Expanded meeting of Syrian civil and political forces and personalities (February 15-16, 2025): Final declaration

Expanded meeting of Syrian civilian and political forces and personalities, 16/02/2025

Translated by Ayman El Hakim, Tlaxcala

 O great people of Syria

O people of sacrifice and redemption, cradle of the first civilizations in history

O our people, who still suffer deprivation, oppression, bloodshed and the danger of partition, division and social splits that threaten the unity of the country and the unity of the people.

In order to fight to alleviate the suffering of our people, to respond to all these dangers by establishing the basis for free national action, to fight to restore the national unity of the entire people, to lift injustice for all, to reject the monopolization of power by any party whatsoever, so as not to fall back into a totalitarian monolithic regime and not to repeat the national tragedy, and under the motto:

Religion for God and Fatherland for all - Equal Citizenship and Human Dignity.

For all these objectives:

The expanded Syrian national meeting was held in Syrian cities and in the Swiss city of Geneva on February 15 and 16, 2025, with remote participation for those who could not attend in person. Calls to hold this expanded meeting were made in view of the political, security, economic and social conditions that our Syrian people are still suffering from.

The goal of the Syrian revolutionaries has been to overthrow the Assad regime, which has wreaked havoc on the Syrian people for half a century and more, as our Syrian people have paid a heavy price for its overthrow since the beginning of the Syrian revolution on March 18, 2011, and also before it began, many Syrian fighters have paid with their lives for the struggle against the criminal Assad family and its totalitarian system.

December 8, 2024 came to give us a dose of hope on the eve of the fall of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad and his cronies, because it was the day we wanted, as the popular national song says.

However, from the very first days, we Syrian patriots began to see worrying things and behaviours that were never part of the objectives of the revolution for freedom and dignity.

The new administration has unilaterally announced decisions that monopolize the national decision-making process, without respecting the struggles of all those who sacrificed themselves for the success of the revolution. These decisions have given rise to deep concern about what is happening, and suggest that the new administration, despite the rhetoric of the head of the command Ahmad al-Sharaa,  to dissuade critics, and his smooth talk  to various media, is establishing a new totalitarian regime that is unilateral and not pluralistic.

The new administration has announced appointments to the army command and the Ministry of Defense without respecting the struggle and sacrifices of the 6,000 officers who defected from the Assad regime, as if they did not exist. It has also awarded military ranks in the Syrian army to non-Syrians whose hands are drenched in Syrian blood, and has ignored the vast majority of the sons of the revolution, officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers who have given their all to free Syria from corruption and tyranny.

SANTIAGO GONZÁLEZ VALLEJO EU and Spain associated to war crimes

Santiago González Vallejo, 10/2/2025

The author is a Spanish economist who works at the Unión Sindical Obrera trade union and is a member and co-founder of the Comité de Solidaridad con la Causa Árabe (Arab Cause Solidarity Committee).

For many years now, we have accused the European Union of being an accomplice in the occupation and colonization of the Territories occupied by Israel (Palestine territory prior to 1967, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms in Lebanon), as well as the blockade of Palestinian Gaza. This is confirmed by its global inaction and its de facto support for Israel in terms of arms trade, security agreements, maintenance of trade relations – including with the settlements in the Occupied Territory, in both directions – partnership in programs of all kinds or granting aid. All of this forces us to consider that the EU is not only complicit but also a party to Israel's war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Dragan

The European Union (as well as NATO), through these agreements, has been considering Israel as a partner, ally, etc., despite it being an occupying state with supremacist laws that discriminate against Palestinians and despise international law, including the right of return.  All of this is the origin and cause of the injustice suffered by the Palestinian people.  The European Union and other Western countries, by siding with Israel, are participants in the crimes of repression and continuous violence that Israel exercises to maintain that territorial domination.

An excuse sometimes alleged in the abandonment of accepted values of the European Union (such as the respect of international law, democracy or shared prosperity) is that many Europeans are trapped ideologically in accepting the Israeli narrative that they are the Jews who were massacred and discriminated against in the last century. But those Europeans who discriminated and massacred Jewish citizens of their own country, are not us, today’s Europeans. They were, generically, our ancestors. This leads us to ask questions such as: do today’s European have to pay for crimes that they did not commit, or are today’s Israelis victims of those atrocities?

Israelis cannot adduce that they are the same people as those Jews who suffered the Holocaust along with other groups. Nor can the actions of these Israelis against the Palestinians, with their occupation, colonization and supremacist laws, be justified based on the suffering and attempted annihilation of Jews by Nazi and fascist supremacist ideologies (now recreated by many European and Israeli parties).

MOHAMAD ALIANNumber 9077

Mohamad Alian, 8/2/2025
Translated by Ayman El Hakim

In the documents of the assassins and the notebooks of the executioners, in the archives of the air force intelligence services, his number was: 9077.

A number on his forehead, a number in their records, a number in the endless lists of the dead.

But he wasn't just a number... he was my father, Khaled Alian.

He was a simple man who loved life, had goodness in his heart and always had a smile on his face. He was not a politician, he did not carry a weapon, but the identity of the city of Darayya was a charge in itself.

He was in a country ruled by a criminal, and in a country where your religion and your city determine your destiny.

In 2012, they arrested him for the first time. They took him from us, for no reason, without a trial, without explanation. Maybe it was just a report that earned him a few pounds, and my father's share amounted to moaning.

When he came back months later, he was no longer the same man.

He would look into the distance, as if he could see something that we could not. He would wander and think a lot, as if he had never really left there, as if his soul were trapped within the walls of the cells. He would try to become himself again, he would try to laugh with us, but something was broken in him, and we could not fix it.

Before his body had fully recovered from this arrest, they arrested him again months later, in 2013, in a market in Damascus, after we had fled Daraya, escaping the massacres, without asking him a single question, without giving us the opportunity to say goodbye.

We waited for him for a long time... day after day, month after month, for two whole years, dreaming of the moment when he would return, arrive from afar, smile at us, open the door and say: I'm late.

