Palestinian revolutionary women on International Women’s Day

The following is from the website of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Marxist-Leninist is posting it as part of the continuing series of articles on women’s liberation in honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day (March 8th):

The following interview of Comrades Leila Khaled and Shireen Said was conducted by British journalist Sukant Chandan and published on March 8, 2010 – International Women’s Day. We republish the interview below:

The Palestinian people’s oppression continues due primarily to the financial, diplomatic, and military support that the Zionist state receives from the USA and secondly to the acquiescence of pro-Western states in the region.  After the fall of the Zionist state’s long lost brother — the Apartheid state of South Africa — the Palestinian struggle remains perhaps the leading and most potent anti-imperialist struggle in the world.  Therefore, Palestinian women are a central example of what role women can play in the struggle to free themselves, their families, their communities, and their nation from imperialism.

Comrade Ghassan Kanafani and the Culture of Resistance

The following is from the website of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-Leninist organization that has been waging armed struggle against U.S./Israeli occupation for 40 years. For more about the life of Ghassan Kanafani, read “Comrade Ghassan Kanafani: The leader, the writer, the martyr“.

Towards a Better Future – Kanafani and the Culture of Resistance

by Dr. Ahmed Masoud

In 1977 a local theatrical group in Nazareth was banned from performing an adaptation of Ghassan Kanfani’s novel Men in the Sun (1962). The Israeli authority prevented the actors from going on stage and threatened imprisonment. The script was written by a Palestinian writer who was assassinated in a car bomb by Israeli agents in Lebanon in 1972. It is not surprising for governments to censor literature if it does not comply with its propaganda, but assassination is something which needs more careful examination. Why would the Israeli government feel threatened to go as far as killing Ghassan Kanafani? In order to find the answer for this question, one must look at not only the life and works of this writer but also delve deep into his mindset and how his writing has become a manifesto of the new Palestinian revolution.