Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqah (وليد دقة) dies, the machine grinds on

Reports in English are beginning to spread indicating that Walid Daqqah (وليد دقة), a Palestinian political prisoner born under the Zionist regime of the early 1960s, has died of medical neglect & mistreatment. More than a dozen Palestinians have died in Israeli colonial prisons since 7 October.

Despite increasingly urgent calls & broadening coalitions demanding his release in the past several years, Daqqah was routinely denied release or relief. A member of the PFLP, he wrote numerous books across genres while incarcerated, but also had his sperm smuggled out of prison to his wife, who gave birth to their child Milad (ميلاد) in 2020.

Daqqah had been locked up for 38 years - more than a decade longer than Nelson Mandela. The length of his incarceration sounds exceptional, yet while these words are being typed Israel's close partner, the United States, continues to hold numerous anti-colonialists in prison for even longer terms:

The Virgin Island 3 - Abdul Aziz, Hanif Shabazz Bey, Malik El-Amin - each over 50 years
Joe-Joe Bowen - over 50 years
Veronza Bowers - over 50 years
Muhammad Burton - over 50 years
Kojo Bomani Sababu - 49 years
Zulu - 49 years
Leonard Pelter - 49 years
Bill Dunne - 45 years
Mumia Abu-Jamal - over 40 years

These are only a handful of the hundreds currently jailed for struggling against the empire from within its entirely illegitimate borders. In occupied Palestine, that number currently stands at 9,400. Untold numbers have been held captive, like Walid Daqqah, until their death, by colonial governments worldwide for centuries.

The Venn diagram of "police states" & "colonial, genocidal regimes" is a circle. The global economy is the means by which all tyrants reinforce their cultures of oppression. By what means will we fight them & show up for the compas inside, worldwide?