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14/01/2025

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.



 



01/01/2025

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.





08/12/2024

And still we write وما زلنا نكتب
Recent work by Palestinian poets & actions you can take to stop genocide now

It has been more than a year of this genocidal siege on Gaza, with Israeli forces now expanding their attacks on people, homes, and hospitals to the West Bank and Lebanon. The loss, the suffering, and the violence are unrelenting. At every turn, we hear of entire family lines erased from the civil registry; that Gaza’s rubble could take ten or fifteen years to clear; that it could require three and a half centuries to rebuild; that every school and university has been destroyed.

And then there’s the incalculable loss of adults, children, and babies: gone.  Sometimes, in the face of all this, it feels as though nothing can be said. And yet Palestinians in Gaza continue to write, even in the most difficult of circumstances. And they continue to imagine a different world.  Here, we bring together Palestinian writers in and from Gaza to imagine a future. Recollections of this past year, reflections on where they are now, and thoughts about where they might be tomorrow all come together in this small chapbook.
 

We begin with a moment of silence. In his poem “Amjad,” translated by Wiam El-Tamami, Nasser Rabah writes about trying to find someone to listen to his grief about losing his closest friend: “Who will listen to me tell the story of Amjad? / Who will give me their heart—and a moment of silence?” After our shared silence, Nasser tells us about where he now writes, in his bombed-out home. “Only two rooms on the ground floor remain: this is where my entire family lives now. In a corner of one of the rooms, I curl up and write.”
 

The poet Batool Abu Akleen echoes what many have said about how they must go on writing, despite everything. She has been displaced, and she describes writing among the tents: “You’re sitting and everyone around you is just sitting and watching what you’re doing. It doesn’t feel good at all, but I’m doing it, because poetry is what keeps me alive. It’s what protects me from going insane.”
 

In her poem “A Miracle,” Asmaa Dwaima imagines not a future so much as a wonderment: “A miracle that allows us to start over. / The hand of God wipes away a year, / And takes us one year back. / A miracle: / That’s all I want.”

In this collection, we also remember the many journalists who were targeted and killed by Israeli forces. Poet Heba Al-Agha commemorates two of them in her poem “For Ismail Al-Ghoul and Rami Al-Rifi.” The pair were killed on July 31, 2024 while, according to Reporters Without Borders, they were in an isolated white car in the middle of an empty street, both wearing press vests.  
We include one work by a writer who is not from Gaza: Palestinian poet Samer Abu Hawwash.

The final poem in this collection is his “We Will Lose This War,” translated by Huda Fakhreddine, because it speaks so urgently to both loss and futurity. As he writes, “When our killers look into mirrors, / they will not see their faces, / but ours, many of us, in the mist. / They will finally realize that they have become nothing / but memories of ghosts in the great abyss. / They will never understand how they annihilated us / then annihilated us,/ then annihilated us, / and yet could not erase from their mirrors / our shining image.”
 

These poems and reflections do not exist separately from their authors, nor from the place and time in which they were com- posed. They are not here for passive reading. And so, at the end of this collection, we leave you with suggested actions.

As poet Rasha Abdulhadi has written:

Wherever you are, whatever sand you can throw on the gears of genocide, do it now.”


Download book


29/10/2024

Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions
A letter by writers, translators, publishers, and other book workers

Monday, October 28, 2024:

We, as writers, publishers, literary festival workers, and other book workers, publish this letter as we face the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century. The overwhelming injustice faced by the Palestinians cannot be denied. The current war has entered our homes and pierced our hearts. 

The emergency is here: Israel has made Gaza unlivable. It is not possible to know exactly how many Palestinians Israel has killed since October, because Israel has destroyed all infrastructure, including the ability to count and bury the dead. We do know that Israel has killed, at the very least, 43,362 Palestinians in Gaza since October and that this is the biggest war on children this century. 

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months. Israeli officials speak plainly of their motivations to eliminate the population of Gaza, to make Palestinian statehood impossible, and to seize Palestinian land. This follows 75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. 

