International solidarity

The latest attempt to break the Israeli siege of Gaza was organised by Jewish groups using a Jewish-crewed catamaran. The Irene was stopped and boarded by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on 28 September en route to Gaza with a cargo of aid.

The passengers included 82-year old Holocaust survivor, Reuven Moskowitz; former IDF pilot Yonatan Shapira; and Rami Elhanan, an Israeli who lost her daughter in a Palestinian suicide bombing. The IDF claimed that it used “no violence of any…

“We have been attacked while in international waters…the Israelis have behaved like pirates”. So says Henning Mankell describing the infamous attack by the Israeli army on the Gaza Aid Freedom Flotilla earlier this year. His piece is just one in a fine collection of articles edited by Moustafa Bayoumi, and published with admirable rapidity as a rebuttal to the official Israeli version of events.

This is an excellent resource for activists which provides both eyewitness accounts of the…

On 18 September, an aid convoy left to take much-needed medical equipment to the people of Gaza and draw attention to the inhuman blockade of this tiny strip of land.

UN officials have described the situation as a “medieval siege”. 70% of Gazan families live on less than a dollar a day per person. On 2 August, a Palestinian man was arrested for stealing a bucket of Israeli water.

Wales participants in the convoy left Newport for the long hard overland drive to Gaza, taking…

Meanwhile, in early July, nomadic Penan tribespeople in Sarawak, Borneo, blockaded a road to stop loggers destroying the rainforest. A Penan solidarity demonstration greeted Sarawak chief minister Taib Mahmud in Oxford on 26 July, when he arrived to give the keynote speech at the inaugural Oxford Global Islamic Branding and Marketing Forum.

British company Vedanta Resources’ highly-destructive bauxite mines in tribal areas in India are increasingly under siege. The most high-profile case is the proposed mine on the sacred mountain of the Dongria Kond people in Odisha (formerly Orissa) state (see PN 2520).
A government investigation in March concluded that Vedanta’s mine “may lead to the destruction of the Dongria Kondh [as a people]”, and the mine has not yet received final clearance. During July, Vedanta suffered three…

Peace News pays tribute to the Gaza flotilla martyrs: Cengiz Akyüz (42), Ali Heyder Bengi (39), Ibrahim Bilgen (60), Furkan Dogan (19), Cevdet Kiliçlar (38), Cengiz Songür (47), Çetin Topçuoglu (54), Fahri Yaldiz (43), and Necdet Yildirim (32), killed by the Israeli Defence Forces on 31 May. Let us not mince words. The Israeli assault on the Gaza aid flotilla was an act of terrorism, of state terrorism. The killings of these Turkish solidarity activists was merely the latest chapter in the…

When Cengiz Songür set off to join the Freedom Flotilla, one of his six daughters put a letter into his jacket pocket, where it stayed unnoticed until he was on board the Mavi Marmara.

The letter started: “I have thousands of words to tell you, but they are now all stuck in my throat. I am scared, Dad. I get scared as I see the sadness in my sisters’ eyes and the worried look on my mum’s face. Dad, please do not get scared. Please, go there, Dad. Go there to put a smile on an…

This report is written as a letter to Pat O’Donnell and Niall Harnett who are in jail in Ireland for opposing Shell’s Corrib gas pipeline.

Dear Pat and Niall
We’re just back from the Merthyr to Mayo Solidarity Bike Ride, which connected the struggles of the people of Wales and Ireland opposing the misuse of our natural resources by multi-national corporations and complicit governments.

My partner and I joined the ride in Galway. Some of the other riders did…

In response to the murderous Israeli Defence Force attack on a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza, Bangor and Ynys Môn (Anglesey) Peace & Justice Group were quickly into action.

On 1 June, the group visited Waitrose in Menai Bridge. More than 20 activists turned out to support, a very respectable number for an area like ours.

We began at 3.30pm by handing out boycott flyers, which were well received with almost all shoppers…

It’s the time of year for festivals again, and through the weekend of 16-18 April visitors to the old farm buildings of Neuadd Hendre, near Bangor in Gwynedd, could enjoy top Welsh bands, listen to the edgy and moving stand-up comedy of Ivor Dembina and eat fantastic Palestinian food, while camping in the spring sunshine with panoramic views across the Irish Sea. But this was a festival with a difference. It had an agenda – Palestine.

The Bangor to Bethlehem international…

Eight ships are at the time of writing preparing to try to take badly-needed supplies into Gaza, in defiance of the Israeli naval blockade.

The convoy is the fruit of an international coalition involving the Free Gaza Movement (FGM), the European Campaign to Break the Siege of Gaza, the Greek and Swedish Ship to Gaza Campaigns and IHH, a Turkish campaign. FGM has organised eight similar missions to Gaza in the past three years, the first five successfully.

The last…

In September 2009, the United Nations released the findings of the Goldstone report concerning Israel’s attack on Gaza in December 2008–January 2009, which killed 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

The 575-page inquiry noted that Israel’s offensive was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself and to force upon it an ever-increasing…

At first sight, a book about a Christian minister’s engagement with Islam might appear to have limited value to the non-religious reader.

However, I believe, this book has something to teach all of us working for peace and justice. And in these times when the nature of Islam is so misrepresented and misunderstood, Ray Gaston’s story is little short of revolutionary.

This book is part-autobiography, as we follow Ray on his path to a greater understanding of Islam, and part-…

On 8 April, Britain became the first country in the world to ban profiteering in “third world debt”, in the final hours of the last parliament. The Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill restricts the activities of so-called “vulture funds”. These funds are (generally secretive) investment companies that buy up the bad debts of some of the world’s poorest countries at a discount, and then use the courts to demand full repayment plus costs.

Last November, the British high court…

In February 2009, I went to Gaza as one of a European Parliament group to see the destruction caused by Israeli attacks. A year on, together with 60 members of parliament from 12 different countries, I returned.

As I expected, depressingly little had changed since Operation Cast Lead. Houses, factories, farms and schools are still in ruins. Water, sewage and electricity systems are wrecked.

In any other country, rebuilding would be well under way. But Gaza is…