SYRIA/PALESTINE: Statement in solidarity with Zapatistas and to condemn the suppression by Mexican government /بيان للتوقيع تضامنا مع الزاباتيين وتنديدا بقمع الحكومة المكسيكية

(Español abajo — English after Arabic and Spanish)
بيان للتوقيع:
شباط (فبراير)/ 2014:

إلى أنصار الإعلان السادس لجيش التحرير الزاباتي في غابات لاكاندون.
إلى جيش التحرير الوطني الزاباتي.
إلى مجالس الحكومة الجيدة.
إلى قواعد دعم الزاباتيين
إلى جميع المناضلين والمناضلات من أجل عالم يتسع للجميع.

Regarding the ongoing events in the Ukraine: Statement by Unity Anarcho-Communist Organization Palestine/Israel

The Ukraine is in the throes of a popular uprising, against its regime, which is becoming ever more repressive. Much of the mainstream media presents the image of a confrontation taking place between the two statist political factions in Ukraine: The governing coalition, led by President Yanukovich, which has recently backed away from a trade agreement with the EU, and is developing a close subservient relationship with Russia; and the smaller nationalist opposition, headed by the parties called the Blow, Homeland and Freedom, opposing this development and seeking to attach Ukraine more strongly to the EU.

SYRIA/PALESTINE: Oday Tayem, Son of the Two Intifadas

By Budour Hassan

On 29 August 2013, Syrian security forces arrested Palestinian-Syrian activist Oday Tayem after raiding his house in Jaramana, a regime-controlled suburb southeast of Damascus. In the five months following his incommunicado detention, attempts by Oday’s family members and friends to know the specific security branch where he is being held have failed.

Born on 12 May 1993 south of the Syrian capital in al-Yarmouk Refugee Camp, Oday is the eldest of three brothers. His father is a refugee from the ethnically-cleansed village of al-Shajara, near Tiberias, and his mother’s family was displaced from Kafr Kanna, a town near Nazareth, in the 1948 nakba.

PALESTINE: Eight questions Palestinian queers are tired of hearing

Graffiti in Ramallah reads “Queers passed through here.” (Image courtesy of Al-Qaws)

By Ghaith Hilal

You might think that the main goal of a group of queer activists in Palestine like us in Al-Qaws should be the seemingly endless task of dismantling sexual and gender hierarchy in one’s own society.

It is. But you might think otherwise, judging from the repetitive questions we get during our lectures and events, or from inquiries we receive from media and other international organizations.

We intend to end this once and for all. Educating people about their own privilege is not our burden. But before we announce our formal retirement from this task, here are the eight most frequent questions we get, and their definitive answers.

SYRIA/PALESTINE: Palestine and the Syrian Revolution

Via: Palestinians in Syrian Situation Face Book Page

This is a transcript of a presentation given by Palestinian anarchist Budour Hassan on 17 November 2013 at a Teach in on Syria in New York organized by the MENA Solidarity Newtork US . There is a link to the video of the presentation below.

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SYRIA/PALESTINE: Palestinians and the Syrian Revolution: Lessons from the fight against fascism

April 6, 2013 by Talal Alyan

One writer asserts that even if it were in the Palestinian’s interest for Assad to remain in control, they should not ask that of Syrians in the midst of a civil war.

The lapse of support for the Syrian revolution amongst some segments of the Arab left will in retrospect be regarded as another failure to stray from party vanguards. Palestinians have once again found themselves being used as props for political causes they neither endorse nor hold any sympathy for. The latest instance being the Pro-Assad camp that has worked tirelessly to link the Palestinian issue with the Assad regime.

The colour brown: de-colonising anarchism and challenging white hegemony

By Budour Hassan

The appearance of the Egyptian Black Bloc in Cairo’s streets in January 2013 triggered gullible excitement in Western anarchist circles. Little thought was given to the Egyptian Black Bloc’s political vision – or lack thereof – tactics, or social and economic positions. For most Western anarchists, it was enough that they looked and dressed like anarchists to warrant uncritical admiration. Facebook pages of Israeli anarchists were swamped with pictures of Egyptian Black Bloc activists; skimming through the US anarchist blogosphere during that period would have given one the impression that the Black Bloc was Egypt’s first-ever encounter with anarchism and anti-authoritarianism. But as American writer Joshua Stephens notes, the jubilant reaction many Western anarchists have towards the Black Bloc raises unflattering questions concerning their obsession with form and representation, rather than content and actions. And in this regard, these anarchists are not different from the Islamists who were quick to denounce the Black Bloc as blasphemous and infidel merely because they looked like Westerners. Further, many Western anarchist reactions to the Black Bloc unmask an entrenched orientalist tendency. Their disregard of Egypt and the Middle East’s rich history of anarchism is one manifestation of this. As Egyptian anarchist, Yasser Abdullah illustrates, anarchism in Egypt dates back to the 1870’s in response to the inauguration of the Suez Canal; Italian anarchists in Alexandria took part in the First International, published an anarchist journal in 1877, and took part in the Orabi revolution of 1881; Greek and Italian anarchists also organised strikes and protests with Egyptian workers. Yet these struggles are nonchalantly shunned by those who act today as if the Black Bloc is the first truly radical group to grace Egyptian soil.

PALESTINE: Palestinian Anarchists in Conversation: Recalibrating anarchism in a colonized country

By Joshua Stephens

Photo credit: Ahmad Nimer

“I’m honestly still trying to kick the nationalist habit,” jokes activist Ahmad Nimer, as we talk outside a Ramallah cafe. Our topic of conversation seems an unlikely one: living as an anarchist in Palestine. “In a colonized country, it’s quite difficult to convince people of non-authoritarian, non-state solutions. You encounter, pretty much, a strictly anticolonial – often narrowly nationalist – mentality,” laments Nimer. Indeed, anarchists in Palestine currently have a visibility problem. Despite high-profile international and Israeli anarchist activity, there doesn’t seem to be a matching awareness of anarchism among many Palestinians themselves.

ISRAEL: A smug, bourgeois Israeli ‘social protest’

May 19, 2013 by Larry Derfner

Despite the wishes of many — if not most — of the people in the streets, the masses who identify with the ‘social protest’ are callous to those whose complaints are so much more urgent than theirs.  

PALESTINE: 65 years: ongoing Nakba, secondary displacement

15 May 2013 by BADIL

Of the 11.4 million Palestinians worldwide, 66% are forcible displaced (refugees and internally displaced people) and over half live in the Shatat (forced exile). Instead of an event relegated to history, the Nakba continues into its 65^th year – the central source for the annual increase of these displacement statistics.

(Graphic: Institute for Palestine Studies)