Creating freedom and writing the future for our children
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Creating freedom and writing the future for our children
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Creating freedom and writing the future for our children
An interview with Dahoud Shebab, Spokesperson of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza
by the Liberation staff
Through the help of friends from the international media, the Liberation staff was able to send a set of questions to the Palestinian resistance movement based in Gaza. The questions focused on the reasons why the October 7 military action against Israeli forces was launched, the unity of various groups and forces in Palestine, the vision of a free Palestine, and the lessons the world could learn from the Palestinians as they wage their war of liberation and self-determination.
The Islamic Jihad is among the various groups within the Palestinian Forces Alliance, which includes Hamas, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Struggle Front, Palestinian Liberation Front, Vanguard for the Popular Liberation War-Lighting Forces, and the Fatah Al-Intifada Movement.
Below is the transcript and translation of the video interview with Dahoud Shebab. Minor copy editing was done for this print version.
Liberation: What was the immediate trigger of the October 7 attack against the Israeli government? Is there a strategic goal behind this?
Dahoud Shebab (DS): October 7 was an expression of the angry Palestinian rejection of all forms of repression and terrorism by Israel over many years against the Palestinian people. October 7 is not isolated from the rest of the Palestinian resistance before October 7.
We must say that the Palestinian resistance is about defending its land and defending its people. The resistance is not a group of killers and killing in itself is not the goal. It is not to cause a state of destruction and ruins.
Rather, it seeks to pressure the occupation and use legitimate means to raise its voice to the world and deliver its message, especially in the light of Israel’s complete denial of the rights of the Palestinian people and the continued Israeli attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem, the West Bank; Israel’s continuous violations of prisoners’ rights; and, the continuing siege of the Gaza Strip. All these were done by Israel without anyone in the world doing anything to stop them.
We have been warning and sending messages to mediators, all parties, and the United Nations that Israeli policies will lead to a major escalation and an explosion of the situation.
Before, we witnessed great aggression by Israel. There was killing of Palestinians at checkpoints in the West Bank in cold blood. Every day there were victims. Did anyone look at those victims? No. No one looked.
Came October 7. The aim was to tell Israel and send a message to the whole world that the Palestinian resistance can cause instability if Israel continues its terrorism and aggression; and that it is not only the Palestinian people who will pay the price for Israel’s crimes. Settlers, the whole region and the whole world may pay the price. All stability will be undermined if Israel continues its attacks.
L: Did you anticipate Israel’s counter-attack to be in this magnitude?
DS: We are aware that Israel is brutal, bloody and criminal state, especially this extremist government. We know what they can do. But we did not know that the Israeli government does not care about its prisoners and soldiers in the Gaza Strip. That it can even resort to killing them if only to ensure that this leadership or the Israeli fascist government achieves political and electoral gains in its internal competitions.
Israel has even ignored the humanitarian calls made by the Palestinian resistance since day one of this battle for the release of civilian prisoners or civilian detainees for humanitarian reasons.
We have said this and called for it. Hamas has also called for it. However, Israel has not paid attention and has continued to carry out criminal and bloody bombing and destruction that has made victims even of Israeli civilians and foreign nationalities. Israel did not care at all for its civilian prisoners, not even the military personnel in the hands of the Palestinian resistance.
Indiscriminate and destructive shelling occurred whether there were Israeli prisoners, foreign nationals, or others. Entire neighborhoods were exterminated with its residents, civilians, or prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance.
Israel showed no respect even for minimum humanitarian and moral values in the Gaza Strip, especially in the areas of Gaza governorate and in northern Gaza.
L: What is the vision of a free Palestine? What do you intend to do with Israeli residents who were already born and residing in Israel for so long?
To be clear, all this land is for Palestinians and like any country in the world, when we take full rights and sovereignty over our land, then the government chosen by the Palestinian people can decide how to deal with foreign expatriates, whether Jews or non-Jews.
We have no problem with Jews; we have no problem with anyone. Our problem is with Israeli Zionists who occupied our land. We have positive and good relations with many Jews in the world. They never believe in occupation. They reject the occupation. We have no problem with them.
The problem is with Israeli Zionists who came and occupied our land and established a state on our land. Now when we take the right to our land and be liberated, we can choose our own government. This government, like any government in the world, can decide on these nationals: grant them nationalities or not grant them.
The problem is that Israel is the occupier. Thus, we treat the Israeli people as occupying our land. They are all occupiers, but upon our liberation, we will decide on it. Like any country in the world, you decide on it.
Just like the United States of America. It can or cannot grant citizenship to a person. Also it can or cannot grant any person the right to reside in its territory. Moreover, there are laws and legislation provided for in the constitutions and laws of the United States on matters of asylum, residency, and nationality.
