Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Newsletter   6 December 2024
  In this newsletter:
  • Open Letter to MP Dollimore
  • Next Saturday: Goat Ledge Fundraiser
  • Next Sunday: Zoom Call with Al-Mawasi, Gaza
  • Susan Abulhawa at the Oxford Union
  • Followed by local news, the East Sussex County Council petition, Gifts for Gaza, books for sale, online wellbeing sessions, independent news sources.

    THIS SATURDAY'S INFORMATION STALL CANCELLED

    Due to the weather forecast showing inclement weather, Saturday's stall is cancelled.

    OPEN LETTER TO MP DOLLIMORE


    In the week that Amnesty International brought out its 300-page report concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and as Israel committed yet another horrific massacre in Al Mawasi, annihilating displaced families in tents, we demand our Parliamentary representative makes clear her position.

    Last weekend, Israel killed Save the Children worker Ahmad Faisal Isleem Al-Qadi. MP Helena Dollimore has told constituents that she used to work for Save the Children but has not condemned Israel's murder of her former colleague.

    Indeed, in the last year, Israel has killed over 333 aid workers. It has targeted and killed journalists, medics, civil defence workers, UN workers and children in unprecedented numbers.

    Will Helena Dollimore condemn these crimes?

    Throughout 14 months of genocide, the silence of our politicians has been deafening. We must demand that all political leaders denounce these atrocities against Palestinians and show their commitment to uphold international humanitarian law.

    If you live in the Hastings and Rye constituency, please add your name or organisation to this open letter: Open Letter to MP Dollimore.

    We have two MPs in our area. We would like to collate responses to Israel's attacks from Bexhill and Battle MP Kieran Mullan. If you have received anything, please email us.

    GOAT LEDGE FUNDRAISER STALL


    Saturday 14 December 10am - 3pm. Goat Ledge, Lower Prom, Warrior Square.

    We've raised over £7,400 so far towards our £10k target for the Al-Mawasi Winter Appeal. Help us get closer to the target by visiting our stall at Goat Ledge. We will be selling brick a brac, Gift Cards for Gaza and taking donations.

    From 11am the Goat Ledge Grotto 2024 will be open. So here's your opportunity to visit Santa Claus while you're there!

    ZOOM CALL WITH AL-MAWASI, GAZA

    Sunday 15 December 5 - 6.30pm. Please join us in our meeting with members of the Al-Mawasi community. See and hear the stories of not just the friends we've made in Al-Mawasi but also people who have fled from all areas of Gaza. The people we meet are amazing in the face of so much horror.

    Just showing up to listen, and then share what you've heard, is an act of solidarity. The people we are in contact in Gaza tell us that they draw huge strength from seeing there are people who care, when they feel utterly abandoned and betrayed by world governments.

    If you wish to share a message of solidarity from yourself or on behalf of a group in the zoom call that would be very welcome.

    Please register for free on eventbrite and you will receive the zoom link by email.

    SUSAN ABULHAWA AT THE OXFORD UNION

    Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa gave a powerful speech at the Oxford Union last week. The resolution was: "this house believes that Israeli is an apartheid state responsible for genocide." Despite being interrupted several times she gave an account of the true horror story of the origins of the State of Israel and a tremendous outpouring of feelings, emotions and history as she explained the Palestinian experience. YouTube video.

    GIFTS FOR GAZA - WINTER APPEAL


    We are now three-quarters 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 Gifts 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 Gifts 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:

    29 November 2024
    22 November 2024
    19 November 2024

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