Free Palestine (April 1974)

Free Palestine was a monthly magazine published in Britain from 1968 until 1984, after which it moved to Australia from where it continued publication until 1992. The magazine, little known by activists or scholars today, is effectively an archive of the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain during the years of its publication, and contains a treasure trove of information, experiences, tactics and strategies used by British-based activists in building solidarity with Palestine.

In the midst of an unspeakable genocide being committed against the people of Palestine, this teaching tool aims to retreive the lessons contained within Free Palestine’s pages and explore its significance for the current struggle against Israeli colonisation, Apartheid and murder.

The first issue of Free Palestine was published June 1968 and featured an editorial outlining its aims and positions:

As a group of Palestinian Arabs residing in the UK, we hope that through ‘Free Palestine’ we shall contribute our share to a greater understanding and rapport between the British people and the Arabs of Palestine. Thus, in attempting to acquaint those interested with the facts of the situation, we aspire to represent as well as reflect the rights and aspirations of our people. This means we fully subscribe to our people’s legitimate desire to return to a free, secular and democratic Palestine, and that we unreservedly support our people’s armed struggle to achieve these natural and elementary aims in its homeland.

Free Palestine (June 1968)

This editorial was written by Dr. Abdul Wahab Al-Kayali who was a PhD student at University College London, pen-name ‘Aziz M. Yafi’, a founder of the paper and its editor in chief until 1969. Al-Kayali went on to head the Education and Cultural Affairs Department of the PLO Executive Committee from 1973. His pen-name continued to appear regularly in the magazine as a contributor to the sections ‘Palestine Brief’ and ‘Palestine in the Western Press’, and as a pseudonym for subsequent editors, until he was assassinated in his Beirut office on 7 December 1982. Over the course of its publication, the magazine had several other named editors from various sections of the growing movement of solidarity with Palestine in Britain. This included Ghayth Armanazi, editor from 1969-70, then a Fatah member studying in London and founder of the activist group Friends of Palestine; Louis Eakes, editor from 1970-74, a national organiser of the Young Liberals and closely affiliated with Palestine Action (a campaign group formed in 1973 by Palestinian doctor Ghada Karmi that lasted until the late 1970s); and Andrew Faulds (announced as a member of the editorial board in 1981), a Labour MP (1966–1997) and president of Palestine Action.

The paper covers the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain and elsewhere at a time when it was growing in reach and resonance across the world. Palestinian resistance organisations took control of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) after the Arab defeat in the June 1967 War, and transformed it into a national umbrella organisation for the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle. These resistance organisations were inspired by and built networks with fraternal anticolonial and socialist struggles in Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba, China and elsewhere. They, as well as Palestinian unions of women, students, workers, artists and more, engaged in a widespread solidarity-building campaign in order to transform the position of Palestine on the global stage. Integral to this was communicating the aims, strategies, histories and visions of Palestinian liberation to the world.

Free Palestine (October 1972)

Free Palestine is both an example of how that communication took place through such publications, and a documentation of the wide range of other solidarity-building activities during those years. The paper includes reports on the situation of Palestinians in Palestine and in exile, the crimes of the Israeli occupation, the activities of the Palestinian liberation movement, exclusive interviews with Palestinian leaders, letters and questions from the Free Palestine readership, media analysis, educational materials, reports on conferences, summer camps, and delegations, and coverage of connections with other internationalist struggles for liberation. As well as working to spread information and mobilise support through the paper, the team behind the publication participated in speaking tours, demonstrations and lobbying alongside other organisations and individuals in the UK who were committed to the principles of Palestinian liberation.

Free Palestine (January 1973)

This teaching tool focuses on the insight offered by this publication to the emergence, dynamics and principles of the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain. More than a marginal publication among the booming Left publishing scene of the late 1960s and 1970s, this magazine played an important role in documenting and shaping the emergence of an international conversation and organisational framework around questions of solidarity with Palestine. It had a significant circulation, from student groups to parliamentary networks, and maintained a monthly regularity over more than fifteen years despite the financial and political challenges it faced.

