Palestinian feminist Mariam Abudaqa was on a speaking tour in France when Israel destroyed her home in Gaza. France’s government tried to expel her — but, Abudaqa tells Jacobin, she refuses to stop telling the truth about Israel’s crimes.

I | n September, renowned Palestinian activist Mariam Abudaqa arrived in France for a speaking tour. She’d come to speak as a feminist organizer — and was even invited to the National Assembly by left-wing party La France Insoumise. But Abudaqa quickly became embroiled in France’s debate over Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, and the crisis in Gaza caused by Israel’s retaliation. On October 9, the parliament’s president blocked the move to have her speak at the National Assembly. One week later, seventy-two-year-old Abudaqa was arrested at Marseille’s Saint Charles train station — and ordered to remain under house arrest until her eventual expulsion from France.

Amid the French state’s general clampdown on Palestine solidarity, the interior ministry justified Abudaqa’s expulsion on the grounds of her membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group included on the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations. The order also claimed that Abudaqa’s presence was of “a nature that will stoke tensions, hatred and violence between communities and cause serious problems for public order” and was dangerous given “the growing terrorist threat in France.”

Yet, last Friday, an administrative judge threw out the order for Abudaqa’s expulsion, ruling that “the interior ministry has seriously, and in a manifestly illegal way, infringed on [her] freedom of expression and movement.” In Gaza, Abudaqa is a leading feminist and Palestine liberation advocate. She spoke about the crisis in Gaza with Jacobin’s Harrison Stetler. Dana Katkhoda translated from the Arabic.

read more: https://jacobin.com/2023/10/israel-gaza-war-france-censorship-mariam-abudaqa-feminist-interview/