In Memory of a Fallen Leader

In honor and remembrance of the passing of the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and President of the Palestine National Authority, Yasser Arafat, the Free Palestine Alliance - USA, joins our people in Palestine and throughout exile in calling on the Palestinian and Arab community and all peace and justice loving people in the United States to observe 3 full days of national mourning, remembrance, and a steadfast of reciprocal solidarity and unity.

We call on all to display on their homes, institutions and property Palestinian flags, scarfs, or other symbols of the Palestinian national movement for liberation and justice.

The life and passing of Abu Ammar embodies the very struggle of our people in their totality, in all of its opposing complexities, critical junctures, endless pain, and stubborn victories.  Like him, many have passed before, either as a result of curfews, confinement, and imprisonment, or by rockets, bullets, tanks and fighter planes.  In all, the target has always been Palestine, yet the victor will always be Palestine.  With every fallen leader, we inch forward in our journey home - be it in a coffin through France and Egypt, or on the shoulders of our embattled youth, we are destined to go home free and liberated of Israeli Apartheid and colonial bigotry.

The legacy of Yasser Arafat is inextricable from that of the entirety of not only the Palestinian people, but all those struggling for freedom.  Through the confinement of Yasser Arafat during the assault on Janin Camp, the attempt was to imprison Palestine.  Today, and during the assault on Falluja and the people of Iraq, the Arab people bid farewell to a sea of victims from the hills of Palestine to the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, as the attempt to imprison Iraq intensifies.

As we hold our tears back for those who have fallen in the camps of exile and Palestine and the streets of Iraq, and as we salute in struggle convoys of passing leadership, we know too well that ours is inevitably the future.

Let every flag and kuffiyya fly high in honor of all those who have passed - from Falluja to Rafah and from Baghdad to Jerusalem.

The Free Palestine Alliance - USA
November 11, 2004