Israel’s war on Gaza has ignited a firestorm of international condemnation. In the midst of this outrage, organizations like the Palestinian Youth Movement have spearheaded a global mass movement to fight Israel’s genocide and to stand in solidarity with Palestine. With the temporary truce in Gaza likely ending, this mass movement faces a critical juncture. Yara Shoufani of the Palestinian Youth Movement speaks with The Real News about the tasks of the Western left in this moment, the opportunity to revive anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism as core pillars of the left, and the central role of Palestinian struggle in “sharpening the contradictions” of a status quo that may be breaking apart before our eyes.

Yara Shoufani is a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement and a PhD student at York University.

Studio Production: Adam Coley
Post-Production: David Hebden

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Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Welcome to The Real News. I’m Ju-Hyun Park and I’ll be your host for this episode. Today we once again turn our attention to Palestine, where as of the date of this recording, Tuesday, November 28th, the initial four day temporary truce agreed to by Israel and Hamas has been extended for two more days. By the time you listen to this, it’s quite probable that the truce will have ended and Israel’s bombing of Gaza could continue. In this crucial juncture, we turn to a discussion on the necessity of international solidarity with Yara Shoufani of the Palestinian Youth Movement. Before proceeding, I’d like to extend the gratitude of the entire Real News team to all of you listeners and readers out there. The Real News is a totally independent and not-for-profit outlet dedicated to uplifting the stories of working people and popular struggles around the world. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t run ads, and we don’t do paid subscriptions.

Our operations depend on the generosity of hardworking people like you. If you’d like to help us sustain our work, please visit the realnews.com/donate. No amount is too small and all of it goes towards powering our reporting. As we move towards the end of the year, we are in a final donation campaign for 2023 to ensure that we can sustain our funding into the new year. So you’re giving matters more than ever at this moment. We’re now 52 days into Israel’s latest war on Gaza. Through a relentless and indiscriminate bombing campaign, Israel has obliterated more than half of the buildings in northern Gaza, killing over 20,000 Palestinians, wounding over 32,000, and forcing more than 1.7 million Gazans to flee their homes. The human toll of Israel’s latest bombing campaign now officially surpasses the bloodshed and displacement incurred by the initial Nakba of 1947 to 1949, in which Zionist settlers killed more than 15,000 Palestinians, burned down over 500 villages, and drove some 700,000 people from their homes to clear the land for the founding of the state of Israel.

The suffering and death inflicted on the Palestinian people in the past 52 days is staggering yet this war is far from over. And as we’ve previously discussed here on the Real News, the immense casualties in Gaza do not necessarily indicate that Israel is winning. One dimension in which that’s become increasingly clear is a sea change in world public opinion on Israel, which has been accompanied by a rising tide of international condemnation. 10 nations thus far have either withdrawn their diplomats or fully severed relations with Israel. Since October 7th. Around the world, a mass movement in opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza has mobilized millions of people from Jakarta to Johannesburg, Ottawa to Oslo. Apart from the truly tremendous marches and demonstrations taking place, workers in Belgium and Spain have refused to transport weapons bound for Israel. Students have walked out of their schools and universities, activists have shut down arms, factories, ports and government offices generating political crisis in many of the nations allied with Israel. Political leaders, leaders are struggling to sustain moral and material support for Israel slaughter in the face of this growing outrage.

Joining the Real News today is Yara Shoufani, a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, one of the principal organizations spearheading the mass movement in solidarity with Palestine. With chapters across North America and Europe, the Palestinian Youth Movement is an organization of Palestinian and Arab youth struggling for the liberation of Palestine from the diaspora. Yara Shoufani is a PhD student in political science at York University. Yara, welcome to The Real News.

Yara Shoufani:

Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Yara, your organization, the Palestinian Youth Movement just held a massive mobilization in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, where more than a hundred thousand people marched on Parliament Hill in solidarity with Palestine. The Palestinian Youth Movement was also one of the convening organizations at the head of the march on Washington on November 4th where you spoke with our editor-in-chief Maximilian Alvarez. What’s it been like for the Palestinian Youth Movement building this momentum over the past 52 days, and what do you believe you’ve achieved so far?

