At short notice, the INTERNATIONAL JEWISH ANTI-ZIONIST NETWORK invites you to hear:

Prof Uri Davis

Stop the JNF

7-9pm, Tuesday, 8 June 2010

G2 Lecture Theatre, SOAS

School of Oriental & African Studies

Thornhaugh St, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG (Russell Square )

Uri Davis, born in Jerusalem in 1943, has been at the forefront of the defence of human rights, notably of Palestinian rights inside and outside the State of Israel.

He was a refusenik in the early 1960s, and subsequently a key academic/activist opposing Israeli apartheid, in particular the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Dr Davis is the only person of Jewish and European origin on Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, its legislative body.

His books include, Israel: An Apartheid State and Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, Zed Books, London 1987 & 2003 respectively.

Preparing to launch:

Stop the JNF: Stop Greenwashing Apartheid

This campaign will: expose the JNF’s long involvement in ethnic cleansing; protest and disrupt its activities; oppose its charitable status in the UK and over 50 other countries; support the campaign to resist JNF’s forced displacement of Palestinian people, including Bedouin, in the Naqab (Negev) and Galilee; urge organisations, especially with environmental & anti-racist mandates, to break ties with, and oppose, the JNF.

Published this week: Volume 2 of JNF: Colonising Palestine since 1901 – Preparing for legal Action: Focus Canada Park edited by Prof Uri Davis, assisted by Mortaza Sahibzada.

Download from the Palestine Legal Aid Fund website.

Stop the JNF meeting is hosted by SOAS PALESTINE SOCIETY

Co-sponsored by: Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, Palestine Legal Aid Fund, Rabbis for Palestine.

To endorse/sponsor this meeting, contact uk@ijsn.net

INTERNATIONAL JEWISH ANTI-ZIONIST NETWORK

website: www.ijsn.net email: (international) ijan@ijsn.net (UK) uk@ijsn.net mob: 07816 251377

The ISM was active around the country this past weekend, taking part in a cultural-political festival in Bangor, north Wales, a conference in London, as well as running one of our regular training session for new recruits interested in going out to Palestine for solidarity work.

At the “Bangor to Bethlehem” weekend in Wales one ISMer gave a talk, along with someone from the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel and someone working with the Right to Education campaign. The talk went well and was well received, and the festival itself was fantastic. On the first night there must have been 200 people in attendance, and most were local. Considering Bangor is only a small town with a population of about 20,000 this was a tremendous achievement. There were some great speeches, some country and western music sung in Welsh, and a comedy set from Jewish comic Ivor Dembina.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions had their AGM/Conference event on Saturday. It was an excellent turnout, with around 100 people, and the hall was completely full. The ISM talk was on the consumer boycott and was well received. It was a great opportunity to highlight the work of ISM London to other organisations.

There was an ISM London training session Saturday-Sunday. Eleven trainees braved the indoors on two wonderfully sunny days. They were given an introduction to what it would be like to work with ISM in Palestine, what would be expected of them, and the kind of things they are likely to see. ISM training in London does not replace the compulsory training in Palestine, but it gives trainees the chance to decide whether they would like to go to Palestine with ISM, as well as preparing in advance to traveling.

The festival will be held at Hendre Hall near Bangor (Jn 12 on the A55), an old Victorian farm beautifully located on the edge of Snowdonia. The weekend offers prominent speakers, discussion, live music, comedy, films and family entertainment. Camping wil be available.

The weekend promises to be a celebration and cultural and political exchange,  aiming to support environmental resistance in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem.

All profits will go the Bustan Qaraaqa permaculture farm, a project established by former students of Bangor University in support of community sustainability and in opposition to land-use policies in Israel-Palestine.

Speakers and Attractions

• TONY BENN Veteran politician, activist, patron of the Palestine Solidariy Campaign (PSC): The People and Political Progress

• IVOR DEMBINA Comedian, with his performance of ‘This is not a Subject for Comedy’

• DISCUSSION PANEL with speakers from Gaza discussing life under siege or in exile.

• 2 films by TONE ANDERSEN, the Norwegian journalist: My Land and A Stone’s Throw Away

• Live music with BANDABACANA, STEVE EAVES, GWILYM MORUS, JOHN LAWRENCE, LATIN GROOVE COLLECTIVE

• Genuine Palestinian food

• Tickets for the whole weekend are available at £23 from Galeri Caernarfon, 01286 685222 www.galericaernarfon.com, Day/ evening tickets will be available on the door.

• Camping available on site £3 per person one night, £5 two nights, third night negotiable.

