Chicago – On March 30, thousands of Palestinians, Arab Americans and others took to the streets of Chicago to protest the ongoing genocide in Palestine and to demand an end to all U.S. aid to Israel. Protesters rallied in the Federal Plaza and then marched to and occupied Michigan Avenue- a major street in downtown Chicago. This action was the 30th mass mobilization called by the Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine (CJP) since the Al-Aqsa Flood began on October 7.

March 30 in particular holds special significance for the people of Palestine because it marks two important events in the history of the Palestinian liberation movement: Land Day in 1976 and the Great March of Return in 2018. Both protest movements began in opposition and resistance to Zionist Israel’s illegal occupation and theft of the land of Palestine.

According to a social media post by the United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), a member of CJP, “The Israeli government’s expropriation of thousands of donums of Palestinian land sparked what is now known as Land Day, and years later, the Great March of Return was intentionally organized on March 30 by Palestinians in Gaza to honor the six lives lost in 1976. The Great March of Return lasted until December of 2019, and even though Israel murdered 214 protesters and injured over 36,000 people, Gazans remained steadfast and continued weekly Friday mobilizations demanding the #RightofReturn. The Palestinian resistance has always been strong and well organized, and the Palestinian peoples’ dedication to our land is one of the driving forces behind all of the movement’s successes.”

This was especially evident in Chicago’s downtown march as one of the most popular chants was “Get up and take a stand! We’re taking back our land!” 

Chicagoans were not the only people in attendance. Emma Sheerin, a Sinn Féin party representative from the north of Ireland was also present and stood in solidarity with protesters and organizers of the march. This comes just a week after the USPCN and Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression met with Naledi Pandor, the South African Minister of International Relations And Cooperation. Speakers asked attendees of the march to demand that their congressional representatives vote against the United States South Africa Bilateral Relations Review bill, which could potentially place sanctions on South Africa for its support of Palestine.

Members of USPCN and other organizations also passed out fliers informing protesters of the upcoming April 13 conference to prepare for the March on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19 through the 22. 

“We want to make one thing clear to Genocide Joe, Killer Kamala, and every elected official who feeds us lip service: you will have no rest, no sleep, no peace until Palestine is free!” said Nick Sous, a member of USPCN.

#ChicagoIL #AntiWarMovement #International #MiddleEast #Palestine #LandDay #USPCN #SinnFein #CJP

Bloomington, MN – Israeli security forces refused entry to three U.S. solidarity activists for attempting to participate in a human rights delegation organized by the Palestine Solidarity Group. Sarah Martin, member of Women Against Military Madness, and Katrina Plotz, of the Anti-War Committee, refused voluntary deportation and were forcibly deported Sunday evening, August 2. It was an emotional reunion at the airport on Monday afternoon, as Martin and Plotz were greeted with cheers and embraces by dozens of friends and supporters, carrying signs reading “Free Palestine!” and “End the occupation!”

After a brief encounter with airport security, a press conference was held in the baggage claim area. The crowd gathered closely to hear the story of the Minnesota women who have been the subject of an outpouring of support over the weekend, as hundreds made calls, sent letters demanding their release and their right to enter into Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Martin and Plotz are well-respected local peace and justice activists, especially known for their work in organizing protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul. Palestine solidarity activists from across the U.S. joined the campaign as well, in hopes of shedding a light on the situation.

“We believe that Palestinians should have the right to control their own borders,” Jess Sundin said in an opening statement for the Anti-War Committee, “Their invited guests should not have to go through an Israeli controlled security apparatus to visit them. It was Israel that turned Katrina Plotz and Sarah Martin away before they reached their destination. We denounce Israel’s policy of excluding Palestinians and those who support them. We know that this policy is part of a campaign to isolate the Palestinian people and prevent us from learning the truth about the impact of our country’s policies in the Middle East.”

According to Sarah Martin, “What we got to experience was the tight grip of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. If you’re going on a human rights delegation, which we were, you cannot tell that to Israel or they will throw you out summarily. But they knew we were a human rights delegation anyway.”

Each of the women was sent for questioning upon arrival at the airport in Tel Aviv. During the interview with Katrina Plotz, Israeli security officers showed her the Anti-War Committee website and accused her of lying about her plans. He was shouting and banging his desk with a book and then threw it on the floor.