But the doors that take loved ones away to Syria never bring them back.

He went out and never came back, as if the earth had swallowed him up. We had no certainty, no death to mourn, no life to look forward to, only a deadly void and infinite possibilities.

We waited for him for two years, but he didn't wait... He died after only a fortnight, as it was written on his forehead.

He died there, between the cold walls, in the sunless cells, under the merciless whips, under their bloodthirsty fists. He did not die a natural death, but a death caused by criminal hands, hands that do not consider human beings as anything other than a number to be erased after they have played their part in the whirlwind of torture and the game of death.

He died in Assad's prisons, like tens or hundreds of thousands of others whose mass graves are still being discovered, at the hands of the assassins who ruled Syria with fire and prisons.

When Caesar's photos were released in 2015, I saw him... I saw my father for the first time after all these years.

But he was no longer the man I knew, no longer with his voice, no longer with his gait, no longer with his laughter.

He was a body lying in the dirt among the piles of corpses, in dusty clothes, with a face and a body exhausted by torture, with his number on his forehead, waiting for those around him to take him to the cemetery.

 

I saw him in the photo, and I couldn't leave him there, I couldn't let that photo be his end, so I tried to change the scene with a trembling hand.

I needed to see him in a photo worthy of him, in a kinder place, in the sunlight he had never seen before his death, on green grass, in a clean shroud. I wanted to apologize to him for the cruelty he had suffered.

But I didn't do it to escape reality or to avoid remembering the pain of that image, but because I firmly believe that God changed the scene for him and for all those who had spent time with him from the first moment into something more beautiful.

He honored them and took away their pain when their soul left their body.

JOE SACCO & ART SPIEGELMANNever Again and AgainA graphic conversation

Source: The New York Review, 27 Feb 2025

     

Bye bye USAID: why I won’t mourn its death

 FG, 4/1/2025

The infernal couple in red ties - Donald II and Baby Marco - in tune with Adolf Musk, have decided to liquidate USAID, which they consider a den of fanatics - a kind of radical left Marxist Al-Qaeda inside the Beltway. Social media is full of the lamentations of thirty-somethings in the Global South, who see their dollar livelihoods slipping away. I can only applaud this decision by the MAGAlomaniacs. 

Here’s why: in my distant youth, in the happy 60s, I lived in downtown Tunis. On my way home from school around noon, I’d stop at the now-defunct boulangerie - an industrial bakery with no store, where you bought bread straight from the oven - to buy “bâtards”, “Italian bread” or, more rarely, “baguettes”. Around 1963-1964, the bread became inedible. When you opened it, a green crumb appeared. Rotten flour. I asked the baker, “What’s going on?”  Looking disgusted, he pointed to a pile of flour sacks piled up in a corner. The text printed on the sacks read “Graciously donated by the people of the Unted States of America – USAID” and - underneath - the two hands intertwined, with the stars and stripes flag in the background.

Quite simply, USAID was generously offering us rotten wheat flour. One more reason to vomit at the Yankees, who had started bombing North Vietnam and landing troops in South Vietnam. Today, USAID no longer poisons us with rotten flour, but with empowerment programmes: youth empowerment, women’s empowerment, LGBTQ+ empowerment, in short, empowerment with all the sauces, including ketchup. They’ve bought into the Arab Spring generation, in stiff competition with German, Swedish, Canadian, French and Japanese foundations, without forgetting our Emirati brethren. Blessed be Donald, Marco and Adolf, who will deliver us from this scum of the earth and their Monopoly money.

Condoms to Gaza?

Condoms to Gaza?

Yes, to Gaza, Mozambique

Watch 

The US spent millions on STD prevention in Gaza. But it was a province in Mozambique

Source

Call to a Broad Meeting of Syrian Civil and Political Forces and FiguresSovereignty, Citizenship, Democratic Transition (SAMA) February 15-16, 2025

Arabic original: الاجتماع الموسع للقوى والشخصيات المدنية والسياسية السورية  

On the morning of December 8, 2024, the freemen of Daraa and Swaida entered the capital, Damascus, followed by armed factions from the north and various provinces, to end half a century of tyranny and bloody oppression.

This historic national milestone signaled the beginning of the end for injustice, despotism, and dictatorship. However, we have also witnessed actions and initiatives that contradict the foundational principles of the March 18, 2011 Revolution: “One, one, one—the Syrian people are one.” Kurds and Arabs united, Christians and Muslims hand in hand, Sunnis and Alawites in solidarity—a state of citizenship for all Syrians, where people are citizens, not subjects. These principles, for which our people sacrificed nearly half a million martyrs, remain the cornerstone of our vision.

We remind our people: liberation from tyranny does not justify the presence of any non-Syrian fighters on the soil of our beloved homeland. We categorically reject any military force monopolizing national decision-making, regardless of its size or strength. We will not accept any ideology replacing fifty years of Baathist misery, nor will we tolerate any authority imposed by the force of arms.

Yes, the criminal Assad regime has fallen. Yet, familiar hands—known to all Syrians—are working to reproduce the old system under new guises, perpetuating internal conflicts, war crimes, and cycles of revenge.

Today, as regional powers have granted Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) authority over operations in Damascus, we are witnessing blatant attempts to manipulate those who entered the Presidential Palace. Each faction seeks to secure its interests first, ensuring that the new authorities align with Western-Turkish regional agendas. These actors exploit the fact that the current leadership in Damascus lacks popular legitimacy, tainted by Syrian blood, marred by purges of allies and opponents alike, and susceptible to external influence on issues dictated by foreign powers.

We Syrians now find ourselves under a weak new authority shackled by the misconduct of its leaders. Armed militias, including foreign fighters, have become the dominant force in Syria's security and military institutions, seeking to impose their vision in any national dialogue or discussion. Meanwhile, external powers play the role of overseers, dictating the steps of the “caretaker government.”