Yara Shoufani:

I think the past 52 days have been, I think both really challenging in the context of watching Israel’s genocide on the people of Gaza, seeing day after day, the increasing death toll of Palestinians murdered. We have been watching the destruction of hospitals and schools and mosques and churches, videos of Palestinians trapped under rubble. So there’s been a sense of anger and frustration, but also I think a sense of urgency and a responsibility that what we build in this moment must be successful because our people cannot afford for us to fail. And I think that what that has driven is a mass movement across the world that is organizing on the question of Palestine.

And really, I mean you named a few of the pieces there, the national march on Washington DC, which was the largest march in favor of Palestine in US history with updated estimates ranging as high as 600,000, as well as the march that took place just this past weekend on Ottawa, even amidst the quote “pause”, which we know is not a true ceasefire, it’s not an unconditional ceasefire. But nonetheless, we saw the largest march in Canadian history take place this past weekend as well as the campaign to shut it down for Palestine, which was launched in early November and has had now multiple campaign dates. And really at the center of this campaign is really this refusal to continue on with business as usual while the Palestinian people are facing a genocide that is part of a 75 year long process of colonization. And what we’ve seen in the context of this campaign have been a myriad of direct actions and mass mobilization.

So we’ve seen high school and university walkouts, we saw in the Bay Area not only the shutdown of a highway, but also the shutdown of a bridge in New York. We saw the Macy’s parade, the Thanksgiving parade disruptions, the occupation of BlackRock, occupation of New York Times. Across the world, we’ve seen the shutting down of train stations, including here in Toronto where I’m based as well as the occupation of Scotiabank here, which is a major Canadian bank with a $500 million investment in Elbit Systems, we’ve seen labor organizers refuse to transport weapons to Israel, the blocking of boats with weapons being sent to Israel. And so really what we’re seeing is a major watershed moment in the Palestinian struggle where the PYM has been a part of, and certainly in the context of North America and Britain, in the leadership of this kind of call to shut down industry and organizing mass mobilizations across the world and across North America and Europe.

And I think that the center of this is important to note is really when we say it’s a watershed moment, we don’t only mean that it’s a watershed moment and that we’re building a mass movement, but that actually we’re seeing Palestine at the center of the sharpening of contradictions. As in Palestine is able in this moment to mobilize people in service of revolution and to show people that actually the interests of the American Empire, of the Canadian Empire, the British Empire, the interests of the media outlets in these countries, the mainstream media outlets, the interests of the corporations, that these nations are not aligned with the interests of the masses. That these corporations, whether they be media outlets or weapons manufacturers and banks are profiting off of the destruction of Palestine.

And that the American and Canadian and European states more broadly are aligned with the Zionist state of Israel’s destruction and pillaging of Palestine and genocide in Palestine, while the American masses who are now building a broad coalition of national liberation struggles, of working class struggles, of left struggles, and Arab and Palestinian and Muslim communities are coming together and saying, actually our interests are not the same. And we’re seeing really this major sharpening of contradictions that I think shows us as the PYM that we have not only been able to mobilize in this moment, but that we have work to do to now channel this moment into serious political organization. And I think what we’re seeing is actually the beginning of that, and not in the sense that we are beginning this organization now, but that we’re building on decades long of political organizing.

Certainly 2021 building on the victory of [inaudible 00:09:25] and the major mobilizations that we saw take place across North America and Europe and the global south in defense of [foreign language 00:09:34] which was facing dispossession in Palestine as well as Gaza, but that we’ve now built and taken this to the next level and continue to build on the 75 year long national liberation struggle. And so I think we’re seeing here a major resurgence of our movement that reflects the 75 years long that our movement has been fighting for freedom and national liberation.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Thank you so much for that overview. I’m realizing that I should have asked you this first, but you’ve already spoken a bit about the scope of the Palestinian Youth Movement, about the role that you’re playing in this particular moment. I’m wondering if you can provide our audience with a little bit more of an introduction to the Palestinian Youth Movement in terms of your approach to the struggle, the scope geographically and internationally that you occupy, and any other information that could be pertinent to helping us understand who the PYM is and the role that you’re playing at this time.

