Abdul Mun’im Ramahi (also known as Abu Maxim), has passed away after battling cancer for the past five years. A long-time Palestine activist and leftist since his early youth, he will be sorely missed among the Palestinian community in Melbourne.
I spoke with his eldest daughter, Olga, about his life. Abu Maxim was born in 1940 in a village called al-Muzeir’a, near Jaffa, which is close to present day Tel Aviv. She explained that he might have been a bit older and that his birth date is just an estimate – all of his family’s basic documents were lost when their home was destroyed during the Zionists’ attacks on his village and the neighbouring towns during the Nakba and the establishment of Israel in 1948.
When the Zionist militias attacked their village, Ramahi’s family fled to other villages. Seven months later, they ended up in the village of Deir Ghassaneh near Ramallah. All the Palestinians who stayed behind to defend their homes were killed; they were poorly equipped compared to the occupying gangs. Ramahi’s father had a friend in Deir Ghassaneh who offered them a 7 by 7 metre room to stay in. All 27 family members lived there for the following five years. They considered themselves luckier than most Palestinian refugees, who lived under the trees, and then in tents offered to them by the UN, in either the West Bank or neighbouring Arab countries.
“Afterwards, my dad completed school in Ramallah. Then he moved to Jordan, where he joined the Communist Party – working underground”, says Olga. “He went on to study chemical engineering in the former Soviet Union, lasting six years there on a scholarship. Upon his return to the Arab world he applied to work in the petrochemical industry in different countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq – but he was rejected in all of them due to his political affiliation and having a degree from the Soviet Union.”
When Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in the wake of the 1967 war, the Naksa, Ramahi was not in the West Bank, so he was not allowed to stay there except for visits.
“My father migrated to Australia as a skilled migrant, then went back to the West Bank and married my mother”, says Olga. “She is from the same al-Muzeir’a village – but her family lived in Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah. My parents still have relatives in the West Bank and he kept visiting them numerous times. Currently, only two brothers and two sisters of my father survive out of 15 siblings, and he kept looking after them. He took us there with him in the West Bank visits to ensure that we are proud of our Palestinian identity.
“Here in Australia, my father continued his political activism. For example, he was a member of ‘Arab Workers Trade Union’ and the ‘Palestinian Society’. Later on he joined the Socialist Alliance and kept being involved in the Palestine campaigns.
“My father’s strength in fighting his illness was very impressive. He was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer five years ago. The doctors gave him only two years to live but he endured 65 rounds of chemotherapy because he was a tenacious fighter who always had hope.”
Olga shared with me a piece of an Arabic poem from the 1950s that her father was especially fond of. She said her father wrote it down and kept reciting it when the Arab revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya erupted, saying that this poem’s words are finally realised after 60 years:
Oh workers of the Middle East – this is the time to fight off the occupiers 
Go for the hard battles – burn in it whilst smiling 
Raise the flag of the people – red hot 
Raise it and follow it – high up till victory 
Struggle, struggle – oh you poor people 
Men, women – and revolutionary youth 
For how long you dwell in misery – whilst lazy people indulge
I agree with Olga. Abu Maxim represents to me everything that is purely Palestinian, with an amazing revolutionary hope. He was the first Arab I called when news broke out that Ben Ali of Tunisia had left the country as a result of his people’s uprising. He was the first leftist Palestinian with whom I could share my short-lived euphoria about the Arab Spring.
Only sweet memories pass your mind when you remember someone such as Abu Maxim, who embodied all our turbulent history of occupation and resistance.
As Oscar Wilde once said: “Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us”.
His legacy lives on in his children and grandchildren.
Farewell Abu Maxim.

