Palestinians today are facing a 'New Nakba' thanks to a new geopolitical alliance that threatens to permanently remove the Palestinian cause for justice.
That was the message of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's (PSC) National Director Ben Jamal to an audience at the Queen's Head in Rye, East Sussex on Thursday night.
The Nakba -- the Arabic word for 'catastrophe' - refers to the forced expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from their villages and towns after the State of Israel was declared in May 1948.
Ben - invited to speak by the Hastings & Rye Palestine Solidarity Campaign (HRPSC) - warned that the situation is now more urgent than it has been for a generation thanks to the alliance of Trump, Israel and a number of Gulf states in the frame of an anti-Iran alliance.
And, at the same time, he said the solidarity movement is under sustained and systematic attack as never before, as Israel attempts to delegitimise it worldwide - even as public opinion has swung behind the Palestinian cause.
'There has been a massive shift in public opinion in the UK in the last 20, 30 years,' he said. 'It's undeniable. You can measure it in opinion polls on a very basic level, you ask people - where is your basic sympathy? Do you broadly sympathise with the Palestinians or do you sympathise with the Israeli's? There's been a fundamental shift. And it's particularly stark among the younger generation.
'There's a very definitive shift among people under thirty; 5-1 for the Palestinians the last time the PSC did an opinion poll. But that's not translated into a shift in terms of the discourse. That's why people get passionately angry because they see this injustice and then they see how it's described and it gives a sense of a double injustice.'
Ben explained that the way the solidarity movement understands the Palestinian situation is not one of conflict, but as one in which one party is imposing unjust power over another.
'Our job in the solidarity movement,' he said. 'is to be supportive of legitimate resistance to an unjust system of power.'
But that narrative is now under organised and sustained attack which Ben tracks back to 2010 when the Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank, launched a report in the UK which identified the growth of the global solidarity movement and in particular the growth in support for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) as the 'single biggest strategic threat to Israel.'
The report stated that Israel was losing the battle for public opinion - effectively becoming a pariah state.
The assault on Gaza in 2014 contributed to this view, with the PSC tripling its supporters from 40,000 to 120,000 over one summer.
Today the PSC is the UK's largest group campaigning for Palestinian human rights, with over 60 branches nationwide.
Consequently, Israel invested heavily in the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, assigning it global responsibility for coordinating efforts to suppress BDS.
'At the heart of the strategy,' said Ben. 'Was the idea of delegitimising the global solidarity movement.
'They said - we have to separate them out from the liberal mainstream, confine them to the extremes. They've got to be put into the margins and part of that narrative is to reframe us as anti-Semites. And this is where the tool of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism comes in. 'It is directed very specifically at closing down two types of narrative and speech. One is - any attempt to define Israel as an apartheid state.
'And of course the other is to try to define any call for BDS as antisemitic and the most pernicious example we've seen of that is the resolution that went through the German Parliament recently which said that the call for BDS was inherently antisemitic.'
He went on: 'Our argument is that Palestinians should have the right to accurately describe their experiences of dispossession and their experiences of living under a system of racial injustice and we should have the right to advocate on their behalf. We should have the right to respond to their call for BDS.'
He said part of the PSC's task was to educate and inform people on Israel and explain why it is termed an apartheid state.
'We're not just throwing around words randomly here,' he said. 'Apartheid is a legal term under the Rome Statute that defines what it means to be practicing apartheid - and Israel meets that definition.'
Ben quoted two useful sources of information on this subject: Ben White's Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide and the 2017 UN report by Virginia Tilley: Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian people and the question of Apartheid which looked at the different way Israel exercises control over different groups of Palestinians.
The talk was concluded with a lively Q&A discussion where questions were raised about how supporters can act locally, what pressure can be brought to politicians and how to tackle the problem of public indifference.
Ben talked about being Palestinian himself but also addressed the question of why Britons should care about Palestine.
'There are two broad answers I would give to that: first is the recognition of the special role Britain has played, its particular complicity in the creation of the problem.
Palestinian history is British history and Britain has a colonial responsibility going back to the Balfour declaration, for laying the foundation of Palestinian dispossession. And successive UK Governments since 1948 have sustained that complicity either through their continuing failure to call Israel to account or through the proactive diplomatic, military and political support that the UK lends to Israel.'
The second reason, he said, was that the struggle for Palestinian human rights was part of the wider struggle against universal injustice.
'Palestine is one of the world's most enduring examples of a continuing injustice,' he explained. 'Of a process of settler-colonialism by which 750,000 people, including my grandparents and most of my extended family, were expelled from their homes in 1948 in a process which saw over 500 towns and villages destroyed - wiped from the face of the earth.
'Then a construction of a system of power, not based on the precept that rights belong to all but that rights can be allocated on the basis of ethnicity, culture, religion, on the basis of nationality, depending on how one wants to describe Jewishness.
'So that's why the struggle for justice in Palestine is and has to be rooted in this broader anti-racist struggle. That's why Nelson Mandela said that the freedom of black South Africans is 'incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people.' That's why we chant when we march 'in our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians.' It's not an empty slogan to me.
'If we are committed to struggle against issues of universal injustice, if we are committed to the anti-racist struggle then we are committed to the struggle for justice in Palestine.'
HRPSC Chair Katy Colley said afterwards: 'The audience tonight really responded to Ben's forensic and thoughtful discussion of these vital issues facing all of us today. There was so much to discuss in fact, the talking went on well after our meeting broke up. It just goes to show - we may just be a small town in East Sussex but the struggle for justice is a universal one and we are all part of that movement.'
