Announcing the RDTW 2024 Recipients!

  • November 21, 2024 1:06 am

from Philly ABC

rdtw-2024-recipients.jpg

Every year, we raise money for the ABCF Warchest and a single designated political prisoner or organization through our biggest event, Running Down the Walls (RDTW). This year we dedicated the split of proceeds to support on-the-ground mutual aid work in Gaza, but for the first time, we did not announce any specific recipients. Early in our planning, we corresponded with people in Cairo who facilitated evacuations from Gaza, but then Israel seized and closed the Rafah Crossing, rendering this work impossible. Acknowledging that the situation on the ground would likely continue to be fluid and unpredictable, we decided to simply support “mutual aid in Gaza” and choose the specific recipients based on the reality on the ground following the event.

On September 15th, we ran with almost 400 comrades both inside and outside prison walls in the biggest and most financially successful RDTW ever. We’re now thrilled to be able to announce the recipients of the event. We will continue to accept donations and sell t-shirts through November 26th, so if you have not yet contributed to RDTW, or you would like to give a little extra, you can now you can see exactly who your money will be supporting. Since we have already raised record funds for the ABCF Warchest this year, all further funding will go to the following co-recipients in Gaza:

Thamra

Thamra is a new Palestinian organization that promotes food sovereignty in Northern Gaza through restoring water access, building urban food gardens, and providing fresh produce. It was created by farmer Yousef Abu Rabea, whose family has cultivated strawberries in Beit Lahia for generations, and photographer Leena Almadhoun. Yousef managed to hastily collect seeds and seedlings before evacuating his family farm earlier this year amidst heavy IDF shelling. Upon returning to the ruins, he scavenged dried-out peppers and eggplants. He and his brothers began planting anew in rooftop containers, and in the land between their home and a destroyed kindergarten. Once they could provide fresh produce for their family and surrounding community, they began traveling across Northern Gaza, sharing food, seeds, and water, and creating new gardens.

On October 22nd―shortly after we first learned of Yousef and Leena’s work but before we were able to make contact with them―we learned that Yousef had been martyred alongside another team member, Zakaria Abu Sultan, by a targeted IDF airstrike in the Al-Shemaa area. Yousef was 24 and Zakaria was 30. Their work is being continued by Thamra, which means “fruit” in Arabic. We extend our support and solidarity to Thamra in Yousef and Zakaria’s memory.

Operation Olive Branch’s Family Encampment

Since July, the Operation Olive Branch Family Encampment has faced down evacuation orders and the closure of humanitarian corridors to provide food, water, medical care, and other necessities to 300 residents requiring urgent perinatal care in Gaza. It is currently expanding to provide the same level of support to 1000 residents with disabilities and urgent medical needs. OOB is an international organization that links on-the-ground mutual aid projects with international support. The Family Encampment is coordinated by PAL Humanity, two Palestinian doctors and sisters who provide field visits and distribute medical aid; Palestinian dentist Dr. Zayn Eldeen, who distributes infant formula and hot meals; and Palestinian cook Amani Alkahlout, who cooks for hundreds of families in Rafah and runs supply deliveries.

The Sanabel Team

The Sanabel Team is a Palestinian-led mutual aid initiative launched in 2018 to help families in need in Khan Yunis. It has since expanded to provide food, clean water, and basic needs to families displaced internally in Gaza and externally to Egypt. The Gaza team continues to provide daily hot meals despite constant threat of violence and repeated displacement. On at least on occasion (October 7th), the team has been forced to flee their mobile kitchen under Israeli bombardment. On May 27th, Sanabel worker and video editor Muhammad was martyred during the Israeli bombing of a refugee camp that killed 44 other people and wounded more than 200, most of them women and children. Muhammad was 27. We extend our support and solidarity to Sanabel in Muhammad’s memory.

The Sameer Project’s Refaat Alareer Camp

The Sameer Project is a grassroots aid organization led by four Palestinians in the diaspora. Originating in an informal mutual aid network linking an extended Palestinian family, it expanded as the genocide wore on to coordinate shelter and medical aid in central and South Gaza, and food, water, diapers, and medical aid in north Gaza. We are supporting their most recent initiative, the Refaat Alareer Camp, which will provide shelter in central Gaza for perinatal and neonatal people, children with disabilities, and adults with special needs and mobility issues, war injuries, and chronic diseases. Relocated in early September after an Israeli quadcopter came to the camp and shot two of its children, the new Refaat Alareer Camp will include an independent medical clinic, will supply food, diapers, and formula, and will provide mental health support to traumatized children via a virtual reality tent.