This matter applies to different countries of the world as well. Also, why is it permissible for a group of countries, such as NATO member states, to establish an alliance with each other and have joint defense agreement but other countries could not? This is a natural right that Palestine exercises when it, too, has entered into an alliance with other countries such as Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and other countries or other powers, to support the cause of the Palestinian people.
L: An alliance of different resistance movements is now formed, are there other political forces working at a different direction? How was this unity achieved?
DS: We welcome any party that wants to support us as Palestinians and we will not stand against it. But it is important that there is no interference in our policies and in our method of work. That is, no one should intervene.
The Palestinian resistance has independent positions and are not linked to any foreign agenda as claimed by the Israeli occupation and other countries that support it. We are going to achieve a more comprehensive Palestinian unity.
Today, we are more confident than ever before in our ability to achieve internal Palestinian reconciliation. The great plight of the Palestinian people today as a result of the Israeli aggression requires building true unity, especially as some countries are trying to interfere in our affairs and imposing the form and method of managing ourselves.
We know how to manage ourselves and know how to decide our destiny. We never accept interference from any external party.
Our Arab brothers have many things in common. We all are in consensus on what things may be like in the coming days, and we will not allow Israel to impose on us the form, administration, and method of governance in the next phase.
L: What could possibly threaten this unity?
Israel is the constant threat to Palestinian unity.
Israel, which kills the sons of Fatah, the sons of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and the DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Marxist Leninist organization), and kills all the Palestinian people in the West Bank. Israel is the most serious threat to internal Palestinian unity. It has always been a major obstacle to achieving Palestinian unity.
Today, everyone is fully aware that there is no future for a settlement with Israel and that Israel is a bloody, criminal, and terrorist entity. In the long term, we believe that this conviction will promote greater efforts to overcome internal political differences and lead to building a true Palestinian unity created by the Palestinians.
This is a right exercised by all occupied nations and subjected to aggression, but won their independence at the end.
There is no occupation that lasts forever, not in all human history. We seek our freedom.
Therefore, our vision is our resistance will be further strengthened despite all Israeli threats. Israel will not be able to end the resistance, because as long as there is an occupation, the resistance will remain. This is a natural thing, and we are confident that we are closer to victory.
L: The struggle of the Palestinians is now at the center stage of the world, gathering millions of supporters. Would you consider this a political victory?
DS: The whole world today is looking at the Palestinian people, the injustice done to them and the need for the Palestinian people to exercise their rights. We are committed to use all our rights throughout our land. This is what we hope to achieve.
There are free people in the world. There are countries, peoples of the world, that have become more biased towards justice and truth regardless of their religion or belief—whether they are Jews, Christians, Muslims or any other religion.
Today, there is a great deal of empathy and support for the Palestinian people, including Arabs, foreigners, and people of all races and ethnicities. There is great sympathy for the Palestinian cause. There is great support for the right of the Palestinian people to resist, regardless of the positions of the colonial countries.
We do not expect anything from Britain, for example, or the British government. Britain is known to be a colonial country. France is a colonial country. The United States of America is the main sponsor of all the chaos that prevails in the world. It created chaos in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan and in other countries. The American experiments—even when America wanted to create governments in its own mold—failed miserably and put these countries into misery, and their future became sorry and uncertain.
L: Having demonstrated the higher unity and capacity for waging this war of liberation, what are the prospects now?
DS: People always create their freedom with their own hands. Today, the Palestinian people have decided to create their freedom and write the future of their children by their own hands.
We defend the future of future generations. We defend the future of our children in future generations. They should live a decent, safe, and stable life like other peoples of the world. But to remain under siege and suffer the injustice practiced against us by Israel, and to remain hostage to the policies of starvation, killing, and ignorance practiced by Israel against us, this can never happen.
Yes, today we are making great sacrifices. But these sacrifices will be a light of hope for a real bright future for the next generations.
The world now faces a test. All countries in the world are facing a real test. This world has raised great principles.
All peoples of the world have had bitter experiences with injustice, with tyranny, with oppression, with colonialism. People have experienced great and harsh experiences and have come up with a number of charters and laws that have begun to govern relations between countries and have begun to determine the fate of peoples and the right of peoples to independence and to live in dignity.
Today, the world faces the test of whether to be loyal and honest with itself, and to take sides with these values and principles, which were the result of a great deal of wars and bloody, deadly and destructive conflicts.
The world came up with these pacts: Today!
Either we are loyal to these charters and are honest with ourselves, or we will return to the square of bloody and deadly conflicts and return to experiences practiced or experienced by humanity decades ago.