Jameela Jubran

Remembering Abdul Mun’im Ramahi, 1940 – 2017

Palestinians (or “Israeli Arabs” as the Zionists like to call them), who make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, have been continually subjected to a fierce campaign of repression.
Israel’s latest episode of racism came a couple of weeks ago, when a “Jewish Home” parliamentarian proposed a bill to ban mosques from performing Adhaan (call to prayer) through loudspeakers. This was a response to demands from a small group in the illegal settlement of Pisgat Zeev, which complained that Adhaan emanating from Jerusalem’s mosques is a form of “noise pollution”. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced his support for the bill, and within hours his government approved it and decided to move it to the Knesset.
Extreme right groups in Israel have for decades been trying to silence the call to prayer, but the bill never got enough support to pass the Knesset. Now, Israel wants vengeance against the latest UNESCO rulings, two of which have condemned Israel’s illegal practices in occupied East Jerusalem. After staging an unsuccessful campaign to counter the UN’s verdicts, Israel escalated its punitive measures against Palestinians by constructing yet more Jewish homes and threatening to demolish thousands of Palestinian homes. Now they plan to restrict Adhaan in various mosques in the holy city.
The call to prayer, five times a day, has not stopped in Jerusalem and all over Palestine for 15 centuries. The sound of Adhaan from mosques and the ringing of church bells not only carry a deep religious and spiritual meaning but also signify the Arab cultural identity and heritage. The call to prayer in occupied Palestine symbolises our people’s continuity and survival. This is why the Jerusalemites and the Arab communities in 1948 Palestine are protesting in the cities of Taibeh, Rahat and Kofr Qana of the Galilee. While discussion of the bill has been postponed on a technicality, there is outrage in every corner of Palestine at the Israeli government’s move.
Haneen Zoabi, an Arab member of the Knesset, said that this is a racist attempt to change culture and life in the occupied holy city. “For those who are not happy with it, they have to go back home to Europe”, she said. Father Atallah Hanna, Greek Orthodox archbishop of Sebastia, has strongly condemned the Adhaan ban, saying that it is an unprecedented step in Israel’s attempts to Judaise Jerusalem. “Today they are targeting the mosques, and tomorrow is the church’s turn”, he said.
In direct defiance of the Israeli occupation, thousands of Jerusalemites shouted the Adhaan in one voice for the Ishaa (evening prayer) from their rooftops on 19 November, in a majestic scene that gave me goose bumps. Churches in Nazareth, in the meantime, performed that Adhaan for the first time, in solidarity with their Muslim brothers and sisters and in defiance of the occupation.
“On this land, there is all that’s worth living for”, and I would add to Mahmoud Darwish’s verse, “and fighting for”.

Israel’s racist ban on Muslim call to prayer

Palestinian teachers in the West Bank have taken strike action, which has now morphed into one of largest democratic movements in the territory’s history. Around 20,000 teachers have participated in the last month.
Beginning as a two-day walkout in mid-February, it has closed state schools across the West Bank and pitted teachers against their own official union leaders and the corrupt Palestinian Authority.
They are demanding that the PA honour a 2013 agreement to increase salaries and pay money owed.
The government agreed to implement the agreement progressively if the strike were called off. The teachers refused, insisting that their demands for a new union be accepted. New representatives have already been elected in each district, but the government has not recognised them as a legal union.
On 7 March, more than 3,000 rallied outside the Palestinian prime minister’s office – despite a crackdown by the PA police, who erected checkpoints and issued fines for bus drivers transporting teachers in order to prevent them from arriving at Ramallah.
Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah asked the teachers to be “responsible”, to realise the school year is almost over (the Palestinian school year ends in June) and that the children need to go back to class.
Meanwhile, PA officials on one occasion accused the striking teachers of being agents for Israel and on another as being proxies for Hamas!
The rallying cry of the strike has become “dignity for the teachers”. Samih, an English teacher from Qalqilya, told the Times of Israel: “The teachers are offended by the large increase in salaries for government employees but not for them. When publicly employed doctors and engineers recently went on strike, the PA gave in to their demands. But not us. Not for the teachers.”
Aside from a salary increase, teachers are also demanding that women receive the same benefits as men. “If a female teacher with a pension dies, her salary will stop”, Samih said. “But a male teacher, if he passes away, the salary will go to his wife, or sons and daughters. So it’s not just about wage increases, there is also gender equality. This is also what we mean by dignity.”
The basic salary for public school teachers is barely enough to get by on. Some have to take second jobs to survive financially.
Parents and students have also taken part in protest. “I support the teachers’ strike because it’s about education which is our country’s future”, one student told Middle East Eye.
The movement has brought class struggle in Palestine to the fore.

