By JAMES MARKIN
Last month, buoyed by the mass movement that has arisen in the United States in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, the Palestinian Youth Movement hosted the “People’s Conference on Palestine” in Detroit. According to the organizers, over 3000 attended the May 24-26 conference, engaging with plenary sessions and panel discussions that grappled with relevant topics such as the explosion of the student movement for Palestine, the role of labor in the movement, and how to understand the armed resistance of Palestinians.
Reportedly, a third of attendees were locals from Detroit, a city known for its large Arab community and the conference, as befitting something hosted by a Palestinian organization, was very much oriented in this direction. The conference also received significant support and participation for the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and many different Palestinian organizations were present in the conference hall.
The conference itself addressed a series of important topics. It began on Friday, May 24, with a plenary full of pageantry, with Palestinian flags and the playing of the historic national song, Mawtini. Evening panels dealt with the role of political education and the history of Palestinian feminists.
The second day started with a plenary covering Palestinian resistance. The panel was opened by a Birzeit University professor, Abdaljawad Omar, speaking via video call to debunk what he called the seven myths of Palestinian national resistance: Resistance is motivated by antisemitism, resistance is symptomatic of a defect in Palestinian culture, all resistance is terrorism, resistance does not “serve the Palestinian image in the world,” it is responsible for the genocide in Gaza, it is ineffective and futile, and it is predicated on despair and revenge.
Next, the popular journalist Raja Abdelhaaq spoke on the history of the resistance movement in the Middle East, and Ashraf Hazayen from PYM Britain spoke about the PYM’s strategy for protest. Finally, activist Jeanine Hourani spoke about the psychological and social implications of resistance in Palestinian society.
Following the plenary, panel discussions were available on confronting Zionism both at the university and in the workplace. In particular, the second panel on workplace organizing was important, led by representatives of major fights, such as union leaders from United Educators of San Francisco (UESF), Unite ALL Workers for Democracy (UAWD), Starbucks Workers United, and No Tech for Apartheid. These activists and union organizers spoke about how they are integrating the struggle against genocide in Palestine into their labor work.
In the afternoon, organizers rushed attendees back into the main hall to hear a surprise speech from Democratic Party Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Tlaib made a big show of condemning Biden for his, at the time, recent rebuke of the international courts, the ICC and ICJ. She, at one point during the speech, was overcome by emotion when telling the story of her grandmother, who died before seeing the liberation of her people. While much of the content of her address was good, ultimately as a member of the Democratic Party, Tlaib herself is part of the very apparatus that is continuing to enable the genocide in Palestine.
Tlaib’s appearance at the conference was part of a broader ambiguity about where organizers stood on the question of how to relate to the Democratic Party. This was reflected in the following plenary on the state of the movement in North America. It was opened with a very interesting and candid talk by PYM organizer Mohammed Nabulsi. Nabulsi laid out the PYM’s overall strategy since the beginning of war in October in a very clear and honest way. He said that for the PYM, the main goal has been to put pressure on the force they see as controlling the levers of power, the ruling class as expressed in the Democratic Party, in order to force them to end the war.
Nabulsi explained that PYM believes that the best way to do this is through mass mobilizations in the streets that show the ruling class that “we have the masses.” However, while he acknowledged that in his opinion these mass mobilizations are far and away the most effective strategy, he made an aside affirming that the PYM also supported other strategies, such as student encampments and the uncommitted movement.
Nabulsi was followed by Roua Daas, an SJP activist from Penn State who offered an analysis of the state of the student movement, and veteran activist Taher Herzallah, who offered an incisive analysis of the catastrophic results of the Oslo Accords on the Palestinian student movement abroad. The plenary wrapped up with Lara Kiswani of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, a non-profit organization in the Bay Area, who spoke on the need for broad coalition building and deepening the connections between Palestine solidarity and trade unions before attendees once again had an opportunity to attend a series of different talks.
That evening, the much-awaited keynote speaker of the conference finally arrived, Sana’ Daqqa, along with her young daughter, Milad. Sana’ is the widow of Palestinian martyr Walid Daqqa, who recently died from poor medical care while jailed in Israeli prisons for his role in the Palestinian left-wing militant organization, the PLFP. Sana’ and Milad were ushered to the stage with great fanfare as the audience clapped in time to the music. Still tired from the ordeal of her journey from Palestine, Sana read some short pre-written remarks about Walid, their relationship, and the struggle for Palestinian liberation. She spoke about the importance of organizing done by Palestinian political leaders held in Israeli prisons and told the story of how her daughter was conceived through sperm smuggled out from Walid’s prison cell. Walid was one of many Palestinian political prisoners who have died in Israeli prisons, and his family is still fighting to receive his body for burial. Sana and Milad were presented with a large artwork showing Walid and Milad together, and left to get some rest.