L: What is your take on the role of Israel’s allies and supporters?
DS: We must always remember that the American colonial mind can never tell people how they can live. America has killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese and non-Japanese people in its grinding wars and destructive wars.
This is the United States of America that threatens the whole world today and dominates the whole world with its terrorist force, its nuclear weapons and its deadly weapons supplied today to Israel to subjugate the Palestinian people.
We must see the United States for what it really is. It is not a civilization, it has not created civilization, has not created stability, but has created ways for itself to dominate the whole world. Today is the time for the world to be free from American domination, from slavery to the US dollar, and for the world to take sides with justice.
There can be no justice in the light of the continued occupation of the land of Palestine, the occupation of the Palestinian people, and the continued suffering of the Palestinian people among the other peoples of the world who are also suffering as a result of American and Western colonial policies.
The whole world is a victim of the policies of Europe and America’s colonial policies. Colonial countries plundered the world’s wealth. It destroyed the world, destroyed the world economy, and dominated the world.
Today, there is a true awakening in many countries and peoples in the world, and It must be strengthened and must continue. ###
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Revolutionary lawyers raise the bar
All rise!
Everyone rose to the occasion. Although it was far from a courtroom scene, lawyers, law students, and paralegals, true to the nature of their profession, intently and intensely deliberated on the draft constitution of the underground revolutionary organization Lupon ng mga Manananggol ng Bayan or LUMABAN (literally, to fight or to struggle). They hammered out the plan of action to continuously strengthen the organization and to effectively arouse, organize, and mobilize the sector behind the national democratic revolution.
It was LUMABAN’s first congress, which Ka Joben, in his written welcome address, described as having been a long journey.
“We have come a long way, a lot of things have happened in the interim and a great many sacrifices have been waged. With inspiring tactical legal victories and cumulative strategic battles over time and hard and painful lessons as well, it is with heartfelt joy that we have finally gathered here as one united in profession, commitment and vision on a higher level,” Ka Joben said.
Acknowledging the contributions of those who had been directly involved in long process but could no longer be present at the first congress, he explained:
“The deaths from fascist hands of some, or from illness or old age of others, and the peculiar demands of our profession have impacted on the formalization of our anti-fascist and anti-imperialist organization. Many of those involved in the process are either still in the hands of the enemy or have taken on new tasks of equal importance.”
Composed of representatives from eight regions and two major sectors, the two-day founding congress was a mix of young and seasoned lawyers and paralegals. Notably, young lawyers and paralegals constituted almost half of the delegates.
Defending the people’s interests
“All of us in the National Democratic Front of the Philippines rejoice in this major act of consolidation of LUMABAN,” said Luis Jalandoni, leading member of the NDFP National Executive Council, in a video message. LUMABAN has been affiliated with the NDFP since its inception.
Jalandoni recognized LUMABAN’s support to the revolutionary armed struggle and its contributions to the NDFP’s endeavors to ensure the victory of the national democratic revolution. “It ensures that the revolution in the sector is part of the revolutionary movement and program for the establishment of the people’s democratic government,” he said.
His message corroborated Ka Joven’s point that members of the legal profession can use their skills and experience to provide a “counterview of the reactionary justice system to craft, develop, enrich, collate and further implement an alternative revolutionary legal and justice system.”
LUMABAN’s congress statement acknowledged the role of lawyers in the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, and anti-fascist struggle dating back to the Spanish and American colonial regimes.
It cited lawyer and revolutionary leader Apolinario Mabini, known as the “Brain of the Revolution,” who fought against the Spanish and American colonial rules; Epifanio delos Santos, associate editor of La Independencia, a major newspaper during the Philippine Revolution; Natividad Almeda-Lopez, the first female lawyer in the country, who was also one of the first advocates for women’s rights in the country; and, Claro M. Recto, who espoused political and economic sovereignty and fought US neocolonialism. In recent history, lawyers such as Lorenzo “Ka Tanny” Tañada, Jose “Ka Pepe” Diokno, and Romeo T. Capulong were at the forefront of the people’s struggle against the US-Marcos dictatorship.
Indictment of the US-Marcos Jr regime
NDFP Negotiating Panel interim chairperson Julieta de Lima called on members of LUMABAN to “join the entire Filipino people in struggling against the US-Marcos II dictatorship”, which she described as the “partnership of the most corrupt and most brutal political dynasties for perpetuating the reign of greed and terror in our country.”
