Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Newsletter   6 November 2024
  In this newsletter:
  • Thursday 7 November 7.30 - Film show: The Teacher at the Kino-teatr
  • Saturday 9 November 12noon - 2pm - Information Stall
  • Saturday 16 November 11am - 1pm - Barclays Day of Action
  • Saturday 23 November 7.30 - Poetry for Palestine Fundraiser
  • Report: General Dynamics protest
  • Plus...Dates for your diary - Workplace Day of Action 28 November, National Demonstration for Palestine in London 30 November; Gifts for Gaza, local news, film: Israelism now on YouTube, books for sale....

    FILM SHOW: THE TEACHER
    AT THE KINO-TEATR

    Thursday 7 November 7.30pm. Kino-Teatr TN38 0EQ.


    Don't miss the chance to see The Teacher at this one-off screening in Hastings as part of the movie's official UK tour schedule.

    There is a huge buzz around this film by Oscar-nominated British Palestinian writer-director Farah Nabulsi and it has already been nominated for and won several awards, including Best International Film At Galway Fleadh, Ireland.

    Inspired by true events, it follows a Palestinian school teacher who struggles to reconcile his risky commitment to political resistance with the chance of a new relationship and his emotional support for one of his students Adam.

    Critics have praised the central performances, the cinematography as well as the 'absorbing' and 'riveting' storytelling.

    UK/Palestine 2024, 12A, 120 mins, drama.

    The Teacher Trailer.  More information at our Facebook event page.

    Tickets £8 - £12 plus booking fee at the Kino-Teatr.

    SATURDAY'S INFORMATION STALL

    Saturday 9 November 12.00 noon until 2pm Town Centre. Please visit and support our soldarity stall. All the usual information, petitions, plus keffiyehs, books, badges, boycott stickers and Palestine Cola.

    BARCLAYS BANK: STOP BANKING ON GENOCIDE

    Saturday 16 November 11am - 1pm. Barclays Bank, Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1QP
    An important victory in this campaign was announced recently when Barclays sold all its shares in Israeli armaments company Elbit. But Barclays still has £2 billion invested in companies that supply armaments for Israel's genocidal policies. This includes over £100 million in General Dynamics,

    We want as many people as possible to join us on the 16th - we are planning an event that will be both visually and audibly dramatic. A clue is in the image below - we will be linking different aspects of Israel's genocidal policies: it's destruction of Gazan infrastructure, its attacks on civilian life including the increase in its imprisonment of civilians with documentation of widespread torture. Around 10,000 Palestinians are presently in Israeli prisons.


    POETRY FOR PALESTINE OPEN MIC NIGHT - AN AL-MAWASI FUNDRAISER

    Saturday 23 November 7.30pm. 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. It is preferably for poets to please sign-up beforehand. Tickets available at the door, online tickets available at Eventbrite and more information at our Facebook page.

    Readings will take place from 7.30pm to 9.30pm, followed by Afrobeats and vintage West-African sounds from DJ Sam Ye Ye 9.30pm - 11pm.

    WORKPLACE DAY OF ACTION
    THURSDAY 28 NOVEMBER

    Take action to call for an end to government and corporate complicity in Israel's atrocities. "Discuss with your colleagues in your branch about what kind of action is best suited to your workplace and its circumstances." Take action in your workplace.

    NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION FOR PALESTINE IN LONDON

    The date of the next demonstration in London is Saturday 30 November. Details to follow.

    REPORT - PROTEST AT GENERAL DYNAMICS

    Photo: Hastings Independent.

    Our most recent early morning picket at the General Dynamics at the Sidney Little Road factory was organised 'under the radar' taking the company unawares. General Dynamics is one of the main arms suppliers to the Israeli military. Israel had been targetting the population of Gaza for over a year and had just started bombing Lebanon, along with Syria and Yemen.

    We were still shocked at the news of the bombing of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital two days earlier when 19 year old software engineering student Sha'ban Al-Dalou was burnt to death in his hospital bed, along with his mother Alaa. Sha'ban's younger brother Abdul Ruhman, 10, succumbed to his injuries from the strike after nearly a week in intensive care

    This General Dynamics site in Hastings provides avionic systems for fighter planes and tactical communications equipment for ground vehicles. This is our tenth protest at General Dynamics. We hope to step up our protests against the company. Article by Rod Webb in the Hastings Independent.

    FILM: ISRAELISM NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE

    Back in December we showed the film Israelism in Hastings to a packed house. It is now available on YouTube. The film depicted two young American Jews who were raised to defend the state of Israel at all costs. When they witness Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinian people, they are horrified and heartbroken. The film showed how more young Jews are questioning the narratives fed to them as children. Highly recommended. The link is here.

    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    Recent Hastings and District PSC newsletters:

    25 October 2024
    18 October 2024
    12 October 2024

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