The Sameer Project is named after the father and uncle of two of its organizers. In the words of his niece Hala Sabbah :

[Sameer] passed in Gaza in January. … My uncle was a lover of Palestine, a lover of giving, and so we wanted to honor him.

The Refaat Alareer Camp is named after the professor, writer, and cofounder of the organization, We Are Not Numbers, whose last prophetic poem written to his daughter Shaimaa, “If I Must Die” has become a touchstone of Palestinian resilience both in Gaza and internationally. In December 2023, after months of death threats, Refaat was martyred in a deliberately targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, sister, and four of his nephews. In April 2024, another Israeli airstrike killed Shaimaa, her husband Mohammed Siyam, and Refaat’s infant grandchild Abdul Rahman in their Gaza City home. We extend our support and solidarity to the Sameer Team in their memory, and in the spirit of Refaat Alareer’s final printed words: “If I must die, / you must live.”

Again, if you have not already done so, please consider donating or buying a t-shirt before November 26th to support Thamra, OOB’S Family Encampment, the Sanabel Team, and the Sameer Project’s Refaat Alareer Camp. As we do every year, we will release a detailed reportback outlining the money in, and the disbursement of funds.

Some Initial Thoughts On Unity Of Fields

  • November 9, 2024 1:49 am

Submission

Some Initial Thoughts On Unity Of Fields

[I am writing as an insurrectionary anarchist in the u$a and speaking to that context]

Unity Of Fields is a counter-info project that emerged in August of 2024. They describe their project as “a militant propaganda front against the US-NATO-zionist axis of imperialism.” It used to be Palestine Action US and has since changed its orientation. It has a website and some social media accounts, some of which have are banned at the time of this writing, they seem to be most popular on Telegram. Although it links to mostly anarchist sources for technical knowledge, Unity Of Fields does not seem to be an anarchist project and their political reading and media suggestions are all over the map. They suggest classic decolonial texts by Fanon and Cesaire, Black liberation writings from the BLA and BPP, texts from various Palestinian resistance factions, as well as authoritarian communists like Lenin and Mao among others.

Mostly their website is a clearing house for news, action analysis, and communiques. Many of the communiques posted are original submissions though they also repost from other counter-info projects and from social media. They also post some of their own original writings to their website. The fact that they post sketchy criminal stuff and link to technical advice on how to better carry out insurrectionary forms of struggle is probably a large part of why they are discussed in anarchist circles at all.

What does the emergence of a project like Unity Of Fields mean for us as anarchists? For one thing Unity Of Fields expands some spaces we occupy as anarchists — the combative struggle space and the digital counter-info space. We are clearly not the only ones re-coloring walls, opening windows, and carrying out our little sabotages and then writing about it, though at least for now others seem to look to our collective knowledge and experience for technical guidance. We are sharing a struggle space, one which is not limited to riotous moments and combative demonstrations, with other rebels who have made themselves visible to us. We are being included (at least some of the time) in a dialogue with other rebels through the sharing of our words and news of our actions, and anarchists have shared writings from Unity Of Fields on our own websites.

Local struggles against zionism, imperialism, and colonialism are visibly taking on more destructive, decentralized, anonymous, and autonomous approaches, a long-term dream of insurrectionary anarchists, yet new questions arise for us. How do we want to contend with other rebels with whom we have ideological differences and tactical similarities? How do we avoid getting lost in the vanguardist, unifying, nationalist tendencies that often accompany revolutionary leftist approaches to combative struggle? Are we interested in conspiring with these others outside the spontaneity of spiky demonstrations, occupations (and potentially riots), and if so how?

As anarchists we both seek to expand and connect anarchic forms of struggle yet also hold a healthy skepticism of unity with people who don’t hold anti-authoritarian views of freedom. Our history includes many betrayals by the left and progressives, from peace policing at demonstrations to executions and imprisonment from newly established revolutionary governments. The question of who to coalesce with and why is not an easy one, and one that is best addressed on a case by case basis. The appearance of Unity Of Fields potentially facilitates the dialogues and understanding that can help us better decide if and how we want to team up. As anarchists can often find ourselves isolated from others who we may have some political parallels with, the opening up of a “militant propaganda front” is a bridge to dialogue and learn across. This is not a call to join forces with anyone on the basis of being anti-zionist or anti-amerikkkan, it’s simply a reminder to always be analyzing the changing terrain around us and to think critically as we carry forward our struggles.