Culture has played an integral role in normalizing these injustices. Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.

We have a role to play. We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement. This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians. We will not cooperate with Israeli institutions including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that:

  • Are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel's occupation, apartheid or genocide, or 
  • Have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law. 
To work with these institutions is to harm Palestinians, and so we call on our fellow writers, translators, illustrators and book workers to join us in this pledge. We call on our publishers, editors and agents to join us in taking a stand, in recognising our own involvement, our own moral responsibility and to stop engaging with the Israeli state and with complicit Israeli institutions.


28/10/2024

MILENA RAMPOLDI
We need a pedagogy of resistance

Milena Rampoldi, 28-10-2024

Pedagogy is one of the fundamental sciences when it comes to changing the world, which we do not like the way it looks right now. Pedagogy thus has the task of anticipating the socio-political utopia that we would like to see in the near future. Pedagogy should sow the desire in our minds and in the minds of our children to bring these ethical ideals forward in time, to stop dreaming about them and to experience them first hand. Any change in people and in society begins with the education of children and of society as a whole in the sense of lifelong learning.


‘Autonomous education builds different worlds where many true worlds with truths fit’, mural by a collective led by Gustavo Chávez Pavón, Zapatista primary school in Oventic, Chiapas, Mexico.
‘Autonomous education builds different worlds where many true worlds with truths fit’, mural by a collective led by Gustavo Chávez Pavón, Zapatista primary school in Oventic, Chiapas, Mexico.
The pedagogy of human rights is also often mentioned. Children should be sensitised from an early age to grow into people who neither discriminate nor exploit others. They should develop into people who show empathy, oppose violence and war, and work actively and dynamically for a better world in the spirit of peace and justice. They should grow up to be tolerant and cooperative people who support the weak, oppose all violence in their environment, denounce racism and discrimination, advocate for a just starting point and think in a tolerant and open way.
But for people who have been subjected to extreme oppression or genocide, human rights education is not enough. In an environment of total dehumanisation, where the killing and suffocation of every human life dream is brutal, no pedagogy for human rights can take root, because that would mean that people have not been deprived of their humanity, but that is the case. Because the narrative of genocide requires the dehumanisation of the enemy. I can only kill if I know that there are no humans in front of me. Only then can I pull the trigger and only then can I kill children en masse. And that was the case in the Nazi regime. And it is being repeated today in Gaza. The victims are children who have been dehumanised in advance so that they can be killed coldly and without any ethical consideration.
What we urgently need in an environment of dehumanisation is not a pedagogy of human rights, but an education in resistance. And the goal of this resistance, which is the result of the pedagogy of resistance, is the renewed recognition of the humanity of the dehumanised, along with overcoming their role as victims and their reification.
What Theodor Adorno says, albeit with some ethnocentric restrictions, applies to all of humanity. In his essay from 1966, the Jewish philosopher expressed the following view on the ‘never again’ of the concentration camp of Auschwitz and the killing of fellow citizens who were gassed because they belonged to a Jewish and thus inferior Semitic ‘race’:
“The first demand of education is that Auschwitz not happen again. It precedes all others to such an extent that I believe I neither have to nor should justify it. I cannot understand why it has been given so little attention to date. Justifying it would be monstrous in view of the monstrosity that occurred […] …. Any debate about educational ideals is futile and irrelevant compared to this one: that Auschwitz must never be repeated. It was barbarism that all education is directed against.”
And this paradigm of the pedagogy of resistance is precisely the common thread running through the book by the Colombian history professor Renán Vega Cantor, entitled “Education after Gaza”, which I have just translated from Spanish into English and German.
Resistance in such an enclave, which symbolises the quintessential example of Zionist, imperialist oppression of the Other, is not only a universal right, but a universal obligation that must come from both within as well as from without. Educators from all over the world are called upon to name Israeli human rights violations and denounce the brutality of this genocide. Because neither Auschwitz nor Gaza must be repeated. Resistance to the killing machine of the Zionist state, which completely reverses Jewish ethics and religious thought, can only be guaranteed by this reversal: the children of Gaza are not victims, but fighters.
The Palestinian-Brazilian poet Yasser Jamil Fayad has summed up this concept in a few brief but eloquent words:
“Running/ Dancing/ Crying/ Kissing/ Loving/ Suffering/ Helping/ Screaming/ There are countless verbs in life/ I am only Palestinian/ My verb is fighting!’
This is the pedagogy of resistance that we need worldwide. This is a paradigm of pedagogical thinking that will take its place in schools all over the world.
The No is a universal No to the dehumanisation of any human being, of the Jews of yesteryear and the Palestinians of today.