Yara Shoufani:

Of course. So the PYM, the Palestinian Youth Movement is a political organization comprised of Palestinian and Arab youth who are fighting for the liberation of Palestine, but also the liberation of our homelands more broadly from Zionism and US-led imperialism. We are organized across the United States, Canada and Europe, specifically Britain. And really we’ve been working for now upwards of 10 years as a political organization on mobilizing our base. We’re primarily a base building organization, mobilizing our base, our community, which is the Arab and Palestinian community in service of our people’s struggle. And I think really at the heart of our project is the refusal to allow for the conditions that displaced us into the west, the condition of colonization and imperialism which have violently uprooted us from our homes and resulted in our existence in western nations. And we refused to allow for that condition to sever us from our national liberation struggle.

And we know that the conditions of Palestinians and Arabs in the West and United States and Canada and Europe is one where we are surveilled and repressed and really disconnected from our homeland. But we also know that through political organization, particularly of our youth, but more broadly our communities, we are able to challenge that disconnection, that severing of our people from our homeland and work to ignite our people in service of the national liberation struggle. And that we have a historic role to play in the heart of empire in the nations that fund Israeli colonization, to fight this colonization and to fight the imperialism that drives their support for Israeli colonization. And we do this through a myriad of different approaches, whether they be protests, political education and popular education, cultural programming, the importance of resistance arts. So for example, each year we publish a anthology in the name of Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian revolutionary who was martyred by the Zionist state, and we published a anthology of artist submissions in his name, which also allows for us to fund three scholarships for Palestinian artists.

And this is not only a book that is published but also something that we hold local launch events for in our respective communities and locales. And so we’re really, we think about the question of arts, the question of culture of political education as key parts of how we activate and mobilize our people of service of the liberation struggle. And we also participate in broad coalitions with other national liberation struggles and see the critical importance of building with other national liberation struggles and with the working class of the places that we reside in order to be able to build as broadly as possible to confront Zionism and imperialism in the places that we reside and center the role of youth and the student movement in that struggle as well.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Thanks so much for that introduction. We’re speaking today at what could prove to be quite a pivotal moment in this 52 day war, which building on what you’ve referred to already is really just one episode of confrontation in this 75 year plus history of colonization. Now this four day truce or now six day truce, also referred to as a humanitarian pause has had as part of its conditions, the transfer of about 50 or so Israeli and foreign hostages of Hamas who are being exchanged for about 150 Palestinian prisoners. Those numbers may be updated in the coming days due to the extension. Several dozen of these prisoners were children, some of whom have been in Israeli jails and prisons for years. Can you talk to us about the significance of this prisoner hostage exchange in the context of the struggle of political prisoners in Palestine?

Yara Shoufani:

I think in order for us to understand the significance of these exchanges, we have to first understand the role of Israeli prisons in the context of the Palestinian national liberation struggle, which are really primarily to criminalize the resistance of Palestinian people against their occupier. And we see this clearly through the Palestinian political leaders that are regularly arrested by Israel, for example,[inaudible 00:15:47] a Palestinian leader and revolutionary who has been arrested and jailed many times by Israel and oftentimes held without charge, as well as Palestinian political leaders who remain inside Israeli prisons. For example, Marwan Barghouti and Ahmed Saadat amongst many, many others. And so really what we understand and see clearly is that prisons are a way to stifle the Palestinian revolution to incarcerate those who dare to resist, but they are also a way to break the Palestinian spirit and commitment to struggle and instill fear in the Palestinian people to deter opposition to Israeli genocide and occupation.

And that is precisely why many of those enzyme of prisons are youth and many are held under the Israeli policy of administrative detention, which allows for Israel to hold people indefinitely without charge. We have Palestinian prisoners who are sick and dying in Israeli prisons who are fighting medical negligence. But for example, there is the case of the Palestinian revolutionary leader Walid Daqqah who has been in prison for over 37 years and has been diagnosed with chronic lung disease and bone marrow cancer. And despite completing his sentence and worldwide campaigns calling for release, including a campaign undertaken by the PYM earlier this year to call for his release, Israel has refused to release Walid leads from prison.

