Photo: 1066 Drone Photography
Hastings and Rye Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Newsletter   18 November 2021
 
Hastings Friends of Al-Mawasi - update
Online Zoom meeting 7.30pm Tuesday 23 November 2021

We are holding an organising meeting to plan our next steps in building links between Hastings and Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza. Now we want to organise more joint events and hopefully work towards a formal 'twinning' between the two areas.

Please register to obtain the Zoom link for the meeting:

REGISTER HERE

Please share widely: Facebook event page.
Our webpage with more details of the meeting and of the Al-Mawasi community. Click here.
Hastings Friends of Al-Mawasi Facebook page.

The video of the meeting we had last month with the Al-Mawasi community is on YouTube.

______________________________________________________________________

Mike Howard 1952 - 2021

We heard the sad news that Mike Howard died last Thursday. Mike was a life-time anti-racist, a fighter for justice, Trade Unionist and a great friend of the Palestinian people. His parents' families had fled from the threat of pogroms in Lithuania and Poland and fought Oswald Mosley's fascists in their East London neighbourhood. His parents were politically active, both shop stewards. It was from this background that he learnt about internationalism as a child and this informed his philosophy and his activism throughout his life.

We remember fondly the visit he and Dee gave us at the recent Palestine on the Pier day and the support he gave at other local Palestine solidarity events. Above left is a photo of Mike and Dee visiting our stall in September (at the Ragged Trousered Troubadours event) meeting Jeremy Corbyn. Our condolences to Dee and the family. RIP Mike.

This is a recent interview with Mike where he talks about his background and how he became on the receiving end of the Labour Party witch hunt. Video: Mike Howard's story.
JVL: Mike Howard - "a true mensch."
______________________________________________________________________

Demand that the East Sussex Pension Fund divests from companies complicit in Israeli apartheid and war crimes

Tuesday 7 December 9.20 am
County Hall, St Anne's Crescent, Lewes BN7 1UE

The East Sussex Pension Fund has investments in excess of £71 million in companies that are complicit in Israel's violations of international law, in Israel's war crimes against the civilian population of besieged Gaza and which aid Israel's abuses of Palestinian human rights. The majority of these companies directly supply the Israeli military forces.

We will shortly be sending out more information about the rally.
Facebook event. List of complicit companies in the Pension Fund: Click here.
______________________________________________________________________

Information stalls

Our weekly information stalls are held every Saturday 12 to 2 in the Hastings town centre near Millets (weather permitting). Please come and say hello.
______________________________________________________________________

Refusenik Shahar Perets serves third term in jail
Shahar has spent her 19th birthday behind bars for refusing to join the Israeli military.

"I decided to refuse to join the army because I am not willing to take part in the oppression of millions of people who live in the West Bank and Gaza."

She writes about how the Israeli authorities have been trying to silence her: "the silencing of political refusers is a small part of a more violent pattern of behaviour - The silencing of the Palestinian struggle for human rights in the West Bank and Gaza."

Shahar's article in the Refuser Solidarity Network: Another 30 Days In Prison.
The RSN's donation page: Donate.
More information: Israeli refusenik serves third term in jail.
______________________________________________________________________

Israeli Military Kill 15 Year Old Mohammad Da'das Near Nablus

During a confrontation between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians, the Israeli forces using live ammunition shot 15-year old Mohammad Amjad Salem Da'das in the abdomen. Mohammad, from the New Askar refugee camp, was immediately rushed to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus in a critical condition, where he was found to be in cardiac arrest. He died shortly afterwards.

DCI-P (Defense for Children International - Palestine) has stated that Mohammad is the 15th Palestinian child shot and killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since the beginning of 2021. DCI-P article.

Film: Caging Childhood: Palestinian Children in Israel's Military Detention System
Saturday November 20, 2021 6 p.m. London
This short documentary follows three Palestinian boys - Islam, Qusai, and Osama - through their experiences in the Israeli military detention system. Israel is the only country in the world to automatically prosecute children in military courts that lack basic safeguards for a fair trial. This film is staged by the DCI(P) which is one of the organisations that Israel has blacklisted.
Register here.
______________________________________________________________________

LSE protest against lecture by Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely

Last week there was a protest against a lecture by the Israeli Ambassador Hotovely at the London School of Economics (LSE). The event was billed as a debate, but as there was no outside speaker opposing Hotovely, it was nothing of the sort.

It is clear why there is so much opposition: Hotovely is a religious fundamentalist who supports annexation of the entire West Bank, and Israeli control of the Temple Mount; she has claimed that there is "no Palestinian people" and last year described the Nakba - the well-documented 1948 expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians in order to establish Israel - as "a popular Arab lie;" she played an active role in the expansion of illegal settlements as the former Minister for Settlements; and she opposes mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews, promoting the work of supremacist group Lehava.