The Syrian state cannot be rebuilt without the collective effort of all its people, grounded in a shared sense of ownership and responsibility. No decision-maker in Damascus, or their opposition, can afford to ignore the root causes of our current tragedy: since 2011, politicians, armed groups, and the regime have all sought external validation to gain “legitimacy” and maintain power.

Many parties to the conflict, to varying degrees, have contributed to instilling fear and division among Syrians, reducing them to sectarian, religious, ethnic, or tribal identities, perpetuating the absence of a citizenship-based state—a situation that began with Assad the father’s rule.

Both Islamists and secularists have fallen into the trap of populism, driven by momentary emotions, at great cost. The time has come for rational, wise dialogue—one that moves beyond narratives of defeat or victory.

Principles to Unite Syrians:

1. Sovereignty and equal citizenship.

2. Human dignity and rights for all, regardless of nationality, religion, or sect.

3. Gender equality—women as equals to men.

4. Freedom of expression and political participation.

5. The rule of law.

6. Balanced economic development.

Necessary Steps:

• Establish a National Military Council: Dissident officers must form a council to oversee the rebuilding of a unified Syrian national army.

• Convene a General National Conference: Inclusive of all Syrian national forces,  excluding no one, under international sponsorship. This aligns with UNSC meeting on  12/18/2024 AD to implement UNSC Resolution 2254, aiming to create a transitional  governing body, a constitutional drafting committee, and an independent judicial body  for transitional justice.

• Form an Interim Technocratic Government: Its mandate will end with the election of a government under the new constitution.

• Revive and Expand the Syrian Network for Free and Fair Elections.

• Establish the Syrian National Commission for Human Rights: A collaborative  effort between human rights organizations and lawyers’ unions to guarantee and  protect all human rights in Syria, with special emphasis on women’s rights.

• Respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: All parties must commit to  the principles Syria ratified in 1968, distinguishing those dedicated to citizenship and  democracy from those seeking to reproduce dictatorship.

• Criminalize Hate Speech and Sectarian Incitement: Enact laws against hate speech  based on religion, race, ethnicity, or nationality and amend the Penal Code to increase  penalties for systematic sectarian violence and killings.

Additional Points:

• Foreign Occupation: The world, as well as the Syrian people, is well aware of the  presence of multiple occupying forces in our country, including American, Turkish,  and Israeli troops currently stationed on Syrian soil. We have witnessed the blatant  Israeli aggression against Syrian territory, targeting the military’s infrastructure,  research centers, and defense factories. It appears there is an unspoken agreement or  coordination between the de facto authorities, their supporters, and the Israeli military  to disengage under Israeli terms, along with those of the powers backing the current  regime. Yet, we have not heard any condemnation from the Security Council,  Western parties, or even a clear and unequivocal demand for the withdrawal of all  foreign forces from Syrian soil. This serves as a crucial lesson for all Syrians: the urgent need to build a national army dedicated to ensuring the departure of these  foreign forces and preserving the unity and integrity of Syria’s entire territory.

• Economic Sanctions: The Syrian people have suffered under unilateral sanctions for  two decades, which have affected every aspect of life. We demand the immediate and  unconditional lifting of these sanctions to relieve our people’s suffering.

All these demands require urgent action. Delays, procrastination, or neglect are unacceptable. History teaches us that the absence of clear timelines leads to catastrophic consequences.

Call to Action:

In three weeks of discussions among political and civil forces, we recognized the need for the broadest meeting to unify all those committed to building a sovereign state, inclusive citizenship, and democratic transition. This pivotal meeting will take place in a Syrian city capable of hosting it, with parallel gatherings via video conference in Geneva and major Syrian cities.

This broad national meeting aims to develop a unified roadmap, foster collaboration among active forces, and envision a Syria that reflects its people. All indications we observe today point to the intentions of the de facto authorities to establish military and security apparatuses that replicate the tragedies our people endured in Idlib at the hands of the same decision- makers now in control of Damascus. These include the re-seizure of decision-making power from professional unions and the perpetuation of retaliatory and vengeful actions against large segments of our population.

The Preparatory Committee invites all Syrians to join this effort, rejecting exclusion and division, to prevent new dictatorships and avoid the perils of civil war and partition.

Long live free, independent Syria!

The Preparatory Committee for the Broad Meeting of Syrian Civil and Political Forces and Figures

For inscription please: ➤ https://syrnc.org/

Sunnis, Alawis, Druze, Christians, Arabs, Kurds: one people

JONATHAN POLLAK“I saw that the floor was covered with blood. I felt fear run like electricity through my body. I knew exactly what was about to come”Testimonies from the Zionist gulag

Rape. Starvation. Fatal beatings. Mistreatment. Something fundamental has changed in Israeli prisons. None of my Palestinian friends who have recently been released are the same people they used to be

Jonathan Pollak, Haaretz  , 9/1/2025
Translated by Shofty Shmaha, Tlaxcala

Tlaxcala's Note: Haaretz finally translated this article from Hebrew into English, allaying our fears that they wouldn't. You can read their version here 

Jonathan Pollak (1982) was one of the founders of the Israeli group Anarchists Against the Wall in 2003. Wounded and imprisoned on several occasions, he contributes to the daily Haaretz. In particular, he refused to appear before a civilian court, demanding to be tried by a military tribunal, like a common Palestinian, which he was obviously refused.