02/10/2024

RENÁN VEGA CANTOR
Education after Gaza



The title of this text paraphrases Education After Auschwitz, the title of a radio lecture given by the German philosopher Theodor Adorno in 1966 and later published in printed form, the first lines of which read as follows: “Demanding that Auschwitz never happen again is the first requirement of all education. It precedes all others so much that I don't think I should or can justify it. I can't understand why we didn't care so much about it until today. Justifying it would be somewhat monstrous in the face of the monstrosity of what happened. […] Discussing ideals in the field of education leads to nothing in the face of this demand: never again Auschwitz. This was the type of barbarism against which all education stands.”

Today we are faced with repetition the genocidal barbarism by Israel against the Palestinian people.   In this essay, Colombian historian Renán Vega Cantor outlines what critical educators driven by a humanist ethic could and should be doing.

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30/09/2024

ALAIN GRESH/SARRA GRIRA
Gaza – Lebanon, a Western war

Alain Gresh and Sarra Grira, Orient XXI, 30/9/2024
Translated by
Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

Alain Gresh (Cairo 1948) is a French journalist specialising in the Mashreq region and director of the OrientXXI website.

 Sarra Grira is a doctor in French literature and civilisation, with a thesis entitled Roman autobiographique et engagement: une antinomie? (XXe siècle), and is editor-in-chief of OrientXXI.

How far will Tel Aviv go? Not content with reducing Gaza to a field of ruins and committing genocide, Israel is extending its operations to neighbouring Lebanon, using the same methods, the same massacres and the same destruction, convinced of the unfailing support of its Western backers who have become direct accomplices in its actions.

The number of Lebanese killed in the bombardments has exceeded 1,640, and the Israeli ‘exploits’ have multiplied. Inaugurated by the episode of the pagers, which caused many Western commentators to swoon over the ‘technological feat’. Too bad for the victims, killed, disfigured, blinded, amputated, written off. It will be repeated ad nauseam that, after all, it was just Hezbollah, a ‘humiliation’, an organisation that, let's not forget, France does not consider to be a terrorist organisation. As if the explosions had not affected the whole of society, killing militiamen and civilians alike. Yet the use of booby-traps is a violation of the laws of war, as several specialists and humanitarian organisations have pointed out [1].

The summary assassinations of Hezbollah leaders, including that of its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, each time accompanied by numerous ‘collateral victims’, do not even cause a scandal. Netanyahu's latest thumbing of his nose at the UN was to give the go-ahead for the bombing of the Lebanese capital at the organisation's own headquarters.

In Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories, the members of the UN Security Council are ignoring the opinions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) more and more every day. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is delaying issuing a warrant against Benyamin Netanyahu, even though its prosecutor reports pressure ‘from world leaders’ and other parties, including himself and his family[2]. Have we heard Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron or Olaf Scholz protest against these practices?

For almost a year now, a handful of voices - who would almost seem to be the village fools - have been denouncing Israeli impunity, encouraged by Western inaction. Such a war would never have been possible without the airlift of USAmerican - and to a lesser extent European - weapons, and without the diplomatic and political cover of Western countries. France, if it wanted to, could take measures that would really hit Israel, but it is still refusing to suspend the arms export licences it has granted. It could also lobby the European Union, with countries like Spain, to suspend the association agreement with Israel. It is not doing so.

