid its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the heart in the Middle East, its arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wherever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the world revolution.’

Kanafani’s descriptions of imperialism are characteristically graphic. He pointed to the international significance of the Palestinian struggle.

‘The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary… as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era’.

In the memoir which Anni Kanafani published after her husband’s death, she wrote:

‘His inspiration for writing and working unceasingly was the Palestinian-Arab struggle…He was one of those who fought sincerely for the development of the resistance movement from being a nationalist Palestinian liberation movement into being a pan-Arab revolutionary socialist movement of which the liberation of Palestine would be a vital component. He always stressed that the Palestine problem could not be solved in isolation from the Arab World’s whole social and political situation.’

We should not forget, of course, that 17-year-old Lamees was murdered alongside him in the car bombing. Ghassan’s sister Fayzeh reflected:

‘Just the previous day Lamees had asked her uncle to reduce his revolutionary activities and to concentrate more upon writing his stories. She had said to him, “Your stories are beautiful,” and he had answered, “Go back to writing stories? I write well because I believe in a cause, in principles. The day I leave these principles, my stories will become empty. If I were to leave behind my principles, you yourself would not respect me.” He was able to convince the girl that the struggle and the defense of principles is what finally leads to success in everything.’

Kanafani’s class analysis was ahead of its time in the Palestinian movement and pointed to the dangers ahead if the bourgeois trend in the PLO leadership went unchecked. Negotiations with the Israeli leadership, he said, would be ‘a conversation between the sword and the neck… I have never seen talks between a colonialist case and a national liberation movement.’

Ghassan Kanafani was murdered for his commitment to Palestinian resistance. Like Basil Al Araj, gunned down in February this year, he was seen by the Israeli occupiers as a threat to the racist occupation regime. His legacy lives on in every Palestinian and internationalist willing to fight for the anti-imperialist cause. Speaking to students he once said,

‘The goal of education is to correct the march of history. For this reason we need to study history and to apprehend its dialectics in order to build a new historical era, in which the oppressed will live, after their liberation by revolutionary violence, from the contradiction that captivated them’.

– Louis Brehony contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Posted by

admin

on Sep 4 2017 . Filed under

Articles

,

Features

,

slider

. You can follow any responses to this entry through the

RSS 2.0

. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Via Palestine Chronicle http://bit.ly/2wEMR5y

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

PFLP mourns comrade Ahmad al-Adaini

With deep pride, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine salutes its esteemed martyr, Ahmad Abdullah Abdullah al-Adaini, who was martyred as he participated in the uprising of return near al-Bureij.

The Front sends its sincere condolences to the family of the martyr, his friends and his loved ones on the occasion of the loss of this courageous, intellectual and revolutionary comrade. His departure is a deep loss to Palestine and to the Front. The comrade was a strong example of commitment, awareness and dedication to the principles and ideals of the Palestinian people. His vast capabilities made him an esteemed contributor to the struggle; he never left the field and especially the march for return, carrying high the banner of its goals and advancing with his comrades until his death.

The martyred comrade was born in the Gaza Strip in 1981 to a family from Tarabin in Bir Saba. He was a member of the leadership of the PFLP in Deir al-Balah and its secretary and a member of the Palestinian Progressive Youth Union. He studied in Yemen and was distinguished by his proficiency in the English language, which he used to emphasize Palestinian principles and expose the realities of the occupier. He was active in voluntary associations and relief work, especially in the Zionist aggression on the Gaza Strip in 2014.

He was one of the first comrades to join the activities, events and committees of the Great Return March, never disappearing from the camps of return, continuing to participate in the marches to the colonial fence and marching toward our occupied Palestine, believing firmly in the inevitability of liberation. He was martyred along with 60 others, shot down as they marched for return.

The martyr lived according to the principle, “If you are not involved, there is no value to your educated thoughts,” according to the words of the revolutionary martyr Basil al-Araj, who marched with comrade Ahmad on his path and that of all free intellectuals.

#GreatReturnMarch 

[secular-jew]

A DOSE OF CLARITY ON THE PALESTINIAN STORYLINE by Valerie Sobel

Whenever Western media, Western governments, Israel, or anyone draws an intentional disconnect between the Palestinians and Hamas, a myriad of lies and warped presumptions are activated.

The political correctness machine, invented by liberals but operated by everyone today with respect to the current war in the Middle East, guarantees 100% detachment of the poor Palestinian cause from terrorist Hamas. But the cost of this on-going theatre is egregious intellectual corruption; a complete reversal of truth and entire revision of Middle East history.

If Hamas is, indeed, a rogue terrorist regime under which the poor Palestinian is suffering, are we to erase all irrefutable knowledge and evidence of the following?

1. Palestinians elected Hamas as their ruling government in the year 2007 by an overwhelming majority. In their charter, Hamas boldly states aspirations to wipe Israel of the face of the earth in not one but 36 separate articles.

2. Before Hamas, Palestinians produced one Yasser Arafat who founded and innovated the art of terrorism and airplane highjacking. No amount of concessions and negotiation with this father of terrorism, for decades, convinced the Palestinians to adopt a two-state solution for peaceful co-existence.

3. Before Yasser Arafat, Palestinians produced another racist leader, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who actively worked against the UN’s two-state solution platform of 1948, led the 1920 Nebi Musa riots against the Jews in the very Jewish Palestine, and established himself as an ally in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. During World War II he collaborated with both Italy and Germany by making propagandistic radio broadcasts and by aiding the Nazis recruit 25,000 Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS. The more Jews killed the better for this Palestinian also. On meeting Adolf Hitler, he demanded Hitler opposes the establishment of a Jewish national home in Jewish Palestine.

4. Since the failed Oslo Accords of the 1990s, more than 2400 Israelis have been killed or wounded in terror attacks by the Palestinians.

