Austria: Events held in three cities for the release of Georges Abdallah

Hereby we publish an unofficial translation of an article published here.

A series of events took place last weekend for Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the revolutionary of the Palestinian liberation struggle who has been in prison for 40 years. Presentations were made in three cities, Vienna, Linz and Innsbruck, to support, in Austria the demand for the release of Georges Abdallah!

Several articles detailed the story of Georges Abdallah’s imprisonment and the long witch hunt, incarceration and isolation torture. Various discussions arose about the anti-democratic practices of the French State. These were also compared to the repression against the movement today, against political opposition to the rulers, their “solidarity with Israel” and their plans for war and social cuts. And: in Austria, too, it has been reported, there are Palestinian political prisoners who have been in prison almost as long as Georges Abdallah.

Two contributions also presented the movement’s experiences with State repression and how they successfully resisted it. The work in the “Tyrol Palestine Initiative” and a report from the student camp at the University of Vienna were presented as examples.

Even those visitors who already knew Georges Abdallah were unaware that he regularly publishes statements. He takes position on important events, supports the Palestinian national liberation struggle and the solidarity movement with it, while attacking the Israeli State as an “expression of imperialism”. In anti-imperialism, the ADRV [Translator’s note: Action for Democratic Rights of the People] noted, there is also common ground in the struggle of the Palestinian people and the struggle against warmongering and the dismantling of social and democratic rights caused by imperialism in Austria. “Solidarity with Israel” is also the purest war program.

Even in the face of the genocidal war in Gaza, Georges Abdallah is optimistic, “the criminal Zionist occupying army is sinking more and more into the sand of Gaza.” This is a law on national liberation struggles, that even a people with weak weapons can defeat a genocide, and it is based on the experiences proven by history. An important example of this is currently the revolutionary movement of the Indian Naxalites, which has been defying genocide for almost 20 years. Photos were taken in solidarity with them, as part of a current campaign against the latest military operation, called “Kagaar”.

Georges Abdallah represents the revolutionary and anti-imperialist movement, the contributions about his work in connection with the experiences of the solidarity movement in Austria were an important and welcomed contribution to its advance and development.