The never-ending Palestinian Nakba and the accelerating destruction of Lebanon are not only Israeli crimes, but also Western crimes for which Washington, Paris and Berlin bear direct responsibility. Far from the posturing and theatrics of the UN General Assembly over the last few days, let's not be fooled by Joe Biden's anger or Emmanuel Macron's pious hopes for the ‘protection of civilians’, who has never missed an opportunity to show his unwavering support for Benyamin Netanyahu's extreme right-wing government. Let's not even forget the number of diplomats who left the UN General Assembly hall when the Israeli Prime Minister took the floor, in a gesture that had more to do with catharsis than politics. For while some Western countries bear primary responsibility for Israel's crimes, others, such as Russia and China, have taken no action to put an end to this war, whose scope is expanding daily, spilling over into Yemen today and perhaps Iran tomorrow.

This war is plunging us into a dark age in which the laws, the law, the safeguards, everything that would prevent humanity from sinking into barbarism, are being methodically torn down. An era in which one side has decided to put the other side to death, judging it to be ‘barbaric’. ‘Savage enemies‘, in Netanyahu's words, who threaten ’Judeo-Christian civilisation’. The Prime Minister is seeking to drag the West into a war of civilisation with religious overtones, in which Israel sees itself as the outpost in the Middle East. With undoubted success.

Through the arms and munitions they continue to supply to Israel, through their unwavering support for a spurious ‘right to self-defence’, through their rejection of the Palestinians' right to self-determination and to resist an occupation that the ICJ has declared illegal and ordered to be halted - a decision that the UN Security Council refuses to implement - these countries bear responsibility for Israel's hubris. As members of such prestigious institutions as the UN Security Council and the G7, the governments of these states endorse the law of the jungle imposed by Israel and the logic of collective punishment. This logic was already at work in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003, with familiar results. Back in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, occupied the south, laid siege to Beirut and oversaw the massacres in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila. It was this macabre ‘victory’ that led to the rise of Hezbollah, just as Israel's policy of occupation led to 7 October. Because the logic of war and colonialism can never lead to peace and security.

29/09/2024

SCARLETT HADDAD
Despite criticism of Hezbollah, this is no time for internal discord among the Lebanese

Scarlett Haddad, L’Orient-Le Jour, 28/9/2024
Translated by
Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

 

Scarlett Haddad is a journalist and analyst for the French-language Lebanese daily L'Orient-Le Jour. She specializes in Lebanese domestic political issues in addition to Syrian, Palestinian and Iranian matters from Lebanon's perspective, including topics concerning Hezbollah and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

 At a time when it is waging a ferocious war, albeit a supportive one, against the Israelis, Hezbollah fears it could face internal unrest. At a time when the inhabitants of the South have taken to the streets again because of the violence of the Israeli bombardments in their region, political and other voices have been raised to criticise Hezbollah and ask it to close the ‘support front’. This may be pure coincidence or the expression of popular unease about this front and the prospect of its enlargement, but it may also be a step in a plan to put Hezbollah against the wall as a prelude to its weakening.


After having more or less avoided criticising Hezbollah too openly, particularly after the Israeli escalation of recent days, some political figures have decided to raise their voices. This may be entirely justified by the intensification and broadening of Israeli attacks on several regions of Lebanon and by the threat of a ground invasion, but the simultaneous nature of these criticisms raises questions for Hezbollah.

At a time when it is the target of murderous attacks and is conducting an internal investigation into possible infiltration, which its opponents are exploiting to undermine its credibility among its supporters, Hezbollah is wondering whether this sudden wave of criticism is spontaneous or whether it is orchestrated by foreign parties. It is also wondering whether this is just an indirect means of putting pressure on it to accept certain conditions or whether there is a wider plan.