“Towards The Last Intifada” and “Towards Another Uprising” seem to be the beginnings of a dialogue among anarchists that address some of these questions. I look forward to more.

Relevant Readings:

Unity Of Fields: Opening Up A New Front

Unity of Fields: Opening Up a New Front

Towards The Last Intifada

Towards the Last Intifada: A Statement on Palestine by Anarchists

Towards Another Uprising

Towards Another Uprising

Archipelago – affinity, informal organization, and insurrectional projects

Archipelago – AudioZine

Voices from the Front Line Against the Occupation: Interview with Palestinian Anarchists

Voices from the Front Line Against the Occupation: Interview with Palestinian Anarchists

PS: Some Thoughts On Spectacle

Many if not most of the actions posted to Unity Of Fields are accompanied by some visual media, usually photos, sometimes videos. I want rebels to consider some pitfalls of spectacularizing our struggles. Every photo or video is another crumb for the state to eat up as part of their investigations. Digital media can offer up metadata about where and when and what kind of device it was recorded on if not properly removed. Footage that shows rebels gives the state valuable information, such as number of participants, approximate time of day, whether any passersby were present, as well as biometric data even when a person is masked. Height, skin tone, gait, approximate weight, and other information can be determined from even grainy footage.
Additionally there are the downsides of understanding our struggles in a quantitative way. This approach may blunt the qualitative changes that participating in struggle can bring us individually and collectively. Of course propaganda is useful, the seductive appeal of revolt is made easier with imagery, and these things must be weighted out, no struggle will be pure. I want to remind us that though this is the path that is being worn into the ground, it is not the only one, and should we choose it let us choose it intentionally.

pro-Palestine vandalism, arson at Centre Co. DoD building – Ferguson Township, PA

  • November 6, 2024 1:14 am

from Unravel

Investigators say on June 4, the unidentified suspect allegedly spray-painted pro-Palestine graffiti on the side of the U.S. Department of Defense contractor building, which is located along Science Park Road, in Ferguson Township.

Authorities say the graffiti included several pro-Palestine phrases, such as”FOR THE MARTYRS,” “ESCALATE 4 RAFAH,” and “FREE PALESTINE.”

Federal officials say the suspect then allegedly attempted to enter the building but fled after being confronted by security.

Investigators say a few days later, during the early morning hours of June 9, the same individual returned to the building and again spray-painted graffiti, including the phrase “INTIFADA IS HERE,” and an inverted red triangle indicating the “rising” is here.

Authorities say the suspect then began pouring a flammable liquid near the building before lighting it and fleeing the scene.

Investigators note that the area around the building includes a compressed natural gas pipeline, a natural gas generator, and a nearby transformer.

Found on Mainstream Media

Old City Synagogue Statue Vandalized – Philadelphia, PA

  • November 6, 2024 1:12 am

from Unravel

October 22, 2024

Someone defaced a memorial sculpture in front of the building by scrawling profanity on it, said Police Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore.

The sculpture was a tribute to Israeli military commander Yonatan Netanyahu, the brother of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who led — and was killed during — the raid on Entebbe that rescued more than 100 hostages being held by terrorists at an airport in Uganda in 1976. Both brothers, Zarnighian said, were congregants at Mikveh Israel.

Police said the profanity written on the memorial statue was not antisemitic.

Congregation Mikveh Israel was founded in 1740 and bills itself as the synagogue of the American Revolution.

Found on Mainstream Media

NJ Hate Watch: Zionist Owned Restaurants of NJ

  • November 5, 2024 1:35 am

from Jersey Counter-Info

[This post only contains information relevant to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, to read the entire article follow the above link.]
The majority of Zionist owned NJ restaurants have tried to subdue their outward image over the past year in order to not draw attention their genocidal agenda and beliefs. With the many successful pro-Palestine marches, rallies, and boycotts that have taken place in NJ, Zionist business owners and staff fear that they will draw-in protestors, lose money, and risk being shuttered for good.The restaurants highlighted in this article have been positively identified as being Zionist owned and operated. It is requested that all restaurants listed below be boycotted and exposed for being supporting the ongoing genocide against Palestinians and propping up violent settler colonialism in Gaza and occupied Palestine.