5. Beside popular Hamas membership, Islamic Jihad, The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Fatah, Tanzim and Muslim Brotherhood - are all made up of “innocent” Palestinian citizenry.

6. Palestinian children, from nursery age are systematically taught to regard Jews as the infidel enemy who took their land. Schools employ maps where Israel doesn’t exist. Children are instructed to kill Jews, join ISIS and Hamas for the glory of Islam. This is proudly exhibited to the world as a moral duty for young Palestinians.

7. Palestinian children are also reared for martyrdom by their parents and families. Islam’s promise of eternal life with 72 virgins and the favour of Allah is the goal of life, not life itself. Highest honor is given to families of so-called martyrs who execute Jews.

8. Palestinian families are paid a monthly stipend -- for life -- by the Palestinian Authority when a family member kill's themselves in the duty of slaughtering Jews. It is estimated out of 2000 Gazan terrorists who came into Israel on October 7th to behead, burn alive and kidnap - one half (1000!) were Palestinian citizens who were promised 17,000 shekels and up for broken limbs, rapes and savage killings. For every person kidnapped, they were promised not just money, but an apartment.

9. Kibbutz Kfar Azza was entirely penetrated and terrorized by scores of Palestinians on foot, on bicycle and motorcycle for the job of massacring babies, children and anything that moved. This was documented in vivid color by a CNN reporter, Hassan Eslaiah.

10. Maps of Sderot police station (first venue of slaughter), homes, businesses and everything inside, including what the family dog looks like and where the safe rooms are….information all meticulously collected by 20,000 regular Palestinians entering Israel on permits to work daily. Without these details provided by everyday Palestinians allowed to enter Israel on goodwill, Hamas had no way to execute the massacres.

11. For as long as the Palestinians have invented themselves as Palestinians to illegitimately lay claim to Jewish ancestral land Romans called Philistine…they have publicly cheered and celebrated every Jewish death. Whether it’s candy distribution or singing and dancing or setting the Israeli flags on fire. The elation at Jewish suffering is generational and feverish and has nothing to do with Hamas origins.

12. Palestinians are first and foremost Sharia Law Muslims of the Quaran. They are no different than the 22 Arab states surrounding Israel that share no love loss for Israel simply because it exists. For Islamic law, the very existence of Israel is diametrically opposite to Quran’s instruction of slaying Jews “wherever you can find them”. Or Qurans’s 177 instructional statements that Jews are “descendants of apes and pigs” and must be slayed.

13. Every sign of millions of Palestinians on the streets of Europe and America today that reads “from the river to the sea” is from the Palestinian charter of driving Israel into annihilation. Every mouth that utters it is calling for the explicit desire for Jewish extermination.

What’s happening today is simple; this is a religious war. It is NOT terrorism. It is certainly no land dispute. It is Jihad in the name of Allah. And every government of the western world knows it.

So why the continued farce of separating and detaching the Palestinians and their “cause” from known history, from Hamas, from Islamic Jihad, from Fatah, from PLO, from Tanzim and PFLP, all Palestinian groups aiming at Israel’s annhialation?

Because an admission of truth will, perish the thought;

a) delegitimize the UN at its core.

b) force European nations and the US to admit utter failure of decades of foreign policies.

c) force a myriad of civilized countries to quit financial aid to the Palestinians, hence admitting billions of dollars of taxpayer theft.

d) elucidate the fallacy and fraud of that two-state solution, which was invented by the west (prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948) in order to appease the 22 Arab states. But more importantly…

….will immediately unite the Arab world, including nuclear Iran, in a war against the west. This very real and justified fear of Islam and its 2 billion followers who believe in the supremacy of the sword, in beheadings, rapes, massacres and annihilation of western civilization in the name of Allah is palpable. This very basic of human emotions, fear, is the catalyst for every lie, for all the theatre, for all the fraud around the fabricated Palestinian victimhood. It will continue to the end of time until Islam’s demographical strength reaches a critical mass for the destruction of an entire society of Judeo-Christian culture. And then, and only then, truth will be allowed, Islamophobia will be understood not as racial discrimination but as a rational fear rooted in evidence and posing an immediate threat to our existence. And finally, that survival-of-the-fittest meter will begin ticking.

As for Israel and the Jewish plight - the sacrificial lamb, the Jews will continue to repeat “Never Again!”through every atrocity, every raging antisemitic-crime statistic, every American campus pro-Hamas rally with “Kill The Jews” signs, every Jihad war, every Palestinian stabbing and every missile launched at Tel Aviv…until the end of time.

Mindlessly parroting something that has never been true, because there is simply no other hope.

Until the west finds its balls against Islam, nothing changes. Western governments’ and media’s established theatre of lies and fraud narratives for the Palestinians and their cause …IS the very manifestation of real justified Islamophobia. Until the west feels an immediate threat to its survival, no matter how many times Israel screams “You’re next!”, nothing changes.

[humanrightsupdates]

Israel/OPT: Two Palestinian women in administrative detention

Member of the Palestinian parliament Khalida Jarrar and women’s union leader Khitam Saafin have been held without being charged or tried for 36 days. They both face indefinite detention without charge or trial. Their administrative detention orders can be renewed indefinitely and with no prior notice.

Palestinian civil society leaders Khalida Jarrar and Khitam Saafin have been held without charge or trial since 2 July. According to Addameer Association’s lawyers who represent both women, the Israel military commander issued a three-month administrative detention order against Khitam Saafin on 9 July. The decision was confirmed by a military judge on 12 July. Khalida Jarrar, who is an elected parliamentarian, was given a six-month administrative detention order on 12 July and a military judge confirmed the decision on 18 July. Although six months is the maximum period of detention for each order, they can be renewed indefinitely.