Free Palestine cover (September 1971).

The teaching tool highlights some of the key figures and themes that emerged from this magazine over that time, and is intended as a primer to alert researchers to the publication and the rich history of international solidarity that it documents. This resource provides an outline of the magazine’s role and influence, and key themes in it, over the following five sections:

1) An outline of the organisational landscape of pro-Palestine solidarity work in Britain, the context in which the magazine emerged and the role it played in integrating the diverse strands of the movement.

2) A summary of tactics and actions used in building solidarity with Palestine, utilised across different pro-Palestine solidarity groups, including conferences, boycotts and actions.

Free Palestine (May 1974).

3) A documentation of the internationalist themes in the paper, and the connection made between international anticolonial struggles and the Palestine liberation movement.

4) A record of different efforts by Zionist organisations to and the British state to silence and suppress pro-Palestine activism.

5) Finally, the resource looks specifically at the trajectory of efforts to build solidarity within the British trade union movement and in Parliament, documenting the early efforts by the Palestinian Revolution to gain some traction amongst these sectors.

Free Palestine (May 1974).

For those unacquainted with the Palestinian struggle over this period, there is much in Free Palestine that they will find striking. Beyond scholarly interest, studying the paper also provides important lessons for those engaged in organising for Palestine in Britain today. Its pages provide an insight into the longer-term nature of political struggle for Palestine and how organising efforts can accumulate to provide frameworks on which subsequent generations of organisers can build. Alternatively, they also show how the same battles are often fought and refought over generations. In either case, the paper makes available a wealth of experience and tactics for building solidarity with Palestine and protecting public space, whilst also reinforcing the multigenerational impact of political work. What also stands out is the sheer variety of tactics and strategies employed by organisers in making the case for Palestine in different arenas and amongst different sectors, rather than being limited to any single approach.

Such reflections are more important now than ever. As Palestinians face an Israeli genocidal regime committed to their total erasure from their homeland, the need for global solidarity to stem Israel’s murderous project is more important now than ever. Reading Free Palestine in light of recent Israeli massacres in Gaza, we can see that huge strides have been made in ‘mainstreaming’ support for Palestinian liberation amongst large sections of the British population, a significant achievement that, nonetheless, has yet to be translated into a movement capable of ending Britain’s military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel, even in light of two years of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.

Whilst not providing us with answers, the pages of Free Palestine do help orientate our questions: how can we materially impact the situation in Palestine, build solidarity and end British complicity? How can growing understanding of Israel’s settler-colonial, Apartheid and genocidal nature, and statements of support, be translated into effective solidarity? What are the different groups that must be organised, and how can this best be achieved? What have we acquired from previous generations of solidarity work, and what frameworks and tactics are useful to pass on to future efforts?

“As a group of Palestinian Arabs residing in the UK, we hope that through ‘Free Palestine’ we shall contribute our share to a greater understanding and rapport between the British people and the Arabs of Palestine. Thus, in attempting to acquaint those interested with the facts of the situation, we aspire to represent as well as reflect the rights and aspirations of our people. This means we fully subscribe to our people’s legitimate desire to return to a free, secular and democratic Palestine, and that we unreservedly support our people’s armed struggle to achieve these natural and elementary aims in its homeland.”

Founded in Beirut in 1969, the Arabic periodical al-Hadaf (The Target) was the media organ of the newly formed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PLFP arose as a guerrilla organization in 1967, espousing a Marxist-Leninist framework and advancing armed revolutionary struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Its rise is indicative of wider political transformations precipitated by the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, the radicalization of a Third World internationalism and New Left anti-imperialist solidarity in the late 1960s. In this context, Al-Hadaf has often been consulted as an archival source offering valuable insights about this crucial moment of revolutionary transformation in the history of the Palestinian liberation struggle. However, the periodical itself, its editorial foregrounding of art as a site of revolutionary struggle, and its visual and material form, have yet to be studied.