Sarah Martin continued, “They regretted to inform us that we weren’t going to be allowed into Israel because we were a security threat. We were a security threat, because they do not want the reality of Palestine known to the outside world, and that was our point. So, Katrina and I decided, no we’re not going, we’re not going that easy and so we refused to get on the airplane.”

Katrina Plotz agreed, “They’re afraid of people knowing the truth. They are afraid of people who have any amount of courage to stand up against them and stand up for the rights and the dignity of Palestinians. So they kept us cut off from each other and from all of you and all the work that was being done.” The women were put in separate cells and not allowed to speak with each other or make phone calls while they were detained.

There was graffiti on the walls of Plotz’s cell. She was denied a pen or pencil, but wrote with the cap of a soda can: “Free Palestine,” “Israel out of Palestine,” “Justice for Gaza,” and “Right of Return.” When the guards discovered this, they took the rest of her food, turned the lights off in her cell, and ultimately handcuffed her to the bed. Some time later, the women were driven to the plane in separate cars, put on the plane separately and still not allowed to speak to one another. The women were never informed that supporters had secured a lawyer for them. They were never given the form required to file a formal appeal of their deportation. Their only outside contact was with the U.S. Embassy, who also failed to inform them of their rights or assist them in anything other than communicating their status to friends and family back home.

According to Plotz, “It’s not democracy. It’s not fair and it’s wrong. I’m glad to have been able to take just a small stand against that.”

Martin added, “One other irony, we were returned home. One of the main demands of Palestinians is the right of return, to go back to those lands that were taken and cleared in 1948. That’s enshrined in UN law and has been reaffirmed year after year, but it’s never been implemented and the U.S. and UN has never enforced that. Instead of a right of return, more and more land is being taken away, and more and more houses are being bulldozed.”

Palestinian Sameh Shabaneh, of the Al Aqsa Foundation, also addressed the crowd. “What these courageous ladies went through, the Palestinians go through on daily basis. There are millions of Palestinian refugees in the world that cannot visit their homes the original homes and villages, let alone resettle there. They have the keys for their homes and they cannot actually go there because they are not permitted by the Israeli occupation. Palestinians are barred from moving around their towns and villages. Farmers are taken away from their farmlands. Teachers are being kept away from their schools. Doctors are not being able to go to hospitals to help the needy. And pregnant women are giving birth at checkpoints.”

“I don’t think a pregnant woman, or for that matter, Sarah my friend, look at her,” Sameh continued, gesturing towards 69-year old Sarah Martin, “neither is a threat for Israel’s security. Those ladies should not be treated as such a threat to Israel’s existence.”

He also said, “Rest assured, we will soon extend an invitation for you when Palestine is free, very soon, inshallah.”

Mary Beaudoin, Director of Women Against Military Madness, closed the gathering by expressing outrage at the events of the last few days, and called on people to use the organization’s website as a resource to inform themselves of what is happing inside Palestine.

#BloomingtonMN #AntiwarMovement #News #Occupation #Palestine #AntiWarCommittee #rightOfReturn #SolidarityDelegation

“It's the basic human right of people to go back to their homeland,” said Palestinian Legislative Council member Abdel Jawad Saleh, who spoke at the rally. “I want to tell them [world leaders] that conceding the right of return will make any future peace agreement a transitional truce.”

Terrorist gangs of Zionists, holding the racist view of a country exclusively for Jews, forced 800,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948. Many Palestinians who refused to leave were massacred, including thousands from the villages of Deir Yassin and Tantura.

Exiled Palestinians found themselves in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. One of the survivors of the massacre at Deir Yassin, Imad ad-Dean Ahmad, lamented the death of his relatives in a folk song he performed at the rally.

Sponsored by the Palestine Right of Return Coalition, the rally's date coincided with the 18th anniversary of the Israeli-supported massacre at Sabra and Shatilla, two refugee camps near Beirut, Lebanon. More than 2000 Palestinian civilians living in these camps were killed during an Israeli invasion in 1982.

Buses and caravans brought protesters from all over the U.S., including Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and New Jersey. Many more traveled by plane from as far as Oregon and California. Joining the rally in solidarity with the Palestinians were hundreds of other Arabs, North American Christians, non-Arab Muslims, and Jews.

