Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s liberation after 40 years of unjust imprisonment in France could not have come at a more significant moment.
As we witness the final stages of the US-armed, EU-funded Israeli genocide in Gaza, the complicity of the West in the mass killing of Palestinians has never been clearer. At the same time, however, the continued onslaught points to the failures of Palestine solidarity movements in the belly of the beast, with some more concerned about performing symbolic gestures that play into a politics of appeal.
Abdallah’s liberation provides an opportunity to critically re-examine the watered-down solidarity that in some sections is plagued with power-hungry leadership, problematic allies, and unethical funding that comes with strings attached.
He reminds us of the historical price that is paid for meaningful resistance in Europe for the sake of Palestinian liberation, and the widespread absence of direct, organised action against Western complicity to the genocide.
Europe’s longest serving political prisoner
Sentenced to life imprisonment in France in 1987 for alleged complicity in the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) resistance operations against US and Israeli diplomats complicit in the occupation of Palestine, Georges Abdallah was Europe’s longest serving political prisoner.
Despite being eligible for release from prison for over 25 years, and Lebanon’s repeated requests for his return and their willingness to organise his deportation, US interference prevented his liberation until now.
Abdallah’s unjust detention, repeatedly extended under US pressure, exposed yet again that the law is in direct conflict with morality on the question of Palestine. This is a fact that has become even more evident with the increasing state suppression of more effective Palestine solidarity groups in Europe in recent weeks.
In taking the fight for Palestinian liberation home to roost in Europe, Abdallah recognised that moral appeals to colonial systems were futile, and that global architecture of oppression, which extends from colonial France, to Lebanon, to Palestine, must be confronted. He paid for this revolutionary integrity with his liberty.
Abdallah and the LARF – which was a Marxist group established in 1979 after Israel invaded southern Lebanon – pierced Europe’s cultivated veneer of detachment from Israeli violence. It violated the comfort which the Europe enjoys, undisrupted, as it invests in violence in Palestine. In a broken system, accountability cannot be advocated for; it must be seized.
Whilst Abdallah’s LARF coordinated with direct-action movements across Europe, today barely one such movement exists. The left has become so passive that a leader merely marching for Palestine is cause for celebration.
This only leads to the self-serving symbolism of the likes of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. After having risen to power as a ‘leftist’ and the darling of American ‘progressives’, she seems more concerned with condemning Palestinian resistance than taking on the US-funded genocide of Palestinians.
The fact that she posed like a vulture in every photo-op with Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil after his release from ICE detention, only to then vote in favour of sending millions of dollars of fresh military aid to Israel, highlights that the ‘liberal’ line on the Palestinian struggle no longer exists, it is complicity.
But AOC is not unique. The genocide has revealed the true faces of most of those with access to power and resources in the West, who used the Palestinian cause for self-promotion during their rise, only to shed their principles and become complicit in the very institutions funding and protecting Israeli crimes. They parrot empty discourse, never too radical or disruptive, and always within the red lines determined by those invested in the Zionist project.
In a time when a culture of fear remains frustratingly and resolutely stuck within our collective conscience, crushing our ability to imagine, act, and organise more radical forms of opposition to the genocidal machine, remembering Abdallah’s resistance provides a reality check.
We are all Palestinians?
We have become too comfortable with the notion that only Palestinians must sacrifice for their liberation. And as long as this belief remains, it means we are not “all Palestinians”, and international solidarity will remain a self-congratulatory performance.
As Abdallah said: “It is urgent to do everything possible to counter and stop the Zionist barbarism under way in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. […] Shame on all those who, in the face of genocidal Zionist barbarism, call for us to look the other way! May a thousand initiatives flourish in support of Palestine and its glorious resistance!”
After 40 years of incarceration, the responsibility to remind us of the urgency and necessity of action certainly shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of this 74-year-old man. Simply witnessing the livestreamed extermination of Palestinians in Gaza should have already forced us to take more decisive actions.
Marching weekly for over 20 months with nothing changing for the better should make it clear that things need to change.
After almost two years of genocide, the approach of solidarity movements has proven ineffective. As we are forced to watch Palestinians starve to death as they dodge bullets and bombs, it is clear that now more than ever, we need a disruption to business as usual. We need to escalate, to take action, and to directly confront governments that are enabling genocide.
Hannah al-Khafaji is a freelance writer and researcher focusing on Ash-Sham, Iraq, and global resistance to imperialism.
Follow Hannah on Twitter/X: @hannahkhafaji or on Instagram: @hannahkhafaji
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