Twenty two years ago, the International Red Help started their campaigns for the release of Georges Abdallah, who was already in his 18th year of detention. We have never ceased to play our part in it, just as George never abandoned his resistance, never ceased to embody the struggle against imperialism, the struggle for a free, democratic, secular and socialist Palestine from the Sea to the Jordan.
The extension of his detention is one of the manifestations of the French state’s support for the colonial and genocidal state of Israel. The history of the FARL is precisely that of the attack on this link between the complicit interests of imperialism and the crimes of Zionism. It is this double heritage of the Arab revolutionary left and of the international anti-imperialist struggle that the French state wanted to bury with these decades of blackmail to renounce.
Campaigns of solidarity with Georges have seen several generations of activists engage, the last of whom were not born when Georges became eligible for release in 1999. They form a long history of solidarity, tenacity, and sometimes wear and tear too, you have to know how to see it. The decision of 15 November by the enforcement court to order Georges’ release as of 6 December highlighted the importance of the support campaign. The prosecutor’s office has appealed, of course, and the decision is due on February 20.
This is not the first time that we believe we have reached the goal. We have not forgotten the maneuver of Manuel Valls, Minister of the Interior of the Socialist Party in 2013 who, by refusing to sign the deportation order of Georges, had by a turn this administrative sleight of hand hindered the previous decision of the court to release Georges. It is for this reason that we are calling for a new impetus of mobilization on February 19.
Against the crimes of imperialism and Zionism,