WFPSC Branch Meeting
Monday 16 January, at 7.30pm
Hornbeam Centre, 458 Hoe Street, Walthamstow, E17 9AH
Two special presentations followed by open floor discussions on:
1) "West Bank Update" - with Rada Daniell
Rada has just returned from three months in the West Bank with International Women's Peace Service, supporting Palestinians under occupation. WFPSC is delighted to get an exclusive look at her short presentation on her recent findings and open a discussion on the dreadful situation for occupied Palestinians in the West Bank at present. In December, during a memorial protest to Mustafa Tammimi (murdered by the Israeli military) Rada, along with several Palestinians and other international demonstrators, were arrested. Alarming pictures of her violent removal into military custody were distributed around the world.
2) "A debate about Zionism" - with Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
Naomi will lead a discussion on this issue, preceding a national debate on the subject at PSC AGM on 21 Jan (see Motion 9, submitted by various PSC individual members, below).
PSC AGM Motion 9 - BUILDING AN ANTI-RACIST, ANTI-COLONIALIST, PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT - ANTISEMITISM AND HOLOCAUST DENIAL
One of the most potent weapons of Zionism is the accusation that those who support the Palestinians and oppose Israel’s settler-colonial practices are antisemites who want to see a new Holocaust against Jews.
The Zionist movement deliberately blurs the distinction between the ‘Jewish state’ and Jewish people, in order to discredit Israel's critics and cause confusion among the growing number of people whose humanitarian and anti-racist instincts make them eager to support the Palestinian cause.
Both racism and antisemitism are features of Zionism. Virtually all far-right and neo-Nazi parties today in Europe are Islamophobic and support Zionism (while often remaining antisemitic).
The Palestine solidarity movement, by its very nature, is anti-racist. To allow antisemitism or any other form of racism to gain a foothold would be to undermine the very cause that we support.
PSC AGM therefore:
1. Welcomes the statement on the PSC website explicitly asserting its commitment to building a mass solidarity movement, in which expressions of racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust, have no place.
2. Confirms that support for the Palestinians and opposition to Israel's policies is an anti-racist campaign
3. Calls on the EC to reinforce these principles by:
a) organising a series of forums to build understanding of Israel as a settler-colonial, apartheid state.
b) publishing educational material to develop understanding of:
- Israel’s status as a client state of US imperialism;
- aspects of Zionist history, including the non-Jewish origins and Jewish opposition to Zionism, and Zionism's collusion with antisemitism
- the growing alignment between the Israeli state and openly racist and fascist groups in Europe, including the English Defence League (EDL) and the British National Party (BNP)."
