Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Newsletter   19 November 2024
  In this newsletter:
  • Wednesday 20 November 5.30 - Hastings Council Offices, Muriel Matters House, Hastings TN34 3UY
  • Followed by news of meetings, fundraisers, demonstrations, coming up over the next few days, along with the East Sussex County Council petition.........

    EMERGENCY PROTEST: GAZA MOTION BLOCKED FROM THE FULL COUNCIL AGENDA FOR A FOURTH TIME

    Wednesday 20 November 5.30pm. Hastings Council Offices, Muriel Matters House, Hastings TN34 3UY


    Hastings Borough Council officers have taken it upon themselves to prevent discussion at the Hastings Council meeting of the ongoing savagery in Gaza - for the fourth time.

    Previous motions were blocked by the Labour Mayor and the council's Monitoring officer on the grounds that they weren't relevant to the local community.

    It's time to stop playing party politics with Palestinian lives, to stop taking constituents for fools and to stand up for human rights and for international law.

    If you want to register your outrage that once again Hastings councillors have been denied the opportunity to discuss Gaza in council, join us on Wednesday for a protest outside council chambers. Bring friends, family, flags and placards.

    Full Hastings and District PSC statement. Article in skwawkbox.

    HASTINGS FRIENDS OF AL-MAWASI PLANNING MEETING

    The next meeting will be 7pm Wednesday 20 November at the East Hastings Sea Angling Club TN34 3FJ. More information about Hastings Friends of Al-Mawasi: Facebook and Website.

    FUNDRAISING FOR AL-MAWASI
    SATURDAY 23 NOVEMBER 10.30AM TO 5PM

    Saturday 23 November 10.30am to 5pm. Thai in Town, Queens Arcade, Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1PA. Many thanks to Thai in Town for inviting us to join their fundraising event this Saturday in Queens Arcade. Come and check out our fundraising stall from 10.30 to 5pm selling bric-a-brac and festive cards to raise money for our friends in Al-Mawasi as they face a second bleak winter under siege and bombardment. 10.30 to 5pm Queens Arcade, Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1PA. More information (Facebook).

    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. 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.

    DIVEST: EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL

    We refuse to be complicit in Genocide!

    Our council, East Sussex County Council, is guilty of supporting genocide. If we collect 5000 signatures we can force our councillors to vote on ending all our council's links with Israel, including divesting council pension funds from weapons companies that are arming Israel and stopping council contracts with companies who support Israel such as Barclays bank.

    We need everyone to sign the petition online and forward it to everyone you know. But we also want to reach more people by taking the petition around our workplaces, knocking on doors, and collecting signatures at big public events. Can you help with this? The printable version of the petition can be downloaded here. For more information contact Grace on our WhatsApp group or email us.


    Please sign and share the ePetition:

    PETITION - EAST SUSSEX COUNCIL: DIVEST

    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: SATURDAY 30 NOVEMBER

    End the Genocide - Hands Off Lebanon - Don't Attack Iran - Stop Arming Israel. Central London. Details to follow.

    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 or at Stooge Coffee on Trinity Street in Hastings.


    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:

    16 November 2024
    6 November 2024
    25 October 2024

    Keep up to date with our website and social media:

    Website      Facebook      X/Twitter      Instagram      YouTube Channel      TikTok.

    		•