We Are on the Side of Humanity: Sana’ Daqqah

On day two of the People’s Conference for Palestine, Sana’ Daqqah, activist, journalist, and the wife of the martyred Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqah, gave a special address to attendees, with her daughter Milad in her arms. 

Palestinian revolutionary Walid Daqqah spent 38 years as a political prisoner before being martyred behind prison walls on April 7, 2024. Daqqah’s family is now engaged in a struggle to return Daqqah’s body, which the Zionist state insists on keeping until Daqqah’s sentence is over. 

Israeli authorities inflicted many cruelties upon Daqqah while he was behind bars, including denying him and his wife conjugal visits, blocking his attempts to start a family. 

Nevertheless, against all odds, Sana’ gave birth to Milad Daqqah in February 2020, conceived through smuggled sperm. In 2011, Walid Daqqah penned a letter to his (then) unborn child, Milad, reflecting his aspirations for the future:

I write to a child, yet unborn …

I write to an idea or a dream that intentionally or unintentionally frightens the jailer; even before becoming a reality,

I write to any child,

I write to my child that has not been born yet,

I write to the birth (Milad) of the future.

This is how we want to name our child,

and this is exactly how I would like for the future to recognize us […]

Will I stop dreaming?

I’ll continue to dream despite this cruel reality,

I’ll search for a meaning for life despite what I have already lost.

They dig ancestors’ cemeteries searching for a delusional authenticity,

while we search for a better future for our grandchildren; one certain to come.

Salaam Milad, salaam my dear. 

Read the full transcript of Sana’s address below:

Good evening everyone, first of all, I want to thank you all and thank you for this invitation, and for the amazing conference that’s been organized, and for the welcome that I just received that instills in me inspiration, and serves me and Walid, and his story, and his message, and his struggle. He always said that Milad will carry his message into the future.

Walid was martyred in the Israeli zionist prisons, after 36 years of imprisonment. We have no doubt that there was a decision that was taken by the prison authorities to assassinate Walid. 

We always said, and we still continue to say that the aggression on Gaza, this barbaric, savage aggression, has created an opportunity for the Zionists to end whichever prisoner they wish to end. 

And Walid was on the top of this list that they wanted to assassinate. And we know this because he was martyred after a couple of hours of arriving at the hospital. Meaning, that they left him in prison until there was nothing that could be done when he got to the hospital. 

We are still in the middle of the battle to release him from the Israeli prisons so that we can bury him in his nation’s land. And as you know, the Zionists and their country are the only people that keep dead bodies after they are killed. And that shows that this is a country that sanctifies death over life. 

What allows for us to retain glory and honor is that we are on the side of humanity, that we are better than them morally because we are committed to our land and the freedom of our country. 

They are the ones who are on the dark side of humanity, they are the human monsters of humanity. And as Walid once said on Milad’s tongue, or Milad said on Walid’s tongue, we do not fear this country, as we produce life, while they produce death. 

To you dear attendees, I say, continue, continue to raise your voice, to fill the streets, demonstrate against this racist, barbaric, Zionist entity, and remember that our resistance is what roots us in our struggle. We will not capitulate. That it is either victory or death.

Walid spent nearly 40 years in prison, 40 years unlike any other. And throughout the duration of his time there, he would always produce a thought around what it means to respond to his conditions, to resist, and to confront. And Walid was a writer, and thinker, an academic, he taught generations within prison, after he, himself, was taught in prison. And he wrote a book specifically titled, “Searing of Consciousness,” and it discusses and evaluates the politics of the administration of the Israeli prison system. And it articulates how the strategies and the politics of the administration of prisoners inside of Israeli prisons predicated on the complete control of the human man, and that this engineered project of developing control of man is produced in prison, and exported outside of the prison to be implemented against the entirety of the Palestinian people, that’s meant to destroy them as humans.

Walid created a challenge for prison guards and was a fighter against the prison guards on every level. He created a cultural challenge for them through his writings, through teaching and through learning, and what he got in response was always abuse and torture. 

But there was nothing that me and Walid planned on doing that we didn’t do. And our biggest victory against the prison guards and imprisonment was Milad. We know that Milad created a flood in the prison because of the torture that Walid received as a response to giving birth to Milad. Because for years, they put him through solitary confinement, took away his personal belongings, his books, and didn’t allow him to learn. Having Milad was our biggest victory. 

After I became a mother and Walid became a father, he stayed in solitary confinement for years, and I honestly thought that he would not come out of it. The abuse went on for years and years.

I want to mention here that Walid has “Israeli” citizenship. And we see this as a way to stay on our land, because we are not going anywhere, and we will continue to fight on our land. But this is to tell you that he should have legal rights. But this is a racist country that continued to abuse Walid until his martyrdom.