Israa Jaabis who was actually released in this recent exchange just a few days ago, is an example of another prisoner who has faced severe medical negligence inside Zionist prisons. And Israa Jaabis was injured severely after a fire broke out in her car 500 meters away from a Zionist occupation checkpoint. And the Zionist occupation forces accused her of attempting to detonate a car bomb and she was arrested and held or sentenced for 11 years in prison. But in the car designation in the fire that had broken out in her car from a cooking oil, Israa was severely burned, especially on her face and hands, eight of her fingers were amputated when she was hospitalized and Israel refused to give her adequate medical treatment and imprisoned her and continued to neglect her in the eight years that she was held in prison, which as I said was supposed to be 11, but it’s precisely because of this prisoner exchange that she was released three years early.

And so for Palestinians, when we watched these prisoner exchange, we watched exchanges, we watched the release of Israa Jaabis, her embrace with her children. This is a historic moment for us, and we know that when we’re speaking of the Palestinian prisoner movement, what we’re really speaking of is the center where one of the centers of Palestinian people’s resistance and the refusal to crush and contain our people’s struggle. And it is precisely because prisons are a site of violence and repression in the national liberation struggle precisely because the Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons face indescribable horrors that we are now hearing these prisoners, these released prisoners recount on television that Palestinian prisoner exchanges have been a central part of the Palestinian struggle for freedom. So for example, in 1983, there was a exchange with Fatah where 4,700 Palestinian and Arab prisoners were released from an unsaid prison in South Lebanon in exchange for six Israeli soldiers.

In 1985, we saw the Jibril agreement by the Popular Front for the liberation of Palestine general command wherein 1,150 Palestinian prisoners were exchanged for the release of three Israeli soldiers. In 2011, we saw an exchange between Hamas and Israel, which saw the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. And it was in this exchange that Yahya Sinwar, who’s in the current leadership of Hamas was released after spending over 22 years in prison. And so when we’re seeing this current exchange of 150 Palestinian political prisoners who are mostly children and women imprisoned unjustly under administrative detention who are now being released and celebrated by the Palestinian people, they’re being celebrated because they represent a central compass of our people’s struggle because they have now acquired freedom. And I think it’s really important here to note that this was one of Hamas’ main goals from October 7th, which was the release of Palestinian prisoners.

This agreement for release was on the table from them. It was on the table from October 8th and Israel chose instead to ignore this request, to ignore this offer and murder 20,000 Palestinians in a nearly 50 long day assault on the people of Gaza. And I think that also speaks to the nature of the Zionist state’s, genocidal nature, its foundation on the destruction of Palestinian life and Palestinian land. And I think the fact that 40 plus days later we’ve seen this release, it is a big achievement and political win for the Palestinian national liberation struggle and certainly being seen as a political win for Hamas inside the Palestinian liberation movement arena. And these are prisoners, these 150 prisoners are prisoners that Israel has refused to release even under treaties for release that they had signed with the Palestinian authority. And I think historically speaking, the only way to release prisoners for the Palestinian people has been through these exchange deals. This is what history has taught the Palestinian people.

And so through these next few weeks and months, the Palestinian people will continue to await the release of thousands more prisoners, freedom that was made possible only through the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, of the prisoners themselves and of the people of Gaza. And people I think are waiting endlessly to see who will be released next, which Palestinian leadership, children and women will be released next. And it is certainly for many Palestinians, the ushering in of the new era as a comrade of mine, Saada put it in her speech in Ottawa, the era of Liberation.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Absolutely. This information that you’ve shared with us about the context of Israeli imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians, including predominantly women and children in many cases as you referred to under administrative detention, meaning that they have not been formally charged, they have not been convicted, is really, really significant to reframing the narrative that has developed since October 7th, first of all, temporarily displacing us from this idea that this is a conflict that only begins 52 days ago when of course there are these decades and decades of struggle and oppression that preceded. And also for understanding the centrality of the hostages and the discourse and politics and bickering around what is to be done for the Israeli hostages that were taken by Hamas. How is it that we’re to understand and discuss these sorts of actions? And I think that’s been really crucial, especially in shaping the responses from various progressive forces in the West, in North America in particular, around what are the demands that we put up right now?

And we’re in this moment where there is this lull officially at least in the violence, that’s not to say that it has completely stopped. There have been many instances of violations of this truce, particularly from Israel that we’re not going to enumerate at this moment, but bringing us back to what is to really be done at this time, this demand for a ceasefire is certainly not going away and slowly but surely, there are more elected representatives here in the United States that are moving towards supportive deposition position. I’m hoping you can talk to us a little bit about what the demands the Palestinian youth movement have made of the US and other governments who continue to support Israel. What else do you see as needing to occur in this time and how do these goals align with your longer term vision of liberation, which you outlined for us earlier?

