East Sussex Pension Fund divests funds from complicit Israeli company after lobbying by scheme members and campaigners

• Chair of Council Pension Committee says they have divested from Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems on ‘human rights and international law’ grounds.
• Divestment follows months of lobbying by scheme members and Palestinian human rights campaigners across East Sussex, including PSC branches in Hastings & Rye, Eastbourne and Brighton & Hove
• Scheme members say fund must go further to fully discharge its obligation to end complicity in Israel’s violations of international law
• Campaign victory follows the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum’s decision to engage with companies complicit in Israel’s violations of international law

East Sussex Pension Fund (ESPF) has revealed that it has divested funds from Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private arms manufacturer. This follows months of pressure by scheme members and supporters of Palestinian human rights who have lobbied the fund to divest from companies complicit in Israel’s violations of international law, including Elbit Systems. Since May 2020, campaigners have flooded council meetings with over 60 letters demanding the fund divests from Elbit.

In a public statement on the Council’s website, the Chair of the Council’s Pension Committee states that Elbit Systems is on the exclusion list of their pension fund manager, on the grounds of ‘Conduct-based Exclusions – Human Rights and International Law ‘, along with 37 other companies, including several that appear on the UN Human Rights Office list of companies with business dealings in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Elbit was consequently dropped from the ESPF investment portfolio in late 2020. 

Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest private arms manufacturer. It produces a range of weaponry deployed by the Israeli occupation army to murder or maim Palestinians. Elbit Systems’ Hermes 900 drones were among Israel’s drones that murdered 164 Palestinian children in Gaza in 2014.

Elbit has been subject to widespread divestment by a range of investors, including financial institutions HSBC after sustained campaigning led by PSC and War on Want, AXA and ABN Amro, and a range of European pension funds, including in Norway, Holland and Sweden.

In April 2020, PSC won a victory in the battle to defend the right to take action in the UK in support of Palestinian rights, overturning government guidance that restricted the ability of local authority pension funds to divest from companies violating human rights and international law.

Since then, scheme members, their representative trade unions, and supporters of human rights have been lobbying funds to take action and implement adequate screening and due diligence policies to address their complicit investments.

The campaign has been taking strides forward. In its engagement report for Quarter 4 of 2020 the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF), which includes the vast majority of LGPS funds and pool companies, began engagement with companies cited on the UN Human Rights Office’s list of business enterprises active in Israel’s illegal settlements, based on stolen Palestinian land.

Campaigners have welcomed ESPF’s exclusion of Elbit Systems but say the fund must go further, to ensure all companies complicit in Israel’s violations of international law are excluded.

Lewis Backon, Campaigns Officer at Palestine Solidarity Campaign commented:

“The exclusion of Elbit Systems is a great victory for scheme members in East Sussex. Elbit produce weapons that are used repeatedly in Israel’s war crimes against the civilian population of besieged Gaza. But the fund must go further and commit to exclude any company complicit in Israel’s violations of international law.”

Aidan Pettitt, Scheme Member of East Sussex Pension Fund said:

“I’m relieved no more of my deferred wages will be invested in Elbit Systems, whose weapons are used to oppress Palestinian civilians. Going forward, the fund must act to ensure members’ wages aren’t invested in companies aiding Israel’s grave abuses of Palestinian human rights.

We’re pleased to announce that video recordings of our first two online events in the ‘Brighton-Palestine Connect’ series are now available to view on YouTube.

‘Fragmentation and Resistance’
24 Sept 2020
Dalal al Taji
Sam Bahour
Rashid Khudairi

‘Cultural Resistance in Palestine’
29 Oct 2020
Heba Zaphiriou-Zarifi
Mahmoud Muna
Hossam Madhoun
Jamal Al Rozzi
Jonathan Chadwick

Just published by Middle East Eye, this article is an explosive exposé of the forces – locally and nationally – behind the so-called antisemitism ‘crisis’ in the Labour Party. 