What really catches its attention is the timing of this campaign, which comes at a time when truce negotiations are due to be held in New York. These talks, led by the USAmericans and the French, should in principle involve a 21-day halt to the fighting, the time needed to reach an agreement on an in-depth solution to the situation on Lebanon's southern border. Hezbollah and with it official Lebanon are insisting that the agreement should also cover Gaza, but the Israelis and the USAmericans want to separate the two issues. They could therefore try to put pressure on Hezbollah to change its mind on the latter point.

However, Hezbollah is adamant that it will continue to support Hamas in Gaza through the open front in southern Lebanon. It considers that all attempts to change its mind are doomed to failure, especially since, after the latest Israeli attacks, any concession on its part would be interpreted as a defeat. It is therefore prepared to face the consequences of this position, but what would worry them is if this sudden wave of criticism were not the prelude to internal unrest. In addition to the Israeli attacks, they will have to deal with the notorious intercommunal discord that has become an obsession for Hezbollah since the coup of 7 May 2008 and the clashes that followed.

Over the last few months, those close to Hezbollah consider that one of the greatest achievements of the opening of the ‘support front’ has been the consolidation of relations between the group's supporters and the Sunni street that favours Hamas. This sort of ‘honeymoon’ that Sunnis and Shiites in Lebanon are currently experiencing, united for the Palestinian cause, means that Hezbollah can feel that its back is protected and it can therefore devote itself fully to the front and its popular environment. Moreover, the fact that from time to time Palestinian fighters and others from various Sunni groups launch missiles against the Israeli North from the South is a way of showing the extent of the understanding and coordination between them and Hezbollah. Similarly, the welcome given to displaced persons from the South in predominantly Sunni regions is further proof of the good relations that currently exist. This is a terrible blow to any attempt to spark discord between Sunnis and Shiites. Even after the so-called beeper and walkie-talkie attacks, many young Sunnis, particularly from Tarik Jdideh neighbourhood, rushed to give blood to the wounded.

As far as the Druze community is concerned, Hezbollah can also rest easy because of the positions taken by its leader Walid Joumblatt, who has repeatedly expressed his support for the Palestinian cause and Hamas in particular in this war that has been going on for over 11 months. He has also made numerous statements urging the inhabitants of the Mountain to open their doors to displaced persons from the South, and has increased the number of so-called reconciliation and rapprochement meetings with numerous parties in the Mountain and elsewhere, with the declared aim of nipping in the bud any attempt at internal discord.

That leaves the Christians, who seem to be more difficult for Hezbollah to manage in the current period. Its relations with the Free Patriotic Movement have become more complicated and it can no longer count on unfailing support from the party's base. Admittedly, the FPM has drawn up a plan to help displaced persons in the South, but the sensitivity of its base is no longer as favourable to Hezbollah. On the other hand, most of the other parties are downright hostile to Hezbollah and even if their leaders waited before openly expressing their criticism, it was already in the air.

In this respect, there is no doubt nothing new. But rumours have been circulating recently that some parties are organising and training for a possible confrontation with Hezbollah. Immediately, the spectre of the civil war, in all its stages, which took place between 1975 and 1990, reappeared. Of course, the parties concerned deny any desire to engage in a new armed confrontation and claim that their criticisms are merely the expression of a justified political position. Similarly, well-informed military sources totally deny rumours of a possible militarisation of the political conflict, assuring us that there are no preparations in that direction. Reassuring statements in these anxious times. So there should not be time for discord.

José Alberto Rodríguez Avila, Cuba

25/09/2024

PUBLISHERS FOR PALESTINE
International publishers demand Frankfurt Book Fair cut ties with Israel
Des éditeur·trices du monde demandent à la Foire du livre de Francfort de couper ses liens avec Israël
Editorxs del mundo exigen que la Feria del Libro de Fráncfort corte sus lazos con Israel
Internationale VerlegerInnen fordern Frankfurter Buchmesse auf, Beziehungen zu Israel abzubrechen
Editori·trici del mondo chiedono alla Fiera del Libro di Francoforte di tagliare i ponti con Israele



@publishers4palestine

@pubforpalestine

ENGLISH FRANçAIS ESPAÑOL DEUTSCH ITALIANO

PRESS RELEASE
 For immediate release

Publishers for Palestine Open Letter to the Frankfurt Book Fair
Contact: Publishers for Palestine
publishersforpalestine[at]gmail[dot]com 

 24 September 2024                                                                         

International publishers demand Frankfurt Book Fair cut ties with Israel

We international publishers stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and with resisters of Israeli apartheid and genocide within Germany, including the organizers and participants of the Palestine Congress that was brutally and undemocratically shut down by German authorities. 