Start Time:

Friday, 16 April 2010 at 16:00

End Time:

Sunday, 18 April 2010 at 19:00

Location:

Neuadd Hendre Hall,
Ffordd Aber Road, Tal y Bont, LL57 3YP
Bangor, Wales

British activist and independent journalist, Jody McIntyre, addressed a rapt audience of around 70 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London on Wednesday 17th March.

Jody, recently returned to the UK after eight months in the West Bank and Gaza, told of his experiences living side-by-side with Palestinians struggling against the illegal occupation of their land. The talk was a moving and personal account of Jody’s journey in Palestine; giving a vivid and, at times, humorous description of his stay in Palestine and ending with an impassioned call for action.

Jody’s account began with what he called “the worst morning of my life” – the eviction of the Hannoun family by Israeli forces in occupied East Jerusalem in August 2009. It ended with a rare eyewitness account of life in the besieged Gaza Strip, where Palestinians face daily power shortages and regular Israeli air-strikes that go unreported in the British media.

In the intervening period, Jody spent six months as the guest of a local photographer in the West Bank village of Bil’in, where weekly demonstrations have been held since 2005 when the construction of the illegal separation barrier cut residents off from over 50% of its land. Jody described how, since becoming involved with the nonviolent demonstrations, his host has been forbidden from taking his son to receive treatment for leukemia.

He also addressed the recent ban imposed by occupation forces on Israelis and internationals from attending the Friday demonstrations in Bil’in. “What the Israeli forces fear most is Palestinians and Israelis standing side by side” said Jody. “Every few months a new commander takes over the area, and every time they say ‘I will stop the demonstrations’ and every time they have failed. And every time they will fail. The demonstrations will continue”

Throughout his journey, Jody wrote for the online magazine Ctrl.Alt.Shift, a forum funded by the charity Christian Aid. In his talk, Jody described having his articles ‘pulled’ by Chrsitian Aid after they were attacked by a member of a right-wing Israeli lobby group on the website of The Guardian. ”They deleted every article I had ever written on the site and every article containing the word ‘Palestine’.” The attempt to silence Jody provides a troubling insight into the influence wielded by the Israel lobby in framing public discussion of Israel-Palestine in the UK.

The evening ended on a more inspiring note. Jody reiterated the call-out issued by his friend, Iyad Burnat, the head of the Popular Committee in Bil’in, for regular demonstrations to be carried out around the world in support of their cause. He spoke with optimism about the regular Saturday demonstrations that began last Saturday outside Ahava, Covent Garden – a retailer which sells products from illegal settlements in the West Bank. “There were fifty people at the first regular demonstration I went to in Sheikh Jarrah [East Jerusalem]. Now there are three hundred people every Friday. I hope this momentum can spread to Britain.”

You can read a week-by-week account of Jody’s experiences on his website here.

Jody still has several dates left of his speaking tour in Edinburgh, Manchester and Exeter. See his website for more details.

Ghada Karmi and Jeff Halper, two leading lights of the struggle to create the just conditions on the ground in Palestine-Israel which are prerequisite to sustainable peace and reconciliation in that region, are undertaking speaking engagements together in UK universities later this month. The dates and venues of public meetings where you can hear them are below.

Dr Ghada Karmi is a leading Palestinian academic and writer. She was born in Jerusalem, but was brought up and educated in England after she and her family were expelled from Palestine by Zionist militias in 1948. Currently she is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, where she teaches conflict resolution in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. She is also on the Board of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) and a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Her major area of work has been on the Palestine/Israel conflict and she has published widely on this subject. She is also a well-known figure on British radio and TV. Her most recent and widely acclaimed memoir, In Search of Fatima; a Palestinian story (Verso Press, 2002), represents a rare example of Palestinian personal narrative writing in English. Her new book, Married to another man: Israel’s dilemma in Palestine, deals with the One-State solution in Israel/Palestine.

Prof. Jeff Halper, a Professor of Anthropology,is co-founder and Director of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. The constructive activism of ICAHD and the quality of Halper’s analysis of the conflict, combined with his prophetic voice on Israel’s self-destructive policies, have won him wide recognition. In 2005 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

TOUR SCHEDULE

15 March – Exeter
6:30pm – Lecture Theatres 1 & 2, Institute of Arabic & Islamic Studies Dept, Streatham Campus, Stocker Road, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4DD.
Local sponsors: Exeter PSC and Exeter Friends of Palestine Society
Contact: Dave Chappell davidchappell@tiscali.co.uk

16 March – Birmingham
7:30pm – Birmingham Unite Offices, Broad Street, Birmingham
Local sponsors: West Midlands PSC, Birmingham-Ramallah Twinning Initiative, Midlands Palestine Community Association, Friends of Sabeel – UK
Contact: Martin Sullivan pscwm@yahoo.co.uk