Because the protest was so successful in exposing this racist and extremist side of Israel, there was an incredible campaign carried out in the corporate media by the Israel lobby, and by both government and opposition politicians.

Statement by Jewish LSE students and alumni: No to Hotovely on campus.
Politicians are lying about the Palestine student protest at LSE.
______________________________________________________________________

Palestinian prisoner ends hunger strike after 113 days

The protest by Miqdad Al-Qawasmi - and parallel hunger strikes by five other detainees also from the occupied West Bank - was in response to being placed in administrative detention, under which Israel can hold Palestinians for up to 60 days without charge, and extend that period with court approval. The United Nations and European Union have criticised the practice. Article here.
______________________________________________________________________

JCB found by a UK Government body to practice human rights violations

It has been confirmed that JCB's business practices violate human rights. The statement came as a result of evidence submitted by Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR) showing that JCB machinery has been used in illegal activities - namely the demolition of Palestinian homes and properties, and for the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank, both of which are war crimes according to international law. LPHR statement.
______________________________________________________________________

Police evict last residents of Mizrahi neighborhood

Israeli authorities originally sent the Mizrahi Jews to Givat Amal in the 50's to stop Palestinian refugees from returning to their land. Now, those who remain are struggling over the only home they've ever known.

The experiences of the Mizrahi Jewish residents of Givat Amal are not comparable with the ethnic cleansing faced by Palestinians by Israel. From 1948 to today, all forced displacement by the Israeli government is the result of Zionism, an Ashkenazi-led, settler-colonial movement that promotes ethnic hierarchy - not just Jews over Palestinians, but also European Jews over Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. Israel's treatment of black Jews is even harsher.
Article here.
______________________________________________________________________

Israel can monitor every telephone call in West Bank and Gaza

According to a former member of the Israeli Army's elite signals 8200 unit, hundreds of soldiers will at any time be listening to the conversations being conducted by Palestinians. They will either be listening to Palestinians who are politically active. Or they will be monitoring to find "pressure points" in Palestinian society - so they can blackmail someone who owes money or someone who is having an affair to force them to act as collaborators. Article here.
NSO spyware found on 6 Palestinian activists' phones.
______________________________________________________________________

University of Glasgow attempts to censor critics of Israel

The university raised the IHRA's definition of anti-semitism as justification for its attempts to censorship. The irony is that the student on the receiving end, Jane Jackman, was doing PhD research on the silencing of the Palestinian voice in the UK via pro-Israel groups.
Scottish college censors Israel's critics.
______________________________________________________________________

Israeli attacks on Damascus, Syria

This latest airstrike comes less than a week after Israel launched a similar attack with missiles targetting a site in the town of Zakia on the outskirts of the capital Damascus. This makes a total of four attacks in the past month with airstrikes on the Palmyra area in October. Israeli attacks of Syria are violations of international law. Article here.
Israel Targets a Telecommunications Tower in the eastern Homs countryside.
______________________________________________________________________

120,000 signatures to PUMA - end your partnership with Israeli apartheid

A petition of 120,000 signatures was handed in at PUMA's London HQ last week demanding the company end its sponsorship of the Israeli Football Association, which includes teams in illegal settlements. Israeli settlements are illegal land grabs that force Palestinians off their land and are an integral part of Israel's apartheid system. Article here.
______________________________________________________________________

More news:

Israel to level Palestinian land to install sewage pipe for settlers: Article here.

Secret Israeli dossier provides no proof for declaring Palestinian NGOs 'terrorists': Article here.

An open letter to Sally Rooney from Gaza: Article here.

In Germany, universities are leading the charge against Palestine solidarity: Article here.

Vermont Episcopalians condemn Israeli apartheid: Article here.
______________________________________________________________________

Hastings and Rye PSC online membership and donations

Becoming a member of Hastings and Rye PSC is an important way of supporting our work.The annual subscription is £10 waged, £5 unwaged. We now have an online membership payment form. It can also be used to renew membership. The work of Hastings & Rye Palestine Solidarity could not continue without the generous donations from members of the public. If you would like to support our work without becoming a member please visit our shop page here and see the right hand column: Donate to Hastings & Rye PSC.
______________________________________________________________________

Recent Hastings and Rye PSC newsletters:

5 November 2021
16 October 2021
7 October 2021

Keep up to date with our website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube pages:

Website      Facebook      Twitter      Instagram      YouTube Channel.