The article describes, in forensic detail, some of the groups and individuals that have targeted campaigners for Palestinian rights, attempting to discredit them using the largely spurious allegation of antisemitism. Many of the targets are based in Brighton & Hove, and several have been investigated, suspended and even expelled from the party as a result of this orchestrated campaign of disruption. As the article argues:

As an anti-racist party, Labour should be opposing Israeli apartheid policies and its latest annexation drive, due to be enacted by the new Netanyahu-led government. Yet by uncritically endorsing Zionism, conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism and taking direction on disciplinary cases from pro-Israel bodies, it seems that silencing those voices is the main outcome of the party’s drive to “solve” the antisemitism crisis.

The Middle East Eye article builds on an earlier piece in Electronic Intifada that lifted the lid on a recent spate of suspensions from the Labour Party.

The Middle East Eye article draws on a large dossier of evidence collated by the news site. This evidence will form the basis for further exposés, on various sites, in the coming weeks and months.

11 June 2020
The following letter, signed by nearly 60 local campaigners for Palestinian rights, was sent to all Labour and Green City Councillors today, in response to the council’s public statement on 3 June 2020 Brighton & Hove City Council stands in solidarity with protesters in America

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Solidarity with Black Lives Matter and the victims of racism and imperialism

To: Nancy Platts, Leader Btn & Hove Council and Leader of the Labour Group
& Phélim Mac Cafferty, Convenor of the Green Group

Dear Nancy and Phélim, We are writing to congratulate you for issuing such a forthright statement of solidarity with Black Lives Matter and people of colour who are the victims of racism in the United States. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police is yet another shocking reminder of the visceral state-sponsored racist violence in the United States and the continuing murder of Black men by American ‘law enforcement’ – in most cases armed white men.

Israeli troops using the ‘knee on neck’ hold that was used to murder George Floyd

Just five days after George Floyd was murdered, Eyad Hallak, an autistic Palestinian, was gunned down in East Jerusalem as he was walking to his day centre. He was just 32 years old but with a mental age of 5. Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper described what happened:

‘He’s disabled,’ the caregiver screamed. ‘I’m with her,’ Eyad cried. The cop opened fire anyway.

Three Border Police pumped seven bullets into Iyad’s body, at least three at close range. There is however a difference with George Floyd. The first his parents learnt of his death was when the murderers burst into his home, searched it and then asked when is the funeral.

In Minneapolis all four police have been arrested and charged with murder and aiding and abetting murder. In Israel none of the police have been charged. Although there is a police investigation these rarely result in prosecution, still less imprisonment.

We welcome your statement that ‘As anti-imperialists we recognise that America has been built on the slavery, dispossession and subjugation of its native and BAME population’. However imperialism is not confined to the United States. Palestine too, from 1917-1948, was part of the British Empire, a Mandated territory as a result of the 1922 San Remo Conference and the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

In 1948 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and made refugees. In 1967 Israel completed its occupation of Palestine, including East Jerusalem where Eyad lives. Palestine is still a victim of colonialism and imperialism.

Yet in October 2018 Brighton and Hove City Council adopted the ‘working definition’ promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which purports to be a definition of anti-Semitism, although the majority of its examples of anti-Semitism include Israel. It was drawn up at Tel Aviv University, its purpose being to equate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Even the person who drafted the IHRA, American academic Kenneth Stern, now accepts that the IHRA is being used to ‘weaponise’ anti-Semitism against the Palestinians. In testimony to Congress Stern argued that the definition was being used to suppress free speech on Palestine. In his words to ‘chill, if not suppress, their [students’] political speech’.

When the Council adopted the IHRA it deliberately ignored the views of 17 local anti-racist, Black and Muslim organisations in the City. It instead preferred to accept the views of white members of Sussex Friends of Israel that the IHRA was essential to defend the Jewish community. It wasn’t and isn’t. The IHRA’s only purpose is to defend the Apartheid State of Israel and to silence those campaigning for justice for the Palestinian people.

