The Trial Statement of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah
Madame, Monsieur,
That an Arab revolutionary should be tried by this Western “special” court is perfectly normal. That he be deemed a criminal and a delinquent is nothing new: the “bandits of the Aurès,” [1] the “terrorists” of Palestine, and the “vile zealots” in Ansar and Khiam [2] have already received such honorable epithets. They are stark reminders for all amnesiacs about the actual heritage of your so-called Western justice system and the legacy of your Judeo-Christian civilization. Yet, when the real criminal, the Yankee––exterminator of all the wretched of the earth––is also a representative of the alleged victims before you, this is reason enough to abstain from commenting on the nature of your court and the task to which it is assigned.
If, at first glance, representatives of the Zionist entity seem to be absent from the stage, it’s not, of course, because of your modesty and discretion. This entity is simply a Western outpost, an operational base for imperialist attack dogs, a prototype of the strategies of annihilation and balkanization that your rulers have in store for us. It goes without saying that this entity is well-represented before your court: if not by its Yankee ruler, then by its counterpart, the Attorney General.
That I am abstaining to comment on the nature of your court by no means implies that I am endorsing its illegitimacy or obscuring its absolute legality, a perfect illustration of the gulf that separates your legal world from our real world, an authentic representation of the “peace” your system institutes and maintains through the annihilation of millions of people in the peripheries. Despite the suffering of all people everywhere on earth, your rulers impose their criminal system’s peace and legality of which war comprises an integral part. You are profoundly mistaken if you hope that war will never again spread beyond the borders of the peripheries.
40 years after the liberation of Paris, we still see all of your rulers––through mystifications, tears, and bluster––continue to pay obligatory homage to the years of the Nazi occupation. On the one hand, this conceals the cowardice of everyone who didn’t give a damn about those who bore the yellow star, everyone who found their virility by supporting the swindlers who exploit the memories of Auschwitz and the other terrible crimes of your system. On the other hand, it also masks the legitimate reasons for why those “vile terrorists” in Affiche Rouge [3] and their comrades took illegal action to save your country’s honor by fighting heroically against the system of criminals and their stooges. Here in France they fought and elsewhere. Wherever they could, they attacked, trampling any legality underfoot that hindered their legitimate struggle. The four years of the occupation have brought to light the criminal legality of your imperialist system and have given honor to everyone who was committed to the legitimacy of fighting it.
Certainly, these “vile terrorists” were not very numerous, and generals like “Massu” [4] were not exactly exceptional in their movement, but this doesn’t stop us from hoping to witness the emergence of a new era of “vile terrorists” in much greater number and whose movement, untainted by the presence of anyone like “Massu,” remains committed to the same struggle as the “terrorists” in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Central America, a struggle to bring an end to the legality of your peace that is upheld by your rulers’ strategy of annihilation in our peripheries. Fortunately, the present doesn’t contradict our hopes.
Of course, you are not here to talk politics. This is clear. You are here simply to judge actions that have disturbed your system’s peace. To know the meaning of this “apolitical” peace, one only has to refer to the words of Mitterrand, one of your wise rulers and institutional guardians. On the eve of one of your aggressions against our people, did he not declare, “This peace is better defended by the war that we are waging than by letting the present state continue unchanged. Peace is better preserved by our action than by our inaction[?]”
This is the peace, Messieurs––the peace of the graveyards––that is threatened by the actions you presume to judge. What is threatened is only the continuation of the war of extermination perpetrated by Reagan, the leader of your system. What your court has undertaken to put on trial is the imperialist war itself.
No, Messieurs, your court is far from being apolitical. No, Messieurs, your trial is far from being legitimate. This trial is the legal emblem of the imperialist war that is being waged against our people, and thereby any of the “good intentions” of those who play their part as mediators for your rulers are automatically abjured, as are any of the illusions of those who hypocritically believe that a viper can change its nature simply by shedding its skin.
With what grace and independence do you presume to judge acts of war by isolating them from the general process of imperialist aggression that is being perpetrated against our people? To what extent are you yourselves, you representatives of French imperialism, involved in this war? And how cynical must the representative of that criminal Reagan be to present the US as a victim and a civil party to the French government at the same moment as the US Navy is preparing its attack [5] on Beirut and other Arab cities?
One must be related to Goebbels by blood in order to accept such a charade. Who else but the imperialist authorities themselves are entitled to this trash heap of history and its infamous progenitor?
Our people have been subjected to aggressions of all kinds for well more than 40 years. There’s no weapon lacking among the testing ground in which our people are the lab rats. From the start of this century until the present day, your rulers have spared us nothing, from the most nefarious conspiracies to the most heinous massacres. The strategies of annihilation and balkanization coincide under the emblem of Western human rights. Annihilation is currently being perpetrated in the cruelest way possible by the Americans and their Zionist attack dogs. As for balkanization, it is you, you Europeans, who are its architects, the guardian angels of its continuation.
Our lands, Messieurs, are occupied. Our people have been uprooted. The occupiers, the aggressors, are blond-haired, blue-eyed Westerners.