While a massive wave of writers, artists and cultural institutions worldwide speaks out for Palestinian liberation, enraged by Western complicity in Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, the crime of crimes, many German institutions insist on isolating themselves from the world by attempting to censor those expressions of solidarity, contrary even to German public opinion, which generally opposes Israel’s military actions in Gaza. 

Even Pop-Kultur Berlin was forced to dump its years-long partnership with the Israeli embassy after many artists boycotted the flagship German music festival. Many federal German politicians and Berlin senators condemned the campaign, which nonetheless compelled the publicly-funded event to conclusively abandon its partnership with genocidal Israel.

Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest and oldest international book fair in the world, is also complicit in the German state’s deep involvement in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. Despite supposedly standing for “respect, diversity and tolerance”, through its financial operations and cultural presence the fair is enmeshed in Germany’s financial, military, and diplomatic support for Israel’s genocide, and last year engaged in shameful repression of solidarity with Palestine.

As Publishers for Palestine, a coalition of 500 book publishers from 50 countries around the world, we call upon the Frankfurt Book Fair to undertake the following:

1.      Publicly denounce Israel’s regime of genocide and setter-colonial apartheid against the Palestinian people.

2.     Adhere to the long-standing calls from Palestinian civil society, including the absolute majority of writers, scholars, and cultural institutions, to refuse professional engagements with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit in whitewashing or justifying Israel’s oppression against Palestinians. This means refusing collaboration with Israeli book publishers, including their participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair, unless those institutions fulfil the basic demands to affirm the legally enshrined rights of the Palestinian people according to international law, including refugees’ rights.

3.     Acknowledge and denounce Israel’s deliberate targeting of writers, academics, journalists, book publishers, schools, universities, libraries, archives, and all cultural producers and caretakers of the written word in Gaza and Palestine, acknowledging that these attacks on culture, language, history, and art, are part of a genocidal project that seeks to erase Palestinian life and culture.

4.    Create programming for Frankfurt 2024 that prominently features Palestinian writers, publishers, and narratives, in a way that does not attempt to mask or minimize the truth of Palestinian history, and that does not attempt to minimize or omit the truth of the current Israeli occupation and genocide of Palestinians.

We invite fellow book publishers and writers—particularly those in Germany, and in other countries whose governments, corporations and institutions remain supportive of and complicit in Israel’s genocide and apartheid—to join us in endorsing and amplifying the above demands being made by the international publishing industry of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Publishers for Palestine

COMMUNIQUÉ DE PRESSE
Pour publication immédiate

Lettre ouverte de Publishers for Palestine à la Foire du livre de Francfort
Contact : Publishers for Palestine/
Éditeurs-Éditrices pour la Palestine
publishersforpalestine[at]gmail[dot]com

24 septembre 2024

Des éditeurs du monde demandent à la Foire du livre de Francfort de couper ses liens avec Israël

Nous, éditeurs du monde, sommes solidaires du peuple de Palestine et des résistants à l’apartheid et au génocide israéliens en Allemagne, y compris les organisateurs et les participants du Congrès de la Palestine qui a été brutalement fermé de manière antidémocratique par les autorités allemandes.

Alors qu’une vague massive d’écrivains, d’artistes et d’institutions culturelles du monde entier s’exprime en faveur de la libération de la Palestine, furieux de la complicité occidentale dans les crimes de guerre, les crimes contre l’humanité et le génocide par Israël, le crime des crimes, de nombreuses institutions allemandes insistent pour s’isoler du monde en tentant de censurer ces expressions de solidarité, contrairement même à l’opinion publique allemande, qui s’oppose généralement aux actions militaires d’Israël dans la bande de Gaza.