In defending Israeli Apartheid the Labour and Green groups on the Council make a mockery of their statement of solidarity with George Floyd, and of their claims to be anti-racist.

Black Lives Matter has come under repeated attacks from American Zionist groups because of the movement’s support for the Palestinians and BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).

Black Lives Matter supports the Palestinians because, like the ANC in South Africa, they recognise that their enemy is an Israeli state which is hand in glove with Donald Trump and the US military.

Using the knee-on-neck restraint on Palestinians is a speciality of Israeli police forces. Israel has been training law enforcement officers around the US for many years including the Minneapolis Police as the Morning Star reported last Monday.

Neta Golan, the co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said:

When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.

It was disgraceful enough that when you passed a motion supporting the IHRA you did so in conjunction with the Tories, the party of the British Empire and slavery. What is worse is that Labour Councillor Nicki Brennan, who was part of the picket of the Council when it was debated, has been singled out for victimisation and removed from the Housing Committee.

When those who fought against Apartheid in South Africa, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the ANC veterans, declare that Israel is an Apartheid State, who are you to argue with their view? When Ronnie Kasrills, the Jewish Commander of the ANC’s military wing, wrote that ‘I fought South African apartheid. I see the same brutal policies in Israel’ who are you to argue? Yet according to the IHRA saying that Israel is an Apartheid State is ‘anti-Semitic’.

Benjamin Netanyahu has just announced that Israel will annex 30% of the West Bank. He also declared that the Palestinian residents of the annexed territories won’t be given Israeli citizenship. If this isn’t apartheid please tell us what it is.

If the Labour and Green groups are sincere in your declarations of solidarity with Black victims of racism in America, and we would like to think that you are, we would ask you to give notice of motion at Council withdrawing support for the IHRA.

Yours sincerely,

Ben Steele Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Tony Greenstein Brighton and Hove Labour Left Alliance

Plus 57 signatories

Stand up to Trump

Brighton & Hove PSC had a very successful and well-attended Annual General Meeting on the 15th of June. More than 70 of our 265 members attended, to review our achievements over the past year and to plan next year’s activities. It was fantastic to see so many supporters and to be able to thank them for their involvement in the struggle for justice and human rights for the people of Palestine.

We were especially pleased to welcome Tom Suarez to Brighton as our special guest speaker. Tom is a professional violinist, a former member of major US symphony orchestras, and a former faculty member of Palestine’s National Conservatory of Music. He is also an author and historian, and has written extensively on the history of cartography. He is perhaps best known to solidarity campaigners for his book State of Terror: How terrorism created modern Israel (Skyscraper Books). He contributes regularly to Mondoweiss, the online site for news and analysis on Palestine/Israel.

The focus of Tom’s keynote talk was ‘Ending apartheid in the age of IHRA’. In his talk, Tom spoke of the need to resist the proliferation of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and to call it out for what it is: an attempt to smear and silence solidarity campaigners. It should not be difficult to discredit the IHRA definition. It is logically flawed and politically inspired. Imminent figures – many of them Jewish – have added their voices to the opposition to IHRA. But Tom urged us to mount a more assertive fight-back – one based on the argument that the IHRA definition is itself antisemitic.

Tom argued that the IHRA definition perpetuates a pernicious trope about the Jewish people – that they all long to return to ‘the homeland’, and that this yearning is an essential characteristic of Jewishness. If this were true, then any attack on zionism could be construed as an attack on the Jewish people, and would therefore be antisemitic. But it isn’t true. We know that many Jewish people reject and repudiate the zionist project, so it’s a racist stereotype to say that they all identify with it, and that it is antisemitic to oppose it.

Tom also summarised some of the main themes in his book State of Terror – in particular, the systematic way in which, from the beginning of political zionism, violence and terror were seen as legitimate tools to deny the rights of the indigenous inhabitants to the land they had lived on for generations.

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