Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Newsletter   29 November 2024
  In this newsletter:
  • This Saturday 30 November - National Demonstration for Palestine; information stall in the town centre
  • Our recent action highlighting the abuse and torture of Palestinian political prisoners.
  • Latest news from Al-Mawasi.
  • Followed by local news, the East Sussex County Council petition, Gifts for Gaza, books for sale, online wellbeing sessions, independent news sources.

    NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION FOR PALESTINE: SATURDAY 30 NOVEMBER


    End the Genocide - Hands Off Lebanon - Don't Attack Iran - Stop Arming Israel. Assemble 12 noon at Park Lane, London before marching to Whitehall. 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,

    INFORMATION STALL THIS SATURDAY

    Saturday 30 November 12.00 - 2pm. Hastings town centre For those who can't get to the London march, please visit our stall. All the usual information, petitions, badges, boycott stickers, books. Plus Gifts for Gaza cards.

    WHAT IF IT WERE HAPPENING HERE?

    Our recent action showed the ongoing dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israel and its genocidal policies. Its attacks on civilian life include the kidnap, torture and rape in prisons where over 60 Palestinians have been killed in the last year. As people went about their Christmas shopping we drew attention to this obscenity.

    On the day we reaffirmed our call to boycott Israeli goods and products, as well as complicit companies like Barclays, which has investments of £2 billion in armaments companies that supply the Israeli military. Our base for the day was at Barclays. Our action resulted in management locking the bank, only allowing one customer in at a time - resulting in a very long queue. Hopefully the long wait gave customers time to reflect on whether it was really worth banking with a company complicit in genocide. Video of the day's actions (Facebook).

     

    NEWS FROM AL-MAWASI

    Here are some recent pictures our friends in Al Mawasi have shared with us. They are now clearing a bombed out building they have access to. 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. The bakery will be a significant investment but it will provide a sustainable income for 10 families and benefit the whole community.

    The other image shows a long queue for bread - some people queue all day and by the time they have got to the front the bread has run out.

     

    GIFTS FOR GAZA - WINTER APPEAL


    We are now halfway towards our target of £10,000. Thank you everyone who has donated so far or joined one of our fundraisers. 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.


    DIVEST: EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL

    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 the WhatsApp group or email us.

    Please sign and share the ePetition:

    PETITION - EAST SUSSEX COUNCIL: DIVEST

    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:

    22 November 2024
    19 November 2024
    16 November 2024

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