The Friendship Inn in Borth, near Aberystwyth, was packed to the rafters on 8 September as people gathered for the potentially solemn purpose of raising funds in support of ‘Freedom from Torture’. This organisation dreams of a world free from torture but, until such time, it supports survivors of torture in rebuilding their lives and it works to bring perpetrators to account.
The vision for the…
Mike Marqusee
Definable Traces in the Atmosphere: Selected Writings
OR Books, 2018; 366pp; £13
Available online here.
The title of this book refers to a line in Mike Marqusee's poem Egypt. In it, Egyptian people are filling a public square, presumably Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and being captured on TV. Much like a dream, Marqusee writes, what is happening is ‘turbulent and…
On 7 July, the Palestine Chronicle reported that the Palestinian ‘Great March of Return’ had taken place near the Gaza-Israel border for the 15th consecutive Friday. A Palestinian man was shot dead by an Israeli soldier, bringing the overall Great March death toll to 135.
Nearly 400 Palestinians were injured on 7 July, according to the Palestinian ministry of health. Overall, some 5,000 Palestinians have been injured by Israeli live fire and tear gas during the largely…
Today, 25 June, prince William will arrive in Israel and the occupied West Bank as part of a regional trip.
This visit is the first since the creation of the state of Israel, 70 years ago, and breaks with British foreign office policy that the royal family should not make official visits to Israel due to its historic and grave violations of human rights, international law and UN resolutions
Palestine Solidarity Campaign is deeply concerned that prince William’s visit,…
On 15 May, boats of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla set out from Gothenburg, Sweden on a two-month journey to the besieged Palestinian territory. Three Swedish ships, the Mairead, the Falestine/Palestine and Freedom to Gaza, were joined by a converted Norwegian fishing boat, Al Awda/The Return. The Mairead is named after Mairead Maguire, the Peace People activist from Belfast, northern Ireland, who was joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.…
Vigils were held across Wales after Palestinian authorities declared 31 March a national day of mourning. 17 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza as the Israeli Defence Forces cracked down on ‘The Great Return March’ starting on Land Day, 30 March.
On 31 March, Aberystwyth’s street choir Côr Gobaith fundraised for Medical Aid for Palestinians. In Llanidloes, about 20 protesters pinned…
On 21 March, an Israeli military juvenile court in Ofer in the Occupied Territories sentenced Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi to eight months in prison (with a further eight months suspended) and fined her 5,000 shekels ($1,440). She had agreed to a deal where she pleaded guilty to four of the 12 charges she faced, according to her lawyer.
Ahed, then 16, had been filmed slapping and kicking armed Israeli soldiers at the entrance to her home in the village of Nabi Saleh in the…
On 5 February, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, visited Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi in an Israeli prison.
Ahed, then 16, was filmed slapping and kicking armed Israeli soldiers at the entrance to her home in the village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank on 15 December. Just an hour earlier, she’d learned that her 14-year-old cousin, Mohammed Tamimi, had been shot in the face at close range by Israeli soldiers with a rubber-coated metal bullet.…
On 28 December, 63 Israeli teenagers signed an open letter to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring that they will refuse military service because the Israeli army ‘carries out a racist government policy that enforces one legal system for Israelis and another for Palestinian in the same territory’. The 63 say they will not take any part in ‘the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people’.
As the Israeli army does not recognise conscientious objection based…
On 22 November, B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, issued a press release detailing the continuing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
The release…
On 10 July, some 50 Ceredigion residents gathered in the Morlan Centre in Aberystwyth to hear Iyad Burnat bear poignant witness to a life of resistance in his native Bil’in, a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank some seven miles to the west of Ramallah. Bil’in has been divided by Israel’s separation barrier which cuts off access to half of its agricultural land.
Iyad is the head of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall (PCAW) which for the last 12 years has staged…
’Biktub Ismak Ya Biladi, ‘al shams ilma bit(a)gheeb
La mali wala wlaadi, ‘Ala Hubik mafe Habib.
I will write your name oh my country, above the sun that never sets.
Not my children nor my wealth, above your love there is no love.
I first heard this song at a demonstration in Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, Palestine, in 2012. I was in the village to participate in a demonstration with my choir and, as is their tradition of…
Aberystwyth’s Côr Gobaith made their presence felt at the annual Street Choirs Festival in Kendal at the end of June. One of three Welsh choirs, alongside Pales Peace Choir and Wrexham Community Choir, we took our messages of nonviolence, justice and environmental sustainability out onto the streets with our peace flags, pride flags and red dragons flying!
The festival has a long history of putting music into protest and for us, especially in these difficult times, the overarching…
When my choir San Ghanny (‘We Shall Sing’ in Arabic) and I were in Palestine two months ago, we took part in a demonstration to call for the return of Palestinian bodies from the Israeli government.
The campaign is led by family members, often mothers, of Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces, or who have been involved in militarised resistance to the occupation resulting in their own deaths. This includes desperate actions such as suicide bombing.
For family…
On 22 June, the high court in London ruled that the government had acted improperly by seeking to use pension law to pursue its own foreign and arms industry policy.
In September 2016, the department for communities and local government had published some innocuously titled ‘guidance’ on investment strategies for local government pension schemes.
The DCLG wrote: ‘using pension policies to pursue boycotts, divestment and sanctions against foreign nations and UK defence…