 

Jonathan Pollak facing an Israeli soldier during a protest against the closure of the main road in the Palestinian village of Beit Dajan, near Nablus, occupied West Bank, Friday, March 9, 2012. (Anne Paq/Activestills)



Jonathan Pollak at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, arrested as part of an unprecedented legal campaign by the Zionist organization Ad Kan, January 15, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)



Activists hold up posters in support of Jonathan Pollak during the weekly demonstration in the Palestinian town of Beita, in the occupied West Bank, February 3, 2023. (Wahaj Banimoufleh)

Jonathan Pollak alongside his lawyer Riham Nasra at the Petah Tikva court during his trial for throwing stones during a demonstration against the Jewish settler outpost of Eviatar in Beita, occupied West Bank, September 28, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

When I returned to the territories [occupied since 1967] after a long detention following a demonstration in the village of Beita, the West Bank was very different from what I knew. Here too, Israel has lost its nerve. Murders of civilians, attacks by settlers acting with the army, mass arrests. Fear and terror around every corner. And this silence, a crushing silence. Even before my release, it was clear that something fundamental had changed. A few days after October 7, Ibrahim Alwadi, a friend from the village of Qusra, was killed along with his son Ahmad. They were shot as they accompanied four Palestinians who had been shot the day before - three by settlers who had invaded the village, the fourth by soldiers who were accompanying them.

After my release, I realized that something very bad was happening in the prisons. Over the past year, as I regained my freedom, thousands of Palestinians - including many friends and acquaintances - were arrested en masse by Israel. As they began to be released, their testimonies painted a systematic picture of torture. Fatal beatings are a recurring motif in every account. It happens in prisoner counts, during cell searches, at every movement from one place to another. The situation is so serious that some inmates ask their lawyers to hold hearings without their presence, because the path from the cell to the room where the camera is installed is a path of pain and humiliation.

I hesitated for a long time about how to share the testimonies I heard from my friends who had returned from detention. After all, I'm not revealing any new details here. Everything, down to the smallest detail, already fills volume upon volume in the reports of human rights organizations. But for me, these are not the stories of faraway people. These are people I have known and who have survived hell. None of them is the same person they once were. I seek to tell what I’ve heard from my friends, an experience shared by countless others, even while changing their names and obscuring identifiable details. After all, the fear of reprisals recurred in every conversation.

Blows and blood

I visited Malek a few days after his release. A yellow gate and guard tower blocked the path that once led to the village from the main road. Most of the other roads passing through the neighboring villages were all blocked. Only one winding road, near the Byzantine church that Israel blew up in 2002, remained open. For years, this village had been like a second home to me, and this is the first time I’ve been back there since my release. 

Malek was detained for 18 days. He was interrogated three times, and during all the interrogations, he was asked trivial questions. He was therefore convinced that he would be transferred to administrative detention - that is, without trial and without evidence, without being charged with anything, under a veneer of secret suspicion and with no time limit. This is indeed the fate of most Palestinian detainees now. 

After the first interrogation, he was taken to the Garden of Torment. During the day, the guards would remove mattresses and blankets from the cells and return them in the evening when they were barely dry, and sometimes still wet. Malek describes the cold of winter nights in Jerusalem as arrows penetrating flesh to the bones. He tells how they beat him and the other inmates at every opportunity. At every count, every search, every movement from one place to another, everything was an opportunity to hit and humiliate.

“Once, during the morning count,” he told me, ”we were all on our knees, our faces turned towards the beds. One of the guards grabbed me from behind, handcuffed my hands and feet, and said in Hebrew, 'Come on, move'. He lifted me up by the handcuffs, behind my back, and led me bent over across the courtyard next to the cells. To get out, there's a sort of small room you must go through, between two doors with a small window”. I know exactly which little room he’s talking about, I’ve passed through it dozens of times. It's a security passage where, at a given moment, only one of the doors can be opened. “So we got there,” Malek continues, “and they slammed me against the door, my face against the window. I looked inside and saw that the floor was covered in clotted blood. I felt fear run through my body like electricity. I knew exactly what was going to happen. They opened the door, one came in and stood by the window at the back, blocked it, and the other threw me inside onto the floor. They kicked me. I tried to protect my head, but my hands were handcuffed, so I didn’t really have any way of doing that. They were murderous blows. I really thought they might kill me. I don’t know how long it lasted. At some point, I remembered that the night before, someone had said to me, “When they hit you, scream at the top of your lungs. What do you care? It can’t get any worse, and maybe someone will hear and come.” So I started shouting really loud, and indeed, someone did come. I don't understand Hebrew, but there was some shouting between him and them. Then they left and he took me away. I had blood coming out of my mouth and nose”.

Khaled, one of my closest friends, also suffered from the violence of the guards. When he was released from prison after eight months’ administrative detention, his son didn’t recognize him from afar. He ran the distance between Ofer prison and his home in Beitunia. Later, he said that he hadn’t been told that the administrative detention was over, and he was afraid that there had been a mistake and that they would soon arrest him again. This had already happened to someone who was with him in the cell. In the photo his son sent me a few minutes after their meeting, he looks like a human shadow. All over his body - his shoulders, arms, back, face, legs - were signs of violence. When I came to visit him, he stood up to kiss me, but when I took him in my arms, he groaned in pain. A few days later, examinations showed edema around the spine and a rib that had healed.

In the Megiddo prison

Every action is an opportunity to hit and humiliate

Another testimony I heard from Nizar, who was already in administrative detention before October 7, and has since been transferred to several prisons, including Megiddo. One evening, the guards entered the cell next door and he could hear the blows and cries of pain from his cell. After a while, the guards picked up an inmate and threw him alone into the isolation cell. During the night and the following day, he moaned in pain and never stopped shouting “my belly” and calling for help. No one came. This continued the following night. Towards morning, the cries stopped. The next day, when a nurse came to take a look around the ward, they understood from the tumult and the screams of the guards that the inmate was dead. To this day, Nizar doesn't know who it was. It was forbidden to speak between cells, and he doesn't know what day it was. 

After his release, he realized that during the time he was detained, this detainee had not been the only one to die in Megiddo. Tawfik, who was released in winter from Gilboa prison, told me that during a check of the area by prison officers, one of the inmates complained that he wasn’t allowed out into the yard. In response, one of the officers said to him: “You want the yard? Say thank you for not being in the Hamas tunnels in Gaza”. Then, for two weeks, every day during the noon count, they took them out into the yard and ordered them to lie on the cold ground for two hours. Even in the rain. While they lay there, the guards walked around the yard with dogs. Sometimes the dogs would pass between them, and sometimes they’d actually step on the inmates lying down; they’d walk all over them.

