| |
Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Newsletter 25 October 2024
|
|
|
| |
In this newsletter:
Saturday's Information stall
Saturday 2 November - National Demonstration
Write to Keir Starmer and your MP - Liquidation of North Gaza
Reports: Al-Mawasi call and the houmous1 trialPlus...local news; books for sale....
Saturday 26 October 12.00 noon until 2pm Town Centre. Please visit and support our soldarity stall. All the usual information, petitions, plus keffiyehs, books, badges and boycott stickers.
NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION: END THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA
Saturday 2 November 12pm. Whitehall, London
Demand that western governments - including Britain and the USA - stop supplying the weapons that are being used to carry out Israel's crimes against humanity. Catch the 10.31 train to London. If you would like to go but need help towards the cost of a ticket, contact us directly. We match donors with marchers. More information: PSC website,
URGENT ACTION: STOP THE LIQUIDATION OF THE NORTH OF GAZA
We are witnessing crimes of historic proportions. 'The smell of death is everywhere' in the north of Gaza, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, has written. Densely populated areas are under relentless Israeli attack.
Bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Israel is firing on Palestinians attempting to rescue the injured or retrieve the dead. Since the start of the month, no food or medicines have been allowed in and all attempts to provide humanitarian assistance are denied. Schools and hospitals serving as evacuation centres are deliberately targeted to drive out the population.
Support the PSC e-action: Write to Keir Starmer and your local MP now to demand immediate action in parliament to halt the liquidation of the north of Gaza.
EMAIL KEIR STARMER AND YOUR MP
DAWN RAID TARGETS JOURNALIST ASA WINSTANLEY
Last Thursday British police carried out a dawn raid on the house of journalist and investigative reporter Asa Winstanley on the pretext of an investigation into his social media postings.The police seized devices used by Asa for his work as associate editor at The Electronic Intifada.
The police raid on Asas home comes after a series of similar attacks by British authorities on journalists and activists engaged in work around Palestine
Last year Asa came to Hastings to give us a talk about his book Weaponising Anti-Semitism; and in 2021 we organised a meeting with Asa and Jonathan Cook through Zoom. We've got to know Asa and have a high respect for his journalism. We're sure that these scare tactics won't succeed in intimidating and silencing him. This is Asa's report, following a full, year-long investigation, into: How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October. Article here.
Saturday 23 November. The Downstairs Bar, White Rock Hotel TN34 1JU
Poetry For Palestine - Poetry Open Mic Night. Fundraiser for the Al-Mawasi community. Tickets are £10 and £15. For Open mic poets £5. Tickets available at the door, online tickets available at Eventbrite.
REPORT: ONLINE CALL WITH AL-MAWASI
Over the last two Zoom calls with Al-Mawasi we've been able to hear the stories of people from different parts of Gaza who have sought refuge at the 'Safe Space.' One woman spoke of the bombing of her house. Her family had to dig her 7-day old baby out of the rubble. Thankfully they survived. But having moved away, her husband was later killed in an Israeli airstrike.
We were given updates on the running of the second well. Also, at the moment the community is planning to renovate part of a bombed building they have access to in Khan Yunis (see photo above). This will be for 3 projects to help provide jobs and self sustainability for displaced people and the community as a whole. The projects are a bakery, a clothes production unit (repurposing old garments and adult clothes to make children's clothes), and an educational centre.
For more information about Hastings Friends of Al-Mawasi click here. Also, please see below GIFTS FOR GAZA as a great way to contribute to the work of the community.
REPORT: BOYCOTTING ISRAEL IS NOT A CRIME
Nurse Chris Dindar is being pursued for crimes against houmous. While the UK state is supporting Israel's genocide against the people of Gaza, it is pursuing a man whose only 'crime' is to see the end of that same genocide and calling for the boycott of Israeli houmous.
Chris pleaded not guilty to criminal damage relating to a peaceful protest at a Sainsbury's supermarket. The trial will take place at Brighton on 6 March.
"Boycotting Sabra Houmous and encouraging others to do so is not just a moral necessity - it's a legal requirement."
For more information about the boycott of Sabra houmous, this is Chris' talk after Wednesday's plea hearing on Facebook and on Instagram.,
Chris' trial in March in Brighton will be very expensive - please support Chris' crowdfunder.
GIFTS FOR GAZA - WINTER APPEAL
Thousands of displaced families are living in tents in Al Mawasi in Gaza with no means of supporting themselves. The Al Mawasi Community Resilience Committee is helping to support huge numbers of refugees now living there by distributing food, clothes and hygiene products. But the ongoing siege has forced prices sky high and aid is scarce.