Both women were arrested by Israeli soldiers during pre-dawn raids on their homes on 2 July. According to eyewitnesses, at 3:30am that day, between 40 and 50 armed Israeli soldiers conducted a raid on Khitam Saafin's home in Beitunia, a neighbourhood of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, in order to arrest her. On the same morning at around 4am, a similar Israeli military raid was carried out to arrest Khalida Jarrar in her home in Ramallah. In the raid, the soldiers also confiscated Khalida Jarrar’s phone, tablet and the hard drive of her home computer.

Both women were first held in Ofer military compound near Ramallah and then transferred to HaSharon prison inside Israel in the afternoon of 2 July. The transfer of both women to HaSharon prison violates international humanitarian law; detainees from occupied territories must be detained in the occupied territory, and not in the territory of the occupying power. Israeli authorities accuse each woman of membership in an illegal organisation, claims they both deny.

As with all cases of administrative detention, the “evidence” against Khalida Jarrar and Khitam Saafin is secret, and neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to review it. This violates a central tenet of fair trial standards.

Please write immediately in English, Hebrew or your own language calling on the Israeli authorities to:

Immediately release Khitam Saafin and Khalida Jarrar and all other administrative detainees or to promptly charge them with an internationally recognizable criminal offense and bring them to trial in conformity with international trial standards;

Take immediate steps to end the practice of administrative detention.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 19 SEPTEMBER 2017 TO: Minister of Defence Avigdor Leiberman Ministry of Defence 37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya Tel Aviv 61909, Israel Email: minister@mod.gov.il pniot@mod.gov.il Fax: +972 3 691 6940 Salutation: Dear Minister

Commander of the IDF – West Bank Major-General Roni Numa GOC Central Command Military Post 02367, Battalion 877 Israel Defence Forces, Israel Fax: +972 2 530 5741, +972 2 530 5724 Salutation: Dear Major-General Roni Numa

And copies to: Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan Kiryat Hamemshala PO Box 18182 Jerusalem 91181, Israel Fax: +972 2 584 7872 Email: gerdan@knesset.gov.il Salutation: Dear Minister

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country. HIS EXCELLENCY MR MARK REGEV, Embassy of Israel 2 Palace Green Kensington W8 4QB, 020 7957 9500

Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Khitam Saafin, aged 54, is the president of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, an organization that works for community-based economic and social development of women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She has been an outspoken activist for Palestinian women’s economic, national, and social liberation for decades both locally and in international forums. Khitam Saafin is a prominent educator and civil society leader in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. According to a family member, Khitam Saafin’s youngest child, aged 18, was called to an interview with an Israeli intelligence officer at Ofer military base following his last trip home in January from Cyprus, where he attends university. He was interrogated about his social and political views, his activities and those of his mother. The intelligence officer who questioned him appears to be the same intelligence officer who was present during the arrest of Khitam Saafin on 2 July.

Khalida Jarrar, aged 54, is an elected Palestinian parliamentarian and outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and Palestinian security cooperation with the Israeli military. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Addameer Association, a human rights organization, and an appointed member of the Palestinian Higher National Committee to Follow-up with the International Criminal Court. She has been a strong advocate for the rights of Palestinian prisoners and their families. Khalida Jarrar has been subjected to decades of harassment and intimidation by the Israeli authorities, including a travel ban imposed since 1998. The ban was lifted once for a couple of days in 2010 to allow her to travel for medical testing in Jordan for a serious chronic medical issue that she continues to suffer from. Israeli authorities have repeatedly declared her a security risk, but did not charge her with any criminal offence until April 2015. On 2 April 2015, she was arrested by Israeli soldiers at her home in Ramallah, and placed under administrative detention. On 15 April 2015, at the review hearing of her administrative detention order, the military prosecution brought 12 charges against her relating to membership of the banned political party Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and incitement to kidnap Israeli soldiers. She has vehemently denied this accusation and her lawyers have claimed that it has no basis. Following an unfair trial in an Israeli military court, Khalida Jarrar was convicted of four of the charges, including incitement. She served 14 months in prison and was released in June 2016 with a five-year suspended sentence.

Israel’s use of administrative detention of Palestinians is widespread and has led to mass hunger strikes by Palestinian detainees and prisoners, protesting against the conditions in which they are held and being detained without charge. Administrative detention – ostensibly introduced as an exceptional measure to detain people who pose an extreme and imminent danger to security – is used by Israel as an alternative to the criminal justice system to arrest, charge and prosecute people suspected of criminal offences, or to detain people who should not have been arrested at all. Although six months is the maximum period of detention for each order, they can be renewed indefinitely and Amnesty International believes that some Palestinians held in administrative detention by Israel are prisoners of conscience, held solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and association.

According to Israeli NGO, HaMoked—Center for the Defence of the Individual, Israel is holding 465 administrative detainees without charge or trial as of August 2017.

UA: 187/17 Index: MDE 15/6859/2017 Issue Date: 8 August 2017

Download PDF

[eretzyisrael]

Understanding Israel-Hatred

The state of Israel has been in existence only for 73 years. The Zionist project has been around for somewhat longer, beginning in the 19th century. Since 1860, some 116,000 Jews and Arabs have lost their lives in wars, terrorism, and pogroms related to Arab-Jewish conflict in Eretz Yisrael. In the annals of recent human bloodshed, this doesn’t move the needle; in the Congo Wars of 1996-2001 and the genocides that immediately preceded and followed them, as many as 5.4 million were killed. The Syrian Civil War, still under way, has claimed 500-600,000 victims. And yet, more concentrated diplomatic and media activity surrounds our conflict than any other since the Cold War. Why are we special?

Israel is regularly accused of genocide. According to the UN, her alleged victims, the Arabs of Judea/Samaria/Gaza and eastern Jerusalem, who were about 1.1 million in 1970, now number at 5.2 million. Genocide? Even if this figure is exaggerated, the accusation is simply crazy.