According to Tawfik, every time an inmate met a lawyer, it came at a price. “I knew every time that the way back, between the visiting room and the ward, would add at least three more volleys of blows. But I never refused to go. You were in a five-star prison. You don’t understand what it’s like to be 12 people in a cell where even six are cramped. It’s like living in a closed circle. I didn’t mind at all what they were going to do to me. Just seeing someone else talking to you like a human being, maybe seeing something in the corridor on the way, that was worth everything to me”.

Munther Amira   - the only one here to appear under his real name - was released from prison by surprise before the end of his period of administrative detention. Even today, no one knows why. Unlike many others who have been warned and fear reprisals, Amira told the cameras about the catastrophe in the prisons, calling them cemeteries for the living. He told me that one night, a Kt’ar unit burst into their cell at Ofer prison, accompanied by two dogs. They ordered the inmates to strip down to their underwear and lie on the floor, then ordered the dogs to sniff their bodies and faces. Then they ordered the prisoners to get dressed, led them to the showers and rinsed them with cold water while clothed. On another occasion, he tried to call a nurse for help after an inmate attempted suicide. The punishment for calling for help was another raid by the Kt’ar unit. This time, they ordered the inmates to lie on top of each other and beat them with truncheons. At one point, one of the guards spread their legs and hit them in the testicles with a truncheon. 

 Hunger and disease

Munther lost 33 kilos during his detention. I don't know how many kilos Khaled lost, having always been a slim man, but in the photo sent to me, I saw a human skeleton. In the living room of his house, the light from the lamp then revealed two deep depressions where his cheeks used to be. His eyes were surrounded by a red outline, that of someone who hadn't slept in weeks. On his skinny arms hung loose skin that looked as if it had been artificially attached, like plastic wrap. Blood tests on both showed severe deficiencies. Everyone I spoke to, regardless of the prison they passed through, repeated almost exactly the same menu, which is sometimes updated, or rather reduced. The last version I heard, from Ofer prison, was: for breakfast, one and a half boxes of cheese for a cell of 12 people, three slices of bread per person, 2 or 3 vegetables, usually a cucumber or a tomato, for the whole cell. Once every four days, 250 grams of jam for the whole cell. For lunch, one disposable plastic cup with rice per person, two spoonfuls of lentils, a few vegetables, three slices of bread. At dinner, two spoonfuls (coffee, not soup spoons) of hummus and tahini per person, a few vegetables, three slices of bread per person. Sometimes another cup of rice, sometimes a falafel ball (just one!) or an egg, which is usually a bit spoiled, sometimes with red dots, sometimes blue. And that’s it. Nazar told me: “It’s not just the quantity. Even what's already been brought in isn’t edible. The rice is barely cooked, almost everything is spoiled. And you know, there are even real children there, the ones who have never been in prison. We've tried to take care of them, to give them our rotten food. But if you give a little of your food away, it's like committing suicide. In the prison there is now a famine (maja'a مَجَاعَة), and it's not a natural disaster, it’s the policy of the prison service.”

Recently, hunger has even increased. Because of the cramped conditions, the prison service is finding ways to make the cells even tighter. Public areas, canteens - every place has become an extra cell. The number of prisoners in the cells, which were already overcrowded before, has increased still further. There are sections where 50 extra prisoners have been added, but the amount of food has remained the same. Not surprisingly, prisoners are losing a third or more of their body weight in just a few months.

Food is not the only thing lacking in prison, and inmates are in fact not allowed to own anything other than a single set of clothes. A shirt, a pair of underwear, a pair of socks, a pair of pants, a sweatshirt. That's it. For the duration of their detention. I remember once, when Munther's lawyer Riham Nasra visited him, he came into the visiting room barefoot. It was winter and freezing cold in Ofer. When she asked him why, he simply said: “There aren't any”. A quarter of all Palestinian prisoners suffer from scabies, according to a statement by the prison service itself in court. Nizar was released when his skin was healing. The lesions on his skin no longer bled, but scabs still covered large parts of his body. “The smell in the cell was something you can't even describe. Like decomposition, we were there and we were decomposing, our skin, our flesh. We’re not human beings there, we’re decomposing flesh,” he says. “Now, how could we not be? Most of the time there's no water at all, often only an hour a day, and sometimes we had no hot water for days. There were whole weeks when I didn't have a shower. It took me over a month to get soap. And there we are, in the same clothes, because nobody has a change of clothes, and they’re full of blood and pus and there’s a stench, not of dirt, but of death. Our clothes were soaked with our decomposing bodies”.

Tawfik recounted that “there was only running water for an hour a day. Not just for showers, but in general, even for toilets. So, during that hour, 12 people in the cell had to do everything that required water, including natural needs. Obviously, this was unbearable. And also, because most of the food was spoiled, we all had digestive problems almost all the time. You can't imagine how bad our cell stank”.

In such conditions, the health of the prisoners obviously deteriorates. Such rapid weight loss, for example, forces the body to consume its own muscle tissue. When Munther was released, he told his wife Sana, who is a nurse, that he was so dirty that his sweat had dyed his clothes orange. She looked at him and asked, “What about the urine?” He replied, “Yes, I peed blood too.” “You idiot,” she yelled at him, ”that wasn't dirt, that was your body rejecting the muscles it had eaten”.

Blood tests on almost everyone I knew showed that they suffered from malnutrition and severe deficiencies of iron, essential minerals and vitamins. But even medical care is a luxury. We don't know what goes on in the prison infirmaries, but for the prisoners, they don’t exist. Regular treatment has simply ceased. From time to time, a nurse makes a tour of the cells, but no treatment is administered, and the “examination” amounts to a conversation through the cell door. The medical response, at best, is paracetamol and, more often, something along the lines of “drink some water”. Needless to say, there's not enough water in the cells, as there's no running water most of the time. Sometimes a week or more goes by without even the nurse visiting the block.