Our people are not propaganda slogans. They are disemboweled women and men in the flesh-and-blood. They are children decapitated by the hundreds. Every day they are dying. Every day war planes are bombing and murdering them, war ships are sowing death and destruction upon them. Every day your settlers are taking new hostages. Our people in the occupied territory are hostages. Our people everywhere else are merely potential hostages, potential victims.
Admittedly, there are no gas chambers in Ansar or Ashkelon. But there are vacuum bombs and other jewels of your war industry that carry on their legacy, and your settlers are perfectly satisfied with them, at least for now. It all depends on how many new settlers you can provide. But it also all depends on our people’s attachment to the legitimacy of fighting the system that is providing the settlers: your criminal system. Of course, the edifice of balkanization is still doing its job to your satisfaction, and as long as your pimps still hold the strings of their prostitutes, there they’ll remain, rest assured, in the short term.
Messieurs, I’m not here to draw your attention to the cruelty of the massacres that are being perpetrated against our people. After all, you’re not entirely unfamiliar with them. Nor am I here to solicit condemnations of the executioners. The highest international organizations have already given us enough condemnations. Yet, alas, they are simply paper, and in the face of the flagship weapons of your murderous war industry, they have been of little use to us, not in 1982, not before, and not after.
I am here, Messieurs, simply to ask that, before you presume to judge us, you wash your hands of our our blood and the blood of our mothers and children that stain them, because anyone who disgraces the blood of the 25,000 people who died during the imperialist-Zionist invasion of Lebanon can only be direct accomplices to Reagan and Begin in their war of extermination against our people. 25,000 people dead in just three months of your so-called “peace.” 45,000 people wounded in honor of your justice. 90 days of Beirut as a testing ground for American-Israeli weapons, and yet the Reagan administration is named as a victim and civil party in your trial! Of course, this is perfectly normal, despite the flimsy illusions of those who presume to depict imperialist France and its courts as impartial.
This is the fundamental basis of your court. This is the essence of this trial and the accusations I am charged with that, incidentally, are merely honors that I haven’t yet deserved. Even if our people haven’t granted me the honor of participating in the anti-imperialist actions that you have attributed to me, at least I have the honor of being accused of them by your court and of defending their legitimacy against the criminal legality of the executioners, and I proclaim loudly and clearly: “Let us trample over any obstacle to the legitimacy of our struggle. Let us trample over the peace of any system that manifests itself in our country under the slogan of ‘Peace for Galilee.’” [6]
I know very well that this is the position that is being criminalized. I know very well that your court is being called to order by the Reagan administration to fulfill this task. You have obeyed this call in all “independence” and “impartiality,” and in all solemnity I will speak out on behalf of what I represent here today: either there will be peace for our Arab people and all of the Arab world or there will be peace for no one anywhere.
Of course, the Yankee criminals and their French social-democrat counterparts will denounce the “terrorist zealots.” After all, they broke the laws of imperialist peace and the elementary rules of Western “tolerance,” orchestrated to the rhythm of shells falling from the New Jersey and F-16s when they weren’t falling from the Super-Étendard and Jaguar war planes.
Of course, “tolerant” and “democratic” souls have every reason to be indignant about the rise of “zealotry” and “international terrorism”: they never fail to display their “humanitarian solidarity” with the resistance against the occupier on the sole condition that the victims obey the executioner’s laws, as long as they can rest easy with the knowledge that war will never extend past the borders of the periphery, will never disturb their criminal peace.
Just as comprehensible are the concerns and the outrage of those “civilized” knights of Western “human rights” and “freedom” in the face of the “vile barbarians” in the Middle East. How could we fail to comprehend their worry and frustration? Though everywhere in the Arab world all the masterpieces of your civilization are displayed under the benevolent gaze of your “human rights” and your statues of “liberty”––whether in Maarakah or Zrarieh, in Bir el Abed [7] or Sabra and Chatila, [8] in Benghazi or in Tripoli, [9] not to mention other names of other cities––you are confronted with the same obstinacy among these Middle Eastern “barbarians,” the same disappointment your ancestors received when, on the same “civilizing” mission, they went to Damascus and came back with nothing.
The imperialist Judeo-Christian West that you represent, Messieurs, has no reason to complain that its values are “misunderstood” in our Muslim peripheries in the East––endlessly accused and criminalized, attacked and dominated. Admittedly, we still haven’t yet managed to design a statue of liberty on par with the New Jersey and its cannons or F-16s and their bombs, but we must recognize that we have received them as they deserve to be received! [10]
Admittedly, we haven’t yet built statuettes of liberty in our cities like the one built in Bir el Abed (for example) and signed by Reagan’s hand, constructed with the modest number of 80 charred and mangled corpses, but I assure you that in this regard we would be quite capable of imitating you.
Of course, your indignation at our oriental Arab and Muslim “intolerance” is perfectly clear. This must mean that we have clearly understood what your “tolerance” means, as it was ideally expressed by Sharon and his hordes in Sabra and in Ansar, by Begin and Shamir in Kfar Kassem and Deir Yassin. [11]
And yet the Yankee is a victim and a civil party to the French government! Or rather, this is precisely why the Yankee can present itself as a civil party in Paris rather than being charged with war crimes in Nuremberg.