Israel is regularly accused of apartheid, although Israeli Arab and Jewish citizens have equal rights, both de jure and de facto. There are no segregated facilities, no separate beaches, restrooms, or lunch counters (although Jews are forbidden to drink from water faucets on the Temple Mount). The Arabs in the disputed territories, by internationally recognized agreements, are citizens of the Palestinian Authority, and insofar as the PA holds elections, can vote in them. The historical phenomenon of apartheid bears no resemblance to anything found in Israel or the territories, despite the attempts of anti-Israel groups to torture definitions to make it so.

In the few decades of her existence the modern State of Israel has been attacked by soldiers of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia; other belligerents include Hezbollah, Hamas, the PLO and numerous other terrorist groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). She has been bombarded by missiles, rockets, mortar shells, balloons, and drones from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and Iraq. She has been infiltrated by terrorists countless times, including by means of rubber boats and hang gliders. She is currently the target of threats to annihilate her from Iran, which has provided large amounts of money and weapons to proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, and which is developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Iranian leaders have referred to Israel as a “cancer” that must be eliminated from the world. I don’t think there is any other nation in recent history that has its very existence questioned in a similar way.

Hamas, which took control of Gaza in a coup against the Palestinian Authority in 2007, two years after every last Israeli soldier or civilian left the strip, precipitates periodic wars against Israel while waging a continuous terror campaign against residents of southern Israel. Gaza receives millions in aid from the UN and the EU, along with large amounts of cash from Qatar, supposedly for humanitarian purposes. Hamas uses it to prepare for the next war, and to make its kleptocratic leaders fabulously rich, while the rest of the population suffers. But Israel is blamed for “occupying” Gaza and impoverishing its people.

Although the violent attacks have come from her regional enemies, European countries have been waging diplomatic and cognitive war against Israel since the first days of her existence. Britain trained and sent advisors to the Jordanian army, which invaded the brand-new state the day after the British left in 1948. European money supports international, Israeli, and Palestinian NGOs which work to subvert the State of Israel, to propagandize against her, and to engage in “lawfare,” such as attempts to arrest IDF soldiers and government officials for “war crimes” and to prosecute Israel in the International Criminal Court. But there is evidence from impartial observers that the IDF does far more to prevent collateral damage than Western armies do.

In the US, countless organizations dedicated to bringing about the end of the Jewish state exist, from the numerous campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, through professional propaganda outfits like the Foundation for Middle East Peace, to Jewish organizations like IfNotNow and “A Jewish Voice for Peace” (JVP). Large foundations like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund finance numerous groups and initiatives working against the Jewish state around the world. The New Israel Fund provides millions of dollars to hundreds of Israeli “social justice” groups. Some are harmless, but others are subversive or even connected to terrorism.

The progressive Left in America is monolithically anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, despite the fact that the PLO and Hamas have shown themselves to be racist, misogynist, homophobic, and antisemitic. Organizations like the Movement for Black Lives and other “racial justice” groups consistently line up “for Palestine” and increasingly express explicitly antisemitic beliefs. The ridiculous and illogical proposition that Israel trains American police to abuse blacks (promoted by JVP) is widely accepted, and has encouraged anti-Jewish violence in US cities. Several members of the US Congress have made attacks on Israel – which often shade into antisemitism – their stock in trade.

In the international arena, the UN is shot through with bias against Israel. From the dozens of anti-Israel resolutions passed regularly by the General Assembly, the Human Rights Commission, and various agencies such as WHO and UNESCO, to the 2001 UN-sponsored World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, and the annual “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” the UN seems to do little else than attack Israel.

The large “Human Rights” NGOs, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, falsely accuse Israel of apartheid, war crimes, and numerous acts of oppression; they defend terrorists, engage in lawfare against Israel, and employ many anti-Israel activists and individuals with connections to terrorist groups.

Finally, there is the almost universal contempt for Israel that is found throughout the academic world everywhere, even to a great extent in Israel. Pro-Israel students and faculty find themselves marginalized and punished if they express their beliefs. Some “scholars” and whole departments specialize in producing articles attacking Israel regardless of their actual area of expertise (if any).

Boycotts of Israel are found in every arena: athletes refuse to compete against Israelis, academics are disinvited from conferences, performers and writers who are Israeli or pro-Israel are canceled, Israeli products are boycotted. Ben and Jerry’s would prefer that Israelis don’t eat their ice cream (and not just in the territories). Israel disappears from maps and from the American passports of people born in Jerusalem. Even Israeli ham radio operators’ calls go unanswered. Perhaps they think that if they act as though we don’t exist, we will disappear.

Israel, like any modern state, isn’t perfect. But accusations of genocide, apartheid, oppression, and war crimes are not only false, they are absurd. In many cases they mirror what Israel’s enemies themselves have done, are doing, or would like to do, to Jews and their state. They constitute a Big Lie assault, in which massive repetition of outrageous falsehoods stuns the mind into accepting them.

The obsessive, extreme, and irrational hatred of Israel today is almost without precedent. In fact, there is only one historical phenomenon that can compare to it: the vile treatment of Jews throughout the millennia of recorded history. The persecutions, expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, boycotts, discrimination, and ultimately genocide that befell the Jewish people were no less obsessive, extreme, and irrational than today’s hatred of Israel.

This is not surprising, because the latter is nothing more than a mutation of the former. The State of Israel came about because Zionist thinkers realized that there was no other way for the weak, divided, Jewish people to survive in an increasingly unfriendly world than in a state of their own. In a kind of evolutionary response, Jew-hatred itself then had to become Israel-hatred to survive.

But there is an important difference: the weak, divided Jewish people had no way to fight back. Israel does.