This list is not exhaustive, so it’s important to examine any restaurants that may be suspicious, as it can be difficult to identify what businesses are “safe”. The following information can help you figure out if a restaurant in question is Zionist owned and operated. Many Zionist/Israeli restaurants try to squeak by unnoticed by branding themselves as non-specific “Middle Eastern”, “Kosher”, and/or “Mediterranean” establishments, while stealing commonly used Arab and Palestinian Arab cultural images, recipes, and Arabic phrases which they profit off. While their menus typically feature a range of dishes, they often change the name of individual dishes, making their actual intentions and beliefs known. A prime example of this is “Arabic Salad”, which is re-branded as “Israeli Salad”, or “Israeli couscous”. More reading about the Zionist/Israeli tradition of cultural food theft can be found here. Checking out a restaurant’s social media content and websites can also illuminate whether or not they are owned/operated by Zionists.

1. Mia’s Meals- Located at 3 S Haddon Ave. Haddonfield NJ 08033

Mia’s Meals operates out of Located at 3 S Haddon Ave. Haddonfield NJ 08033, which is pictured on the left.

Mia’s Meals, which is owned and operated by Zionist Mia Eylon, is branded as a “Middle Eastern” falafel bar.

Mia Eylon, is pictured on the bottom left. Mia also runs the restaurants social media accounts.

Eylon has utilized social media to brand the restaurant in a trendy way to attract different subsets of patrons including vegans. Looking deeper at the restaurant’s social media page also reveals explicit support for the Palestinian genocide and Israel.

Eylon has used the business to raise thousands of dollars to support the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF).

Mia’s Meals is directly engaged in funding the Palestinian genocide.

3. Naf Naf Grill– Located at 1041 NJ Route 73 Marlton, NJ 08053

Naf Naf Grill is located at 1041 NJ Route 73 Marlton, NJ 08053, within a corporate park strip mall.

Naf Naf Grill is a smaller national chain restaurant, founded by Israeli Zionist Sahar Sander, that poses as a “Middle Eastern Grill”. There are locations in several states, including NJ. Nationally, Naf Naf Grill offers franchising opportunities to those who have the capital and poor ethics to do so.

Naf Naf Grill’s hours of operation.

Send tips and information: njhatewatch@protonmail.com

graffiti and wheatpastes

  • October 29, 2024 1:16 am

from Mastodon

Some excellent graffiti and wheatpastes I ran into

Grafitti saying burn the prisons
Poster saying anti-fascist anti-zionist stop cop city everywhere
Poster saying your taxes are funding genocide and you choose to look away?

Monday October 28th: Letter-writing for Pre-Oslo Palestinian Prisoners

  • October 27, 2024 1:34 am

from Philly ABC

pre-oslo-letter-writing.jpg

Join us on Monday October 28th at 6:30pm at Wooden Shoe Books for the next session of our letter-writing series illuminating facets of Palestinian resistance movements. This month we’ll be discussing and writing to one of the pre-Oslo Palestinian political prisoners. There are approximately a dozen men, most of whom are serving life sentences for resisting the occupation forces, who have been imprisoned since before the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. These men have been intentionally excluded by occupation forces from release deals. Many of them remain active from behind bars through writing essays and founding the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

Snacks and letter-writing supplies will be provided. We’ll tune in to some related podcasts while we’re writing. If you are unable to join us, you can write to Palestinian prisoners via Samidoun’s website.

Hands Off Samidoun: Solidarity with the Palestinian Prisoner Support Network

  • October 26, 2024 1:37 am

from Philly ABC

hands-off-samidoun.jpg

 Photo credit: Joe Piette

 

Philly ABC extends our solidarity to Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, in response to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) falsely-premised sanctions against the organization announced on October 15th. As anarchists and abolitionists attuned to organizing against prisons and policing, we recognize this as the latest attempt to employ the tactic of fabrication to repress powerful social movements. Samidoun affirmed their commitment to remain steadfast in the struggle to free Palestinians from the atrocities of colonization and state-sponsored fascism:

As Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, we reiterate our support for the Palestinian people, the prisoners and the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic resistance, who are confronting the genocide and occupation on a daily basis. … Our response to this designation is clear: we will keep struggling to stop the genocide, stop imperialist support for Israel, until the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. … The repression is a sign of strength for the Palestinian movement and the international solidarity movement. This movement has mobilized the largest demonstrations for Palestine in history, has costed Israeli and Zionist companies billions of dollars in losses, it has united millions of people from across the world, and it has united virtually all social movements in every country for the Palestinian liberation struggle. …We affirm that we shall remain steadfast and committed to the Palestinian people, until victory, return and liberation.