And if there’s little talk of rape, there’s no need to mention sexual humiliation - videos of prisoners being led around completely naked by the prison service have been posted on social networks. These acts could not have been documented other than by the guards themselves, who sought to brag about their actions. The use of the search as an opportunity for sexual assault, often by hitting the groin with the hand or metal detector, is an almost constant experience, regularly described by prisoners who have been in different prisons.

I didn’t hear about assaults on women first hand, obviously. What I have heard, and not once, is the lack of hygienic material during menstruation and its use to humiliate. After the first beating on the day of her arrest, Mounira was taken to Sharon prison. On entering the prison, everyone goes through a body search, but a strip search is not the norm and requires reasonable cause to suspect that the inmate is hiding a prohibited object. A strip search also requires the approval of the officer in charge. During the search, no officer was there for Mounira, and certainly no organized procedure to verify reasonable suspicion. Mounira was pushed by two female guards into a small search room, where they forced her to remove all her clothes, including her underwear and bra, and get down on her knees. After leaving her alone for a few minutes, one of the guards came back, hit her and left. In the end, her clothes were returned to her, and she was allowed to get dressed. The next day was the first day of her period. She was given a sanitary pad and had to make do with it for the whole of her period. And it was the same for all of them. By the time she was released, she was suffering from an infection and severe inflammation of the urinary tract.

Epilogue

Sde Teiman was the most terrible place of detention, and this is supposedly why they closed it down. Indeed, it’s hard to think of the descriptions of horror and atrocity that came out of this torture camp without thinking of the place as one of the circles of hell. But it was not without reason that the state agreed to transfer those held there to other locations - principally Nitzan and Ofer. Sde Teiman or not, Israel is holding thousands of people in torture camps, and at least 68 of them have lost their lives. Since the beginning of December alone, the deaths of four more detainees have been reported. One of them, Mahmad Walid Ali, 45, from the Nour Shams camp near Tulkarm, died just one week after his arrest. Torture in all its forms - hunger, humiliation, sexual assault, promiscuity, beatings and death - does not happen by chance. Together, they constitute Israeli policy. This is the reality.

 

BENOÎT GODINForty years after his death, Éloi Machoro's battle continues unabated

Benoît Godin, Billets d’Afrique, January 2025
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

Benoît Godin is a French journalist and activist with the Survie association, which fights against Françafrique. Author of the radio documentary Le combat ne doit pas cesser : Éloi Machoro, un super-héros pour Kanaky 

On 12 January 1985, the GIGN [National Gendarmerie Intervention Group] shot dead Éloi Machoro, bringing to a halt two months of an uprising that shook the colonial order in New Caledonia and revealed to the world the existence of the Kanak people and their fight against French domination. Forty years on, that struggle is still painfully relevant today.

Who took the decision to shoot Éloi Machoro and one of his comrades in arms, Marcel Nonarro, on 12 January 1985? Edgard Pisani, the French Republic's High Commissioner, who had just arrived in New Caledonia with extensive powers to deal with a quasi-insurrectionary situation? Someone higher up in Paris? Or the GIGN men sent to the scene, the same ones who had been humiliated a month and a half earlier by Machoro and his comrades and who had allegedly gone beyond their orders? Forty years on, the question remains.

 But is it really that important? The real culprit in this double murder - for it was one - is known: it was the French state, always implacable when confronted with peoples rebelling against the colonial yoke. That morning, France eliminated one of the men most hated by the whites of New Caledonia (the announcement of his death was greeted by howls of joy in the central square of Nouméa). He was the emblematic figure of the first major post-war Kanak uprising (and even since the wars of 1878 and 1917), which marked the beginning of the hardest phase of the period known as the ‘events’.

 A man on the ground

Who was Éloi Machoro? Before those terrible weeks that shook the colonial order, he was already a leading local figure, elected to the Territorial Assembly. Along with Yeiwéné Yeiwéné and above all Jean-Marie Tjibaou, he was one of the most prominent representatives of the young Kanak generation who, in 1977, took over the reins of the archipelago's oldest political party, the Union calédonienne (UC), transforming it into a pro-independence movement. In 1981, Éloi Machoro even became the party's Secretary General after the assassination of his predecessor, Pierre Declercq. In this role, he was responsible for organising the life of the party. This man of easy approachability and obvious charisma was constantly on the move in the four corners of the country, in contact with activists of all ages and even of all origins. He was a man on the ground. And so it was there, on the ground, that he was to be found, quite logically, at the end of 1984, leading part of the Kanak forces.

 The broken ballot box

 There are many similarities between the Kanak uprisings of that time and this Spring of 2024, and one of the most obvious is the way they were triggered. Back then, restricting the electorate was already at the heart of the pro-independence demands. The aim was to counter the effects of almost a century and a half of colonisation, which had ended up with the indigenous people in a minority on their own land. The Socialists in power in Paris refused to take this into account: they imposed a new statute, known as the Lemoine Statute (named after the Secretary of State in charge of the French overseas departments and territories), and organised open territorial elections on 18 November 1984. This was too much for most pro-independence organisations, led by the UC, who formed the Front de libération nationale kanak et socialiste (FLNKS) and called for an ‘active boycott’ of the elections. On D-Day, the territory was ablaze with demonstrations, blocked roads, occupied town halls and even arson attacks.

 Eloi's axe, by Miriam Shwamm

That morning, Éloi Machoro and a group of activists invaded the town hall in Canala, his home town on the east coast of Grande Terre. Armed with a tamioc, a traditional axe, he smashed the ballot box. It was a powerful gesture, immortalised by the local daily's correspondent. The photo went around the world. The struggle of the Kanak people suddenly came into the open, and it had a face: the severe face of Éloi Machoro, wearing a cap, sunglasses and a thick moustache.

