Local News & Reports

ETHNIC CLEANSING IS NOT GREEN

• Sodastream’s healthy modern eco-image is meant to disguise the fact that it has set up its factory on land confiscated from Palestinians. The Israeli government gives them tax breaks and legal support to work there. For its part the company uses the Made in Israel label to hide the fact that the products are actually made in illegally occupied territory.

• Palestinian workers often have no choice but to work in the Israeli colonies, in a situation of high unemployment rates that are a direct result of the Israeli occupation.

• A 2011 United Nations report  states  that  Israeli government policies are destroying  Palestinian agriculture and industry by confiscating  land and natural resources, restricting the movement of people and goods and isolating  them from international markets.  To boast  that Sodastream are  giving employment to people  when they  have had their land and freedom stolen,  can only be considered immoral.

• Sodastream’s factory is in a settlement industrial zone which is expanding and taking over Bedouin land. The Bedouins themselves, the native people of Palestine, are being forcibly relocated into ‘ghettos’ by a rubbish dump in East Jerusalem.

• Sodastream itself recognises the dangers of negative publicity and a boycott of its product but prefers to stay in the occupied territory and enjoy the favourable tax breaks and economic incentives.
  

• It is up to us to show them the price of their illegal and immoral activity.

 

For further information read the Sodastream report online.

Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign presents

OVER THE WALL

Film show followed by Q&A session with Directors, Cast and Crew

Thursday 6th December 7.30 p.m.

(Tea and coffee from 7 p.m.)

Friends Meeting House, Meeting House Lane, Brighton

The film documents the physical and emotional journey to Egypt and Palestine of a group of  student footballers and two young directors from London in the summer of 2011. Their experiences, particularly in Palestine, become a rite of passage into growing personal awareness and dawning political consciousness.

It’s a gem!   Heart-warming and inspiring!

Directed by:  Jasper Kain & Matthew Kay

Runtime:   58 mins

Donation on the door

Watch the trailer

This is a film about the journey of a British University football team who are transformed by the events they bear witness to in the Middle East which force them to change their outlook on life.

In the year of the Arab Spring, a diverse London based team head to Egypt armed with a football and a desire to engage with local communities. International news unfolds around them. With events ranging from the siege of the Israeli embassy in Cairo to bombings in Gaza the boys quickly see that this tour is about more than just football.

The worsening situation forces the team to rethink their agenda. Do they carry on with their journey into Palestine? The outcome of their decision and the subsequent events that follow make them realise that there is a greater goal in life.

Over The Wall provides a refreshing insight into this unique group of young men who, through their journey, challenge common perceptions of 21st century London, the Middle East, football and activism. [Read more…] about Film ‘Over the Wall’ – Special screening in Brighton

At each of our weekly Saturday pickets of the Israeli Ecostream store in Western Road our numbers have continually increased, to the point where this past Saturday (10 November) there were upwards of 100 protesters, including proud Palestinian comrades visiting Brighton for a Jordan Valley Solidarity international conference.

For photographs and up-to-date commentary, visit Tony Greenstein’s blog.

Friday 9 November

There have been four disruptions of the Batsheva Dance Ensemble’s performance at Brighton Dome tonight. Over 70 people protested against the dance performance outside the venue while several people purchased tickets and protested inside the performance.

Soon after the performance began shouts of ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘End the occupation’ rang out inside the Dome. The performance was repeatedly disrupted by a total of four pairs of demonstrators.

The demonstrators are responding to a call from the people of Palestine for a campaign of ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ similar to the boycott campaign waged against apartheid South Africa. [Read more…] about Disruption of Israeli state-funded Batsheva Dance performance: Brighton Dome

Brighton and Hove PSC, together with a number of other local pro-Palestinian and antiracist groups, mounted a lively and effective picket of the new Ecostream store in Western Road in Brighton.

The picket is a local manifestation of the international campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) targeting Israeli economic, cultural, academic and sporting activities, called for by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

For full coverage of the picket, including video and photos and useful background to Ecostream’s complicity in illegal settlements, land grabs and ethnic cleansing, see Tony Greenstein’s blog post.

Local activists plan to picket the Ecostream store every Saturday afternoon from 1pm till 3pm, aiming to raise awareness about Ecostream’s true background and about BDS generally, and to discourage local people from patronising the store. Join us!

Members and supporters may be interested to read our response to the dangerous and provocative statement by Graham Cox, Chairman [sic] of the Brighton and Hove Conservatives. It is reproduced below.

Dear Mr Cox,

We write in response to your statement on the Brighton and Hove Conservatives’ website (http://www.brightonandhoveconservatives.com/2012/07/statement-on-anti-israel-remarks-of-smash-edo/) dated 3 July 2012, and in particular to object to what we feel is your attempt to discredit our campaign with the charge of antisemitism. We’d be pleased to come along to speak to your group to clarify our position.

The Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign works to achieve justice and equal human rights for Palestinians. We oppose many of the policies and actions of the Israeli government both in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in 1948 Israel.

Your statement asserts that there has been ‘a rise in racist incidents targeted at the Jewish community’ locally. You go on to suggest a link between this alleged rise in anti-Jewish incidents, and the activities of SmashEDO ‘and other local extreme left-wing groups’, in which category we assume you clearly intend to include our own organisation. We wish to refute this slur in the strongest terms. It is both spurious and insulting for you to attempt to discredit our campaign by insinuating that we have somehow encouraged anti-Jewish racism implicitly or explicitly.

Racism – including antisemitism – thrives in conditions of poverty, inequality and social exclusion. We are living in precisely such conditions. A much more plausible explanation for the alleged increase in anti-Jewish incidents is therefore the well-documented growing gap in living standards and opportunity between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ – conditions reminiscent, to use your own phrase, of the 1930s. [Read more…] about BHPSC responds to the smears of local Tories