Of course, there is no reason that the executioner should be accused or charged. Its victims are ultimately nothing more than Arabs, Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans. Their extermination is neither an offense nor a crime in the eyes of Western courts.
This is the spirit in which the investigating court has established its allegedly irrefutable charges against me.
It is already evident to your court that I have no intention whatsoever of commenting on these alleged charges. I will simply point out that, if these charges were applied universally as they’ve been presented to you by the investigating court, they would be irrefutable against any average person in France.
I would also like to point out the following fact to those of you who have the legal right and legitimacy to judge me: I am accused of murder and attempted murder just because I was present in France before or after the attacks. Can the same be said about Monsieur Jean-Christophe Mitterrand who was present in occupied Palestine in Kfar Hanassi when Zionist soldiers were committing the worst atrocities? Can the same be said about the one [12] who traveled to Beirut atop Sharon’s tanks in 1982 during the invasion of Lebanon in order to express his support to the vanguards of your “free” world? Can the same be said about those who sold and are still selling the jewels of their weapons arsenals––from Jericho 2 thermonuclear warheads to F-16s––to the aggressors of our people? Of course, these comparisons won’t make sense to you. After all, they’re just blond-haired, blue-eyed Westerners who are acting in service to imperialist peace. But must we remind you that your legal argumentation will only be used to indict them by those who have the right and legitimacy to judge them?
I know that the struggle of our people does not advance according to the length of the trial statements of its imprisoned fighters, so I will thank my captors for allowing me to express what I have to say despite the solitary confinement regime under which I am imposed. I will address myself to you (and to my father from whom I haven’t yet heard) and repeat the words of an African revolutionary: “Wotta Sitta,” which in French means, “le temps est juste,” or rather “c’est juste le temps de. . .” [“The time is right,” “Now is the time to. . . ”] Now I will withdraw from this court and leave you the pleasure of listening to the representative of the executioners and its defense spew their hatred against all the wretched of the earth.
Down with imperialism and its lackeys!
Victory and glory to all people in struggle!
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah
February 23, 1987
Paris
_______________________________________________________________________________________
1. A reference to the fighters in the FLN during the Algerian War, who were described as such in the French press at the time.
2. Ansar is an Israeli concentration camp. Khiam is a concentration and torture camp run by the Fascist Lebanese militia, South Lebanon Army, which was organized, armed, and financed by Israel.
3. A reference to a communist resistance group from the FTP-MOI (Francs-tireurs et partisans – main-d’œuvre immigrée) that comprised immigrant workers in France. Responsible for numerous attacks against the Nazis and their collaborators, they were arrested, tortured, and executed.
4. General Jacques Massu was a member of the Free French Force before distinguishing himself during the Algerian War at the head of the 10th Parachute Division, responsible for the counter-revolutionary torture and repression of the FLN during the Battle of Algiers.
5. At the time of the second trial of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the American Navy was bombing the outskirts of Beirut in the context of the conflict between the Lebanese resistance and the “International Peacekeeping Force” (The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon [UNIFIL]) deployed by the imperialist powers to Beirut after the Zionist’s withdrawal. US Navy fighter jets and Battleship New Jersey left dozens of victims. The French Navy’s Super-Étendard fighter jets also participated in these bombings.
6. “Operation Peace for Galilee” was the name of the Zionist entity’s military operation that began the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
7. A suburb south of Beirut where in response to American bombings a US Marine Corp barracks was attacked leaving over 300 US and French military forces dead.
8. A Palestinian refugee camp where the fascist Lebanese Phalangists massacred hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. Recall that the imperialists imposed Bachir Gemayel, leader of the Phalangists, as president of Lebanon in 1982.
9. The US Navy had just bombed these two Libyan cities at the time of the trial.
10. The “International Peacekeeping Force” (UNFIL) suffered a crushing defeat in Lebanon. Attacks had destroyed the headquarters of the American and French contingents, killing dozens of soldiers and provoking a retreat that amounted to a general routing of their forces.
11. Palestinian villages whose populations were massacred by the Zionists.
12. François Léotard, then France’s Minister of Defense.
print-imposed & read PDF’s: https://archive.org/details/georges-abdallah-trial-statement-imposed
original French: https://liberonsgeorges.samizdat.net/ses-declarations/declaration-de-george-ibrahim-abdallah-a-son-proces-en-1987/
Screen-reading:
https://ia601502.us.archive.org/11/items/georges-abdallah-trial-statement-imposed/georges-abdallah-trial-statement-read.pdf
Print-ready:
https://ia801502.us.archive.org/11/items/georges-abdallah-trial-statement-imposed/georges-abdallah-trial-statement-imposed.pdf
Received by email.
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=20592
#antiImperialism #europe #France #georgesAbdallah #lebanon #palestine #PoliticalPrisoners #westAsia #zionistEntity