Concurrent with this, LUMABAN’s three-year program of action calls on the Filipino people to “expose, fight, isolate and overthrow the US-Marcos regime.” Furthermore, it cited the crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system as the root of the chronic socio-economic crisis in the country that, for decades, has victimized the Filipino people especially the poor.
Agreeing with that observation, De Lima affirmed the efforts of LUMABAN members to be an “effective force” in the masses’ fight against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism, and in advancing the national democratic revolution by defending the Filipino people against the “state of the semicolonial and semifeudal system that we seek to replace with a just, patriotic, democratic and prosperous system.”
No objection
By unanimous vote, delegates to the founding congress elected the first officers of LUMABAN.
Elected chairperson was Rosa Kinabukasan. In an interview with Liberation, Kinabukasan acknowledged that establishing an underground organization of lawyers was not an easy task, citing the “inherent weakness of the legal profession—being magnet for all things bourgeois.” From law school, stated the congress statement, “We were introduced to laws of bourgeois origin, to the universal concept of rights and to the misguided idea and ideals of justice.”
Honoring their martyred comrades for defending the rights of the masses, and condemning how the State controls the legal system to serve the interests of the ruling classes, the revolutionary lawyers vowed to remold themselves by rejecting the bourgeois viewpoint and legal training. They pledged to be with the masses in the fight to end the systemic oppression and exploitation.
To paraphrase LUMABAN’s congress statement, the lawyers will not flinch, they will not falter. Whenever called, as revolutionary lawyers they will rise and fight because it is just and necessary. ### (Priscilla Guzman)
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Imperialist U.S. Heightens Intervention, Dirty War in the Philippines
In a recent collated report, the Philippine Revolution Web Central traced a disturbing modus operandi of the Armed Forces of the Philippines—that of conducting summary execution of captured combatants or hors de combat of the New People’s Army (NPA), in violation of international war protocols. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has been killing in brutal rubouts senior or veteran revolutionaries aged 60 and up, captured Red fighters, unarmed peace consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), and abducted civilians who were suspected to have connections with the revolutionary movement.
The AFP and its paramilitary groups have strafed and bombed civilian communities, hamletted if not encamped in civilian communities, threatened residents by their presence, corrupted minors and women, forcibly held “meetings” and ordered people to present themselves to the military to “clear” their names and be “informed” on the activities of the revolutionaries. While doing these, the AFP attached fabricated stories of armed encounters or “pursuit operations,” fake surrender, and various labels slandering the revolutionaries to spread disinformation.
Although the reactionary government through the AFP and the national police are the main implementers of various “counterinsurgency” Oplans, the justification and guide on “counterinsurgency” and “anti-terrorism”, the supplies of arms, equipment, and intelligence, the myriad of cooperation and trainings for “interoperability” of US and Philippine troops are all from the imperialist US. That a foreign power is directly arming and instigating the local reactionary government of a sovereign country to shoot, kill, and maim the Filipino people is actually done openly. And they euphemistically call the master-puppet setup as a “treaty partnership,” or a relationship of “treaty allies.”
History shows the U.S. imperialist through military aid and cooperation has been directly behind every thieving regime of puppet Philippine presidents, dictators and tyrants. They waged war on Philippine soil and repressed civilian dissent to defend their narrow interests—a resource-rich, strategically located neocolony.
Given the bloody history of US imperialist’s “pacification” campaign at the turn of 20th century, followed by the deceitful neocolonial control they have imposed since 1946 to placate the patriotic Filipinos, the war against today’s progressive and revolutionary Filipinos is not a throwback but an increasingly more insidious, brutal continuation of imperialist US’ bloody subjugation of peoples in these shores.
Their latest crimes and attacks on the people and their revolutionary vanguards wreaked losses to the Filipino people. Every revolutionary and supporters killed, every community bombed and threatened, represent more room for the narrow alliance of big landlords, bourgeois compradors, and monopoly corporations to continue plundering the riches of not only the Philippines but also of the neighboring countries which the imperialist US seeks to control by forward deployment in “treaty allies” such as the Philippines.
US imperialist most eager to crush national liberation movements like in Ph
Imperialist US is most interested to crush the Philippine national democratic revolution with a socialist perspective because its very existence is another threat to imperialism. When the national democratic revolution gains victory, the US imperialist risks losing a neocolony and social base of local oligarchs and puppet government, thus depriving them of a geopolitically strategic military outpost, a parrot in regional formations as ASEAN, a dumping ground for surplus products and capital, source of cheap labor and resources.
The national democratic revolution is an assertion of the Filipino people’s right to self-determination against the domination of US imperialism and towards genuine national independence.