Abu Yehuda

[nathanitatspectrum]

Prevent and safeguarding

Introduction

The Safeguarding and Prevent Policies of Aspire Advance Achieve Ltd (3aaa) reflects the importance of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children (those under the age of 18) and vulnerable adults.    Our Policy is based on the guidance issued by the Department of Education – Working Together to Safeguard Children and Young People (2015) WT. 3aaa also complies with the statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care (January 2014) and The Prevent Duty (The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act June 2015) and Social Media for Online Radicalisation (July 2015) and this Policy should be read in conjunction with these procedures and guidance – a copy of these are available from the Academy Manager.   The Prevent Duty (The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015)

Responsibilities of Apprentices and Staff All apprentices and staff have a responsibility to:

o Undertake training o Be aware of when it is appropriate to refer concerns to the Designated Safeguarding Lead o Exemplify British values of: • Democracy • The rule of law • Individual liberty and mutual respect • Tolerance for those with different faiths and beliefs

What is CONTEST? CONTEST is the Government's Counter Terrorism Strategy, published in July 2006 and refreshed in March 2009. The aim of the strategy is 'to reduce the risk from international terrorism, so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence.'

CONTEST has four strands, often known as the four Ps. The aims of the 4 Ps are: o PREVENT - to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism o PURSUE - to stop terrorist attacks through disruption, investigation and detection o PREPARE - where an attack cannot be stopped, to mitigate its impact o PROTECT - to strengthen against terrorist attack, including borders, utilities, transport infrastructure and crowded places

What is Extremism? The Government has defined extremism as "vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs".   This also includes calls for the death of members of the British armed forces.

What is Terrorism? An action that endangers or causes serious violence to a person/people, causes serious damage to property or seriously interferes or disrupts an electronic system.  The use of threat must be designed to influence the Government or to intimidate the public and is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.

What is Radicalisation? The process by which a person comes to support terrorism and forms of extremism leading to terrorism.

What are British Values? British values are defined as "democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance for those with different faiths and beliefs".  

What is Prevent? Prevent is about stopping people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism.  The long-term solution to the threat faced by the UK from domestic or international terrorism is not just about more effective policing. It is about tackling the factors that can cause people to become drawn into violent extremism and empowering individuals and communities to stand up to violent extremists.

Prevent is not about singling out a particular group. It is about addressing the real threat to the security of this country.

Today if we think of extremism or terrorism we think about one group ISIS, however 30 years ago it would have been the IRA, there are many different violent extremist groups that can cause potential harm and conflict. Below are a few examples from the proscribed Government list of 71 separate groups.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) Proscribed June 2014 PFLP-GC is a left wing nationalist Palestinian militant organisation formed in 1968. It is based in Syria and was involved in the Palestine intifada during the 1970s and 1980s. The group is separate from the similarly named Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). 16 From its outset, the group has been a Syrian proxy. PFLP-GC has been fighting in the Syrian war in support of Assad, including in Yarmouk Refugee Camp in July 2013. The group also issued statements in support of the Syrian government, Hizballah, and Iran.

National Action Proscribed December 2016, National Action is a racist neo-Nazi group that was established in 2013. It has a number of branches across the UK, which conduct provocative street demonstrations and stunts aimed at intimidating local communities. Its activities and propaganda materials are particularly aimed at recruiting young people. The group is virulently racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic. Its ideology promotes the idea that Britain will inevitably see a violent ‘race war’, which the group claims it will be an active part of. The group rejects democracy, is hostile to the British state and seeks to divide society by implicitly endorsing violence against ethnic minorities and perceived ‘race traitors’ National Action’s online propaganda material, disseminated via social media, frequently features extremely violent imagery and language. It condones and glorifies those who have used extreme violence for political or ideological ends. This includes tweets posted by the group in 2016, in connection with the murder of Jo Cox(which the prosecutor described as a terrorist act), stating “Only 649 MPs to go” and a photo of Thomas Mair with the caption “don’t let this man’s sacrifice go in vain” and ”Jo Cox would have filled Yorkshire with more subhumans!”, as well as an image condoning and celebrating the terrorist attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and another depicting a police officer’s throat being slit. The images can reasonably be taken as inferring that these acts should be emulated and therefore amount to the unlawful glorification of terrorism.

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) Formed in November 1999, SHAC is perhaps the leading ARE group in the UK. Its stated aim is to force the closure of Huntingdon Life Sciences. After beginning with actions against HLS, including loud and sometimes violent demonstrations outside HLS sites, infiltrations, harassment of employees (including visits to their homes to vandalise cars or other property), and a physical attack on HLS' managing director, SHAC moved on to target HLS' suppliers. SHAC would identify suppliers of virtually any service to HLS (laboratory equipment, catering, childcare, etc), and contact them to  request they sever all relations with HLS ‘or face the consequences.'  SHAC has a history of aggressive and reputation-damaging campaigns.

There are many other such groups can you think of any more extremist organisations?

Think about other groups such as environmental extremists as well as religious, left wing or right wing extremism.

Copy and paste the links below into your browser, look at three different extremist organisations from around the world and describe what each group stands for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_groups

http://scribol.com/news-and-politics/politics/top-4-environmental-extremist-groups/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_left-wing_rebel_groups

Prevent is delivered in partnership by a wide range of organisations including the police service, education providers and local government. Together we recognise that the best long term solution to preventing terrorism is to stop people becoming terrorists in the first place.

Violent extremists are motivated by an ideology, which wrongly uses religion or beliefs to justify violence. Working closely with other organisations, our aim is to support local communities and institutions to challenge and reject the message of extremism. The Prevent strategy also aims to support vulnerable members of our communities by helping to divert them away from violent extremism.

This is a challenging and complex area that requires a whole community approach' between national and local organisations and embraces the experience, energy and ideas of our local communities, as well as police officers, local authorities and staff.  Prevent is a long-term endeavour for us all and together we need to challenge those who support violence regardless of faith, race or background.

Violent extremists seek to exploit vulnerabilities in individuals and drive a wedge between them, their families and their communities. Working with other local and national organisations, it is the aim of the police service to support those who are being targeted and create stronger and more empowered communities who have the ability to reject violent extremism in all its forms.

