Brighton & Hove Palestine Campaign
Supporting the struggle to achieve a just and lasting peace for Palestine
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
Calling all Brighton and Hove PSC members or would-be members
If you are currently a member of BHPSC it is now time to renew your membership by paying your annual subscription. And if you would like to join us as a new member you would be most welcome.
Please note that unless you paid at the AGM on 14 July, or earlier this year when you joined, your annual subscription for 2012-13 is now due.
BHPSC depends on income from membership subscriptions to fund its campaigning activities. Additional donations are also important and much appreciated. During the last year we were able to donate funds to a variety of important projects including those involved in the re-building of Gaza and to the Jordan Valley Solidarity group so that fares could be paid for Palestinian activists to visit Brighton and Hove. It also helps us run the website, produce leaflets and organise effectively.
The sub remains at £10 waged and £5 unwaged. You can pay in one of two ways:
Please ensure that you enclose your full name, postal address and your up-to-date email address so that I can check our membership records.
Please DO pay without further prompting as this will save precious time and resources.
Membership enquiries to dorothysheridan@gmail.com
The Jerusalem String Quartet’s recital at the Brighton Festival on May 8th was interrupted by protesters objecting to Israel’s apartheid system, its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, its attacks on civilians in Gaza and its suppression of Palestinian human rights in Israel and the Occupied territories.
The action was taken in line with the call from Palestinian civil society for a boycott of state-supported cultural events. The call is available at http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1047
A spokesperson for the protesters said, ‘These musicians are cultural ambassadors for an apartheid state and as such should not be performing at the Brighton Festival .The Festival Guest Director’s mission statement affirms that the role of the festival is to ‘remind us of .. the positive changes we can all make to improve our world for future generations.’ Using music to whitewash the apartheid state of Israel should have no place here. [Read more…] about Protesters disrupt performance by the Jerusalem Quartet in support of a boycott of Israel