22 January, Vancouver: Freedom for Ahmad Sa’adat: Protest and Postering for Palestine

Saturday, 22 January
2:00 pm
Commercial/Broadway Skytrain Station, Vancouver
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1084097665709757/ 

Join us to rally for Palestine — including freedom for Palestinian prisoners, against the ongoing displacement in the Naqab and Jerusalem, and for liberation from the river to the sea!

Ahmad Sa’adat is the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Palestinian national liberation movement leader and a symbol of the international left and revolutionary movements.

We will mark the 20th anniversary of Sa’adat’s arrest by the Palestinian Authority in the context of “security cooperation” with the Israeli occupation. After Israeli forces violently abducted him from the PA’s Jericho Prison, he was sentenced to 30 years in Israeli prison on 25 December 2008, accused of leading a prohibited organization and of “incitement.” The PFLP, like all Palestinian political parties and resistance organizations, is labeled a “prohibited organization” by the Israeli occupation authorities.

Sa’adat is a leader in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and the Palestinian national liberation movement and a Palestinian, Arab and international symbol of resistance to Zionism, capitalism, racism, apartheid and colonization. Targeted for his political role and clarity of vision, he remains unsilenced and unbroken, despite the oppression imposed upon him and 4,650 fellow Palestinian political prisoners.

Join our collective call for the freedom of Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners. Take action to escalate the boycott of Israel, end aid and support to Israel, organize for justice in Palestine and resist imperialism and colonialism.

While held in the PA’s Jericho Prison, Sa’adat and his comrades were held under U.S, British, Canadian and other foreign guards. Some of those same British guards previously served to guard Irish Republican prisoners in the occupied North of Ireland. After a violent Israeli attack, Ahmad Sa’adat and his comrades are now serving lengthy sentences in Israeli prisons.

Also, just as Sa’adat was persecuted by the Israeli occupation for leading an “illegal organization”, the PFLP and other Palestinian resistance groups are listed in the U.S., Europe, Canada and elsewhere on so-called “terrorist lists”. These designations are used to criminalize resistance, much as the Palestinian prisoners are criminalized. Now, the Israeli occupation is attempting to use terror designations to suppress organizing and activism from grassroots organizations and civil society groups. “Terror” labels are used as a colonial weapon against resistance movements, and we affirm: Resistance is a right!

“The Palestinian struggle for national liberation is part and parcel of the international movement of peoples for national liberation, international racial and economic justice, and an end to occupation, colonialism and imperialism.” – Ahmad Sa’adat

Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea!