Israel-Palestine

22 February 2024Blog

A peace activist is not arrested despite police witnessing her spraypainting a pro-Gaza message on the outside of the city's naval base.

In mid-February, longtime British peace activist Rosy Bremer spraypainted an anti-war message on the walls of Portsmouth naval base, which also houses an arm of the giant arms company BAE Systems.

As you can see in the video shot by Linda Spence, Rosy spraypainted: '♥ Gaza ♥ Rafah ♥ peace'.

Rosy told the Portsmouth News:

'I'm a normal person and I believe we…

1 February 2024News

US/UK airstrikes on Houthis could condemn Yemen to famine and endless war

The US and Britain are, at the time of writing, at war with the Ansar Allah movement that controls over two-thirds of the population of Yemen and a third of its territory. This war is not an act of ‘self-defence’, it is doomed to failure, it is wrecking the fragile and desperately-needed Yemeni peace process, and it is actually strengthening Ansar Allah, known as ‘the Houthis’ after their first leader.

British forces took part in US-led airstrikes and missile attacks on Ansar Allah on…

1 February 2024News

World Court’s legally-binding order to Israel is a historic first, but still has flaws

Three Palestinian human rights groups issued a joint statement on 26 January welcoming the World Court’s decision to consider whether Israel’s war in Gaza is genocidal, and to order Israel to stop killing Palestinians in Gaza, among other measures.

Al-Haq (based in Ramallah, in the West Bank) and Al Mezan and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (both based in Gaza City, Gaza) described the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ, also known as ‘the World Court’) as ‘a…

1 February 2024News

Meetings banned, peace campaigner faces charges

One worrying trend even more prevalent in France than elsewhere is the stifling of open public discourse about the situation of the Palestinians, and restrictions placed on the freedom of expression of pro-Palestinian voices and movements.

Even before 7 October, public meetings on Israel-Palestine have been prohibited by the relevant authorities (local boroughs, or departmental Préfets) on dubious public-order grounds.

Since 7 October, the trend has got worse: several…

1 February 2024News

New solidarity group takes action in Bournemouth, Brighton, Blackburn and Glasgow

On 7 December, a new Palestine solidarity group, Workers for a Free Palestine, organised 1,000 trade unionists and other protesters to blockade four sites connected to the Israeli war machine: Eaton Mission Systems in Bournemouth, Dorset; the L3Harris factory in Brighton, East Sussex; BAE Systems’s Samlesbury Aerodrome just outside Blackburn in Lancashire; and the BAE Systems Govan site in Glasgow.

All four arms company sites are linked to the manufacture of the F-35 warplane…

1 February 2024News

Over 2,400 arrests in US and Canada since 11 October

At the end of December, four radical Christians were arrested protesting against the Gaza War, around Holy Innocents Day (28 December), which marks the massacre of male infants by Herod, according to biblical tradition.

On 28 December itself, two US Catholic Workers were arrested at the Pentagon in Washington DC, the Nuclear Resister reports.

The arrestees were Bill Frankel-Streit (67, from Little Flower Catholic Worker Farm in Virginia) and Kim Williams (from Norfolk…

1 February 2024Feature

Is the UK providing the Israels military with drone-gathered intelligence?

Late on 2 December, the UK ministry of defence (MoD) issued a short online statement saying that the UK ‘will conduct surveillance flights over the eastern Mediterranean, including operating in air space over Israel and Gaza.’

The following day, health secretary Victoria Atkins, appearing as a government spokesperson on Sky News, was asked about the flights and said: ‘The ministry of defence has announced that it has sent some unmanned, and unarmed, surveillance drones into the region…

1 February 2024Feature

How one British business could stop Israeli jets bombing Gaza

Rishi Sunak’s government has supported Israel’s criminal war on Gaza, both diplomatically and in practical terms: weapons including spare parts, surveillance missions and intelligence gathering through US spy bases hosted by the UK on Cyprus.

A War on Want report in December called for a ‘two-way arms embargo on Israel without delay to end [the government’s] complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.’

Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch,…

1 February 2024Letter

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I refer to the following article ‘The evidence Israel killed its own citizens on 7 October’ (PN 2669) by Asa Winstanley. There are number of issues I could raise in relation to its content, but I will focus predominantly on the one which I find most disturbing.

This is embedded in the following quote: ‘Israel made no effort to collect forensic evidence from bodies supporting its allegations of rape and sexual assault by Palestinians…

1 December 2023Comment

The way propaganda uses language is both insidious and dangerous, says Rebecca Elson-Watkins

Language is important. It’s one of the things, particularly written language, that sets us, as a species, apart from the animals. Having done a little wordsmithing in my time, of course I’m going to think that. But the science backs me up.

When I Google ‘the importance of language’ there are 3.6 billion results. When I narrow my search to ‘the importance of language in propaganda’ I get 61 million results.

The way propaganda uses language is both insidious and dangerous. It can…

1 December 2023Comment

'I couldn't contain my empathy, my anger, or my amazement'

I have spent most of my adult life engaged in solidarity and justice work with and for Palestine, and alongside the small yet vital Israeli peace movement. I have mostly lived and travelled around the West Bank, but the last time I saw Gaza, I was standing beside the border with hundreds of Israeli and international peace activists protesting a heavy Israeli bombardment of that small place and the people in it.

I don’t have the words to even begin to understand how it must feel to be…

1 December 2023Letter

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So good to read Penny Stone’s super review of Leon Rosselson’s book Where Are The Elephants. Back in the early ’80s, when I was one of the PN editorial team, we reviewed Leon’s album Temporary Loss of Vision. The song that stays with me was called The Last Chance, the story of ongoing arguments between two Israelis.

1 December 2023Letter

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I am writing as a warm supporter of Peace News, in the anticipation that my letter will appear in an issue highly critical of Israel.

If so, my beliefs are not fundamentally at odds with yours. I have thought and read quite a lot about the Israel/Palestine conflict, and know it to be very complex; but my politics on it are simple: ‘End the Occupation’.

I believe the Occupation (of the West Bank) has caused Israel to…

1 December 2023Letter

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Excellent to note that Pax Christi and peace collectives here in Bavaria are seeking peace, and without prejudice.

Conflict resolution is certainly required and the process of peace requires equity. Better therefore not to take sides, as doing so simply widens the divide. Such division feeds into the Trotsky StW [Stop the War Coalition]/PSC [Palestine Solidarity Campaign] sentiment that now, worryingly, gives voice through the British…

1 December 2023Feature

Milan Rai dismantles one of the most powerful lies about the current crisis in Gaza

On 10 November, former Guardian journalist Hadley Freeman expressed her concerns about the ‘Ceasefire Now’ marchers due to demonstrate in London the following day. Freeman told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme: ‘First of all, I would ask them, you know, what they think is going to happen if there’s a ceasefire?

‘Hamas has said that they will not stop until Israel is annihilated. And the fact is there are still 200…