Même Pop-Kultur Berlin a été contraint de mettre fin à son partenariat de plusieurs années avec l’ambassade d’Israël après que de nombreux artistes ont boycotté le festival phare de la musique allemande. De nombreux politiciens allemands et sénateurs berlinois ont condamné cette campagne, qui a néanmoins contraint l’événement financé par des fonds publics à abandonner définitivement son partenariat avec l’État génocidaire d’Israël.

La Foire du livre de Francfort, la plus grande et la plus ancienne foire internationale du livre au monde, est également complice de l’implication profonde de l’État allemand dans les crimes commis par Israël contre le peuple palestinien. Bien qu’elle soit censée défendre « le respect, la diversité et la tolérance », la foire, par ses opérations financières et sa présence culturelle, est liée au soutien financier, militaire et diplomatique de l’Allemagne au génocide israélien et s’est livrée l’année dernière à une répression honteuse de la solidarité avec la Palestine.

En tant qu’éditeurs·éditrices pour la Palestine, une coalition de 500 éditeurs de livres de 50 pays à travers le monde, nous demandons à la Foire du Livre de Francfort de prendre les mesures suivantes :

1. Dénoncer publiquement le régime israélien de génocide et d’apartheid colonial contre le peuple palestinien.

2. Adhérer aux appels de longue date de la société civile palestinienne, y compris la majorité absolue des écrivains, des universitaires et des institutions culturelles, pour refuser les engagements professionnels avec les institutions culturelles israéliennes qui sont complices du blanchiment ou de la justification de l’oppression d’Israël contre les Palestiniens. Cela signifie refuser toute collaboration avec les éditeurs de livres israéliens, y compris leur participation à la Foire du livre de Francfort, à moins que ces institutions ne satisfassent aux exigences fondamentales d’affirmation des droits du peuple palestinien consacrés par le droit international, y compris les droits des réfugiés.

3. Reconnaître et dénoncer le ciblage délibéré par Israël des écrivains, des universitaires, des journalistes, des éditeurs de livres, des écoles, des universités, des bibliothèques, des archives et de tous les producteurs culturels et gardiens de l’écrit à Gaza et en Palestine, en reconnaissant que ces attaques contre la culture, la langue, l’histoire et l’art font partie d’un projet génocidaire qui cherche à effacer la vie et la culture palestiniennes.

4. Créer une programmation pour Francfort 2024 qui mette en avant les écrivains, les éditeurs et les récits palestiniens, d’une manière qui ne tente pas de masquer ou de minimiser la vérité de l’histoire palestinienne, et qui ne tente pas de minimiser ou d’omettre la vérité de l’occupation israélienne actuelle et du génocide des Palestiniens.

Nous invitons nos collègues éditeur·trices et écrivain·es - en particulier ceux·celles d’Allemagne et d’autres pays dont les gouvernements, les entreprises et les institutions continuent à soutenir le génocide et l’apartheid israéliens et à s’en rendre complices - à se joindre à nous pour soutenir et amplifier les demandes ci-dessus formulées par l’industrie internationale de l’édition à la Foire du livre de Francfort.

Éditeurs-Éditrices pour la Palestine

COMUNICADO DE PRENSA
Para publicación inmediata

Carta abierta de Publishers for Palestine a la Feria del Libro de Fráncfort  
Contacto: Editorxs por Palestina
publishersforpalestine[at]gmail[dot]com

24 de septiembre de 2024

Editores del mundo exigen que la Feria del Libro de Fráncfort corte sus lazos con Israel

Nosotres, editores del mundo, nos solidarizamos con el pueblo de Palestina y con quienes se resisten al apartheid y al genocidio israelíes en Alemania, incluidos los organizadores y participantes del Congreso Palestino que fue brutal y antidemocráticamente clausurado por las autoridades alemanas.