Local News & Reports

We were honoured to host this meeting, which drew attention to the plight of Mohammed El Halabi. 

Mohammed has been imprisoned by Israel for more than 5 years, without trial.

Mohammed worked for international aid organisation World Vision in Gaza. He was arrested in July 2016 by Israel. The charges could not have been more serious: transferring 7.2 million dollars a year from World Vision, an American charity, to Hamas. This despite the fact that World Vision’s total budget over this time in Gaza was a fraction of this amount, and even though two audits concluded that no money was missing. Why? Almost certainly in an attempt to discredit NGOs and aid agencies working in Palestine, by trying to link them to allegedly terrorist groups.

We were especially honoured to welcome Mohammed’s father Khalil, as well as journalist Asa Winstanley and author Andrew Feinstein.

You can view the recording on our YouTube channel.

We always try to use a proportion of our income, from membership subscriptions and donations from the public, to make donations to groups and projects in Palestine that are part of the resistance. It goes without saying that the need for support in recent weeks has been intense. 

If you wish to add further to our funds for such donations, you can do this via the Donations page on this website

Donation of £500 to Medical Aid for Palestinians
Many of you will be aware of MAP’s work, and you may support their activities yourselves. We responded to their emergency appeal with a donation of £500, on behalf of our members. You can find out more about the appeal, and about MAP’s work, here.

Donation of £500 to IMET2000
IMET2000’s work is perhaps less well known, but achieves extraordinary things in Gaza. You may have heard IMET2000’s founder, Prof Colin Green, speak in Brighton a few years ago. Colin wrote to us personally to thank us for the donation (again, made on behalf of our members) to say that the £500 donation would cover the cost of one of several oxygen concentrators/generators being shipped to Gaza a few days later. More about IMET2000’s work here.

15 May 2021

As a matter of urgency, we call on all our supporters to sign this petition, calling on the UK government to impose sanctions (including an arms embargo) on the Israeli regime. 

The petition was launched on the 14th of May. It reached 100,000 signatures without 24 hours, and has already picked up over a quarter of a million signatures. But it is still essential for as many people as possible to sign – let’s reach half a million quickly! When it reached 100,000 there was an expectation that it will be debated in Parliament, but we must apply pressure on our MPs to ensure this happens without delay.

The ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the relentless assault on Gaza, are only possible with the complicity of the international community. That’s why we must act, now!

Click on the link below to be taken to the petition. Thank you.

Introduce sanctions against Israel

You can now access the recording of our event ‘Women’s Entrepreneurship in Palestine’, featuring a panel of inspiring Palestinian women. You can find the recording by following this link.

In fact, you can also find recordings of our previous online events on our YouTube channel ‘BHPSC Videos’.

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.