How does someone first start to become involved in extremist activity?  They may have previously shown no signs at all of having sympathy to, or identifying with, an extremist or terrorist cause. Clue: the answer lies in a person’s vulnerability – certain factors, whether emotional or something external, which can prompt someone to set out on the journey.     The following are examples of a person’s needs, susceptibilities and motivations.

Emotional External o Confusion o Upset o Loss of identity or belonging o Sense of injustice o Bereavement o Family breakdown o Lack of role model o Anger o Lack of confidence o Isolation o Disappointment o Adolescent feelings o Peer pressure o A need for adventure or excitement o Desire to feel important o Media (especially social) o Desire for political or moral change through extremist activities o Low academic achievement o Substance misuse or mental health issues o Period of transition (move home/school) o Government/establishment policies and conventions o Religion – can be misinterpreted intentionally as it has a strong pull on people o Family or friends’ involvement in extremism

Channel What is Channel? Channel is an early intervention multi-agency process designed to safeguard vulnerable people from being drawn into violent extremist or terrorist behaviour. Channel works in a similar way to existing safeguarding partnerships aimed at protecting vulnerable people.

Who does Channel work with? Channel is designed to work with individuals of any age who are at risk of being exploited by extremist or terrorist ideologues. The process is shaped around the circumstances of each person and can provide support for any form of radicalisation or personal vulnerabilities.

How does Channel work? Each Channel Panel is chaired by a local authority and brings together a range of multi-agency partners to collectively assess the risk and can decide whether a support package is needed. The group may include statutory and non-statutory partners, as well as lead safeguarding professionals. If the group feels the person would be suitable for Channel, it will look to develop a package of support that is bespoke to the person. The partnership approach ensures those with specific knowledge and expertise around the vulnerabilities of those at risk are able to work together to provide the best support.

What does Channel support look like? Channel interventions are delivered through local partners and specialist agencies. The support may focus on a person’s vulnerabilities around health, education, employment or housing, as well as specialist mentoring or faith guidance and broader diversionary activities such as sport. Each support package is tailored to the person and their particular circumstances.

How will the person be involved in this process? A person will always be informed first if it’s felt that they would benefit from Channel support. The process is voluntary and their consent would be needed before taking part in the process. This process is managed carefully by the Channel Panel.

Who can make a referral? Anyone can make a referral. Referrals come from a wide range of partners including education, health, youth offending teams, police and social services.

What happens with the referral? Referrals are first screened for suitability through a preliminary assessment by the Channel Coordinator and the local authority. If suitable, the case is then discussed at a Channel panel of relevant partners to decide if support is necessary. Raising a concern If you believe that someone is vulnerable to being exploited or radicalised, please use the established safeguarding or duty of care procedures within your organisation to escalate your concerns to the appropriate leads, who can raise concerns to Channel if appropriate

Safeguarding 3aaa Have a duty to safeguard and promote the well-being of children and young people.  This includes the need to ensure that all adults who work with children and young people are competent, confident and safe to do so. Safeguarding means “recognising that the needs, wellbeing, and safety of all apprentices and staff and that actions relating to this are in line with legislation, recommendations and guidelines. All adults who work with children and young people are accountable for the way in which they exercise authority, manage risk, use resources and safeguard children and young people

Local authorities have overarching responsibility for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children and young people in their area. This includes specific duties in relation to children in need and children suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm, regardless of where they are found under sections 17 and 47 of the Children Act 1989.

Whilst local authorities play a lead role, safeguarding children and young people and protecting them from harm is everyone’s responsibility. Everyone who comes into contact with children and families has a role to play.

Safeguarding is the action that is taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. Safeguarding means: protecting children from abuse and maltreatment. preventing harm to children’s health or development. ensuring children grow up with the provision of safe and effective care.

There are many forms of abuse some examples are listed below

Child Sexual Exploitation Child sexual abuse and exploitation includes touching and non-touching activity.

Some examples of touching activity include:

o Touching a child's genitals or private parts for sexual pleasure o Making a child touch someone else's genitals, play sexual games or have sex putting objects or body parts (like fingers, tongue or penis) inside the vagina, in the mouth or in the anus of a child for sexual pleasure

Some examples of non-touching activity include:

o Showing pornography to a child o Deliberately exposing an adult's genitals to a child o Photographing a child in sexual poses o Encouraging a child to watch or hear sexual acts o Inappropriately watching a child undress or use the bathroom

As well as the activities described above, there is also the serious and growing problem of people making and downloading sexual images of children on the Internet (also referred to as child pornography). To view child abuse images is to participate in the abuse of a child. Those who do so may also be abusing children they know. People who look at this material need help to prevent their behaviour from becoming even more serious.

Neglect Neglect is the ongoing failure to meet a child's basic needs and is the most common form of child abuse.  A child may be left hungry or dirty, without adequate clothing, shelter, supervision, medical or health care.  A child may be put in danger or not protected from physical or emotional harm.  They may not get the love, care and attention they need from their parents.  A child who's neglected will often suffer from other abuse as well. Neglect is dangerous and can cause serious, long-term damage - even death.  Neglect can be really difficult to identify, making it hard for professionals to take early action to protect a child.  Having one of the signs or symptoms below doesn't necessarily mean that a child is being neglected. But if you notice multiple, or persistent, signs then it could indicate there’s a serious problem.

Children who are neglected may have:

o Poor appearance and hygiene o Health and development problems o Housing and family issues

Domestic abuse Is any type of controlling, bullying, threatening or violent behaviour between people in a relationship. But it isn’t just physical violence – domestic abuse includes emotional, physical, sexual, financial or psychological abuse.

Abusive behaviour can occur in any relationship. It can continue even after the relationship has ended. Both men and women can be abused or abusers. Domestic abuse can seriously harm children and young people. Witnessing domestic abuse is child abuse, and teenagers can suffer domestic abuse in their relationships

Forced marriage Is a marriage in which one or more of the parties is married without his or her consent or against his or her will. A forced marriage differs from an arranged marriage, in which both parties consent to the assistance of their parents or a third party (such as a matchmaker) in identifying a spouse. This is illegal in the UK under the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007 and can lead to up to       5 years in prison, forced marriages are often abusive relationships.

FGM Female Circumcision, and Cutting Female Genital Mutilation- also called FGM, Female circumcision, cutting or sunna – Across the world, it is estimated that 125 million girls and women are survivors of FGM. Most of these live in just 29 African and Middle Eastern Countries. FGM can also be found in other regions such as SE Asia and across Europe including the UK. FGM is mainly carried out on young girls between the ages of 8-15.

In the UK FGM has been a Criminal offence since 1985 with the introduction of the Female Circumcision Act. In 2003 the law was updates and renamed the Female Genital Mutilation ACT. This means that anyone found to be involved in FGM including sending girls abroad for FGM can be prosecuted and sent to prison for 14 years. Under UK law FGM is regarded as a human rights issues. When it involves a girl under 18 years it is regarded as child abuse, and when it involves a woman over the age of 18 it is treated as violence against women.

There are many other forms of abuse and as educational providers 3aaa are committed to keeping all our learners safe and can offer professional guidance and support.

E-Safety E-safety is in place for not only staying safe on the internet, but also other electronic form of communication, l such as wireless technology and mobile phones. The purpose of e-safety is to safeguard all activity on electronic devices and the internet, as well as raising awareness of how to stay safe.

3aaa promote the use of the internet and other forms of technology to work and learn, however, doing so in a suitable manner. As technology and the internet are easily accessible, it also unfortunately means that every user could face potential risks and consequences.

The internet is a huge part of learning, mandatory for most workplaces and is used constantly in day-to-day life. There are many advantages of the internet and its uses, however, there are also plenty of risks that result in using it. When visiting websites, it is a possibility that you may come across malicious and/or inappropriate websites with the following risks:

o Viruses & spyware (Malware) o Phishing (Obtaining your personal financial details to possible steal identities) o Fraud o Copyright violation (Illegally copying/downloading protected images, software, documents etc.) o Being exposed to inappropriate content. In addition to the internet, it is extremely important to use email safely and be cautious of sending and receiving mail. There are a few points to consider when using email:

o Never click on link or open attachments from unknown senders or suspected fraudulent senders o Do not respond to, or forward on, emails for unknown senders or suspected hoax senders o Report any scam emails and spam to the IT team who will then take the appropriate action.

As a learner at 3aaa’s, your responsibility is to report any incidents regarding e-safety either to your trainer / assessor who will forward this on, or directly to the safeguarding lead. As a learner or 3aaa’s, you are also responsible for ensuring you use all systems and devises in accordance to our policies and procedures.

General tips for E-Safety o Never enter any personal/financial information into PC’s/laptops/mobile phones o Always ensure the websites you are visiting are secure (the website address should begin with ‘https://’- the ‘s’ stands for ‘secure’. o Use a well-known, safe browser e.g. Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari etc. o Ensure you have effective ant-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software installed. o Report any inappropriate material to your assessor who will then forward it over to the it department. Report any concerns involving Safeguarding, Prevent or personal issues to the 3aaa safeguarding team below. Safeguarding Team email: sachamccarthy@3aaa.co.uk, telephone: 07471 357 360                                                                           Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead – Kate Whittaker                                                           email: katewhittaker@3aaa.co.uk, telephone: 07772 657 501 Safeguarding Officer – Ebony Newton                                                                                         email: ebonynewton@3aaa.co.uk, telephone: 01332 854 045 Safeguarding Officer – Karla Craven                                                                                           email: karlacraven@3aaa.co.uk, telephone: 01332 854 045 By reading this Prevent Workbook and completing the following questions, you should:

1. Understand what extremism and radicalisation are 2. Know what Prevent and the Government’s CONTEST strategy are 3. Better understand what makes people vulnerable to radicalisation 4. Know your responsibilities and recognise indicators that radicalisation might be taking place 5. Understand what Safeguarding and abuse is. 6. Understand E-Safety. 7. Know what British Values are

British Values

Democracy Democracy can be seen as a state of society characterised by equality of rights and privileges. It can also refer to our nation’s electoral systems. At 3aaa we promote the importance of democracy through such things as:

o Learners being encouraged to consider alternative pathways in lessons. o Learner Voice on key areas of learner satisfaction.

Individual Liberty Individual liberty suggests the free exercise of rights generally seen as outside Government control.  At 3aaa we promote the importance of individual liberty through such things as:

o Learners encouraged to voice views in lessons in a formative manner. o Learners offered autonomy over choices regarding academic pathways. o Support to gain meaningful employment in an area you want to work in.

Rule of Law All people and institutions are subject to and accountable to law that is fairly applied and enforced.  At 3aa we promote the importance of the rule of law through such things as:

o There is a shared classroom code of practice. o Marking and feedback, as well as homework, policies set clear boundaries which are explained clearly to Learners o Accountability is stressed to all stakeholders including staff [teacher’s Standards], students [Student Code of Conduct], and company Board of Directors.

Mutual Respect The proper regard for an individual’s dignity, which is reciprocated. At 3aaa we promote the importance of mutual respect through such things as:

o Classroom code of practice. o Company ethos statement o Clear guidance on good behaviour in areas such as the workplace. o The publishing of a dress code for learners o Wellbeing promotes mutual respect through the skills developed in sessions.

Tolerance of Those with Different Faiths and Beliefs A fair, objective, and permissive attitude to those whose faith and beliefs may differ from one’s own. At 3aaa we promote the importance of tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs through such things as:

o Acceptance of faith symbolism. o Respecting different religious festivals and needs.

Questions to be Completed by the Apprentice

What are the 4 Ps of CONTEST? Prevent, Pursue, Protect, and Prepare

Name the 4 British Values democracy. the rule of law. individual liberty. mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith.