Yara Shoufani:

So I think ceasefire, as you named it, has been one of the central demands. And really it has been a central demand because of its urgency and necessity amidst a violent genocide, dull assault that was day after day resulting in the massacres of our people. But really we also know that a ceasefire cannot be the only demand and has never been the only demand. So secondary or in addition to a ceasefire, we have also been calling for an end to complicity and aid. So in the US context, what we’re talking about here is over 3.6 billion per year in aid to Israel. And we saw during the course of this assault, an attempt actually by the United States to approve an additional 14 billion in aid. So essentially kind of showing that the United States government, what we’ve known for a long time, is interested in rewarding Israel for its genocide as an imperialist nation that is aligned with Israel.

Certainly Joe Biden has previously said that had there not been an Israel, United States would’ve needed to create one. And so we’re seeing here the clear alliance between the United States and Israel, but in the case of Canada also more broadly, complicity has been one of our demands where there’s over $20 million in weapons, trade deals that take place per year in Canada between Israel as well as the general refusal of the Canadian government, the American government, and European nations more broadly to call for a ceasefire, which has also been paired with repression against the Palestinian movement. The attempt to criminalize protests specific slogans, for example, from the River to the Sea has been a slogan that the political class has been trying to attack. Repression of people who are attending protests, we’ve seen all across Canada, the United States and Europe. And so that second demand of an end to complicity and aid has been also central for us.

And the third demand is to end and lift the siege on the Gaza. So for nearly 17 years, the people of Gaza have effectively been held in an open air prison whereby Israel controls causes access to air, land and sea determining what goes in and what goes out. What medicine is allowed in, what building products are allowed in, rationing food that is allowed in. And so we’re talking here effectively about an open air prison, 2.2 million people being held hostage for over 16 years. And so we’ve been calling to lift the speech on Gaza immediately, and I think these three demands relate to broader demands to end the occupation and to release all Palestinian prisoners. And that is something that we have been fighting for for a long period of time. Prisoners have been at the compass or really are the compass of our people struggle.

And despite the challenges of the Palestinian prisoner movement, precisely because prisoners are placed out of sight in these cells that make it hard for us to see openly what is taking place. And so there has been a concentrated effort for decades for the Palestinian liberation struggle to put prisoners at the center of that struggle, understanding that inside these jails, our prisoners are engaged in struggle, they are engaged in cultural production and knowledge production that drives the revolution forward. They are teaching one another inside these prison cells. And the prisoners has been a central part of PYM’s work and actually we have been working for the last over a year on the translation of a central text for the Palestinian prisoners movement called the Trinity of Fundamentals written by with Wisam Rafeedie, which is a partnership that we’ve been working on with 1804 book that to be released by the end of this year, which is a pillar or a central text in the Palestinian prisoner literature. And Palestinian prisoner literature has been something that we have been really kind of focused on as the PYM.

And so I think all of these demands, whether they be the call for an end complicity, an aid or a call for the breaking of the blockade, an ending of the occupation or the release of political prisoners, Palestinian prisoners, all of them are part of the Palestinian struggle for national liberation and have been at the center of our work. I think something that’s important to note here is when we say these are our demands and we’re asserting these demands inside the United States empire or inside the Canadian Empire, it’s important to note that we are not naive. We know that it is not through just simply naming these demands that we can convince the US Empire or Canada and Britain and European nations to follow our lead. We know that what is required is rigorous organizing the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of people under the banner of these demands, the unity between various segments of the people inside these countries, whether they be Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims or the left, or labor unions and workers, other national liberation struggles, people from all walks of life are coming under this banner.

And we believe that it is through the power of the masses that we can start to deliver victories pertaining to these demands, to exert pressure on the US empire and Canadian and British empires to end their complicity, to end their aid, and to exert pressure on these nations on the question of the siege of Gaza, to exert pressure on the release of Palestinian prisoners. And we know that in the popular discourse, the story began on October 7th. In the mainstream media, The story began on October 7th. And so so much of the American masses and the Canadian and British masses do not know that we are talking about over 6,000 Palestinians who were held hostage on October 6th by the Zionist state of Israel. And many of the people do not know what does it mean that the 2.2 million people in Gaza are being held hostage in an open air prison? What does this blockade really mean?

