e began our last editorial with these words: “The Israeli assault on Gaza has left many of us angry and sick at heart.” Our last front cover depicted the horrible wounds of a Gazan teenager. The photograph was taken by a Totnes peace activist (in Gaza with the International Solidarity Movement), who wrote our front page story, and sent us the accompanying image. This picture left some readers feeling angry and sick.
One letter from an experienced activist said: “I did not need the…
As Israel commits brutal war crimes in Gaza, it also continues to covet the land of Palestinians living in the West Bank. The 790km-long apartheid wall snakes through the occupied West Bank annexing Palestinian land to Israel.
Israel is also progressing with the annexation of the entire eastern section of the West Bank, known as the Jordan Valley, the most fertile region of the West Bank, which constitutes a further 28.5% of the land inside the 1967 green line.
Israel already…
Over the past month or so, in the wake of Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza, the UK’s student population has witnessed a widespread political awakening. Campus occupations or sit-ins have been staged at some 20 universities around the country, by hundreds if not thousands of students, demanding action to help the people of Gaza and an end to the complicity of UK educational institutions in Israel’s crimes.
On the evening of 28 January, around 200 students had just finished…
Visiting the West Bank in 2003, one young Palestinian girl, above all others, touched my heart. This was Hiba, in the Aida refugee camp, who dreamed an impossible dream: she wanted to be a nurse. No income was coming into her home, so college fees were totally out of the question.
When I came back to Glasgow, I helped to found the Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign (GPHRC), a grass roots solidarity campaign to support Palestinian students.
As a result of the GPHRC’s…
Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde students ended occupations, after winning demands to fund scholarships, disinvest from military industries and boycott Israeli companies including Eden Springs water. These actions were part of a wave of over 20 student occupations across Britain.
Edinburgh students started their action on 10 February, just as the Glasgow occupation finished, and were able to end their occupation of the University’s George Square Theatre on 16 February.
On…
Over 700 people from around the UK have now signed up to support the Gaza Freedom March. Timed to coincide with the first anniversary of Israel’s brutal 22-day assault, this will involve hundreds of internationals marching nonviolently alongside the people of Gaza on 1 January 2010, breaching the illegal Israeli blockade (see PN 2513).
PN is organising a training for people intending to go on the march. Assuming sufficient demand, this will take place in London on the weekend of 31…
Khoza’a is a small rural community in the south of the Gaza Strip which endured a brutal incursion by Israeli ground forces on 13 January, indicative of so many attacks elsewhere in Gaza during the three weeks of “Operation Cast Lead”.
Heavy missile strikes preceded the ground offensive, which destroyed 50 homes and razed farmland. Homes with families inside them were attacked by military D-9 bulldozers .
A group of women and children carrying white flags attempted to leave…
The Free Gaza Movement was formed in 2008 by a coalition of Palestine solidarity activists and organisations, including various Christian, Jewish, and Muslim groups. Their mission is to break the siege of Gaza, raise international awareness of the devastating effects of the Israeli-imposed closure, and pressure the international community to review its support of the Israeli government.
The Free Gaza Movement has broken the siege five times in dramatic and highly publicised boat…
The Israel assault on Gaza has left many of us angry and sick at heart. The glaring injustice of the conflict is reflected in the wildly disproportionate casualty figures. The government of Israel says it was motivated by fear of Palestinian rockets and mortars.
From November 2001 to November 2008, precisely 23 people were killed inside Israel by Qassam rockets (15) and by mortars (8) fired from Gaza (not all by Hamas), according to the pro-Israeli-government group The Israel…
Gaza desperately needs aid, but more than that it needs Israel to lift the near-total closure of Gaza’s borders, according to aid experts. Palestinian estimates of the cost of the first fortnight of the Israeli assault range from $976m to $1.7bn.
Even before the latest attack, Gaza was reeling from the effects of the Israeli blockade. Unemployment was nearly 50%, almost all of Gaza’s 3,900 manufacturers had been forced to shut down, 80% of drinking water was substandard,…
The new crimes that the US and Israel have been committing in Gaza in the past weeks do not fit easily into any standard category – except for the category of familiarity. Literally, the crimes fall under the official US government definition of “terrorism,” but that designation does not capture their enormity. They cannot be called “aggression,” because they are being conducted in occupied territory, as the US tacitly concedes.
In their comprehensive scholarly history of Israeli…
All day I’ve been thinking about Gaza, listening to reports on NPR [National Public Radio], following the news on the internet when I can spare a moment. I’ve been thinking about the friends I made there four years ago, and wondering how they are faring, and imagining their terror as the bombs fall on that giant open-air prison.
The Israeli ambassador speaks movingly of the terror felt by Israeli children as Hamas rockets explode in the night. I agree with him – that no child should…
On 10 January 100,000 people from all over Britain joined a march in London to protest at the Israeli embassy against the continuing relentless attacks on Gaza’s civilian population.
Ray Davies, 79-year-old vice-chair of CND Cymru, sustained head injuries, concussion and cuts when he was trapped with hundreds of others against the embassy gates by the Metropolitan Police.
The march had gone peacefully until it reached the embassy. Many shoes were thrown over the fence in a…
The Israel-Palestine conflict is often presented in the British media as a highly controversial subject of near-labyrinthine complexity – with its “road maps”, “final status agreements”, and endless “peace processes”. The tacit implication is clear: unless you’ve spent ten years getting a PhD in Israel-Palestine studies, and can argue fluently about the minutiae of the Wye River Memorandum and the Yom Kippur war, don’t even dream of trying to form an independent opinion. In truth, as Norman…
In line with a lot of the mainstream media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, the New York Times editorial on 30 December argued: “Hamas must bear responsibility for ending a six-month cease-fire this month with a barrage of rocket attacks into Israeli territory.”
However, this not only contradicted earlier reportage by Israeli newspapers (including Ha’aretz and Yediot Ahronot) and Amnesty International, but also that of the NYT itself: on 12 November, the paper reported that: “…
