Revolution, O Palestinians

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

O Palestinian people, Arab and Muslim,

We have been fighting for a hundred years, and our heads have remained held high, our standing among the nations preserved. Nations have learned from us struggle, jihad, patience, perseverance, steadfastness, and the offering of sacrifices; and despite the horror of the calamities, sorrows, and pains that have befallen us, and despite the ganging up of enemies and collaborators against us, our resolve remains at its full strength, and it is, God willing, gaining momentum with each passing day.

The enemies, foremost among them the Zionists, have tried every method of persecution, repression, fragmentation, and dissolution against us, and in the end nothing has served them except hired Palestinians who wear the garb of false, counterfeit patriotism in order to undermine the unity of the people and the foundations of its quest to restore its established national rights. The Western states have opened their treasuries to these mercenaries, offering them money, pleasures, and comforts, so that Palestine is transformed into bank accounts and real estate, national rights into luxury cars, and the blood of martyrs into fuel.

They commit indecencies and abominations against this people, and work to destroy its social and moral fabric in a programmed, systematic, and premeditated fashion. They destroy, while the people watch them from a distance, doing nothing but offering them a faint smile, or amusing themselves with their shameful tales in gatherings and salons.

These traitors, who shelter under the protection of the occupation, have wronged the entire Palestinian people, disfigured its image before Arabs and Muslims and before the peoples of the earth, wronged the Palestinian cause, and trampled on all its sacrifices, tears, sorrows, and pains. Yet the people’s response has not been proportionate to the harm inflicted upon it, nor to the scale of the contempt shown toward the people’s established national rights.

It falls to us, the people of Palestine, to repair what has been wrecked and destroyed by leaders who know neither values nor morals, so that our efforts toward liberating the homeland may be set right. So where do we begin?

The people in the West Bank are afflicted with persecution, repression, and abuse, and it is important that we begin from outside Palestine. Palestinians, wherever they may be, are required to begin carrying out activities that denounce the situation prevailing in the Palestinian land occupied since ‘67. They are required to hold gatherings, seminars, and lectures, and to stage demonstrations denouncing corruption, the corrupt, and the contempt shown toward rights — as a first step toward changing internal Palestinian conditions.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الثورة أيها الفلسطينيون” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.