Palestinian teachers launch mass strike

“Man, at the end of the day, is the issue” – from Gassan Kanafani’s famous novel Returning to Haifa.
Since the 1993 US-designed Oslo Accords were signed between the late Fatah-PLO Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel, Palestinians’ lives have gone from bad to worse.
Over the next decade, gross national product dropped 35 percent. Unemployment reached 40 percent in some areas. In addition, Israel extended its control of the West Bank via a massive settlement building program. The pace of construction increased during all stages of the futile “peace process” negotiations. That pressure cooker situation led to the second intifada.
Today under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, the situation has deteriorated further : the erection of the illegal separation wall; the increased settlements; the Israeli-only roads; the humiliation and delays at checkpoints; the uprooting of olive trees; the Israeli control of water resources, which forces Palestinian farmers to rely on primitive wells contaminated with fertilisers; and the ongoing confiscation of land and eviction of people from their homes in which they have lived for generations. People are oppressed twice as much as they were a decade ago.
The Israeli occupation remains while the Palestinian Authority oversees mere Bantustans. The Palestinian Authority Security Forces and the Preventive Security Service serve as Israel’s loyal collaborators. Since Oslo, they have been hired, trained and paid for by Israel, the USA, the CIA and the EU. Their aim is to maintain the stability of Palestinian society while preventing the formation of a Palestinian state. This is the Israeli-Palestinian security coordination that Abbas recently reaffirmed as “sacred”.
If we go back to the PLO Revolutionary Penal Code 1979, articles 144 and 148, we will find that Abbas’ “sacred” security coordination, which rightly has infuriated Palestinians, amounts to treason.
Article 144 states: “Any person who provides the enemy with documents, or is considered to have harmed military action or the security of military sites and centres, or any other military institutions shall be punished by death.”
Article 148 states: “Any person who leads the enemy to the sites of the revolutionary forces, or the allied forces, or misleads these forces shall be punished by death.”
The Arab working classes rose up in 2011 and brought down dictators. Even though the Arab revolutions have hit roadblocks, they provided proof for the peoples of the region that the barrier of fear can be broken and that real power lies within. Many wondered then: where is the third Palestinian intifada?
In the past few weeks Israel’s brutality in Palestine has escalated. The excuse was the killing of three Israeli teenagers. Israel launched Operation Brother’s Keeper, in which hundreds of Palestinian homes have been raided and Hebron’s 300,000 residents have been placed under siege. Palestinians in all areas of the West Bank have been detained and some killed.
Raids were coupled with hysterical, racist incitement by top Israeli officials. Settlers ran over Palestinian children with their cars and tried to kidnap and kill them. Seventeen-year-old Mohamad Abu Khdeir was tortured and burned alive.
The death of Abu Khdeir sparked an uprising in Jerusalem, all areas of the West Bank and most of the Arab-dominant areas of occupied Palestine ‘48. Hamas and other factions resumed their firing of rockets into Israel. Riot police and Israeli occupation forces (IOF) attacked the Palestinians with tear gas and live bullets, as well as arresting protesters. On 9 July, the IOF arrested 38 Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied Palestine ’48, bringing the total to 936.
Israel launched another offensive called Operation Protective Edge, in which naval and air strikes pummelled Gaza’s residential areas. So far, more than 100 have been killed and more than 900 wounded. The number is rising as you read these lines. In the meantime, confrontations with the IOF, which began after Abu Khdeir’s horrific death, were transformed into solidarity with Gaza.
Abbas and Co are hiding behind their “sacred” security coordination while Palestinians are busy developing their popular committees, throwing themselves into confrontations with the IOF and getting more creative. Fireworks against the IOF is their latest craze. They are learning as they go how to organise in resisting the occupation.
Hanan Aruri, a Palestinian activist from Ramallah put it most eloquently: “Good morning to a homeland that is reunited on the choice of resistance. The only division we allow is the division between the entire Palestinian people and that tiny isolated top layer of collaborators.”