We concur that this repression is a sign of strength. It’s a clear reaction to the surge of global support for resistance movements and efforts to confront Israel’s blatant fascism, in which both the U.S. and Canadian governments are complicit. It’s the type of flailing they do when shit is getting hot; when solidarity is getting real.

In light of their fascist agenda in Palestine, in response to international calls for solidarity, around 400 of us came together in Philly (and remotely) on the 25th anniversary of #RunningDownTheWalls to support mutual aid in Gaza. Not only does Gaza qualify as the world’s largest open air prison, but every Palestinian held by the Zionist entity can be considered an anti-colonial political prisoner. It was the biggest crowd in the history of RDTW. A comrade from Samidoun spoke about the importance of amplifying the voices of Palestinian prisoners, to bolster our collective movements for their freedom as well as liberation more broadly. Just as we support Indigenous and Black liberation movements on Turtle Island and recognize captured combatants as prisoners of war, Palestinians have every right to fight for self-determination.

While hundreds of thousands across the globe continue to mobilize to stop the genocide of Palestinians―and continue to take action day after day to confront imperialist complicity in fascism and colonization―our enemies are deploying their bookies to collect on lost profits and find the next leg to break. We know that these sanctions are just one of many attempts, to quell the groundswell rising for the freedom of Palestine and the right to return. We know that these tactics aim to scare us away from supporting resistance movements and freedom fighters, and we know that it never works! It only ignites us. We know that solidarity is a threat, and threat it shall be, because no one is free until all are free.

Until every cage is empty,
Philadelphia Anarchist Black Cross 🏴

Penn sent officers to raid a pro-Palestinian activist house off campus. They said it was in connection with a vandalism investigation.

  • October 26, 2024 1:31 am

from Mainstream Media

Residents of the house said a cell phone was taken and that the search warrant was issued in connection to a recent vandalism.

University of Pennsylvania police officers raided the off-campus home of several Penn community activists last week in connection to an alleged act of vandalism — a move that has deepened scrutiny into the Ivy League institution’s handling of dissent over the war in Gaza.

Around 6 a.m. on Oct. 18, residents said a dozen armed campus officers stormed their West Philadelphia home in tactical gear, corralling the pajama-clad residents at gunpoint. People who live in the house said police brought one resident, whom they did not identify, to the station for questioning and that their “personal device was seized on suspicion of vandalism.”

While no one has been charged or arrested, the group described the search as an unprecedented and “traumatic” show of force against pro-Palestinian activists on campus.

“This is a disgusting escalation from the University, and comes after a year of disciplining, arresting, and brutalizing their own students who organize for Palestinian liberation, and they made the deliberately traumatizing and threatening decision to invade our home,” the house residents said in a joint statement. The group provided written answers to The Inquirer, but declined to be individually identified as they have not been charged and feared further reprisal.

Penn police confirmed that officers executed a search warrant on Friday in connection with a vandalism incident, but did not specify details about the case or the underlying vandalism. Penn police defended the action by saying that, in the last four months, the university has experienced about a quarter million dollars in damages from vandalism, including broken glass and graffiti.

“Any legal action taken by the UPPD is based on the violation of laws in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not the policies of the university,” said Kathleen Shields Anderson, vice president of Penn’s division of public safety.

While Penn did not elaborate on the alleged vandalism, the search warrant nonetheless marks an escalation in the school’s handling of the fallout from the war overseas. It also comes at the time when the university faces pressure to crack down on antisemitic speech as well as activity critical of Israel on campus. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian student protests over the war continue to roil the campus and administers over what activists describe as biased and uneven treatment.

Penn police did not provide a copy of the warrant and the record has yet to be filed with the courts as of Thursday, meaning details of the investigation may remain unclear unless or until charges are filed.

A spokesperson for District Attorney Larry Krasner confirmed that the prosecutor’s office approved the search warrant based on an ongoing investigation led by Penn police. If the search leads the university to pursue criminal charges, the district attorney “will carefully review the evidence submitted by the appropriate law enforcement authorities and make a fair and just determination,” said spokesperson Dustin Slaughter.

It was not clear where the off-campus house was located nor how many people live there. The group described themselves as “members of the Penn community,” of varying ages.

Last week, Penn police and Philadelphia police officer entered the home, awoke the residents and moved the group into the living room “at gunpoint,” the group said in a statement. The Philadelphia Police Department declined comment and deferred questions to Penn police.

