Category: Featured

State repression, and the spirit of resistance!

By Marion Kawas

On October 15, 2024, both the Canadian and US governments listed Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network as a “terrorist” group and ratified their years-long persecution of both the organization and its representatives. The banning of Samidoun, however, was not an isolated incident; rather, it falls into the broadening and still ongoing harassment of pro-Palestine advocates in many Western countries. Subsequently, in the US, Addameer is now banned as well.

From universities to media outlets to health agencies, there has been a concerted effort to squash the pro-liberation and pro-resistance Palestinian narrative. Just recently, Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada proposed sweeping new restrictions on university formations that will limit freedom of speech.

Meanwhile, mainstream media continues its biased reporting. Although they may occasionally run a piece to “balance” their image (cue CBC), their declared overall policy is still…No to Palestine. Even after the Canadian government’s performative recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state, still the media refuses to use the word Palestine in most instances.

But let’s return to Samidoun and how their being designated as “terrorist” has affected pro-Palestine advocacy here. We must recognize that it did have chilling repercussions and influenced the trajectory of what many activists are willing to include in their solidarity work.

The last year has seen an overemphasis on cultural aspects of Palestinian resistance and a downplaying of support for the armed resistance. Not that the cultural field isn’t important, it is, but not to the detriment of the underlying principles of the Palestinian struggle. Despite a lot of talk about “Centering the Thawabet”, there is little in the way of concrete implementation of most of its basic tenets.

However, it is enlightening (and heartening) that despite all their repression, the Zionist lobby and the Israeli media have admitted that the principles they targeted in Samidoun’s messaging are still being put forward today by other organizations. Multiple groups have accelerated their demands in recent months that the prisoners will always be the compass, and further, that they will not be silenced.

In an article earlier this year, I wrote the following:

“Even for those that felt they had political differences with Samidoun, once people are arrested and targeted, it is our duty to close ranks and defend them. This is the only response that can and will stem the violent repression currently underway, both in Palestine and globally. 

Slogans are not enough, we must be willing to put those words into action. The only reason the Palestinian struggle is still alive is because of the bravery of generations of its fighters during the last century. We cannot shy away now from honouring that proud legacy of Sumoud and resistance, the Palestinian people deserve our last breath of courage and strength.”

And now with the phoney ceasefire and all that entails, we are entering a defining moment in Palestinian history. We must be clear that the Palestinian right to armed resistance is protected by UN Resolution A/RES/43/106 of Dec. 8, 1988 that “Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for their independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.  

We must be clear that calling on the Palestinian resistance to “disarm”, something that the Israeli-US military aggression was unable to achieve in its two years of carpet bombing, is a non-starter. Why would anyone disarm while still under the mercy of an incredibly cruel and brutal genocide? While still being bombed daily and while the so-called ceasefire deal is being violated on all levels?

We must also resist the temptation to allow other voices to narrate and dominate the Palestinian viewpoint. It is positive to have elected officials or UN representatives support the struggle for Palestinian liberation, but they do not have the legitimacy nor the understanding to determine what is required at this stage.

In fact, the Palestinian Resistance organizations in Gaza have shown themselves to be highly effective and resourceful in their strategy over the last two years. In years to come, it will be studied in history books how these groups and the Gazan people managed to resist with so little and despite the overwhelming forces aligned against them. From the Western imperialist countries to the Zionist colony, to the rotten Arab regimes who were supporting this vicious attack over the last 2 years…Gaza has stood against all of them.

The will to survive and to resist demonstrated in Gaza should be an example for us all. If the Palestinians in Gaza are going back to destroyed homes and neighbourhoods, knowing what faces them, then the least we can do as solidarity activists is to honour that spirit. The spirit of a people that have resisted for over a century and plan to keeping on doing so, a spirit that will never surrender.

Yes, we are bitter!

Statement carried in AlMayadeen English: Canadian Palestinian Association… Read more

Statement carried in AlMayadeen English: Canadian Palestinian Association condemns global complicity in Gaza | Al Mayadeen English

Recently, there has been a flood of mainstream officials finally claiming to recognize the genocide in Gaza. To Bernie Sanders, to those UN officials and other Western politicians and personalities who recently discovered their morality…we acknowledge your late support but our souls are shrieking inside us, why didn’t you speak out sooner? What motivates you now, when there’s less risk? How many of our kids have died during your silence?

Do you think we will ever forgive any of you? And even when you finally “do the right thing”, do you feel remorse for the harm you created before? We are waiting for an acknowledgement of how your prior silence gave licence to genocide.

You still tiptoe around the Palestinian right to armed resistance, as if our very survival is a minefield for you. We remember how you held us responsible to convince you that we deserved your support, even as our people were being massacred. How the onus was on Palestinians to “justify” that we were worthy to be heard and to have dignity. Even at that, our voices were consistently sidetracked for the first celebrity or progressive Jewish person that finally spoke out.