Name 3 forms of abuse 1: Domestic 2: Exploitation 3: Sexual

Who can report a Prevent incident? Me

Explain extremism and terrorism Using harmful and extreme ways to get across your views and ideas that will harm others.

Give 3 examples of emotional factors that might lead to extremist activity 1: media

2: peer pressure

3: Political

Explain radicalisation Getting persuaded to change your views through immoral methods.

Who would you report any concerns to? Police

What is the estimated prison sentence for anyone found to be involved in FGM? 14 years

What are 3 risks of websites? 1: Virus

2: Copyright

3: Inappropriate content

Who should you report any incidents regarding e-safety to? Trainer

Whose duty is it to safeguard children and young people? Parent or guardian

What are the definitions of Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people? Safeguarding is the action that is taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. Safeguarding means: protecting children from abuse and maltreatment. preventing harm to children's health or development. ... taking action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcomes

[eretzyisrael]

Another Sovereignty Test

On 19 October 2021, Israel’s Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, designated six Palestinian NGOs as “terrorist organizations” closely linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), one of the most vicious and bloody-handed of the numerous terrorist groups at war with the State of Israel. The PFLP has been wholly or partly responsible for some of the most horrific episodes in Israel’s history. These date back to the late 1960s; more recently they include the 2001murder of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi, the 2014 attack on a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem in which four rabbis and a police officer were murdered, and the 2011 murder of five members of the Fogel family. In 2019, the PFLP murdered 17-year old Rina Shnerb with a roadside bomb.

The NGOs “provided a funding ‘lifeline’ for the PFLP, employed PFLP terrorists, and … PFLP terror operatives used NGO offices for meetings,” according to Israeli security officials. In addition to the detailed classified (to protect sources) information behind the decision, there is a great deal of publicly available evidence collected by the NGO Monitor organization for these and seven other NGOs which share members with the PFLP and channel funds to it. Of the 13 organizations mentioned by NGO Monitor, they “identified over 70 staff and board members, as well as other officials who hold positions in both the NGOs and the PFLP.” One of them, Samer Arbid, worked as an accountant for one of the banned NGOs, Adameer. In his spare time he was the leader of the cell that murdered Rina Shnerb.

The organizations get most of their money from individual European governments, the EU, the UN, large “humanitarian” funds like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in the US and Oxfam in Europe, various Soros-related funds, and so on.

The terrorist designation means that Israeli authorities can close their offices, seize their assets, and prevent them from raising funds. Membership in them becomes illegal.

The announcement brought forth a flood of accusations and denunciations of Israel from every corner, including the European Union, anti-Israel members of the US Congress, the major “human rights” organizations, multiple anti-Israel groups in the US like J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace, some left-wing members of Israel’s Knesset, and numerous others. US State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, said that Israel had not informed the US of its intentions or provided documentation of its charges. He added that “[w]e believe respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, and a strong civil society are critically important for responsible and responsive governance … [we will] be engaging our Israeli partners for more information regarding the basis for these designations.”

Israel credibly responded that it had informed the State Department, and then sent another delegation to the US to present further evidence.

Leaving aside the question of whether Israel is required to inform the US before it takes any substantive action, even without classified information, the publicly available evidence presented by NGO Monitor should suffice. The reaction of the State Department is a troubling sign of its lack of respect for the Jewish state.

Even if these NGOs weren’t funneling large sums of money to actual terrorist murderers, they are hostile to the state. One of them, Adameer, which receives money from Ireland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the German Heinrich Boll Foundation, “is a leader of campaigns in support of Palestinian prisoners convicted of security offenses, referring to them as ‘political prisoners’ and altogether omitting the context of violence and terror.” Another, Al Haq is a “leader in anti-Israel ‘lawfare’ and BDS … campaigns” as well as having been an “active participant” in the 2001 Durban Conference that promoted “the complete international isolation and demonization of Israel.”

It’s hard to imagine any other country permitting subversive, foreign-funded organizations like these to operate freely in their sovereign territory. But even Israel draws the line when money collected to promote human rights goes directly into the hands of murderers.

One of the reasons for the almost universal condemnation of Gantz’ action was the enormous clout of the funders of these NGOs, who are committed to the idea that they are advancing their political objectives without directly killing anybody. Many Europeans would be happy if Israel would change from the nation-state of the Jewish people into a “state of its citizens,” perhaps with a right of return for the descendants of Arab refugees; but few would admit (at least, out loud) that this would unavoidably be a violent process, and even fewer that they favor such violence. Gantz essentially called them out.

These six NGOs make up a small part of a massive anti-Israel industry, which operates throughout the world. This industry is nourished from several main sources: Arab and other Muslim countries, Europe, and the American and international Left. Its components range from the fake “pro-Israel” J Street, to the terrorists of the PFLP and Hamas. Those who contribute resources or time to it vary in their understanding of the ultimate goal of the enterprise, which is not essentially different from those of Haman or Hitler. But the action taken by Israel rips the veil from not only these six NGOs, but of those behind them, in Europe and elsewhere.

Those who suck at the tit of European funding, for example, include numerous left-wing Israeli groups which, one hopes, at least believe that they want to improve the state rather than destroying it. Nevertheless they must express outrage because otherwise they will have to face up to the fact that they are naught but useful idiots.

The American government, too, especially with the Biden Administration in charge, is riddled with anti-Israel elements. They too vary from the more moderate elements who favor the impossible “2-state solution” but think (illogically) that Israel should still continue to exist, to the Rob Malley types who believe that the Jewish state was a mistake that should be corrected.

The crackdown on these groups was long overdue. Like the reopening of the Jerusalem consulate to the Palestinians, it is an issue that will bring massive pressure on Israel to reverse its correct decision. At the same time, it too is an issue that directly bears on whether Israel is a sovereign state or a banana republic.

Abu Yehuda