AMILCAR CABRAL AND THE ARAB IDENTITY OF PALESTINE

  Amilcar Cabral, known for his leadership in the anti-colonialist struggle of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, is one of the greatest African, socialist, and national liberation figures of all time.

  He is one of the few people coming from the dialectical tradition to understand the role of the unitary mission and nationalism in nations of periphery, to realize that serious gaps and errors exist in western linear Marxism, and to abide by a quasi-Nkrumahist synthesis on neo-colonialism, with an eerie foreboding that somewhat accurately predicted some of the effects of today's globalist imperialism.

  When reading this piece need to keep in mind that in Amilcar Cabral's day no progressive leader with the exception of Gamal Abd al-Nasser publicly disputed the myth of 5-6 million dead Jews and the holohoax.  Today however, multitudes of scholars and activists, including Arab and Muslim activists, have shown that while the Nazis really did persecute Jewish people in internment camps and subsequently following this large Jewish losses occurred, that no actual attempt to exterminate the Jews took place, no homicidal "gas chambers" were used, and 5-6 million dead is an idiotic Zionist exaggeration by at least several hundred percent.

  While Cabral, with the data and trends of his time, believed this historical limitation, notice that he still comes out and defends the Arab unification process and doesn't have the slightest problem calling for the destruction of "Israel" anymore than  later calling for solidarity with the Vietnamese resistance or Puerto Rican nationalists.  In fact, Cabral goes even further, recognizing the existence of a common unitary Arab nation, rather than the existence of 20 something Arab regional units Balkanized into smithereens as both the Zio-imperialists and most leftists see it.

  Should this lead us to pretend like smashing the holohoax isn't that important so as to avoid antagonizing western Leftists or being accused of "anti-Semitism'" for diminishing the suffering of non-Semitic Jews, particularly when this narrative is the Zionist entity's settler colonialist narrative?  No, but it also should be clear that some of the best non-Arab polemical defenses of Arab nationalism are from Pan-Africanists and that a militant dialectical brotherhood exists between the unitary project and nationalism of all freedom-fighters and strugglers who thirst for justice.

  Most Marxist and leftists "classics" when needed to understand today’s problems are not worth their weight in toilet paper.  Amilcar Cabral is a rare exception, a nationalist and a believer in the dialectic without falling into the traps of Eurocentrism or believing that if things were evolving differently than Marx or Lenin predicted that we should close our eyes and pretend that they aren't really happening. 

  For people looking and searching for clear and understandable voices from the past with lessons still relevant today, Amilcar Cabral is a wise choice.

--- John Paul Cupp, Public Relations Director of the NORTH AMERICAN COMMITTEE AGAINIST ZIONISM AND IMPERIALISM (NACAZAI)

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          TWO BRIEF EXCERPTS FROM “REVOLUTION IN GUINEA SELECTED TEXTS BY AMILCAR CABRAL”

Translated and edited by Richard Handyside, published by Monthly Review Press New York and London

  Brief Excerpt from "Practical problems and tactics"

 Texts of an interview given to Tri-continental magazine, published in issue no.8 in September 1968

We have as a basic principle the defense of just causes. We are in favour of justice, human progress, the freedom of the people. On this basis we believe that the creation of Israel, carried out by the imperialist states to maintain their domination of the Middle East, was artificial and aimed at the creation of problems in that very important region of the world. This is our position; that the Jewish people have lived in different countries of the world. We lament profoundly what the Nazis did to the Jewish people that Hitler and his lackeys destroyed almost six million during the last World War. But we do not accept that this gives them the right to occupy a part of the Arab nation. We believe that the people of Palestine have a right to their homeland. We therefore think that all the measures taken by the Arab peoples, by the Arab nation, to recover the Palestinian Arab homeland are justified.

In this conflict that is endangering world people we are entirely in favour of and unconditionally support the Arab peoples. We do not wish for war; but we want the Arab peoples to obtain the freedom of the people of Palestine, to free the Arab nation of that element of imperialist disturbance and domination which Israel constitutes, to recover the Palestinian Arab homeland

   Excerpt from “The nationalist movements of the Portuguese colonies"

  Opening address of the CONCP Conference held in Dar- Es-Salaam, 1965

We are with the refugees of Palestine, who have been tricked and driven from their own homeland by the manoeuvres of imperialism. We are on the side of the Palestinian refugees and we support wholeheartedly all that the sons of Palestine are doing to liberate their country, and we fully support the Arab and African countries in general in helping the Palestinian people to recover their dignity, their independence and their right to live. We are also with the peoples of Southern Arabia, of so-called 'French Somalialand", of so-called  'Spanish' Guinea, and we are seriously and painfully with our brothers in South Africa who are facing the most barbarous development in the struggle in the Portuguese colonies, and the victory we are winning each day over Portuguese colonialism in an effective contribution to the elimination of apartheid in South Africa, And we are also certain that people like that of Angola, that of Mozambique and ourselves in Guinea and Cabo Verde, far from South Africa, will soon, very soon we hope, be able to play a very important role in the final elimination of that last bastion of imperialism and racism in Africa, South Africa.

We strongly support all just causes in the world, but we are also reinforced by the support of others. We receive concrete assistance from many people, from many friends, from many brothers. We accept every sort of assistance, from wherever it comes, but we never ask anybody for the assistance which we need. We just wait for whatever assistance each person or people can give to our struggle. Those are our ethics of assistance.