The Week of Action to Free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian Prisoners kicked off on 15 January with photos, events and announcements in cities around the world.
In Toulouse, Collectif Palestine Vaincra posted banners and posters across the city, demanding freedom for Sa’adat and his fellow 4,500 Palestinians held behind Israeli bars, including 160 children and nearly 450 jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention.
In Brussels, activists gathered to protest outside the Israeli embassy to Belgium on 8 January 2021, including the Plate-forme Charleroi-Palestine and Association Belgo-Palestine, took pictures of solidarity for the Week of Action to Free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners.
Meanwhile, Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland announced that members of Macradh-ISR Youth’s Slua Áth Cliath were launching in a seven day solidarity fast, with a different comrade taking part each day, to demand freedom for Sa’adat and his fellow political prisoners. Declaring, “From Ireland to Palestine- One Struggle Against Imperialism!” AIA also posted solidarity posters around Dublin, Ireland.
Ahmad Sa’adat is the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Palestinian national liberation movement leader and a symbol of the international left and revolutionary movements. He was sentenced to 30 years in Israeli prison on 25 December 2008 after being violently abducted from the Palestinian Authority’s Jericho prison in 2006, where he had been held under U.S. and British guard.
Sa’adat is a leader in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and the Palestinian national liberation movement and a Palestinian, Arab and international symbol of resistance to capitalism, racism, apartheid and colonization. Targeted for his political role and clarity of vision, he remains unable to be silenced despite the oppression imposed upon him and 4,500 fellow Palestinian political prisoners.
On 15-23 January 2021, join Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network in a collective call for the freedom of Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners, with action and global solidarity to escalate the boycott of Israel, end aid and support to Israel, organize for justice in Palestine and resist imperialism and colonialism.
Saturday, 16 January – Online Event – Steadfastness and Resistance – The Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement and the Case of Ahmad Sa’adat with Lena Meari. 10 am Pacific – 1 pm Eastern – 6 pm UTC – 7 pm central Europe – 8 pm Palestine, Register online: https://bit.ly/freesaadat
Saturday, 23 January – Online Event – Liberation vs Dependency: Strategies to Defeat Neoliberalism and Colonialism in Algeria, South Africa, and Palestine. 11 am Pacific – 2 pm Eastern – 9 pm Palestine. Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/722789698392609/
Sunday, 24 January – Paris, France – Protest to free Ahmad Sa’adat, Georges Abdallah, and all Palestinian prisoners! 3:00 pm, Place Jean Ferrat – Metro L2 Menilmontant, Paris, France
More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1135211573605908
Join Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network for a webinar launching the international Week of Action to Free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners. The imprisonment of Palestinian national leader Ahmad Sa’adat highlights not only the use of imprisonment as a key colonial weapon of the Israeli occupation but also the complicity of the Palestinian Authority and the direction of imperialist powers like the US, Britain and EU countries.
Noted scholar Lena Meari will speak about the history and present of Palestinian resistance and steadfastness — sumud — behind bars, and the Palestinian prisoners’ movement’s struggle against colonialism and leadership in the liberation struggle. She will be joined by Hadeel Shatara, coordinator of Samidoun Palestine, discussing Palestinian political prisoners detained by the Palestinian Authority amid “security coordination” with the Israeli occupation, and Mohammed Khatib, coordinator of Samidoun in Europe, on the case of Ahmad Sa’adat and the struggle to revive the Palestinian revolution.
Event will take place in English with French translation.
Speaker Bio:
Lena Meari, born in Haifa to a refugee family from Al-Birweh village. Integrated in her academic training and research various disciplines including: Anthropology, Psychology as well as Gender Studies and Development. An assistant professor of Anthropology at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University. Completed her PhD at the University of California, Davis. Her PhD dissertation titled “Sumud: A Philosophy of Confronting Interrogation” investigates the transforming colonial relations in colonized Palestine from the perspective of the interrogation-encounter. Has special interest in the geopolitics of knowledge production, decolonized methodologies, colonial structures and colonial relations, the politics of sumud, revolutionary subjectivity, anti-colonial feminist theory, and critical approaches to the concept of development with emphasis on Palestine and the Arab World.
Samidoun posted the following series of images to our Instagram as part of the campaign launch. We invite you to share this introduction to Ahmad Sa’adat:
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network has chapters and affiliates in the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Palestine and Lebanon and we work with groups around the world. Would you like to form a local chapter or become an affiliate? Contact us at samidoun@samidoun.net.