5 July 2019
That was the message of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's (PSC) National Director Ben Jamal to an audience at the Queen's Head in Rye, East Sussex on Thursday night.
The Nakba -- the Arabic word for 'catastrophe' - refers to the forced expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from their villages and towns after the State of Israel was declared in May 1948.
Ben - invited to speak by the Hastings & Rye Palestine Solidarity Campaign (HRPSC) - warned that the situation is now more urgent than it has been for a generation thanks to the alliance of Trump, Israel and a number of Gulf states in the frame of an anti-Iran alliance.
And, at the same time, he said the solidarity movement is under sustained and systematic attack as never before, as Israel attempts to delegitimise it worldwide - even as public opinion has swung behind the Palestinian cause.'There has been a massive shift in public opinion in the UK in the last 20, 30 years,' he said. 'It's undeniable. You can measure it in opinion polls on a very basic level, you ask people - where is your basic sympathy? Do you broadly sympathise with the Palestinians or do you sympathise with the Israeli's? There's been a fundamental shift. And it's particularly stark among the younger generation.
'There's a very definitive shift among people under thirty; 5-1 for the Palestinians the last time the PSC did an opinion poll. But that's not translated into a shift in terms of the discourse. That's why people get passionately angry because they see this injustice and then they see how it's described and it gives a sense of a double injustice.'
Ben explained that the way the solidarity movement understands the Palestinian situation is not one of conflict, but as one in which one party is imposing unjust power over another.
'Our job in the solidarity movement,' he said. 'is to be supportive of legitimate resistance to an unjust system of power.'
But that narrative is now under organised and sustained attack which Ben tracks back to 2010 when the Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank, launched a report in the UK which identified the growth of the global solidarity movement and in particular the growth in support for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) as the 'single biggest strategic threat to Israel.'
The report stated that Israel was losing the battle for public opinion - effectively becoming a pariah state.The assault on Gaza in 2014 contributed to this view, with the PSC tripling its supporters from 40,000 to 120,000 over one summer.
Today the PSC is the UK's largest group campaigning for Palestinian human rights, with over 60 branches nationwide.
Consequently, Israel invested heavily in the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, assigning it global responsibility for coordinating efforts to suppress BDS.
'At the heart of the strategy,' said Ben. 'Was the idea of delegitimising the global solidarity movement.
'They said - we have to separate them out from the liberal mainstream, confine them to the extremes. They've got to be put into the margins and part of that narrative is to reframe us as anti-Semites. And this is where the tool of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism comes in. 'It is directed very specifically at closing down two types of narrative and speech. One is - any attempt to define Israel as an apartheid state.
'And of course the other is to try to define any call for BDS as antisemitic and the most pernicious example we've seen of that is the resolution that went through the German Parliament recently which said that the call for BDS was inherently antisemitic.'
 Palestine Solidarity Campaign National Director Ben Jamal with Hastings and Rye PSC Chair Katy Colley. |
He said part of the PSC's task was to educate and inform people on Israel and explain why it is termed an apartheid state.
'We're not just throwing around words randomly here,' he said. 'Apartheid is a legal term under the Rome Statute that defines what it means to be practicing apartheid - and Israel meets that definition.'
Ben quoted two useful sources of information on this subject: Ben White's Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide and the 2017 UN report by Virginia Tilley: Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian people and the question of Apartheid which looked at the different way Israel exercises control over different groups of Palestinians.
The talk was concluded with a lively Q&A discussion where questions were raised about how supporters can act locally, what pressure can be brought to politicians and how to tackle the problem of public indifference.
Ben talked about being Palestinian himself but also addressed the question of why Britons should care about Palestine.
'There are two broad answers I would give to that: first is the recognition of the special role Britain has played, its particular complicity in the creation of the problem.
Palestinian history is British history and Britain has a colonial responsibility going back to the Balfour declaration, for laying the foundation of Palestinian dispossession. And successive UK Governments since 1948 have sustained that complicity either through their continuing failure to call Israel to account or through the proactive diplomatic, military and political support that the UK lends to Israel.'
The second reason, he said, was that the struggle for Palestinian human rights was part of the wider struggle against universal injustice.
'Palestine is one of the world's most enduring examples of a continuing injustice,' he explained. 'Of a process of settler-colonialism by which 750,000 people, including my grandparents and most of my extended family, were expelled from their homes in 1948 in a process which saw over 500 towns and villages destroyed - wiped from the face of the earth.
'Then a construction of a system of power, not based on the precept that rights belong to all but that rights can be allocated on the basis of ethnicity, culture, religion, on the basis of nationality, depending on how one wants to describe Jewishness.
'So that's why the struggle for justice in Palestine is and has to be rooted in this broader anti-racist struggle. That's why Nelson Mandela said that the freedom of black South Africans is 'incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people.' That's why we chant when we march 'in our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians.' It's not an empty slogan to me.'If we are committed to struggle against issues of universal injustice, if we are committed to the anti-racist struggle then we are committed to the struggle for justice in Palestine.'
HRPSC Chair Katy Colley said afterwards: 'The audience tonight really responded to Ben's forensic and thoughtful discussion of these vital issues facing all of us today. There was so much to discuss in fact, the talking went on well after our meeting broke up. It just goes to show - we may just be a small town in East Sussex but the struggle for justice is a universal one and we are all part of that movement.'
5 July 2019
