by Marwan Emile Toubassi (*)
Aug 14, 2025
From the wounded heart of Palestine, from the great and steadfast Gaza — with its resilience, its resistance, and its sacrifices — which watches the world as the world watches it, I write to you, the friends, sons, and daughters of Greece, who yesterday turned the streets of your cities, villages, and islands into a bridge of solidarity reaching our besieged shores. From Athens to Thessaloniki, from Samothraki to Gavdos, from Lefkada to Lesvos, from Corfu to Crete, the flags of Palestine and the cries of freedom rose together, proclaiming to the world that principles and values do not die, and that peoples are neither bought nor subdued.
You have taught us — as you have taught the world, being the cradle of democracy — that freedom, democracy, and dignity are natural rights, not gifts bestowed, but treasures wrested from the jaws of colonial power when they are stolen. You are the people who stood against the monster of Nazi and fascist occupation during the Second World War, sacrificing greatly through the ranks of the Popular Resistance Front until your name became synonymous with courage, pride, and defiance. You are the people who, in the 1970s, brought down the military dictatorship and restored democracy to your land through the unshakable will of the people, after the Polytechnic Uprising whose anniversary we honour alongside you every year.
Today, you still stand against the forces of a new neoliberal order that seeks to erode your social and economic rights and your national sovereignty. You face governments that have lacked the courage to condemn the crimes of the Israeli occupation in international forums — and have, at times, even afforded it official support — despite the historic significance of your Parliament’s unanimous decision in December 2015 to urge recognition of the State of Palestine. That decision has yet to be implemented by your government, unlike in most nations that have already recognized our state, which remains under a settler-colonial occupation steadily devouring our land to prevent our national independence. Our people hope that the Greek government will understand the urgency of this step, move forward with recognition, and take the necessary measures under international law to hold the occupying power accountable — in keeping with the stance of the Greek people and all the peoples of the world who stand with justice.
The solidarity between our peoples has never been merely sentimental. It is a shared political stance against the hegemonic designs of the United States and Israel in our regions. Just as the Palestinian people resist attempts to erase their national liberation cause — through settlement, blockade, ethnic cleansing, and now by starvation and forced displacement — the Greek people know well that American policies in the Eastern Mediterranean, from the exploitation of natural gas resources to the fomenting of regional tensions and interference in sovereign affairs, are aimed at undermining the stability and interests of the peoples of the region, including Greece itself. We also know that Israeli interference in Greek affairs is part of this wider scheme, one that binds Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean into a single web of shared challenges.
Our recent history reminds us that the ties between us were forged in decisive moments: from the friendship between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Greek socialist leader Andreas Papandreou, to Greece’s welcome in 1982 to the fighters of the Palestinian revolution and the cadres of the Palestine Liberation Organization — the sole legitimate representative of our people — after our forced departure from Lebanon into exile. These were not mere episodes of history; they laid the foundations of a shared political consciousness, a recognition that our struggle against injustice and modern colonialism is one, regardless of geography.
I had the honour of living among you for nearly a decade, serving my country as Ambassador of the occupied State of Palestine to Greece. I came to know your streets, your political parties, your trade unions, your municipalities, your cafés, and your homes. I came to hear the roar of your seas, the chants of your demonstrations, and, most of all, the beat of your hearts. I found in you a people who do not bargain with truth, a people who place dignity at the summit of human values. From you I felt a solidarity that was genuine — not a political posture, but a natural extension of a long history of rejecting injustice, siding with the oppressed, and insisting on standing on the right side of history.
Jerusalem and all of Palestine — with its refugee camps, its cities, and its villages — and great Gaza today, despite siege, wounds, and the daily inferno of what we call the Palestinian Holocaust perpetrated by the racist Zionist ideology — the same mentality that once conspired against poor Jews and patriotic Greeks during the Nazi Holocaust — know that you are with us, and that we are with you in the same trenches of progressive human struggle. As the Greek doctor Christos Yorgalas said upon returning from Gaza: “I did not expect to see how closely Palestinians follow what happens abroad… they follow the demonstrations, in which country they are held, who organizes them, and their size, with great precision.” Believe him — for we see your images and chant with you, even from behind walls and barbed wire, from amid the rubble of homes, hospitals, churches, and mosques, and from among the unburied dead who have yet to find a resting place worthy of their dignity.
From Palestine to Greece, from the shores of Gaza to the Aegean, we say to you: thank you for never abandoning your humanity. Thank you for making our cause a part of your collective conscience and your revolutionary spirit. Thank you for knowing that the struggles for freedom across the world are indivisible, just as human values are indivisible. We will remain together on the road of dignity and freedom, until justice is won for those whom the revolutionary Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth” — here, and there.
* Ambassador of the State of Palestine to Greece ( 2013 – 2022)
Member of FATEH Advisory Council .
Read also:
Thousands Rally in Greece in Solidarity With Palestine
We remind our readers that publication of articles on our site does not mean that we agree with what is written. Our policy is to publish anything which we consider of interest, so as to assist our readers in forming their opinions. Sometimes we even publish articles with which we totally disagree, since we believe it is important for our readers to be informed on as wide a spectrum of views as possible.