It was the starting point of an epic story that was as dazzling as it was influential for Kanaky-New Caledonia. Two days later, Éloi Machoro and other activists from Canala joined the Kanaks in Thio, some forty kilometres further south, to occupy the gendarmerie. They vacated the premises after a day, but immediately began a ‘siege’ of the commune: for almost a month, the pro-independence fighters held Thio, setting up roadblocks and controlling all access routes.

While Canala was now overwhelmingly Kanak, Thio still had a large population of Caldoches (as Caledonians of European origin were known) and remained a stronghold of the colonial right. Its mayor, Roger Galliot, has just set up the local branch of the Front National. But beyond the political symbolism, Thio also represented a major economic challenge: it is home to one of the largest nickel mines in the world. Nickel is New Caledonia's main source of wealth, a windfall for the French state, but one from which the Kanak people have never benefited, with the exception of a few employees

Kanaky's Minister for Security

 Machoro, who became Minister for Security in the provisional government of Kanaky proclaimed by the FLNKS, led the occupation. He and his men went round the homes of the settlers to confiscate their weapons. But at the same time, he demanded unfailing discipline from his militants. Alcohol, looting and even simple damage were forbidden. Those who failed to comply were severely reprimanded (to say the least) and sent straight home. The mine was shut down, but all the equipment was carefully protected. The aim was not only to preserve the economic tools that were essential to the future independent country, but also to show an exemplary face to the journalists who rushed to Thio. Machoro was happy to receive them and gave many interviews, well aware that the Kanak cause needed outside support, both within the administering power and internationally.

On 1 December, the GIGN tried to invade the commune to put an end to the occupation. But it was not to be: dozens of Kanak, armed with rifles seized from the Caldoches, surrounded them as soon as they got off the Puma helicopters, disarmed them and forced them to leave. It was a slap in the face for the gendarmes - the same ones who were to be found a few weeks later near La Foa. The episode left its mark on people's minds, reinforcing Machoro's aura in the Kanak world... and creating psychosis among Europeans, for whom Machoro became public enemy number one. Yet Machoro was anything but a brutal fanatic. After the massacre on 5 December in the Hienghène valley of ten Kanak (including two of Jean-Marie Tjibaou's brothers) by small settlers, he opposed some of his men, who wanted to take revenge on the isolated whites holed up in their homes in Thio. His action probably prevented a bloodbath.

On the other hand, Machoro had no intention of backing down in the face of the State and its ‘loyalist’ allies. If he ended up reluctantly respecting (and ensuring respect for) the FLNKS order to lift the roadblocks issued in mid-December, it was to immediately prepare, with a group of determined militants, for a new coup: the siege of La Foa, on the other side of Grande Terre. Almost a declaration of war in the eyes of the State: it was tantamount to attacking a ‘Caldoche’ commune and above all to cutting off the highly strategic Territorial Route 1 linking Nouméa, the capital, to the north of the island. On 11 January 1985, on the eve of taking action, Machoro and around thirty companions took up position a few kilometres away in a farm on the Dogny plateau. Spotted, they were surrounded by gendarmes. Early the next morning, the snipers did their dirty work.

Ataï (left) and Machoro, painted by Élia Aramoto on a bus shelter in Poindimié. Photo Hamid Mokaddem, 1990

 Responding to colonial brutality

 Forty years on, Éloi Machoro remains an icon in the Kanak world, particularly among young people, on a par with the great chief Ataï who led the war of 1878 against the French occupiers and to whom he is often compared. His portrait is everywhere: T-shirts, banners, tribal walls, Nouméa's working-class neighbourhoods, social networks... Having disappeared before the time of the agreements, Machoro embodies an uncompromising struggle against this colonisation that never ends. On 4 April this year, on the sidelines of a press conference organised at the UC offices in Nouméa, journalists were greeted by an axe stuck in a ballot box... When it comes to action on the ground, the spirit of old Éloi is invoked.

 However, there is still a certain misunderstanding surrounding this relatively unknown man, almost as much on the part of his supporters as his opponents. Both sides maintain a legend which, whether golden or obscure, paints more or less the same picture, that of a hard-line Oceanian Che Guevara. Which has little to do with reality... Because although he died with a rifle in his hand, Machoro never fired a single shot - not even before being shot, contrary to the first version of the ‘law enforcers’ seeking to justify their crime.

He was in fact a man who was very open to dialogue - like other UC leaders at the time. In 1983, alongside Yeiwéné and Tjibaou, he took part in the Nainville-les-Roches round table, during which the pro-independence movement reached out to the other communities in the archipelago, who were recognised as ‘victims of history’. While Éloi Machoro raised the question of resorting to more radical forms of action, it was only in response to the contempt and brutality of the colonial system. In this, his path follows that of his people, who have always been open to exchange, but who have always come up against a French state locked in its criminal imperialist logic. It cannot be stressed enough that the outburst of popular anger on the evening of 13 May 2024, after the National Assembly voted on the constitutional bill to unfreeze the electoral roll, followed months of massive, pacifist mobilisation by the pro-independence forces, first and foremost the Kanak...

In a letter written on 17 November 1984, the eve of the active boycott, and for a long time wrongly presented as his last, Éloi Machoro wrote these words that are still remembered: ‘ The fight must not stop, for lack of leaders or for lack of fighters ’. If the Kanak people have since given the impression that they were less combative, it was only because they were giving the decolonisation process underpinned by the Matignon and then Nouméa Accords a chance. Following Machoro's motto, it never gave up the fight for his emancipation and for the independence of Kanaky-New Caledonia. The past year has proved this once again.

TESTIMONIAL A Gazan woman’s diary: “We died all kinds of deaths”

Nour Z Jarada has lived in Gaza all her life. For  the French daily “Libération”, this psychologist from Médecins du Monde France writes about her daily life in the war-torn Palestinian enclave. Episode six: the anguish of winter and a hint of hope.

by Nour Z Jarada, Gazan psychologist for Médecins du Monde France, Libération  , 12/31/2024
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

December is drawing to a close and we’re facing a second winter of war. I could never have imagined going through another winter like this one. Winter used to be my favorite season. When asked what my favorite time of year was, I always answered winter. Always. I loved its rain, its coolness, its comfort. I wished it was always winter. But things are different now. I can no longer afford the luxury of loving winter. I no longer have a warm home, winter clothes, blankets or even heating. I no longer have our streets, our gatherings, or our warm cups of tea shared with loved ones. From now on, none of us here can afford the luxury of loving winter.

