Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
4 August
ICONIC JEWISH RESISTANCE HERO SALUTES GAZA RESISTANCE
On this day in 2002, Marek Edelman, a leader of the heroic 1943 Jewish uprising in Warsaw against the Nazis wrote a solidarity letter to fellow resistance fighters in a similarly desperate situation in Gaza, addressed to "Commanders of the Palestinian military, paramilitary and partisan operations - to all the soldiers of the Palestinian fighting organisations". Edelman observed that "to this day, a partisan struggle in cities has never succeeded anywhere in the world, but the armies we fought against also never won”.
بطل ورمز المقاومة اليهودية يحيًي مقاومة غزة
4 أغسطس
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2002 ، كتب ماريك إيدلمان زعيم الانتفاضة اليهودية البطولية ضد النازيين في وارسو عام 1943 رسالة تضامن لرفاق المقاومة المقاتلين في غزة وهم في وضع يائس مماثل، موجهة إلى "قادة القوى والعمليات شبه العسكرية والحزبية الفلسطينيه- إلى جميع جنود المنظمات الفلسطينية المقاتلة ".لاحظ إيدلمان أنه "لم تنجح أبدًا العمليات شبه العسكرية والحزبية في المدن في أي مكان في العالم حتى يومنا هذا، لكن الجيوش التي قاومناها لم تكسب أبدًا ".
Edelman...took to his grave his unshakeable belief, rooted in his strong sense of humanist Judaism and forged in his teenage years as a member of the Jewish Anti Zionist Socialist Bund, that racism could be overcome and that a politics which speaks to a common humanity would ultimately prevail.
"In his 80s, Edelman wrote a letter in August 2002 to Palestinian leaders.. Though the letter criticised the suicide bombers, its tone infuriated the Israeli government and its press. He wrote in a spirit of solidarity from a fellow resistance fighter, as a former leader of a Jewish uprising not dissimilar in desperation to the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories. He addressed his letter to "commanders of the Palestinian military, paramilitary and partisan operations - to all the soldiers of the Palestinian fighting organisations".
Given Edelman's enormous stature, "this set up a howl of rage in the Zionist press, who reminded their readers that Mr Edelman, despite his heroism in the 1940s, is a former supporter of the anti-Zionist socialist Bund, and can therefore not be trusted. Nothing infuriates Zionists more than the arguments of anti-Zionist Jews, who have such a courageous and principled history."
When Edelman died, the President of Poland attended his funeral in Warsaw on 9th October 2009 and there was a fifteen-gun salute. Because of his support for the Palestinians, not even the lowliest clerk in the Israeli Embassy attended.
Edelman was not alone among Jews in drawing parallels between events in WWII Poland and current Gaza. Gerald Kaufman MP talks in this short video of his grandmother's brutal killing and Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. https://youtu.be/qMGuYjt6CP8