Residents described the early-morning sting as “the most severe act of university repression of pro-Palestine activism since last October” as well as “a staggering show of force unheard of at any other university.” The group said it has consulted with lawyers.

Anderson maintained that throughout the execution of the warrant, officers “took care to explain to all involved what was occurring and to treat them with respect.”

As with other campuses, vandalism has been a routine flashpoint at Penn since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, with messages calling for “Ceasefire” or “Free Gaza” scrawled on campus buildings across the region. Penn has been the site of a concentrated — and controversial — series of defacements, including several incidents within the last month alone, according to the student-run Daily Pennsylvanian.

More vandalism occurred this week, including one that said “Kill Zios” and another that said, “KILL YOUR LOCAL ZIO NAZI,” the student newspaper reported Thursday.

In July, doors and windows were damaged at the Pennovation Center, which houses the company Ghost Robotics, which is involved in the production of equipment used by the military and which critics have targeted in the wake of Israel-Hamas war.

But on a large, urbanized campus, few vandalism cases result in exhaustive police investigations, let alone warrant executions.

Yalile Suriel, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota who studies higher education and the militarization of campus police forces, said such departments only began conducting search warrants in recent decades, as universities dramatically expanded their law enforcement footprint. Many university departments now serve as supplemental extensions of the local police department — but often with less accountability.

“Unlike state institutions, where at least there is a sense of transparency and public record, private institutions and their police operate largely away from public view,” she said.

Suriel said that most high-profile raids that make the news involve narcotics on campus, though she could not recall another case like this focused solely on vandalism.

Public outcry over the raid has grown in recent days — with some describing the raid as a gratuitous show of force considering the nature of the alleged crime.

State Rep. Rick Krajewski, who represents parts of West Philadelphia, called it “completely unacceptable and disturbing that a dozen officers armed with tactical gear and assault rifles threatened the safety of unarmed young people who are not only students, but our neighbors.”

Monday October 28th: Letter Writing for Marwan Barghouti

  • October 25, 2024 1:48 am

from Philly ABC

marwan-barghouti-letter-writing-2024.jpg

Join us on Monday October 28th at 6:30pm at Wooden Shoe Books as we send letters to Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian political leader associated with the First and Second Intifidas, and with the campaign for improved conditions for Palestinian prisoners. Marwan has been variously referred to as “the single most popular Palestinian leader alive,” a “ “symbol of resistance,” and “the world’s most important prisoner.” We’ll also sign a card for political prisoner Josh Williams, whose birthday is November 25th.

From prisonersolidarity.com :

Marwan Hasib Ibrahim Barghouti was born in the West Bank village of Kobar in 1962. He is a prominent and popular political figure associated with Fatah, currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison. He is a member of the Fatah Central Committee, and of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Often described by Palestinians as the ‘Palestinian Mandela.’

In the run-up to the First Intifada, Barghouti was a student leader at Bir Zeit University involved in popular protests. He was deported by Israel to Jordan in May 1987 and was only allowed to return to the West Bank in 1993 as part of the Oslo Accords. The following year, in 1994, he became secretary-general of Fatah in the West Bank. During the Second Intifada, he allegedly directed military attacks against Israeli targets. Israel accuses him of having established the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (AMB) at the time.

Barghouti was arrested and sentenced by an Israeli military court in 2002 to five consecutive life sentences for orchestrating attacks on Israelis. Since his imprisonment, Barghouti has been active in the prisoners’ movement and has published various articles from prison to communicate with the outside world. While in prison, he helped draft the 2006 National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners — which he co-signed with Abdulkhaleq al-Natsheh (Hamas), Bassam Sa’adi (PIJ), Abdel Rahim Mallouh (PFLP), and Mustafa Badarneh (DFLP). In 2017, he led a large-scale hunger strike to demand improved rights and conditions for prisoners.

The campaign for Barghouti’s release was launched in 2013 from Nelson Mandela’s cell on Robben Island, in South Africa, where many leaders of the anti-apartheid struggle were imprisoned. Signing the Robben Island declaration calling for Barghouti’s release were eight Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, himself a veteran of the South African campaign.

UPenn: “Sinwar Lives”

  • October 23, 2024 1:24 am

from Unity Of Fields

21 October 2024 – 📍UPenn: “Sinwar lives”

Police Raids at UPenn

  • October 23, 2024 1:22 am

from Unity Of Fields

🚨 On Friday, October 18th at 6am, 12 Penn Police officers and one PPD officer raided the home of pro-Palestine student organizers in full tactical gear and pointed rifles and handguns at the students. They refused to provide a warrant or share their names/badge numbers. The escalation of student repression nationwide continues.

