Local News & Reports

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.

 

Visible from the top of Brighton’s iconic i360 tower, our message of hope and solidarity for 2017 to the people of Palestine. 

Viva Palestina! With love from Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Monday 19 December 2016

Human rights campaigners today held a demonstration outside the Thales arms factory in Crawley to protest the company’s collaboration with Israeli arms giant Elbit Systems in the manufacture of drones used against the Palestinian population of Gaza.

In parallel protests, there were demonstrations at other Elbit factories in the UK. Monday was therefore the first co-ordinated national day of action against Elbit Systems in the UK.

Thales (UK) works with the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems to develop the Watchkeeper drone, modelled on Elbit’s Hermes 450 drone used extensively over Gaza. Thales therefore profits from Israel’s war crimes and is a major target in the STOP ARMING ISRAEL campaign.

Activists from Brighton and Hove were joined by activists from Hastings and from the Crawley Green Party, who wished to support the ‘Arms to Renewals’ message of the demonstration.

The protest is part of a wider campaign to achieve an end to the lucrative two-way arms trade between the UK and Israel.

Why Thales?

The UK’s Watchkeeper drone has been developed under a £1 billion joint venture contract awarded by the UK Ministry of Defence to Thales UK and Israel’s Elbit Systems, allowing the UK military to benefit from technologies that have been ‘field tested’ on the Palestinians.

The Watchkeeper drone project illustrates the collaboration between the UK government and Israel, and the joint working between private arms companies from both countries.

The Crawley factory is one of Thales’s largest facilities in the UK. The Crawley factory has been the target of several earlier protests in 2016. Thales’s other sites have been targeted for protest by human rights protesters. For example, in September 2014 activists from Glasgow Palestine Action staged a protest at the Thales site in Govan (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-29325338). Several of Thales’s sites in France have also been targeted for protest.

The demo outside the Thales arms factory in Crawley was an important part of the campaign for a two-way arms embargo against Israel, as called for by the Palestinian BDS National Committee:

“A comprehensive military embargo on Israel is long overdue. It would form a crucial step towards ending Israel’s unlawful and criminal use of force against the Palestinian people and other peoples and states in the region and would constitute an effective, non-violent measure to pressure Israel to comply with its obligations under international law.”

The December 19th protest

The Crawley demonstration was organised by Sussex Stop Arming Israel (SSAI), a coalition of groups and individuals campaigning for justice for the Palestinian people by exposing companies in Sussex complicit in war crimes by the Israeli regime. SSAI is part of the wider global Stop Arming Israel movement, which in the UK campaigns for an arms embargo – an end to the deadly and lucrative arms trade between Israel and the UK (stoparmingisrael.org). This in turn is one element of the international movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel in support of the Palestinians’ liberation struggle (see bdsmovement.net).

Ben Steele, one of the SSAI activists, said in a statement:

“We are joining human rights activists around the country today to draw attention to the deadly and lucrative arms trade between the UK and Israel, and its tragic human consequences for the people of Palestine. We’ll be outside the Thales factory in Crawley to send a clear message to Thales that:

• they are complicit in Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people through their joint enterprise with Israeli arms company Elbit Systems, and
• arms manufacturers are not welcome in our communities.”