And so by building this mass movement, we are raising the popular conscious of the consciousness of the masses in order to be able to exert pressure on these western imperialist nations to make the position of supporting Zionist blockade of Gaza, Zionist imprisonment of Palestinians and sending money to this genocide so unpopular that these nations have no choice but to start to follow the calls of the masses in the country that they govern over.

Ju-Hyun Park:

We’re starting to get into the role those of us living in the West have to play. And I think you’ve done a pretty thorough job of explaining the vision that is guiding not only these demands, but the overall political approach that the Palestinian Youth Movement is taking. I’m wondering if we can turn the mirror a little bit towards not only our audience, but to the broader agglomeration of progressive and more left forces within Western countries that have participated to varying degrees in this movement thus far.

We have seen a lot of leadership and bravery coming from different organizations, whether that’s taking initiative to, as we were referring to earlier, shutting down everything from train stations to ports to government buildings. We have seen unionists taking very firm action, particularly out of Europe to ensure that the delivery of weapons is not going to proceed and that there’s disruption to the war machine at that level. What’s your assessment of how the Western left is doing so far? There have been some successes, there have also been points of contention, what is the work that remains to be done? How much further do we have to go?

Yara Shoufani:

I think this is a really important question and one that allows for us to both look at the ways in which we have gotten things right and then also how can we do better next time. I think the unity that’s being built in this moment, which as you said, comprises of various left organizations and parties. For example, we saw Answer Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation roll over the last two months in helping mobilize and take leadership alongside Palestinian comrades on various campaigns and projects including the national march on DC, as well as the Shut It Down campaign. And we have seen, as you said, unionists who are shutting down sites of labor, who are blocking boats from being able to exit to send weapons to Israel. We have seen people from all walks of life, from the student movement, from national liberation struggles join this movement.

And I think that this really speaks to what we are capable of. If we can take the right position and understand the centrality of national liberation, anti colonization and anti imperialism. We are able to mobilize in a way that is broad, that is strong, that allows us to have various political approaches but be aligned on the vision and the direction of the moment and the needs and the demands of the moment. And what we are able to do is really, I think it’s clear through the victories that we’ve seen all across the United States, Canada and Britain, Europe, we have been seeing major victories even in the global south, where we are seeing the recalling of ambassadors. And so it’s huge and it shows us our potential and the ability for us to actually build something that takes internationalism seriously.

And I think that it’s also in that analysis, it’s also important to note that there have been errors and gaps in particular that we saw on October 8th, the 9th, and 10th, and in those very initial kinds of days, maybe that initial week where we saw segments of the Western left not take the question of national liberation seriously. Who equated the resistance of the colonized with the violence of the colonizer. Who equated the occupier and the occupied who kind of came out with these nuanced sort of positions and these long wordy analyses and op-eds and retracted on statements that they had maybe initially put out. Who capitulated to Zionist pressure to local political pressure in their locales where you had organizations retracting tweets because they had supported a pro-Palestinian protest and then gotten cracked down against the protest by local politicians. And instead of supporting their Palestinian comrades and understanding that actually these protests are a essential part of the struggle of the fight for socialism itself, the fight against imperialism itself, they retracted.

And I think it’s disappointing, but it also doesn’t have to be our story. And I think that’s the most important piece. We can learn from this moment. It’s what I think is the most critical thing. I don’t want us to be in a place where we’re saying the segments of the Western left failed and therefore represent the irredeemability of the Western left because I don’t believe that I actually think that the Western left must learn from this moment and must learn from this moment in order to actually build a western left tradition that takes the question of anti imperialism and anti-colonialism seriously. That takes the question of national liberation seriously. And that is a tradition that we know has existed amongst the left for decades, not only in the West but across the global south. We know in the era of revolution in the ’60s and in the ’70s, that at the center and at the heart of that revolution was an alliance that was being built between the national liberation struggles of the global south and the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggles for socialism in the global north.