I remember crying my eyes out at the first rain of the year. The sadness of another winter while we’re still at war was unbearable. My heart broke for us, for the families in the tents. That night, I saw flooded tents on the news and thanked God for the fragile roof over my head. Yet my heart broke for our children and families who spent the night in the icy water, waiting for dawn or simply for the rain to stop. As those dark hours stretched on, a child’s cries rang out from a nearby tent. They pierced the silence, filled with sorrow and pain. I didn’t know if the child was cold or hungry, but I couldn’t sleep. All nights are terrifying in wartime: they are merciless, cruel and endless. As we all know, we dread the long hours between now and morning and pray for the night’s horrors to come to an end.

Displaced people’s tents after heavy rain in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, December 30. (Madji Fathi/NurPhoto. AFP)

Resilience

Today, after more than a year and two months of war in Gaza, I’m a different person. Unfortunately, I’m not sure whether this change is a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, grief weighs heavily on my heart, a wound so deep that not even time can erase it. This injustice opens the door to a myriad of questions racing through my mind: Why? How is it that the geographical space in which we were born, to which we belong, our race, our color, our religion, are all factors that determine our destiny? Our suffering, our trauma? How can these elements, which we have not chosen, control the course of our lives? How can we heal from such merciless traumas? How can I go on living without my loved ones? These questions haunt me, all the more so when I imagine the end of the war.

Yet I’ve also discovered a resilience I never imagined I possessed. I endured fear, displacement, loss, grief, tears and unimaginable sorrow. I’ve faced it all patiently, even when I had no choice. Through it all, it was my unshakeable faith that carried me through, a conviction that there is a reason for everything, even if only God knows it. We believe in God. Every trial we go through carries with it a wisdom we can’t grasp with our minds. We turn our hearts over to God, even when the trial seems humanly beyond our capacity. This faith has driven me to persevere, to keep working, to fight and to support those around me.

Security nowhere to be found

In this war, adversity knows no bounds: the famine in northern Gaza during the year was unthinkable. People were forced to eat tree leaves, desperately searching for the slightest remnant of flour. The “flour massacre” even made international headlines, with people eating blood-stained bread. Countries sent aid by sea, our people drowned trying to reach it. Is it really possible that Gaza, once celebrated for its hospitality and generous cuisine, is now a land of starvation? Yet this is the reality we face. We have died all kinds of deaths. And today, famine has caught up with us in southern and central Gaza, areas supposedly “safe” for displaced civilians. But safety remains elusive.

Food is becoming increasingly scarce, and prices are rising so much that they are becoming unaffordable for most of us. Flour, once a staple, is now hard to come by. Those who manage to obtain small quantities often find it infested with worms or insects, but we sift it before cooking and eating it because we have no alternatives.

I’ve even joked bitterly with colleagues that I’d rather die in an air strike than starve to death: it would be quicker and less painful. What greater injustice can there be than to live in a world where we think about a way to die, about the least unbearable way to leave this life?

Maybe I’ll never write again

Since the beginning of December, there have been a few glimmers of hope; rumors of a potential ceasefire. But nobody dares to be optimistic anymore. That’s another change. Just a few months ago, I was one of those hopeful people. Every time I heard rumors of a ceasefire, I rushed to pack my suitcase, ready to go home. But each time, my heart was broken. Today, I’ve learned not to hope. In psychology, this is called learned helplessness: when repeated failures or hardships leave a person in a state of helplessness, unable to believe that things will change.

Yet I still dream of the end of the war. I dream of returning to my home in northern Gaza, of seeing my grandmother again. She’s over 70 and a resilient, gentle and very religious woman. I haven’t seen her since October 7th. My heart longs to hold her close to me. I can’t imagine how she has endured terror, hunger and grief. Sometimes we talk on the phone, but it’s too painful. We both cry and the calls end with more fear and longing.

At this moment, I imagine myself writing to you next time from the north of Gaza. Maybe a little piece of the hopeful Nour is still there in me. Or maybe I’ll never write again. No one knows what the future is made of. But what I do know is that oppression always ends one day. As the poet Aboul-Qacem Echebbi  wrote: “If it happens to the people, one day, to want to live, fate will have to answer.” And as God promises in the Qur’an: “Next to difficulty is, surely, ease!” Despite all we endure, we cling to our strength and resilience. Every day, we put aside our grief to take on our roles and reach out to those around us. Helping those the world has forgotten gives meaning and purpose to our lives.

Such a simple desire

Last month, a moment seared itself into my memory. A young man visiting our clinic lost his entire family and his right leg in the war. The only survivor, he now lives alone in a flimsy tent. Despite this unimaginable loss, he represents a source of hope for others. During psychosocial sessions, he learned breathing exercises and coping techniques. We’ve noticed that he’s now teaching these exercises to other patients in the clinic’s waiting room, and sharing how he’s coping with his grief. His strength inspires me.

At times, my colleagues and I allow ourselves to dream of returning to our devastated city. We talk about the first things we would do when that day comes. First and foremost, we want to honor the memory of our dear colleague, Dr Maisara, by digging his body out of the rubble of his house after more than a year and giving him a dignified burial. Then we’ll seek shelter; perhaps in tents and work together to rebuild our lives and the clinic, to continue serving our people. As for me, I’ll see my grandmother again. It’s such a simple but profound desire that gives me the strength to continue enduring the hardships.

Honestly, after all this, if I had the choice, I’d choose to be a Ghazawiya, to be a Palestinian, from this land I love again and again, today and forever.