Ali Kased

Ali Kased, a well-known Palestinian activist and freedom fighter, died on April 3. He was an internationalist who supported national liberation and workers’ struggles.

Kased was a leader in the Palestinian and Arab communities in New York City and New Jersey. Most recently he helped guide and inspire Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, and, despite failing health, was one of the keynote speakers at Al-Awda’s 2003 annual international convention. His analysis of the decades-long Palestinian struggle for national liberation was both brilliant and sobering. He was also a prominent member of the Palestine Congress of North America.

Kased (sometimes spelled Qased) was born in a Palestinian village near Ramal lah on May 27, 1942. At that time Palestine was a British colony where armed Zionist settlers—mostly from Europe—were already in confrontation with the indigenous Palestinian population. By May 1948 over 750,000 Palestinians had been brutally exiled at gunpoint.

Palestine then became politically divi ded between racist Zionist settlers based in Tel Aviv, who were closely allied with imperialism, and a reactionary U.S.- and British-backed puppet monarchy based in Amman, Jordan.

Growing up in this environment led Ali to dedicate his life to the struggle for the right of the Palestinian people to live in freedom in their own state in all of Pales tine and to liberate the entire Middle East from colonialist and imperialist oppression.

As a teenager Kased was already an activist. He was forced into exile and went to Egypt, where he obtained degrees in economics and political science from the American University of Cairo. There he was influenced by the pan-Arab ideas of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose army-based nationalist movement had overthrown the British puppet mon archy of King Farouk. Ali joined the Nasser-inspired Arab Nationalist Movement.

In 1967 the U.S.-financed Israeli state launched a surprise attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan and extended its brutal rule over all of Palestine and parts of Egypt and Syria as well. Like many young Palestin ians, Kased contrasted the inability of the bourgeois Arab governments to mobilize the masses for an effective defense with the powerful people’s struggle against the U.S. war machine then raging in Vietnam. He came to support the revolutionary Marxist current that emer ged out of the Arab Nationalist Move ment under the leadership of Dr. George Habash.

In the 1960s Kased went to study at the University of Puerto Rico and obtained a Master’s degree there. In 1970 he moved to New York, where he worked closely with Youth Against War and Fascism, the youth wing of Workers World Party, to organize protests against visiting Israeli officials and U.S. aid to Israel.

In 1975 he helped organize the Com mittee for a Democratic Palestine, so that the Palestinian people’s struggle would have a political voice inside the United States. Ali and the CDP were part of the coalition that launched the historic march of 100,000 people on the Pentagon in 1981 —the first mass antiwar demonstration in the U.S. to hear a Palestinian speaker.

In 1981, Ali helped create the November 29 Coalition for Palestine, a turning point for the Palestine support movement in the U.S. It was named after the date the U.S. forced the creation of the racist Israeli state in the United Nations, now marked as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The November 29 Coalition organized the first mass marches for Palestine in the United States, drawing in large numbers of people from outside the Arab community. The coalition built ties with Black, Latino, Native and Asian communities. When the Reagan regime backed the bloody Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the coalition organized protests of tens of thousands in Washington, D.C., and other cities across the country.

In a show of Black-Palestinian solidarity, the coalition mobilized thousands to help confront and break up a Ku Klux Klan rally in Washington on Nov. 29, 1982. It later metamorphosed into the Palestine Solidarity Committee, which organized delegations to Palestine and helped build solidarity with the first Intifada.

Ali will be remembered for his powerful oratory, both in Arabic and English, and his unfailing optimism, even in the gravest situations. His work and his voice gave life to the Palestinian people’s struggle for many in the U.S. and inspired many to become involved.

Kased is survived by his wife and life partner of 29 years, Fatma; his daughters Arwa, Khulood, Rama and Reem; his sons Jamil and Hakim; and four grandchildren.