Israel-Palestine

1 October 2017News

Head of Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall comes to Aberystwyth

On 10 July, some 50 Ceredigion residents gathered in the Morlan Centre in Aberystwyth to hear Iyad Burnat bear poignant witness to a life of resistance in his native Bil’in, a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank some seven miles to the west of Ramallah. Bil’in has been divided by Israel’s separation barrier which cuts off access to half of its agricultural land.

Iyad is the head of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall (PCAW) which for the last 12 years has staged…

1 October 2017Comment

'Yes, we told them, we do know what it means'

’Biktub Ismak Ya Biladi, ‘al shams ilma bit(a)gheeb
La mali wala wlaadi, ‘Ala Hubik mafe Habib.

I will write your name oh my country, above the sun that never sets.
Not my children nor my wealth, above your love there is no love.

I first heard this song at a demonstration in Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, Palestine, in 2012. I was in the village to participate in a demonstration with my choir and, as is their tradition of…

1 August 2017News

Government acted improperly, high court rules

On 22 June, the high court in London ruled that the government had acted improperly by seeking to use pension law to pursue its own foreign and arms industry policy.

In September 2016, the department for communities and local government had published some innocuously titled ‘guidance’ on investment strategies for local government pension schemes.

The DCLG wrote: ‘using pension policies to pursue boycotts, divestment and sanctions against foreign nations and UK defence…

1 August 2017News

Radical choir targets HSBC on day of action

Aberystwyth’s Côr Gobaith made their presence felt at the annual Street Choirs Festival in Kendal at the end of June. One of three Welsh choirs, alongside Pales Peace Choir and Wrexham Community Choir, we took our messages of nonviolence, justice and environmental sustainability out onto the streets with our peace flags, pride flags and red dragons flying!

The festival has a long history of putting music into protest and for us, especially in these difficult times, the overarching…

1 August 2017Comment

'In such extreme realities what can we offer but solidarity and song?'

When my choir San Ghanny (‘We Shall Sing’ in Arabic) and I were in Palestine two months ago, we took part in a demonstration to call for the return of Palestinian bodies from the Israeli government.

The campaign is led by family members, often mothers, of Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces, or who have been involved in militarised resistance to the occupation resulting in their own deaths. This includes desperate actions such as suicide bombing.

For family…

1 June 2017News in Brief

On 7 April, scores of Palestinian and Israeli activists held a ‘Stop Annexing the Jordan Valley’ Freedom March organised by Combatants for Peace (CfP).

In the Jordan Valley, the Israeli government conducts live firing near Palestinian homes, deprives Palestinian farmers of water, restricts Palestinian sheep-herding, and demolishes Palestinian homes, while giving full support to illegal Israeli settlements.

The Freedom March went from a settler-only road to the Palestinian-…

1 June 2017News in Brief

On 19 May, 200 Palestinian and 200 Israeli women held ‘Grassroots Peace Negotiations’ in downtown Tel Aviv, Israel. The talks, organised by the Leon Charney Resolution Centre, aimed to formulate solutions to the conflict.

There have been dozens of such grassroots Palestinian-Israeli peace conferences over the years, many organised by ‘Minds for Peace’. The Israeli group held an Israeli-Palestinian ‘Congress of the People’, with perhaps 2,000 people, in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, on 17…

1 June 2017News in Brief

On 27 March, two 19-year-old Israeli women, Tamar Zeevi and Tamar Alon, reported to Tel Hashomer army base and once again refused compulsory military service – because of their opposition to Israel’s actions in the West Bank.

By this point, both women had served five prison sentences and spent over 110 days in prison for refusing military service.
This time, Zeevi was given conscientious objector (CO) status and released, while Alon was sent back to jail.

Mesarvot, an…

1 June 2017News in Brief

The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign is sending a new legal opinion on the British government’s antisemitism definition to every public body in the UK.

According to British human rights lawyer Hugh Tomlinson QC, it would be illegal to cancel an event on the grounds that it criticises Israel.

In his view, the government’s own definition of antisemitism would require evidence that the event involved ‘hatred of Jews’.

www.…

1 June 2017News

850 prisoners enter sixth week of hunger strike

In April, Manchester university students organised a one-week fast in solidarity with Palestinian hunger strikers. PHOTO: MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY 

As PN went to press, 850 Palestinian prisoners were entering their sixth week on hunger strike to try to get better treatment in Israeli jails.

Several dozen prisoners had been transferred to special prison wings with medical staff, according to prison officials.

The action started on 17 April, chosen as ‘Palestinian…

1 June 2017Comment

Penny Stone reflects on taking songs and solidarity to Palestine

I have just returned from a trip to Palestine with my solidarity choir, San Ghanny (‘We Shall Sing’ in Arabic) where we visited a farming community in the South Hebron hills called At Tuwani where we learned about their everyday lives and accompanied them in planting olive trees.

We planted olive trees on land owned by the community and immediately next to a fence marking off more land that used to be owned by the villagers, but has been stolen by the illegal Israeli settlement next…

1 April 2017News

'Deluge' of charges brought against leading nonviolent activists

Nonviolent Palestinian activists are facing a new wave of repression, demonstrating again that the Israeli authorities fear effective nonviolent action.

Israeli officials themselves know ‘we don’t do Gandhi very well’, as the then director of policy and political-military affairs at the Israel ministry of defence, major general (reserves) Amos Gilad, said in February 2010. Gilad, who retired in February after 14 years in that critical post, was talking to US officials about the…

1 April 2017News

Zionist exploitation of event condemned by local council

On 3 March, Llandudno town council condemned the ‘inappropriate Zionist exploitation of Conwy HMD 2017’ and voted to cancel the grant it had allotted to one Roy Thurley for organising the event.

Every 27 January, the date that the Russian army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1945, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust asks people to ‘pause to remember the millions of people who have been murdered or whose lives have been changed beyond recognition during the Holocaust,…

1 December 2016News in Brief

On 11 November, Palestinian administrative detainees, Ahmad Abu Fara (29) and Anas Shadid (19) reached the fiftieth day of their hunger strikes to demand freedom from imprisonment without charge or trial. They were shackled hand and foot to hospital beds. Their lawyers lodged appeals to demand their release because of their deteriorating health.

Meanwhile, three brothers, Nour al-Din, Abdel-Salam and Nidal Omar, announced in mid-November that they had been on a co-ordinated hunger…

1 December 2016News

Women vow to continue sailing to Gaza after ship seized

The Women’s Boat to Gaza campaign (see PN 2598–2599) has announced that it will continue to sail until Palestine is free, despite the seizure of its first vessel. On 5 October, two Israeli warships and four or five smaller boats surrounded the Zaytouna-Oliva in international waters and ordered it to stop sailing towards the Palestinian coast.

When the women-only boat continued its siege-breaking journey, the Israeli defence forces (IDF) boarded and commandeered the…