Palestinians and the choice of resistance

“Build up your palaces in the farming fields
From our own sweat and toil
And unleash your dogs [to attacks us] in the streets
Build pubs beside factories and prisons in place of parks…
Nevermind, we found our path.”
This is a song written by the poet Ahmad Fo’ad Nijm. It was sung by him and his long-time friend and comrade the late Sheikh Imam. Can you hear the deafening voice of defiant sarcasm in these words? No wonder that the masses across the Arab world kept singing, exchanging and rehearsing his songs throughout many upheavals, since the harsh repressive days of former dictator of Egypt, Sadat, in the 1970s.
Nijm (or Negm in Egyptian dialect) passed away aged 84 on Tuesday 3 December, in his home in Muqattam, Cairo.
I was deeply saddened by his loss, alongside many in the Arab world and progressive forces around the world. For my generation and those at least 20 years older, in Palestine and other sites in the Arab world, Nijm and Sheikh Imam captured the persistent fighting spirit against imperialism and the reactionary Arab regimes.
They were always criticising dictators, agitating for rebellion, reflecting on local and global political events. They paid the price by being locked in prison for long periods of time.
Who was this rebellious poet renowned for his sharp tongue – dubbed the “poet of the poor” by some, the “poet of the people” by others, and the “obnoxious poet” by Anwar Sadat?
Nijm was not your typical Arab poet. He wrote in colloquial (Egyptian) Arabic. In doing so, he was one of the first and most prominent colloquial Arab poets. Nijm developed his style from wedding or romantic street songs into new political heights as his lyrics were taken up by militant unionists, workers, protesters and even Palestinian freedom fighters.
Colloquial Arabic was thrown into the thick of the struggles. Nijm’s compositions from the 1960s to the 1980s were sung all over again by thousands of Egyptians camping in Tahrir Square in early 2011.
Ahmad Fo’ad Nijm was born on 23 May 1929 in Kafr Abu Nijm village. At the time, Egypt was a monarchy under British rule. Nijm worked numerous small jobs at the camp sites of the British army, while undermining them by aiding the guerrilla fighters.
As a result, he was detained for three years under false charges. Later he met communist workers at the printing centres in the cities of Suez Canal, where he started to develop his political consciousness. His poems, which he started writing in detention, were smuggled far and wide in Egypt. He joined the mass protests against the British in 1946, during which a national committee to lead students and workers was formed.
Nijm worked in the postal service and railway from 1951–1956, after which he started to publish his own books. His honest and open defiance, coupled with his scathing criticism of Egypt’s presidents, resulted in a further 18 years of imprisonment during the reigns of Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. Nijm served his time alongside the blind singer Sheikh Imam, whom he had met in 1962.
Nijm and Imam formed a highly effective revolutionary duo, so much so that their songs were banned on Egyptian radio and television stations. However, they were popular among ordinary people. I can vividly remember growing up in the Arab world – the smuggled tapes of Nijm-Imam during the 1970s and 80s gave us great inspiration.
Nijm’s words expressed our anger then, and still do now. The following translation from one of Nijm's works following the Arab defeat in Israel’s 1967 war illustrates their power:
“Oh how amazing, our officers have returned from the front line, 
	Life is just great so long as his excellency and entourage are fine, 
	Don't Sina-me or Sinai-me-not, 
	So what if a whole nation is humiliated or lost?”
Despite a regrettable split between Nijm and his comrade Imam in the late 1980s, their legacy continues to inspire in poems such as “Guevara has died”, “Long live my fellow countrymen”, “Build up your palaces”, “The lady’s dog”, “Pablo Neruda”, “Oh Palestinians, I want to travel to be with you” and “Who are they, and who are we”.
Nijm's appearance and lifestyle matched the bluntness and the nature of his verse, immersed in the language of the poor. He wore a Galabiya (a flowing Egyptian robe), at all times. He chose the Egyptian dialect to speak to the working class and the poor so his words would reach from the heart to the heart, as he once said. He simply found in his poetry a space for freedom.
One of his daughters, Nawara, who has inherited her father’s vocal bluntness and politics, became a leading activist in the Egyptian revolution. Nijm was an enthusiastic supporter. He has become known since then as the “poet of the revolution”. And despite the revolutionaries’ disappointment with Nijm in his last months (for supporting General al-Sisi), they attributed this political confusion to his illness and old age and overlooked it when compared to his rich legacy of struggle. As activist Basma al-Husseini wrote:
“Let no one forget that he remained a thorn in the side of every regime. No matter how much we differed with him, it is enough that he raised his voice against Nasser at the height of his power, against Sadat at the height of his arrogance, and against Mubarak at the height of the silence of the poets and intellectuals.”
“You may not find in the life of your father something to brag about, but you will certainly not find anything that you will be ashamed of”, Nijm wrote once when dedicating a book to his children. “That is the belief I defended and happily paid a price for.”
Upon hearing of his death, Palestine went into mourning. Palestinian activists in Haifa city (Palestine ‘48) held an evening called “Palestine farewells Ahmad Fo’ad Nijm”. That was followed by more events in Yaffa and Ramallah. Tributes flowed from writers’ unions in different parts of the Arab world – and indeed from the rest of the world. The French paper Le Figaro eulogised him as the symbol of the Arab defiance, while the French poet Luis Aragon said, “His poems have a strength that destroys walls”.
In his tribute to Che Guevara, Nijm wrote that “the exemplary battler has died”. I take Nijm’s own words to mourn his own death. An exemplary battler has died indeed, but the revolutionary spirit that he ignited lives on.

Remembering Abdul Mun’im Ramahi, 1940 – 2017

Israel’s racist ban on Muslim call to prayer

Palestinian teachers launch mass strike

Palestinians and the choice of resistance

Ahmad Fo’ad Nijm (1929–2013): revolutionary hero

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