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At the People's Conference for Palestine held on May 26, 2024 in Detroit, Taher Herzallah, the associate director for outreach and grassroots organizing for American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) said: "The gloves are off." He explained that some people in the room will not be at the conference the following year, because the liberation struggle requires sacrifices. Herzallah also said that the long tentacles of Zionism have reached deep into the American heartland. AMP is currently under investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability for its ties to Hamas via its financial sponsor, Americans for Justice in Palestine and links to the Holy Land Foundation.
Yara Shoufani of the Palestinian Youth Movement and a PhD student at York University, quoted from a poem written in honor of Ghassan Kanafani, spokesman of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who was killed in 1972: "You were the homeland, you were the revolution, you were the pen and the gun." She added: "Welcome to the struggle, we fight until victory."
Moustafa Barghouti, secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative and a member of the PLO Central Council said, that in all its forms, resistance is the right, the way, and the guarantee to succeed in the future of the Palestinians. He added that regardless of the sacrifices, what we have seen since October 7 is a return to the root of the Palestinian problem.
The conference was streamed live on BreakThrough News on YouTube. It is worth noting that the keynote speaker at the conference was Sana' Daqqa, widow of terrorist Walid Daqqa, who died from terminal illness while serving out a life sentence in an Israeli jail. Daqqa was part of a cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) comprised of Arab Israelis who kidnapped IDF soldier Moshe Tamam and murdered him. Other speakers at the conference were U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib, mayor of Dearborn Abdullah Hamoud, and PFLP member Wisam Rafidee.
Yara Shoufani: "Our struggle is a long struggle, and one that stands on the shoulders of thousands of martyrs and thousands of fighters who have committed and who are committing their lives to lay the ground for the revolution we see ahead of us today. It is in this tradition that we convene here and commit ourselves to the road ahead.
"After the martyrdom of Palestinian intellectual and revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani, a poem written in his honor notes: 'And the homeland, which you were far from, you were the closest of people to it. The homeland in which you should have been living, was living in you. You were the homeland. You were the revolution. You were the pen and the gun.
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"Welcome to the conference and welcome to the struggle. We fight until victory!"
Moustafa Barghouti: "Al Aqsa... Al Aqsa Flood, which came on the seventh of October, actually represented a continuation of true, new kind of uprising that started in 2015 in the occupied territories.
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"Regardless of how much sacrifices we have to make, in reality, what we have seen since the seventh of October is a return to the roots of the issue. To the roots of the problem. To the roots of why we are suffering as Palestinians.
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"In all its forms, resistance is our right. Resistance is our way. Resistance is our guarantee to succeed in our future."
Taher Herzallah: "We know that Zionism has killed us, has displaced us, has destroyed our lives in Palestine. And the long tentacles of Zionism have always reached deep into the American heartland. Like no other place in the world, Zionism has penetrated the depths of American society, economics, and politics, for decades. But it makes sense though. It makes sense because without America, there would be no Zionist project. At its core, the Zionist settler colonial project is based on the white European settler colonial project of North America.
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"The world has changed in ways that does not suit them. And they're going crazy realizing that they have spent all these years and billions of dollars to prop up this project of theirs, and they are still losing. They're losing a public narrative battle. They're losing their ability to control us. And this means that now the gloves are off. And quite frankly, anything is possible.
"I caution you of the days to come, because they will not be easy. There are people among us today who might not be with us next year at this conference. And this is the reality. Because the liberation struggle requires sacrifice, and I know everybody here is prepared to make that sacrifice."
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