Remembering the Palestine group: Global activism, friendship, and the Iranian revolution

Abstract

The Palestine Group was a loosely connected collection of young anti-Shah activists some of whom were arrested and tried publically in 1970 for the crime of acting against the Pahlavi monarchy and Iran's national security. Their plight became global, receiving support from anticolonial figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre. But while they played an important role in inspiring the revolutionary generation, in the historiography of the 1979 revolution and that of the global south, their story has been mostly forgotten. This article argues for remembering the Palestine Group by focusing on two facets of their prerevolutionary activism: the importance of a connection to the anti-imperial/colonial struggles that spread from “Asia to Africa”; and the centrality of mahfil ı politics (friendship circles) in addition to tashkı lātı (organizational) politics, which the historiography has traditionally emphasized. It demonstrates that as resistance shifted from mahfil to tashkı lāt, it also shifted from a global struggle where Iran was one node out of many, to a nationalized struggle.