If you are considering buying gifts this winter, please consider also giving a Gift for Gaza either in your name, or on behalf of a loved one. For more details go to our gofundme Gifts for Gaza page.
You can also buy Gift For Gaza gift cards from our weekly Saturday stall in Hastings town centre.
ONLINE WELLBEING SESSIONS
Clinical hypnotherapist Chris Dindar is running 30 min relaxation sessions to help decompress, process our emotions, and find a moment of peace and deep relaxation amidst the chaos. Chris is offering his services for free, as a token of his solidarity, to help nurture the well-being of our local group and maintain our collective resolve.
Please email Chris directly if interested in taking part. The sessions are the 1st and 3rd Friday of the month at 12 noon.
BOOKS AVAILABLE AT OUR STALLS AND MEETINGS
 
 
Now available at our stall, five great books to deepen our knowledge of the history of Palestine and Israel. We're grateful to Lee at Printed Matter in Hastings, for generously discounting the price for us in support of the work of PSC.
A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by lan Pappé. (Oneworld Publications 2024) £9. 'A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict is the best primer available on one of the world's most persistent settler-colonial tragedies. Amid the carnage of the Gaza genocide, it is essential to listen to Ilan Pappe, a preeminent historian of the Middle East, and a heroic scholar committed to justice and freedom.' Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Arab Studies.
One State - The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel by Ghada Karmi. £12. This profound and important analysis of the future for Israel-Palestine has never felt more necessary or urgent. Ghada Karmi, whose family were exiled to Britain during the 1948 Nakba, makes the powerful case here for uniting the land to create a just future for all Palestinians and Israelis, and allowing the Palestinian right of return.
The best-selling author of In Search of Fatima has lost none of her eloquence in this bold and engaging treatise which lays out the instability at the heart of the Zionist state, examines its impact across the region, and analyzes the decades of work to present a workable 'solution,'
In the end she is unequivocal in her view that, however impossible it may appear, the current apartheid ethnocentric state will be replaced by one democratic state, asserting: "The fact that something is difficult to realise does not make it any less the right thing to do."
And, moreover, the concept itself must be long-established "not as an immediately attainable goal perhaps, but as a vision, an aspiration and a belief in the ultimate humanity of Palestinians and Jews and all those who wish to see them prosper."
In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story by Ghada Karmi (Verso Books) £12."A captivating Memoir of a middle class Palestinian family, one of more than 700,000 Palestinians uprooted and displaced from their historic homeland, Palestine, in 1948. In this memoir Ms. Karmi has documented a sample of the continuing suffering and injustice brought upon the Palestinian People by the creation of the Illegitimate State of Israel. While expressing the complex social and cultural feelings, hardships, and struggles in coping with the brutality of displacement and diaspora, Ms. Karmi remains optimistic and hopeful that Justice and Right will prevail.
This book must be read by young Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Europeans, and Arabs, to truly understand and appreciate the only solution that will bring a lasting Peace in Palestine."
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld, 2007) £13 by Ilan Pappé, renowned Israeli historian, scholar and author who was forced from his position at the University of Haifa after publishing this book, and is now Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. In this book he exposes the facts behind the Nakba of 1948 with meticulous research into Israeli archival documents, making clear that ridding the land of its Palestinian inhabitants was always central to the founding of the State of Israel.
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, Rashid Khalidi (Profile Books, 2020) £12. Khalidi is Palestinian American and the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York City. He tells this history from the perspective of his own prominent Jerusalem Muslim family using his family's extensive archives in Jerusalem, along with multiple other sources, documenting the extensive Palestinian resistance to colonization that began with the arrival of European Jews to Palestine and has continued to the present.
........................................
PALESTINE - ISRAEL: FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
Much of the 'information' in the corporate media is misleading. Here are some useful sources:
Middle East Eye. Electronic Intifada. Al Jazeera. Middle East Monitor.
Mondoweiss. Palestine Chronicle. Al Mayadeen. Mintpress. The Grayzone.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Jonathan Cook.
The Cradle. MediaLens. Declassified UK.
.......................................
Hastings and District PSC online membership and donations
Becoming a member of Hastings and District 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. If you would rather not use Paypal, you can pay directly to our bank: please contact us for the details. Or alternatively pay at one of our events.
The work of Hastings and District PSC could not continue without the 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 and District PSC.
........................................
Recent Hastings and District PSC newsletters:
18 October 2024
12 October 2024
3 October 2024
Keep up to date with our website and social media:
Website Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Channel TikTok.
|
|
|
|
|
|
