Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Newsletter   20 December 2024
  In this newsletter:
  • Saturday 11 am - 2 pm - Fundraiser for Gaza
  • Saturday 12 noon - Palestine-themed carols
  • Message of love and solidarity
  • MP Dollimore - still no answer
  • Followed by: The East Sussex County Council petition, Gifts for Gaza, books for sale, online wellbeing sessions, independent news sources.

    FUNDRAISER FOR GAZA 11AM - 2PM
    PALESTINE-THEMED CAROLS 12 NOON

    Saturday 21 December 11am - 2pm. Hypha Studios, Priory Meadow Shopping Centre, TH34 1PH. 12 noon Alternative Palestine-themed carol singing.


    Come and find us in Priory Meadow - near to the Marks and Spencers entrance - for the final fundraiser of the year and alternative Palestine-themed carols. If you wish to contribute please bring either a bake or up to two items of bric a brac.

    SATURDAY'S INFORMATION STALL

    Due to poor weather forecast for this Saturday, the stall will be cancelled. But we plan to run the stalls on 28 December and 4 January.

    A MESSAGE OF LOVE AND SOLIDARITY

    It has been a long and difficult 12 months as we have watched history's first live-streamed genocide during which Palestinians in Gaza have been brutalized, terrorised, tortured, maimed and killed.

    And yet, even as these atrocities have multiplied, so too has our community of like-minded souls, and the actions we have taken for Palestine this year have been numerous and impactful.

    Through a variety of fundraisers, including music gigs, poetry events and art raffles, we have raised £28,000 to send to our friends in Al Mawasi.

    Just today we reached our £10,000 fundraising goal for our Gifts for Gaza Winter Appeal which is incredible - thank you to everyone who donated and supported these efforts.

    With that money the Resilience Committee has been able to dig a well to access fresh water, buy solar panels for electricity, buy food and hygiene products, and now they are building a bakery in a bombed building to help feed and support their community.

    We have held our elected representatives to account at local, county and national levels, forcing them to confront Britain's part in the oppression and annihilation of Palestinians.

    We have drawn attention to the profiteers of genocide in our own community, holding 11 protests at the two General Dynamics sites in town, along with the encampment we organised. Three of our group - the #Hastings3, are due to stand trial for their part in one of these peaceful protests on January 22 as the police have become more politicized and repressive this year, abusing their powers to crack down on anti-genocide campaigners.

    We have led huge demonstrations across town as well as smaller, dynamic protests which have gone viral worldwide, like our drive by protest in November which was viewed by over 3 million people and inspired dozens of similar actions.

    This year we held a week-long exhibition of poetry by children in Gaza, we led emergency protests, boycott actions, put on films, hosted speakers, and week after week, our dedicated members have held a Saturday stall in the town centre.

    Through all this, we have grown our membership three-fold - coming together like never before to fight for Palestinian liberation.

    So while it has been a very tough year we are fortified by the incredible solidarity for Palestine in our town and surrounding areas.

    And we are redoubling our commitment to fight for justice and freedom for Palestine in 2025. So thank you all for your love and solidarity these past 12 months and we look forward to coming together again next year.

    We are privileged to stand alongside the very best of humanity in this global movement for change and we will remain steadfast and strong until Palestine is free!

    The Officers of Hastings & District PSC

    Below, left: Support for the #hastings3 at the local Magistrates Court; right: Die-in at Barclays, protesting at the bank's £2+ billion investments in armaments companies that supply the Israeli military.
     

    MP DOLLIMORE: DO YOU CONDEMN ISRAEL?
    STILL NO ANSWER

    Hastings and Rye MP Helena Dollimore isn't very good at answering questions! She hasn't answered the eight questions we put to her recently; nor has she answered the letter we sent to her back in July. She sent a statement in response to the follow-up by the Hastings Independent. Although she still didn't answer any of the actual questions! The latest Hastings Independent with the article is in print now - pick up a copy from one of its distribution points.

    GIFTS FOR GAZA - WINTER APPEAL


    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, at Saturday's Fundraiser stall at Goat Ledge, 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.

    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:

    15 December 2024
    6 December 2024
    29 November 2024

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