Solidarity meeting hails Arab struggle, commandos’ daring tactics
Workers World, Vol. 12, No. 16, October 16, 1970
New York, October 3 – In the first rally held in this country to unconditionally support the liberation movement of the Palestinian people, more than 300 people filled a large hall at the Hotel New Yorker last night to hear Arab and North American revolutionaries denounce U.S. imperialism in the Middle East and its client state, Israel. The audience responded with particular spirit when speakers referred to the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination; to the recent aerial hijackings that dramatized the plight of the exiled and colonized Palestinians; to the release of Palestinian commandos such as Leila Khaled as a result of those skyjackings; and to the need to include the issue of the Middle East in the U.S. movement against imperialist wars.
The meeting had been called by several organizations including Youth Against War & Fascism, the Iranian Students Association, the Arab Students Association and the Committee to Support Middle East Liberation. Featured speakers included Mohammed Ibrahim, a Palestinian student, and Sam Marcy, National Chairman of Workers World Party.
The sponsoring organizations provided a strong defense guard to protest the meeting from right-wing attack or provocation but, probably because of this visible preparation, there were no incidents.
A tall, bearded young man wearing a burnoose, the typical Arab headdress, Mr. Ibrahim brought the spirit of the Arab liberation struggle into the meeting hall. He confirmed that the Arab people are transforming their struggle into that of an “organized, politicized and armed mass of people adhering to the ideology of the workers, peasants and wretched of the earth, that is, the ideology of Marxism and Leninism.”
The young Palestinian showed that his people and movement have absorbed the lessons of other oppressed nations in learning how to fight both imperialist armies and imperialist diplomacy: “The twentieth century has witnessed a continual struggle of Arab masses to repel imperialist aggression from Arab land. The Palestinian people had in addition to contend with the Zionist colonization of Palestine. The essence of any solution of the Palestinian problems rests in the recognition of the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination in the whole of Palestine.
“Any suggestion of a token pseudo-independent state protected by Israel is a suggestion to create a Swaziland or a Bechuanaland in the Middle Easter South Africa which is Israel.”
Sam Marcy’s talk was largely directed at the criminal neglect by U.S. “movement” leaders who have kept the question of the Middle Eastern war hidden. He reminded the audience that it has taken more than three years, since the June 1967 war, and thousands of casualties before there could be held such a meeting “devoted to complete, full and unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian movement and Arab liberation movement as a whole.”
Comrade Marcy emphasized that the U.S. movement doesn’t recognize the nature of imperialism when it fights against only one war, and is moreover carrying on the struggle with one hand behind its back. “There is no fundamental difference between the struggle of the Vietnamese people for liberation and that of the Palestinian people,” he explained.
He also elaborated on the question of the hijackings and the political character of such tactics. “The hijackings were for the purpose of dramatizing the plight of the Palestinian people,” he said. “In some quarters this was called adventuristic, anarchistic, etc. That’s not anarchism. That’s revolutionary socialism!
“The way they treated the hostages they took was in the spirit of Leninism. Every one of the hostages that came back had to admit they were treated fairly, equally, that the commandos showed the greatest concern for their lives. Why? Because what the commandos are interested in is victory over the Zionist-imperialist clique that’s running Israel on behalf of the imperialists. They showed that they’re not anti-Semitic. They’re Semitic people themselves. They just want the oppressor to get off their necks.
“We want to congratulate them for carrying out this dramatic act, and we are particularly glad to see that Leila Khaled and the others are free.”
The Chairman of Workers World Party then went on to compare the hijackings with the recent dramatic acts of the Tupamaros in Uruguay, the Nicaraguan liberation fighters and the prisoners rebelling in five New York City dungeons. “Let all the bourgeois liberals say, ‘These are not the right tactics.’ We say it’s right! Let them do it!”
The size and spirit of the audience, in contrast to the first efforts to organize against the Vietnam war that were made by YAWF in 1962, showed that despite the hawkish position of the bourgeois liberals, there is already a solid core of militants who can bring an understanding of U.S. imperialism’s Middle East war to broad anti-war masses in this country.
Last updated: 11 May 2026