A youth delegation of college and high school students joined adults at the demonstration. Fatimah Ismail, a 17 year-old Palestinian-American and a youth organizer with the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network, admitted that she “knew nothing of Palestinian refugees” until she took part in the Arab Youth Leadership Academy this past summer. In this academy, Ismail heard the story a young girl from Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem. This girl, Manar, who also spoke at the rally, thanked supporters, and asked to be allowed to “return to [her] father's home in Palestine.”

Although the status of Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip dominates the negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership, participants at the rally insist that a comprehensive peace agreement is impossible without the right of return. “I would go back even if they put me in a cage,” an impassioned elderly man said through an interpreter.

Hatem Abudayyeh is Youth Program Director, Arab American Action Network Chicago, IL

#WashingtonDC #News #Palestine #rightOfReturn #ArabAmericanActionNetwork #MiddleEast

(Right of Return March Organizers)”)

Chicago, IL - The streets of downtown Chicago were filled with chants of “Free, free Palestine! Democratic Palestine!” on Sunday, Sept. 29. More than 1200 activists took over city streets and rallied at the Federal Plaza to demand the right of return to Palestine for all Palestinian refugees.

The national demonstration was organized by Al Awda to commemorate the 2-year anniversary of the second Intifada – the uprising of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories against the apartheid-like conditions under which they live. There was also a strong message of “No war on Iraq,” making this rally the largest anti-war protest in Chicago since November 2001, when the U.S. attacked and occupied Afghanistan.

#ChicagoIL #ChiccagoIL #News #Palestine #AlAwda #rightOfReturn #MiddleEast

Fight Back! is publishing the following statement criticizing the Geneva Accord – which purports to be a framework for achieving peace in Palestine. Like Bush’s ‘road map for peace,’ the Geneva Accord does not square with the aspirations of the Palestinian people for justice and liberation. When the text of the Accord was released Dec. 1, thousands protested in Gaza and other Palestinian cities.

WE REJECT THE GENEVA ACCORD AND ANY NEGOTIATIONS THAT DENY THE RIGHT OF RETURN

We, the undersigned organizations, hereby state our determined opposition and rejection of the “Geneva Accord” or any other agreements or negotiations that attempt to negate the full Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants. The Palestinian refugees’ Right of Return to the homes and lands from which they were exiled is an individual, collective, national and human right that cannot be abrogated, denied or modified by any negotiation or agreement. The Right of Return belongs to all Palestinian refugees, and to the Palestinian people; any agreement that fails to recognize this fundamental, necessary right should be and will be rejected as unrepresentative of the Palestinian people.

Besides the abrogation of the Right of Return, the “Geneva Accord,” written by former Palestinian Authority ministers and left-leaning Israeli members of the Labor Party and other opposition forces, allows for limited Palestinian self-determination on most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip – with control over municipality-type responsibilities. But Israel will retain control of airspace, laws, water aquifers, imports, exports, and foreign relations – while borders will be under international control. Most Jewish-only settlements and bypass roads in the occupied territories would remain intact, making the Palestinian “state” a state in name only.

Refugees would be allowed to 1) return to the Palestinian “state”; 2) resettle and be granted citizenship in another country; or 3) stay where they currently are (and be compensated for their lost homes and property by the international community, not by Israel). Palestinian negotiators have essentially renounced the Right of Return to the 1948 territories of historical Palestine.

The accord gives the Palestinians sovereignty over the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, and most of the East Jerusalem neighborhoods will be under Palestinian jurisdiction, but Israel will retain control of the Greater Jerusalem neighborhoods that it illegally annexed, and where Jewish-only settlements were built on the stolen land.

The accord also states that Palestinians must accept the racist notion that Israel forever retains its “Jewish” character, and remains a state for Jews, again negating even the possibility of the Right of Return, and confusing the future status of the Palestinians who currently live in 1948 Palestine. All past agreements, UN resolutions, and future claims will no longer be binding, including UN Resolution 194, which guarantees the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Both the Palestinians and Israelis will sign an “end of conflict” statement and demand that the United Nations adopt the document in full.