The pigs are trying to scare people into obedience to the genocidal US war machine. Do not let them. We must become more bold, more audacious tacticians, more unified amongst revolutionaries…more uncompromising.

We cannot bow our heads and accept this or throw out radicals in an attempt to save our own skins. The hammer of the state can and will come down on any of us. We only get out of this together, as revolutionaries…not fractured, separate, weak, and reformist.

Even if it’s unlikely right now, it’s good practice for *all* of us to prepare for the possibility of raids, detainments, increased surveillance, subpoenas, etc – find educational resources at unityoffields.org

Source: Penn Freedom School for Palestine

Towards Another Uprising

  • October 23, 2024 1:18 am

from Act For Freedom Now

At the end of 2010 an individual act of despair in the town of Sidi Bouzid ignited a daring, enraged, and joyful upheaval that travelled through North Africa into the Middle East and beyond. People defied the oppressive systems they had been immersed in for generations and came together in the streets to topple the political elites at their helm. The authorities, at first stunned by this courageous spirit that they couldn’t understand, then unleashed a cynical and brutal response.

This defeat is still being inflicted on the people in the region, and is also felt all over the world by those who stood in solidarity with the uprisings but were mostly unable to overcome their powerlessness as the uprisings were massacred.

The horrors in the region during the last decade are many. To name some that stick most in my mind: Sisi has turned back the clock in Egypt to military dictatorship with the material support of the US. The regimes in the other North-African countries are paving over any sign of freedom while being coaxed by European countries to shut down the immigration routes over the Mediterranean. Without the murderous military campaigns of Hezbollah and the IRGC in Syria, Assad wouldn’t have survived the uprising. The Iranian regime itself brutally oppressed three different uprisings in the country in the last decade. Most people in Lebanon are in a daily struggle for survival because of the greed of its political leaders while mobs at the orders of Hezbollah beat down street protests. Early on in the uprisings, Hamas, who has shot political opponents in broad daylight on the streets of Gaza, culled attempts at an uprising by rounding up protest organizers and threatening them with murder. Leaders in the region understood once again that they can use any means against the populations under their control without real push-back from outside. Indifference, cynicism and opportunism trump moral appeals, and strategic alliances are always in play. The world churns on. For those of us who have not looked away, how can we not see a connection between Assad bombing Syrian cities into obliteration and Netanyahu razing Gaza?

 

The authors of “Towards the Last Intifada” (Tinderbox ) don’t acknowledge these experiences of the last decade. Instead, they propose to join the opposing side of an American geopolitical alliance (keeping true to American centralism in their own way). According to them, the Axis of Resistance shows the path forward for anarchists to struggle against empire. This article seems to confound resistance with ‘the Resistance’. That is to say, they collapse any form of resistance from people in Palestine, and more broadly in the region, into a particular representation, adopting an umbrella term used by states, militaries, para-state/para-military organizations to describe their own activities. The authors of the article warn anarchists against being too sensitive to hierarchy – as if that is the only aspect of ‘the Resistance’ anarchists might find difficult to accept.

It is now a year after the bloody incursion of Hamas into Israel. Apart from discourse, the accomplishments of the Resistance so far are: Hezbollah has launched ineffectual rockets that have only inflicted significant damage on a Druze village, Iranian leaders are busying themselves with making appeals to the West to reign in Israel, militias in Iraq attacked a couple of US military bases in the country early on and then fell silent, while only the Houthis seem to have taken Nasrallah’s “Unity of Fronts” seriously. They succeeded in disrupting global shipping routes and have carried out some unexpected aerial attacks on Israel. In the meantime, Israel has wiped out the leadership of Hezbollah, drops bombs on Lebanon on a daily basis, has regularly bombed sites in Syria without retaliation, and commits executions in Tehran. The Axis of Resistance and the Unity of Fronts are mere slogans that obscure the strategic dealings among political, authoritarian organisations and states with their own (often differing) interests. It’s delusional to see it as something else. And Israel is calling the bluff of ‘the Resistance’ with an exponential military escalation.