Whether they took form in national liberation struggles inside the empire, the heart of empire or working class struggles inside the heart of empire that were working to build together not only across struggles in a way that understood their struggle as intertwined, but also with the resistance of the global south against colonialism and imperialism. And I think it’s really critical for us to be thinking now about can we use this moment to revive that tradition? Can we use this moment to learn from the mistakes of a more chauvinist western left that has repeatedly thrown anti-colonial struggles under the bus, thrown struggles for racial liberation under the bus, thrown struggles against US-led imperialism under the bus. And now it is a time for us to use this moment as a learning experience and say we refuse for the Western left to be allowed to give cover for Zionism and genocide. Even if that’s not the intention, even if the intention of these nuanced op-eds was not to give cover for Zionism and genocide, ultimately through equating the occupier and the occupied, what we see is left cover for Zionism and athletic imperialism support for Zionist genocide.

And so I think it’s really critical here for us to see this moment as a learning experience and for us to say we don’t want this to define the Western left. We see clearly that there has been a huge segment of the Western left that has stood on the right side of this struggle from October 8th, has never wavered, has built with Palestinian comrades and organizations, has shut down ports, has shut down train stations, has worked to convene hundreds of thousands of people across the western world in service of Palestinian national liberation. And so we know that such an alliance is possible and we can build more broadly in that alliance and bring more segments of the Western left and the working class alongside with us because we know that at the heart of the fight for socialism, at the heart of the fight against US-led imperialism is the Palestinian struggle.

In the context of the United States, we have a country where people are crying for education and healthcare and good jobs and billions of dollars are being sent to drop bombs on Palestinians. American working class don’t want this. They do not agree to this. And we know that. Polls show that the American masses don’t support this. And so it is the responsibility of all of us Palestinian national liberation struggle in the western world and political parties that belong to the Western left and labor unions to build broadly in this moment in a way that allows for us to build a sustained movement that does not yet again fall to the trap of equating colonizer and colonized and takes the question of national liberation, anti-colonialism and anti imperialism seriously.

Ju-Hyun Park:

That was such an amazing overview of the opportunities I think that are inherent in this time. And I think that’s really crucial because we don’t need to only approach this from the standpoint of what could be lost. I think it’s really valuable to look at this also in terms of what can be gained. We are of course looking at absolutely genocidal devastation against the Palestinian people by Israel. We are looking at rising repression against Palestinian activists across Europe, across North America. I cannot help but think of just this past weekend when we saw three Palestinian college students, youth who were in Burlington, Vermont, who were shot in the back by a man who saw them were in kafis and speaking Arabic. But I think what you’ve brought to us in this moment is also what there is to be one by coming together and how it is that we can grow and advance politically by participating in this movement. So I want to really thank you for that change in perspective and frame that I think is really vital for our listeners.

I’m hoping to close us out. If you could speak a little bit about the other side of that, because there is so much to be won, but at the same time, we are in a crucial moment. The bombing of Gaza could commence at any time. We’ve just had the holiday break here in the United States. There may be a little bit of a sense that we’re in this lull and there is potential for lapse. And also there may be a sense among certain people that we’ve been at this for weeks and months now. And I think that while for some the hope is apparent for others, it may be difficult to see the light at the end of that tunnel. So I’m wondering if you have any kind of message that you want to leave people with.

Yara Shoufani:

The Palestinian people have for example, defined here it’s been waging a struggle for their freedom in the most challenging conditions possible. We’re talking here about a people who were forcibly exiled from their land, whose villages were massacred, who upon the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Palestinians were rounded up and put into forced labor camps and settlements were built, further encroachment on their lands, the role of prisons, the role of regular assaults on their daily life. And yet, despite all of that and amidst all of that, the Palestinian people have not given up. The Palestinian people continue to fight against some of the most powerful nations in the world. Against the Zionist state of Israel that is backed by the most powerful nation of the United States under the era of US-led imperialism.