Hisham Ahmed, a professor of political science at Birzeit University, is downright scathing in his assessment of the accord: “If Oslo was repugnant, it was at least only an interim agreement. This [initiative] purports to end the conflict when it, in fact, just lays the ground for endless bloodshed. On the issue of sovereignty, for example, the West Bank-Gaza safe passage route is under Israeli sovereignty, as is Palestinian airspace. The Israeli army will be deployed in the Jordan Valley for a renewable period of three years. I’m not even touching on the really big issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees.”

“The Geneva plan allows for more concessions, especially on the issue of refugees,” one of the resistance organizations in Palestine said in a statement. “We call upon the Palestinian Authority to reject this agreement, and remain committed to its national program and the continuation of the Intifada.”

The Palestinian representatives in Geneva and Amman, Jordan, say that they have Yasser Arafat’s blessings to negotiate this accord and make the major concessions that will undoubtedly be rejected by the vast majority of Palestinians in Palestine and the Diaspora. Although it is obvious that US imperialism has pressured these Palestinian representatives into these negotiations, they still have no right to circumvent international law and even suggest another “peace” settlement that ignores the political, civil, human, economic, and national rights of the Palestinian people. Those that are in Geneva, and those that are pulling the strings in Ramallah, represent nobody but themselves, and have proven once again that they are more concerned with their survival as an “authority” than they are about the legitimate rights of their people. Join the millions of Palestinians who denounce and reject this agreement!

#Palestine #Statement #Lebanon #rightOfReturn #GenevaAccord #MiddleEast

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following obituary on the passing of Ali Qased, a lifelong fighter for the complete liberation of Palestine who resided here in the U.S.

Ali Qased, long-time activist and organizer for Palestinian national rights, died in the early hours of Sunday, April 3, 2005, after spending nearly two weeks in a New Jersey hospital. He had been battling health problems for the last three years, and finally succumbed to complications from heart failure at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Patterson, New Jersey. He was 62.

Qased was born in a village near Rammallah, Ein Yabrood, on May 27, 1942, six years before Al-Nakba, or “the Catastrophe,” when over 750,000 Palestinians were driven off their land by European Jewish settler-colonialists and their British allies. That moment in the history of the Palestinian people stayed with Qased his whole life, and prompted him to dedicate his political work to fighting for the Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

As a teenage activist, Qased was forced into exile to Egypt, where he studied and gained a degree in economics and political science from the American University of Cairo. Egypt was also the place where he became influenced by the ideas of Jamal Abdel-Nasser and ultimately joined the ideologically similar Arab Nationalist Movement. After moving to Puerto Rico, he also gained a Master’s Degree from the American University of Puerto Rico.

A leader in the Palestinian and Arab community of New York, Qased also organized Palestinians in Ohio, New Jersey and Algeria, where he lived for eight years. But it is his work in the United States that will be missed the most. He influenced activists all across the country, and will always be remembered for his strong will, principled stances and mentorship of two generations of Palestinian and Palestinian-American organizers and activists. Adherents of his ideas and views can be found in many cities in the U.S., from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Youngstown, Ohio, to Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington and New York.

His ideas were militant and revolutionary, but grounded in a brilliant understanding of community organizing – meeting people at all different political levels, and helping to move them forward to advanced views of the world. He obviously saw Israel and Zionism as the enemies of his people, but also recognized the roles that U.S. imperialism and Arab reactionary regimes play in the repression of Palestinian national rights. And most importantly, he was an internationalist, supporting national liberation and workers’ struggles all across the globe, including the U.S.

One of his protégés commented on an irony associated with his death: “Ali was a man who spent his whole life fighting for Palestinian national rights, especially the Right of Return. But he’ll be buried in New Jersey, while American Jews from Brooklyn have the ‘right’ to be buried in Jerusalem, the capital of his nation, Palestine. He lived and died in exile, barred by Israel from returning to Palestine, like most Palestinians, as a proud representative of the heroism and steadfastness of an entire people.”

Qased is survived by his strong and loving wife of 29 years, Fatma; four daughters, Arwa, Khulood, Rama and Reem; two sons, Jamil and Hakam; one granddaughter, Fatma; and three grandsons, Ali, Wajih and Adam. He is loved by many throughout the world, and will be greatly missed.

#PattersonNJ #Palestine #Statement #AliQased #rightOfReturn #MiddleEast