Israel’s massacres in Gaza, with the material support of the Western countries, are relentless. The apartheid regime in the West Bank and Israel has been built up for decades, leaving almost no oxygen to breathe for those living under its control. Faced with this bleak reality and an overwhelming powerlessness to put a stop to it, anarchists may be looking for an effective resistance (or rather, as it appears, an image of one). But if we want to fight against oppression, we can’t be content with any opposition. Choosing to join one authoritarian, militaristic system against another will not put an end to the horrors of this world – neither in this conflict nor in any other. It is neither inherently defeatist or a sign of privileged indifference to refuse to take sides between warring groups and states. That conclusion can only be reached if we would reduce reality to simplistic representations. Instead, by being open to complexity and specificity, anarchist action can be a liberating endeavor. It is here that we can find affinities, build relationships on a different basis, and muster the strength and courage – or perhaps, humility and passion – to attack. Anarchists find their effectiveness when they can undermine and destroy oppressive systems. We will not find it in a military prowess which, at the end of the day, produces more oppression and misery. And so those that have a spirit of their own and a memory of past rebellions will fight for another uprising.

From the northern coast of the Mediterranean, with a heavy heart and a soul on fire
Early October, 2024

Ghost Robotics Office And House Vandalized

  • October 15, 2024 1:05 am

Submission



Early Monday morning October 14 before the start of the work week the offices of local weapons manufacturers Ghost Robotics was targeted with a message for Ghost Robotics and their backer the University of Pennsylvania: Ghost Robotics and Penn, THERE’S BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS!

The UPenn run campus known as Pennovation in the Grays Ferry neighborhood where Ghost Robotics has its offices was coated with a mix of red paint, broken glass, nails, and messages from Philadelphians to Ghost Robotics and their landlord and backer UPenn: no business as usual for evil fucks who make murder tech!
Ghost Robotics AI-enabled machine-gun-armed robot dogs have been used against Palestinians in Gaza and have been sold to the Department of Homeland Security for use in the US borderlands. Philadelphians won’t stand for the manufacture of killing machines in our backyard with our stolen tax dollars. Across the city people are taking action against Ghost Robotics, demanding an end to the manufacture and distribution of weapons of apartheid. We want Ghost Robotics out of Philadelphia, out of Palestine, and out of the borderlands. As long as Ghost Robotics exists and keeps peddling their killer robot dogs, there’s blood on all of our hands. We will not stop targeting Ghost Robotics and their backers. If you profit off of genocide, you are on notice.
As we cross the threshold of one year since the people of Palestine took a bulldozer through the apartheid wall, we must reflect on how far we have come, and how far we still have to go to see the liberation of Palestine and the liberation of all people from colonialism, militarism and imperialism. This last year of resistance to apartheid and genocide has mobilized millions, and support for the people of Palestine is stronger than ever before. Even still, the US and Israeli backed assault on the Levant carries on, with escalations in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iran, and doctors estimating that 200,000 people have been killed. If the US government won’t stop sending weapons to Israel, we hope people will do what they can to stop the weapons themselves.
So long as Ghost Robotics exists and until Palestine is free, people in Philly and around the world will continue to fight against agents of genocide. Revolution until Liberation. Free Free Palestine!
House —
On the morning of October 10, an autonomous group targeted the home of Gavin Kenneally, co-founder and CEO of Ghost Robotics. The group painted “Funded By Genocide” across his garage, and “I Make Killer Dogs” on the sidewalk, threw paint at the door and ring camera, and smashed windows. We firmly say — we don’t want your dog shit in Philadelphia! And we don’t want it anywhere!
Gavin’s home is currently listed for sale for a whopping $1.9 million dollars. While his autonomous robots are shipped across the world to patrol and surveil Palestinians, Gavin awaits the sale of his lavish home he’s made with dirty money.
Other manufacturers of autonomous robots have stated their commitment to not arming robot dogs, but Ghost Robotics has positioned themselves as the dealer for these weapons. They clearly have no shame or concern about their robot dogs being used to surveil and kill people.
No genocide profiteer should sit comfortably in their home — we commit to draining funds from Gavin, to reminding him that his robot dogs are agents of U.S. imperialism, and to closing down Ghost Robotics.

Until all people are able to live safely and freely in the place they call home, we commit to fighting for our collective liberation.

Police Mural Vandalized in West Philly

  • October 13, 2024 1:55 am

Submission

We painted over a mural memorializing a dead cop. We took this action as part of the October 7 Week Of Rage in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. We recognize amerikkkan police as part of the same machine that kills and oppresses Palestinians across the ocean. In death as in life may no cop rest peacefully

-some anarchists

How to: fill fire extinguishers with paint