And so I think what’s crucial here is to say that the Palestinian people need to be also our compass in this, and their refusal to capitulate, their refusal to abandon the homeland, abandon the national liberation struggle, should give us all hope, should give us all drive and perseverance, and also should help us understand that we cannot afford to fail. We cannot afford to fail because our comrades and siblings in Palestine also cannot afford to fail. And that is why for 75 years, they have fought with the courage and bravery that they have because they know that the loss of Palestine is not an option. And there have been multiple attempts by US-led imperialism to silence the Palestinian revolution. We saw that with the assigning of the Oslo accords in 1993, which the US facilitated, which sought to basically capitulate the struggle for Palestinian national liberation. And half Palestinians put down their arms and abandoned the revolutionary path in order to adopt a path of “state building”, which really meant the creation of the Palestinian authority, a proxy that would facilitate Zionist colonization.

And we saw Palestinians then refuse by waging the second and the further and say, we refuse to accept the capitulation of our people’s struggle. Imperialism will not co-opt our people’s struggle. And that in and of itself teaches us that the Palestinian people will not give up. And so what does that leave for us? I think what that leaves for us is the need to be driven by this steadfast determination and to support, first of all, the Palestinian movement against repression. We know, as you mentioned, there has been severe repression that’s taken place. We have seen hate motivated attacks against Palestinians and Muslims in North America and Europe. And we have also seen repression against activists who have been engaged in direct action across the western world who are now facing major charges. We know that the student movement is facing severe, severe repression on campus by university administration, which is being driven by Zionist donors. We know that the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL, is working to ramp up repression against Palestinians inside the United States and colluding with the American government in order to crack down on Palestinian organizing.

And so it is really critical, first of all for us to understand that when this repression comes and it’s already coming, that this mass movement must be ready to move mountains to protect the people and the institutions and organizations that are facing repression inside the western world. And I think we also must understand the way in which this repression is tied to US-led imperialism and Zionism is genocidal project inside Palestine. It is not some kind of spontaneous articulation or rise in hate crime against Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims. But actually we know that the genocidal project of imperialism always drives hatred and violence and repression against the communities that are being targeted. And we saw that through the United States political class and media classes rhetoric, which dehumanized Palestinians in order to justify the US’ funding of the genocide theme with Canada and other European Asians.

And so there is a clear connection and tie between the rhetoric that is used by the politicians of the Western world to justify Israel’s genocide and the way in which the politicians collude with Zionist institutions in the West in order to crack down on Palestinian movements. There’s a direct correlation between this and the rise in hate crime that we see now and that we are going to continue to see. And I think that’s really important for us to be able to continue to understand the way in which that rise in hate crime, that rise in violence against our movement is related to the system of US-led imperialism and its collusion with Zionism. And so what’s critical that we support and mobilize to support all of those who are already facing repression, whether it be state led or Zionist institution led or university led, repression in our locales and be prepared to continue to support these people because we know that as our movement grows stronger, we will face more and more repression over the coming years.

I think it’s also important for us to continue to build and understand that we are not simply mobilizing, we are committed to political organizing. We are going to organize in a way that is sustained and build a political movement that is able to assert demands beyond this moment, which include and must include the demand for a lifting of the siege on Gaza. We must build a sustained effort and channel this energy into building of sustained effort to break the blockade.

It’s imperative that we do not let this energy die in any way, shape, or form, but that we get organized, that we join political organizations and we commit to the breaking of the siege on Gaza and that we continue to organize to free all Palestinian prisoners enter free Palestine from the river to the sea. And so I’ll leave it at that. I think really the key task at hand is the big one, but it’s one that we must commit only to in terms of building a new revolutionary era in the imperial core that helps us advance the revolutionary era that the Palestinians in the homeland and in the refugee camps are at the forefront of building.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Excellent. Before we say goodbye, could you tell us how to keep up with you and the Palestinian Youth Movement?

Yara Shoufani:

Yes. The Palestinian Youth Movement has a page on Instagram as well as Twitter that you can follow in order to stay up to date with our different events. We also have our website where you can go to sign up to a mailing list to get regular updates from the PYM about our work.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Amazing. This has been Yara Shoufani from the Palestinian Youth Movement, speaking on The Real News. I’m your host Ju-Hyun Park, where we close immense gesture of gratitude and thanks towards everyone on our staff supporting with this episode behind the scenes. That’s Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivera. Thank you very much as well to you, our listeners. We’ll be back at some other point and until then, stay in the streets, stay in the struggle.

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Ju-Hyun Park is the engagement editor at The Real News.