17 March – Glasgow
1pm – Boyd Orr Building, Room 507, (Lecture Theatre C)
7:30pm Boyd Orr Bldg, Room 611, (Lecture Theatre E)
Local sponsors: SPSC
Contact: Poppy Kohner poppykohner@gmail.com

18 March – Edinburgh
1pm – Lecture Theatre 270, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 0YL
Local Sponsor: Edinburgh Students for Justine in Palestine
Contact: Karen karentostee@hotmail.com
7:30 – Augustine Church, 41-43 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1EL
Local Sponsor: SPSC
Contact: Vanessa Fuertes vanesafuertes@hotmail.com

19 March – Bradford
5:30 Bradford University Campus, Stanley Bell Lecture Theatre, Richmond Building, Richmond Road, Bradford BD7 1DP
Local Sponsor: Bradford United for Palestine
Contact: events@u4p.co.uk Khaled Al Mudal Khalmudal@gmail.com

20 March – London
2:30 – 4:30, G2 Main Building, SOAS
Local sponsors: SOAS Palestine Society, Action Palestine – London Universities
Contact: Pat Price-Tomes info@icahduk.org

Joint Venture: Action Palestine, Bricup, ICHAD and Greenbelt Festival

http://www.actionpalestine.org/
http://bricup.org.uk/
http://www.icahd.org/eng/
http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/

• Monday 15th March, 5pm-6pm. Room H216, Connaught House, London School of Economics. Facebook event here
• Wednesday 17th March, 5pm-7pm. JCR room of SOAS university in Russell Square. Facebook event here

British activist and freelance journalist Jody McIntyre has just returned from an eight-months trip to the West Bank and Gaza, and will be speaking at locations around the country, including LSE and SOAS in London. See his website for other dates and locations, including Cambridge, Leeds, Sussex, Edinburgh and Manchester.

In his own words:

“From being evicted with the Hanoun family in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, to six months of participating in the non-violent demonstrations in Bil’in, and witnessing Israeli army’s nightly military raids into village as a response, to marching into the “buffer zone” in the north of the Gaza Strip, I have spent the last eight months of my life with an occupied people.

“My talk will mainly focus on my experiences from Bil’in, where I reported on the Israeli military’s aggressive suppression of the non-violent Palestinian resistance movement, now spreading across Palestine, and for which the village has become a model. Bil’in became my home, and for those months living with a young photographer from the village… sleepless nights spent lying awake or chasing soldiers, I will never forget.

“After a brief interlude in Egypt, in which I was the only one of 1400 foreigners to make it out of Cairo, followed by beatings from the police in al-Arish, I made it to the Gaza Strip. There, I witnessed a people living under siege… one year after Israel’s brutal massacre, and ever increasing electricity cuts and food shortages make the situation more desperate than ever. Living with two young brothers in Gaza City, and participating in non-violent demonstrations near the Beit Hanoun – Erez border, I will give a portrayal of the isolated Strip today.

“Will also touch on being attacked in the Guardian, over an article I wrote about Shimon Peres.

“I will conclude my talk by giving my own thoughts, and the proposals I have heard in conversations with Palestinian leaders of the non-violent resistance campaign, of how we can support this movement in the UK, and why it is time to globalise the intifada.”

On Friday 19th February, myself and another core-group ISMer delivered a talk to the university ‘Friends of Palestine’ group in Liverpool. We had a great turn out considering it was a Friday night (hats off to those who forfeited the pub in order to listen to us) and we received some generous donations which will go a long way to helping us rebuild our tech equipment base in light of the recent raids on ISM apartments in the West Bank.

We spoke for about an hour on the history of ISM and our own personal experiences on the ground in Palestine. The group asked some excellent questions and were lovely enough to ask us to continue talking after the event in a local pub (we thought it only right to oblige, seeing as we had hijacked their Friday night shenanigans).

It’s at times like those when we really appreciate the support we get from university and community groups in the UK. It’s very easy to become disheartened at what seems like a lack of action in the UK but on closer inspection, we always find amazing individuals and groups doing great work to raise the profile of this ongoing issue. Thanks to all involved for inviting us and being such accommodating hosts. It was a real pleasure to meet you all.

Hosted by London Middle East Institute

Weekend Conference

27-28 February 2010 | The Brunei Gallery — SOAS — University Of London

Saturday 27 February, 9:00am – 6:00pm
Sunday 28 February, 10:30am – 6.00pm

Conference programme can be viewed / downloaded here.

Buy Tickets Here: http://www.soaspalsoc.org/

All in all the talk went well, it was to a very mature crowd so we spoke a bit about the variety of ways to get to Palestine not just with ISM. Coffee and conversations afterward were interesting and it was good to be in a crowd already quite clued up on the key issues. The local press were also in attendance.