Local News & Reports

Saturday 30 September 2017

Once again, dozens of local people protested today at the main Brighton branch of HSBC Bank, angry over the bank’s complicity in the deadly two-way arms trade between the UK and Israel.

 

 

The protest was part of the UK-wide STOP ARMING ISRAEL campaign. The campaign is co-ordinated by a coalition of human rights organisations, including Palestine Solidarity Campaign, War on Want, Campaign Against Arms Trade, the Boycott Israel Network and the Palestinian BDS National Committee. 

Hundreds of leaflets were distributed to the public, and scores of people signed our petition demanding that HSBC immediately cease its business dealings with Israel’s deadly arms trade.

Many HSBC customers were shocked and angry to discover that their bank helps to fund the UK arms trade with Israel, and made a commitment to demand that the bank divest from this deadly business. They were especially concerned to learn that HSBC’s business with BAE Systems, Raytheon, Caterpillar and United Technologies actually contravenes their own Defence Equipment Sector Policy, as well as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Any HSBC customers wishing to protest to their branch managers are welcome to use our template letter as a basis for their own.

Further protests are planned.

Rock legends The Pretenders are scheduled to perform in Tel Aviv on September 23rd. They are also due to play in Brighton on the 10th of October.

Chrissie Hynde and her band are being urged by people of conscience all over the world to to cancel their Tel Aviv gig, and by doing so to support the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel. 

Israel overtly uses culture as a form of propaganda to whitewash or justify its regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people. You can find out more about the worldwide cultural boycott here and here.

The Pretenders are also due to perform in Brighton on Tuesday October 10th. We urge all local supporters of the Palestinian struggle for justice to ignore the Pretenders when they come to Brighton unless and until they heed the call from civil society in Palestine and cancel their Tel Aviv gig.

Don’t buy tickets for The Pretenders’ October 10th gig in Brighton, and tell your friends to do the same. And make your feelings known about The Pretenders’ support for israeli apartheid by tweeting @ThePretendersHQ and via Facebook at facebook.com/pretenders. 

 

Iyad Burnat leads Bilin’s non-violent struggle in the occupied West Bank. He is the head of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall, and has led non-violent weekly demonstrations since 2005 against the Israeli West Bank barriers. Iyad is also head of Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bil’in, a pro-Palestinian organisation with the stated aims of building a “wide network of people from all over the globe who support Freedom and Justice for all”.

Iyad gave an inspiring keynote talk at our 2017 Annual General Meeting in April.

We have copies of his book for sale at £10 each. If you’d like to purchase copies, please contact us using the ‘Contact Us’ link at the foot of this page.

After a great Israeli Apartheid Week, the Sussex Friends of Palestine group is going in to an important stage of its campaign to pressure the university to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. 

Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes.  On Tuesday, we’ll be handing in an open letter to the university asking for the university to commit to not investing any of its money in companies like HP and Caterpillar that profit Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.  It’d be great if you could help out and get involved by doing the following:  1. Make sure you’ve signed the open letter We’d like as many people as possible to sign the open letter before we hand it in. If you haven’t signed it already, please sign our open letter now. 2. Ask your friends to sign the open letter Please share the open letter on social media. The link to share is: https://sussexdivestforpalestine.tumblr.com/letter.  3. Come to our open letter hand in action on Tuesday On this day we will be delivering our open letter to university management and showing that all of us, students, alumni, academics and university staff are united in calling for divestment for Palestine. We’ll be meeting from 11am at Library Square. More info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/194931787664534/ Please get involved if you can, thanks so much!  Sussex Friends of Palestine

UPDATE! Brighton Argus covers our protest at Fatboy Slim’s appearance at the Brighton Half Marathon on Feb 26.

FURTHER UPDATE! Brighton Argus covers our campaign to persuade Fatboy Slim to cancel his gig in Israel. 

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Many Brightonians will be shocked and disappointed to learn that Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim) – local celebrity and cultural icon – is scheduled to perform in Israel on the 12th of March.

Mr Cook may not be aware of the cultural boycott of Israel. It has been called for by Palestinian artists and cultural workers, and is endorsed by thousands of artists worldwide. The boycott supports the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination, and protests against Israel’s brutal 50-year military occupation of Palestine.

In fact, more than 1200 UK artists have signed the ‘Artists for Palestine’ pledge to refuse invitations to Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.

Many UK musicians have signed the pledge, including Elvis Costello, Jarvis Cocker, Eddi Reader, Roger Waters and Brian Eno. Kate Tempest, Guest Director of this year’s Brighton Festival, is a signatory of the pledge.

Israel benefits hugely in public relations terms when ‘western’ artists perform there: it helps Israel to shift its image from a rogue state to a hip and tolerant country.

We call on Norman Cook to cancel his gig in Israel and sign the Artists for Palestine pledge. If he does not, he will be supporting an apartheid regime every bit as despicable as the apartheid South African regime, which was brought down in part through cultural boycotts.

If Fatboy Slim wishes to represent the values of diversity and respect for which Brighton is famous, he will not play Israel. If he supports human rights and international law, and opposes apartheid and ethnic cleansing, he will not play Israel.

We will be demonstrating in the city over the next few weeks to raise awareness amongst Fatboy Slim’s local fanbase.

On 8th December there was an important protest as part of the Boycott Divestment & Sanctions campaign and specifically Red Card Israeli Racism.

Southampton FC were playing Hapoel Be’er Sheva in the Europa League at St Mary’s ground in Southampton. Around 100 protesters were there (including 14 from BHPSC)  demanding that Israel be kicked out of UEFA – the European football body.

The protest organised by Southampton PSC and Football against Apartheid included banners, Palestinian flags and, importantly, mass leafleting of the crowd.

The leaflet we handed out Fair Play for Palestine puts pressure on UEFA to match the words of its President – “Racism, discriminination and intolerance have no place in Football” – with action.

It also rightly points out that sport and politics don’t exist separately and that boycotting South African sport helped end apartheid there.

The fact based evidence in the PSC leaflet contrasted starkly with the sparse leaflet given out by a handful of supporters of Israel on the night. It made great play that there were Arab players in the Be’er Sheva team, a fact that doesn’t change the racism and apartheid in Israeli football and society in general. One Israeli football team – Beitar Jerusalem – has no problem excluding Arabs from their team while the mass of its supporters celebrate their racism. Beitar feature in a shocking but important BBC Storyville programme which is available on BBC iPlayer.

We found out later that the Palestinian flag was waved inside the ground making for a good display of solidarity which will be repeated whenever an Israeli club team or the National side plays here.