Since 1968, the CPP-led national democratic revolution has been a threat to the US imperialist’s global cultural offensive. Because here is a self-reliant army of revolutionaries belying all the imperialists’ cunning and unfounded claims for people to rely only on individual superheroes and myths, serve only themselves and not the masses, and believe that the good old Uncle Sam’s imperialism is the end of history.
With the experiences and lessons gained by the CPP, the NPA, and the NDFP in mass work, learning from and working with the masses to change their situation, using the Marxist, Leninist and Maoist theories in revolution on the concrete conditions in the Philippines, using it to guide the Filipino revolutionaries’ war of national liberation, they are already helping other revolutionaries and liberation movements all over the world.
The imperialist US itches to shut down sources of revolutionary counter-cultures and messaging that threatens its full-spectrum dominance in economic, military, political, and cultural spheres around the world.
US “war on terror” and terrorist tagging
As Juliet de Lima, interim peace panel head for NDFP, noted in a speech on imperialist cultural offensive, since the US launched its “war on terror,” all sort of “terrorists” have appeared all over the globe. They are none other than enemies of imperialism who opposed the US push for neoliberalism (monopolies) and globalization (monopoly profit-taking). The US has arrogated to itself the self-serving task to launch war against “terrorists” wherever they are. Since then their troops and their cultural offensives have invaded countries, overthrown governments, and killed people whom they accuse of breeding, supporting or fronting for “terrorists.”
In the Philippines, then US puppet administration Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo swiftly embraced the “war on terror” through Oplan Bantay Laya I and II. The US-Arroyo regime’s bloodbath against the people—personified by the likes of notorious butcher general Jovito Palparan—justified its reign of terror by blurring the distinction between unarmed legal democratic activists and armed revolutionaries. Everyone became a target.
The US-led war against the Philippine liberation movement was continued by the next US puppet regimes. After so many years, under the cover of COVID19 pandemic, the US-Duterte regime finally managed to upgrade the fangs of the Anti-Terror Act. That was amid a harrowing war on drugs that killed tens of thousands of victims among the poor; war against the Bangsa Moro that became an excuse for pounding Marawi and imposing the first martial law after Marcos Sr; and amid a “counterinsurgency” war against revolutionaries in the countryside.
Duterte failed in his ambitions to be the first US puppet president who can sign a peace accord with the CPP, where he aimed to follow the US guide to disarm and force the revolutionaries to capitulate. He then unleashed an all-out war (not that they stopped during peace talks), but with additional vigor at being brutal and deceitful. By the time he exited Malacanang, Duterte can lay claim to the notoriety of forcing the terrorist-labeling on revolutionaries in the most abrasive, shameless and big-budgeted way through the NTF-ELCAC and so-called whole-of-nation approach.
Now his successor Marcos Jr and daughter Sara Duterte are continuing the US-instigated “counterinsurgency” war against Filipinos, following the same track that failed.
The official website of US Defence Department in September 2022 did not even hide it, saying “The United States and the Philippines have a robust (underscoring ours) counterterrorism program. The United States has counterinsurgency efforts in Mindanao, the country’s largest island, since 2000.”
Current US President Joe Biden said in Fact Sheet: Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States that they are extending and modernizing their “defense presence” and enhancing their capabilities (in the Philippines) to defend their interest and to deter aggression against U.S. territory and against their allies and partners (underscoring ours).
IBON Foundation cited the Philippines as the biggest recipient of US military aid among Southeast Asian countries, with an average of U$ 54 million annually since 2019, mostly military equipment.
The military equipment will make the AFP “more capacitated,” the Philippine News Agency quoted Gen. Cirilito Sobejana when he received the equipment from US. Every year, the US forces and reactionary Philippine troops conduct 300 military exercises, thus helping them gain interoperability, make the local reactionary troops “capacitated” to use surplus US equipment, among others.
All these US imperialist contributions strengthen the local reactionary troops and embolden the puppet government, at the expense of the people and their human rights.
The long-term effects of the intensifying US-instigated “counterinsurgency” war include not just the growing list of gross abuses and violations of human rights and international humanitarian law with utter impunity. It also includes the obstacles generated by relentless cultural offensives against the revolutionaries raised by the psywar guide of US imperialists’ war on terror: the distribution for example of fake news to deceive the masses and mislabel the revolutionaries and liberation fighters as “terrorist.”
The masses know the opposite is true and that in words and deeds the US imperialism is the real terrorist. The progressives and revolutionary forces are challenged to develop unity, cooperation, and coordination of all peoples in the Philippines and abroad, to raise the level of struggle against imperialism and reaction, in particular against imperialist plunder and war led by US and applied hook line and sinker by the puppet government currently led by Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (Pinky Ang) ###
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