Yes, we are bitter. Bitter that you still give more credence to everyone except the actual people who have survived 77 years of dispossession and Zionist brutality.

Now you want us to applaud your Oslo 2.0, this phoney recognition of a “Zionist Palestinian state”. For months, we have been warning of the dangers of this insipid plan that aims to distract and deflect from the ongoing genocide. Western regimes want us to believe that their conditional recognition of a demilitarized and gutted “Palestinian Authority” (with no authority) somehow compensates for their complicity in the massacre of Palestinians. These governments, including the Canadian government, are recklessly endangering the strategic interests of their own countries and peoples; their support for genocide and the vicious state repression of pro-Palestine advocacy will haunt them for centuries.

We are also bitter about the Arab regimes and their empty slogans, thinking they can still deceive their own people. Egypt signs a $35 billion deal with Israel for gas, the Gulf regimes give the US billions of dollars (and a free jet), and then they all want us to believe they don’t have immediate means at their disposal to change the trajectory of this US-Israeli genocide and massacre.  

Yes, we are bitter, in ways that run deeper than you will ever understand. But our time is coming and the sun will rise over Palestine. As surely as the monstrosity of Zionism will be booted to the dustbin of history.

August 23 CBC Protest

Photo Gallery from the Aug. 23 Action (check out our IG for more photos and videos)


CANADIAN MEDIA COMPLICIT IN GENOCIDE – BREAK THE SILENCE🚨

Come join us on August 23, 2025 for Anas al-Sharif, Wafa al-Udaini, Shireen Abu Akleh and all the Palestinian journalists assassinated by Israel for exposing its brutal crimes. Israel has murdered 238 journalists since Oct 8, 2023. From Gaza to Turtle Island, colonial media hides genocide behind “both sides” headlines and state-approved silence.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 2025
📍CBC (700 Hamilton St, Vancouver)
⏱️Starting from 12 pm. Drop by throughout the day.

Join us for every journalist killed, every Palestinian child buried without headlines, and every missing and murdered Indigenous woman Canada’s media erases.

From Turtle Island to Palestine, colonialism is a crime.
More info: Instagram

Info on CBC’s previous racist & biased policies: ‘Do not refer to Palestine or show a map with Palestine as a country’ — the CBC’s Orwellian rules

Canada’s false diplomacy cannot hide its complicity in genocide!

Let’s not fool ourselves or our supporters by pretending that the recent move by the Canadian government to conditionally “recognize the state of Palestine” in September bodes well (in any way) for the liberation of the Palestinian people.  It does not. In fact, this flush of Western leaders recently making the same declaration are all part of a well-orchestrated maneuver to once again disenfranchise Palestinians, an Oslo 2.0. 

You need only to look at Carney’s statement and the document released by the UN meeting this week to see the trajectory of how this is supposed to unfold. An entity (we can’t call it a state) that must be demilitarized and is forbidden to decide who can run in its own elections. And, as has been detailed before, all of this is expected to occur with “mutual” recognition of Israel by those Arab states who have not yet done so and the eventual dismantling of UNRWA. 

Both are full of fine-sounding phrases that have been heard before… “an independent, viable, and sovereign Palestinian state” or “achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee issue”. Palestinians have been hearing such nice words for literally decades now, since Oslo was signed in 1993. But its a smokescreen as history has shown clearly, a smokescreen to cover further Israeli aggression, ethnic cleansing and now genocide. 

And the timing of this new diplomatic flurry is particularly dastardly, as it seeks to cover up and distract attention from the horrors of the ongoing US-Israeli genocide and the complicity of most Western governments. Complicity like Canada’s ongoing arms shipments to Israel that were further highlighted in a new report out just this week.

We all want a progressive Canadian policy on Palestine, but this is not it. In past statements, we in CPA have been clear that legitimizing the corrupt Palestinian Authority was a dangerous and flawed policy and that the phoney “two-state” solution is a vehicle for normalization.

However, this will not be the first time that one of the US imperialist schemes won’t go according to plan; the people of the region will reject all of these infamies and determine their own destiny.  
—————————————————

Epilogue: Further clarity from Canadian PM Mark Carney, Sept. 21, 2025 in his official statement on Canada’s recognition of the state of Palestine:
“Recognising the State of Palestine, led by the Palestinian Authority, empowers those who seek peaceful coexistence and the end of Hamas.”
“The Palestinian Authority has provided direct commitments to Canada and the international community on much-needed reforms, including to fundamentally reform its governance, to hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas can play no part, and to demilitarize the Palestinian state. Canada will intensify efforts to support the Palestinian Authority’s implementation of this reform agenda, on which progress has already been made.”