I chose to avenge Khader Adnan’s murder, to fight for his people’s freedom

By Sarah Wilkinson

I didn’t know Khader Adnan personally, nor his wife Randa, nor his beautiful children. But I had closely followed his persecution by the Israeli regime for several years.

I felt like I knew him, despite that this very ‘feeling’ of familiarity, was precisely the thing that made him a threat to the Israeli occupiers. We make contact with the Palestinian resistance heroes just through solidarity alone. We know them, without them ever knowing us.

When Adnan breathed his last recently, I was one of those protesting in Leicester with Palestine Action outside one of Britain’s eight Israeli-owned arms factories.

His death hit me hard. I was in a tent. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t ready to let him go.

My Palestinian phone friend and confidant couldn’t comfort me: why are you upset, she asked. If he had not starved to death, the Israelis would have assassinated him. This is what we, as Palestinians, live through every day — we live with death. To support us, as you do, is to live with our death also and accept it, she said, trying to console me.

Her words seemed harsh —and equally tragic. They did assassinate him. As one of the Palestinian groups later said, he was executed in cold blood while in custody.

Khader Adnan was from Al-Arraba, near Jenin — a baker by trade, with a university degree in mathematics. He owned a grocery store and was married with nine children.

He became a key figure after the first-ever 66-day-long Palestinian hunger strike in 2011. That inspired a plethora of Palestinian political prisoners to launch their own solidarity mass hunger strike.

After this enormous sacrifice to his health, the valiant resistance fighter was released. 

But in Palestine, ‘released’ does not mean free — it isn’t anything more than awaiting their next arrest. Every moment “released”, at home with their family, playing with their children, is always going to be fleetingly brief. That is the fate of those resisting and fighting against the occupying regime.

For the Israeli regime, Adnan had become too influential, too loved, too popular, too powerful, too notable and too photogenic. He had turned into a big threat to the illegitimate regime.

In February this year, he was again taken away from his family and incarcerated. By the time he began his fifth and last hunger strike; he had been arrested and jailed 12 times by the Israeli regime -- 12 times.

It’s the year 2023 — has no one noticed? Are we still dragging our knuckles through the medieval dirt of yesteryears? The incremental genocide that is being meted out on the Palestinian population by the Israeli regime is laid bare, for all to see, and yet none choose to open their eyes — not even once; not even for the duration of Adnan’s remaining 67 days.

Charged with nothing, Adnan selflessly sacrificed his living precious life for resistance, for freedom, and for liberty of his people. His brutal end was criminally minimized by mainstream apathy and the political unwillingness to admit that no real or substantial intervention ever took place.

He could have been saved. Every single one of those 67 days that he starved for freedom, he could have been saved. I say again, he could have been saved. The world chose not to save him. It chose.

We honored his death — his killing, on the road outside the Israeli arms factory while racist Leicester police laughed, and Elbit’s security guards goaded their dogs to bark throughout our solemn prayers.

While I mentally blocked out their indifference to a man’s pain and suffering, and his family’s bereavement, the fury inside me was surfacing.

And then, my Palestinian friend’s words re-echoed: this is what we, as Palestinians, live through every day — we live with death. To support us, as you do, is to live with our death also.

How! How has it come to this? — that to support the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom, for the liberation of occupied territories, is to live with death and accept it as the norm.

I choose not to accept it. I choose to avenge Adnan’s murder instead. I choose to fight for his people’s freedom. I choose life for the Palestinian people. I choose liberation from Israeli tyranny.

We must all choose. Choose with me – for Adnan, for the oppressed people of Palestine.

Sarah Wilkinson is a UK-based activist. She has been a supporter of Palestine for over 40 years, and a vocal campaigner for Palestinian freedom since the First Intifada.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)

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