In particular, al-Hadaf’s founding editor, Palestinian novelist, journalist and militant Ghassan Kanafani (1936–72) played a pivotal role in defining the aesthetic preoccupations and form of this radical periodical. He dedicated a special section to contemporary political art, literature and culture and, crucially, acted as a conduit to bring on board an emerging generation of Arab artists and writers. Thanks to many artists’ contributions, the periodical itself was visually striking, showcasing a wealth of experimental militant artworks. Furthermore, it reconciled some of the tense relations between modern art and politics which had been fiercely debated in the previous decade in literary Arabic periodicals such as al-Adab and Shiʿr. Thus a new sense of political urgency and commitment through the arts was emerging in the pages of al-Hadaf.

Drawing on an archive of Al-Hadaf’s foundational years (1969-72), under Kanafani’s editorial direction, my paper aims to uncover this neglected art historical and politico-aesthetic dimension. It is concerned primarily with the role such a magazine plays in the politicization of art in revolutionary contexts. How did al-Hadaf succeed in lending new militant meanings to modernist artistic practices outside the confines of gallery spaces, market systems, and elite literary circles? How did it carry in its printed pages—texts, images and symbols—new aesthetic sensibilities that articulate revolutionary horizons? And, in doing so, how did this periodical aesthetically inscribe the Palestinian struggle and the radical left in the Arab world, within the translocal visuality of anti-imperialist revolutionary ferment and transnational solidarities that characterized the global sixties?

My talk will look at the literary and cultural journal as a vehicle in the (re)construction of culture, literature and popular education in the aftermath of colonial destruction. I will focus on the 1950-60’s anticolonial activities of two Palestinian periodicals, al-Jadid and al-Ittihad, while offering frames and queries that can be applied to post and anticolonial periodicals on a broader scale.

As in other contexts, anticolonial periodicals were formed in Palestine/Israel in response to colonial destruction. The magazine and newspaper at hand functioned as forums to redress the ravaged cultural landscape through the development of local culture and literature, historical and cultural thought, popular education, collective self-definition, mobilization and political awareness. In the absence of state or institutional support, such literary production took on a central position, providing a space for collective development and facilitating regional and international exchange networks. Periodicals provided alternatives to the publishing route that ran through mainstream venues and publishing houses. They nurtured local culture through the publication of local writers, the transmission of key issues and debates, anticolonial literary gatherings, networks and mentorship, the translation of literatures, and the exposure of readers to international progressive literatures. I will examine the periodical’s table of contents as an archival record that helps us trace the phases and programs of literary and cultural reconstruction.  I will also discuss the major activities that were central to oppositional periodical culture in Palestine/Israel, emphasizing the dynamic relationship between cultural organizing through intellectual clubs and events, communication with the international anti-colonial and socialist literary scenes through translation and exchange, and the nurturing and mentorship of new writers and artists through publication and dialogue.

In this paper, I will explore the concept of community in relation to publishing practices through the PFLP bulletin, a 1970s-1980s English-language monthly magazine published by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The aim of the bulletin was to present the political line of the PFLP, to provide current information and analysis of the struggle at a local, national and international level, and as a tool to build solidarity amongst similar liberation movements around the world. This role in forming networks and an alternative platform for debate and critique fits into the stream “Counter-Institutional: The Material Histories of Periodicals”.

Through an analysis of the layout design, language and content in digital versions of these issues found online and building on the discussion that I began in an article titled “A platform for third world solidarity: thePopularFrontfor the Liberation of Palestine bulletin”published inThe Funambulist (Issue 22), the paper discusses the role and influence of publishing practices in the twentieth century. It grapples with questions of relevance of publishing these types of publications now, and outlines some lessons we can draw on today from the community and solidarity building activities developed through the PFLP Bulletin.