The United States and Israel don’t want you to know about Nader Sadaqa. He was a commander for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He spent 21 years in apartheid Israel’s prisons. Sadaqa is a Palestinian. He is a Marxist. He is a PFLP leader. He is also a Samaritan.
The Samaritan community is an ethnoreligious group. They descend from the ancient Semitic-speaking Hebrew people. Their homeland is the northern half of the West Bank in occupied Palestine. They are not Jewish. They practice a monotheistic religion similar to Judaism that developed alongside Judaism.
The core difference is that Samaritans believe that the Temple Mount, a sacred symbol of ancient Abrahamic religions, was located at Mount Gerizim, near modern-day Nablus.
The Samaritans hold the oldest copy of the Torah in the world, over 3,5000 years old. They follow the teachings of this ancient Torah and consider themselves religious descendants of Moses. They simply believe Moses received the 10 commandments on Mount Gerizim, not Mount Sinai. Samaritans observe their own version of holidays like Passover. Their sacred texts are written in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, similar to those of Judaism. The Samaritan faith is a valid and parallel tradition to Judaism.
Today, Samaritans identify as Palestinian and speak Arabic colloquially. Israel does not want the world to know of this reality. The Zionist movement and its imperialist backers wish for the world to believe they have a monopoly on Jewish history and religious tradition. They do not.
Nader Sadaqa was raised in the Samaritan community. He remained a devout follower of its Hebrew-descended religious tradition his entire life. He also fought for Palestinian liberation from Zionist apartheid. His faith fueled his desire to see his community and all Palestinian people liberated from Zionist mythology. He was a commander in the PFLP’s armed wing, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades. He led operations against the terrorist Israeli Occupation Forces after the Second Intifada.
For this courageous resistance, Zionist Israel imprisoned him for 21 years. He endured physical torture. He suffered psychological torment. He faced starvation. He never broke. After 21 brutal years, he walked free in the recent round of prisoner exchanges.
To be abundantly clear, Israel and the United States fear Nader Sadaqa. They fear people like him. His identity is a potent threat. He is a Samaritan, from a faith parallel to Judaism. He is a Palestinian resistance commander. This combination inspires a dangerous idea. It could mobilize Jews worldwide to reject Zionism. It could rally them to fight for Palestine.
They hid him for two decades. They now ban him from returning to his home in Nablus. They fear his homecoming. They fear he could lead a whole new movement of cultural and literal resistance.
But, enough with the history. The most powerful point to be made about Sadaqa came in his own words after his release. Upon his freedom, reporters asked him one question: “What is your message to the resistance?” He responded:
“My response is that the resistance is the one who speaks, the one who attacks, and the one who prevails. It is the one who wills, the one who excels, and the one who acts.
“No voice rises above hers; rather, there is no voice except hers. And no statement except her statement, and no shadow except her shadow, and all that is required of us, the free people of the world, is to listen and obey.”
Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist.
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