Israel-Palestine

When Cengiz Songür set off to join the Freedom Flotilla, one of his six daughters put a letter into his jacket pocket, where it stayed unnoticed until he was on board the Mavi Marmara.

The letter started: “I have thousands of words to tell you, but they are now all stuck in my throat. I am scared, Dad. I get scared as I see the sadness in my sisters’ eyes and the worried look on my mum’s face. Dad, please do not get scared. Please, go there, Dad. Go there to put a smile on an…

In response to the murderous Israeli Defence Force attack on a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza, Bangor and Ynys Môn (Anglesey) Peace & Justice Group were quickly into action.

On 1 June, the group visited Waitrose in Menai Bridge. More than 20 activists turned out to support, a very respectable number for an area like ours.

We began at 3.30pm by handing out boycott flyers, which were well received with almost all shoppers…

On 23 May, Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi began a month’s jail sentence for his July 2007 attempt to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the West Bank homes of Palestinian Bedouins.

Ezra wrote: “I have been harassed and targeted throughout the years, because I embody three elements which provoke bigotry in the Israeli society: I am a homosexual, I am a Mizrahim [Middle-Eastern Jew], and I devote all my time to fighting for the human rights of Arab Palestinians…. I…

It’s the time of year for festivals again, and through the weekend of 16-18 April visitors to the old farm buildings of Neuadd Hendre, near Bangor in Gwynedd, could enjoy top Welsh bands, listen to the edgy and moving stand-up comedy of Ivor Dembina and eat fantastic Palestinian food, while camping in the spring sunshine with panoramic views across the Irish Sea. But this was a festival with a difference. It had an agenda – Palestine.

The Bangor to Bethlehem international…

Eight ships are at the time of writing preparing to try to take badly-needed supplies into Gaza, in defiance of the Israeli naval blockade.

The convoy is the fruit of an international coalition involving the Free Gaza Movement (FGM), the European Campaign to Break the Siege of Gaza, the Greek and Swedish Ship to Gaza Campaigns and IHH, a Turkish campaign. FGM has organised eight similar missions to Gaza in the past three years, the first five successfully.

The last…

On 8 April, Edinburgh sheriffs’ court ruled that five activists were not guilty of being racially abusive for having disrupted a concert by the Jerusalem string quartet at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2008.
The five were protesting against Israel’s bombing of Gaza and the quartet’s links to the Israeli army.
The court found that the five were criticising the behaviour of a state and its army, not attacking Jews or any ethnic group, and that there was a clear right to attack a…

Palestinians held nonviolent marches in three villages near the Israeli separation wall on Land Day. 30 March marks the day in 1976 when six Arab Israeli citizens were shot during a general strike and demonstrations protesting against Israeli government plans to expropriate thousands of dunums of Arab land.
The marches to the separation wall in Bil’in, Nil’in and Ma’sara were met as usual by tear gas, shock grenades and rubber-coated bullets from troops and police.

In September 2009, the United Nations released the findings of the Goldstone report concerning Israel’s attack on Gaza in December 2008–January 2009, which killed 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

The 575-page inquiry noted that Israel’s offensive was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself and to force upon it an ever-increasing…

On 5 March, to mark the International Week Against Racism, the weekly Friday march from the Palestinian village of Bil’in to Israel’s apartheid wall was led by demonstrators dressed as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.

Israeli troops fired tear gas, rubber bullets and sound bombs.

The next day, in East Jerusalem, in another regular protest, 5,000 Israelis and Palestinians protested at the eviction of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah…

Following the publication of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (“The Goldstone Report”) last September, British colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded British forces in Afghanistan in 2003, infamously told the UN Human Rights Council that Israel had done “more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone” during the 2008/2009 invasion of Gaza “than any other army in the history of warfare.”

In reality, as Norman Finkelstein shows in this meticulously-sourced…

In February 2009, I went to Gaza as one of a European Parliament group to see the destruction caused by Israeli attacks. A year on, together with 60 members of parliament from 12 different countries, I returned.

As I expected, depressingly little had changed since Operation Cast Lead. Houses, factories, farms and schools are still in ruins. Water, sewage and electricity systems are wrecked.

In any other country, rebuilding would be well under way. But Gaza is…

The anniversary of the Israeli assault on Gaza was marked with protests in the Middle East and in Britain. Internationals converged on Egypt for the Gaza Freedom March, others took part in a land convoy taking aid from London to Gaza itself with Viva Palestina, and people around the world took part in demonstrations against the continuing siege.

Gaza Freedom March

The Gaza Freedom March – initiated by US author Norman Finkelstein and organised by the US women-led group, Code…

On 11.30am, 12 December, two activists locked onto a concrete block inside Ahava, Covent Garden, while a protest took place outside, completely closing the store till 4.40pm, when police cutting teams arrived and arrested and removed the two.
Ahava is an Israeli company marketing products made from Dead Sea mud and minerals, extracted from a site in the occupied West Bank and processed in an illegal Israeli settlement. This was the third store closure.

28 December: Our situation is ironically biblical – never have I understood the story of Exodus so well. The irony is that in the story, it’s the Israelites petitioning Pharoah to let them go. Now, it’s the Israelites, or at least, most likely, the Israelis applying political pressure to the Egyptians to refuse us entry into Gaza.

We had buses scheduled to pick us up at 7am – but we received word the night before that their permits had been cancelled. We decided to go down to…

Hanukkah Candlelit Vigil

The Jewish Fast for Gaza is an ad hoc group of rabbis, Jews and people of conscience world-wide who have committed to undertake a monthly daytime fast to call for the lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

We also call for humanitarian and developmental aid for the people of Gaza and for Israel, the US and the international community to engage in negotiations without pre-conditions with all relevant Palestinian parties, including Hamas, for an end to…