Occupied Palestine: Freedom Road
By Yossi Schwartz, International Socialist League (Section of the RCIT in Israel / Occupied Palestine), 06.09.2021, http://the-isleague.com/
Freedom Road was a 1979 American TV historical drama mini-series starring boxer Muhammad Ali and Kris Kristofferson, based on the 1944 novel by Howard Fast.
This movie comes to mind because six Palestinian freedom fighters managed to escape from a Zionist high-security facility in pre-1967 northern Israel – the Gilboa prison – early on Monday. This was another defeat for the Israeli Apartheid state after a Zionist killer, Barel Shmueli, was shot at the fence through the same hole in the fence he used to shoot protesting children on the Gaza border. This incident happened during a Palestinian protest marking the 52nd anniversary of the burning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Aug. 21 by an Australian Zionist. In Israel, he is considered a hero. He is dead and freedom lovers do not have one tear for him.
According to the Zionist media reports the men, who likely shared the same prison cell, escaped through a tunnel that was dug from below a toilet in the cell, from which the prisoners crawled their way to freedom. They used a rusty spoon that they hid behind a poster to dig the tunnel.
The Zionist Police, soldiers, the Shin Bet, and sniffer dogs have failed so far to catch the Palestinian political prisoners. The prisoners included Zakariye Zubeidi, 46, a former Fatah party leader in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, and five Palestinian Islamic Jihad members serving life sentences for involvement in the Palestinian Intifada of the early 2000s. They are: Monadel Yacoub Nafe’at, 26, Yaqoub Qassem, Yaqoub Mahmoud Qadri, 49, Ayham Nayef Kamamji, 35, and Mahmoud Abdullah Ardah, 46.
Most likely they are escaping to Jenin where the Palestinian Authority lost control and where Palestinians in recent weeks have confronted the forces of the Zionist occupation and repression. Zakariye Zubeidi's mother and brother were murdered by the Zionist soldiers who raided the Jenin refugee camp, where the family lives.
"Some Palestinians and Western journalists referred to Zubeidi back then as the “Sheriff of Jenin” because the armed group he led was considered more influential than the PA. According to Palestinian and Israeli sources, Zubeidi survived at least four assassination attempts by Israel." [1]
"The Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups, including Hamas and the ruling Fatah faction, welcomed the escape of the “heroes” from prison. "In the face of this great heroic operation, we affirm the following,” PIJ said. "First: We salute the six heroic prisoners who dug the earth with their nails to dispel the darkness of the cells, and dispel with it the illusions of the enemy that boasts of its powerful security measures and the strength of his fortifications. Second: The process of gaining freedom constituted a great heroic act and caused a severe shock to the Zionist security system. This operation will be added to the heroic record of our Palestinian people.” [2]
The escape of the Palestinian political prisoners brings to mind the movie "Escape from Pretoria", a 2020 Australian thriller film co-written and directed by Francis Annan, based on the real-life prison escape by three political prisoners in South Africa in 1979.
Today is the Jewish New year when the Jews are reading the story of the expulsion of Hagar and her son Ismail – the father of the Arabs according to the Jewish bible and Islam. As Bradley Burston, a journalist of Haaretz, writes: "On Rosh Hashanah, Jews Everywhere Are Commanded to Mark the First Nakba" [3]
The Zionists ask themselves how this can happen to us. They still do not comprehend that this is not a mere incident. Israel is in the same place the South African apartheid was in the early 1980s.
Down with the Zionist Apartheid!
Free all Palestinian political prisoners
Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Footnotes
[2] Ibid