The third day started with a plenary that began with a pre-recorded statement of solidarity from former UK Labour Party politician, Jeremy Corbyn. The rest of the plenary was concerned with the new explosion of the student movement for Palestine. Ibtihal Malley, a PYM organizer and Columbia alumnus, started with an assessment of the wave of encampments that followed the crushing of the students at Columbia. She argued that the encampments were “an important escalation and important tactic” and explained that many students’ experience in the encampments with police violence was “their first direct confrontation with the state and experience with state sanctioned violence.” Malley was followed by international student activists, one from Britain and another from Italy, who spoke about the student movement and its specific circumstances in Europe.
The final panelist was a student speaker from Birzeit University, Ghaied Hijaz, who spoke via video call about the student movement in the West Bank, no doubt at great personal risk. Hijaz’s presentation highlighted the challenges of organizing students under the conditions of severe colonial repression and spoke about students she knew who had been martyred. Her understanding of the importance of the movement informed and inspired the activists who were present. She stated, “The student movement at Birzeit understands that any form of surrender of fear leads to dire consequences, we have witnessed persecution; however, we understand that the most vital aspect is continuity. No matter the conditions our role is to always continue loud and strong. … As Palestinians we need to continue organizing and fighting on every front to halt this extermination. The path is challenging and difficult. We need to fight the battle together as free people.”
Most of the afternoon was spent in various panel discussions. Highlights included a panel with Vijay Prashad, a well-known academic and political commentator Brian Becker, a major leader of the PSL; Hana Masri, a PYM organizer; and Wassam Rafeede, author of the book “Trinity of Fundamentals,” which was smuggled out during his imprisonment. During the panel, Prashad stressed the importance of creating a “class link” and actually organizing (rather than simply making social media posts or speaking only in “movement spaces”). During the same panel, PSL leader Brian Becker announced a march on Washington for June 8. Rafeede focused on providing an analysis of the broad scope of the Palestinian struggle, explaining that the difference between Palestine and previous struggles like Vietnam or South Africa is the predominance of settler colonialism by Israel. Rafeede also explained exactly why no “two state solution” is possible, and instead argued for one democratic Palestinian state, which would end the Zionist project in Palestine. Masri reflected on the importance of social media for the struggle.
The next plenary addressed the “uncommitted campaign” and electoral work around Palestine. It featured Layla Elabed, organizer with Listen to Michigan and sister of Congresswoman Tlalib; Reema Ahmad, an organizer for the uncommitted vote in Wisconsin; and another appearance from Brian Becker of the PSL. Elabed explained the origins of Listen to Michigan and the success of its campaign to get Democratic Party voters to vote “uncommitted” in the state’s presidential primary. From her perspective, voting is a powerful outlet for the political expression of ordinary people and a way to “hold genocide Joe accountable.” Despite this, Elabed stopped short of putting forward a strategy for the upcoming general election.
The next speaker, Reema Ahmad, continued in a similar vein, arguing that the “uncommitted” movement expressed to politicians that the people “are going to use decisions around [Gaza] to inform how they vote this election.” She implied that this strategy should continue beyond the Democratic National Convention and that activists must “keep bringing the struggle to every place, showing we will act through our electoral muscle and take this to the ballot box.” She then declared, “We will vote and do this as the vanguard for life, justice, and liberation!” This speech implied an openness to support Biden if he made the “right decisions” on Palestine.
The third speech of this plenary was very different. While Brian Becker made some concessions towards the “uncommitted movement,” he mostly talked about how the two-party system in the USA is a “tortured form of democracy” and finished by more or less calling for a vote for the PSL’s own presidential candidate, but without mentioning her name (Claudia de la Cruz). Following this, the conference began to wrap up with a final plenary from Sana Daqqa and concluding with a discussion of internationalism.
However, while there were various hiccups throughout the conference, it was a logistical miracle overall—considering the event’s scope, the sheer number of international Palestinian panelists requiring visas to enter the U.S., and the need for translation to English from both Arabic and Italian. Nevertheless, many panels began late, and the general lateness meant that often there was little time left over at the end of panels for discussion. Often hundreds of people in the hall were raising their hand to ask questions, with only time for three or four. That was unfortunate given the key juncture we are at in the movement right now.
Similarly, while there was lots of reporting back from struggles in the form of panels, little time was allowed for concrete organizing. Activist meet-ups by region or type of work (labor etc) would have been very helpful to push the organizing through to the next stage. Despite these flaws, however, attendees of the People’s Conference for Palestine left energized to continue organizing for both an end to the genocide in Gaza, and ultimately, for the defeat of Zionism itself with the construction of a truly free Palestine.
If the antiwar and Palestinian solidarity movement in this country is going to continue to gather strength, it must begin to construct common places for democratic discussion, planning, and organization. Such conferences can lay the basis for building a broad national coalition of organizations and activists—including sections of the labor movement. The aim must be to organize protests that are massive in their size and number, and that can carry the message of liberation for Palestine to vast numbers of people throughout the country.
Photo: ANSWER coalition.