Justice for Palestine

British bank HSBC has told customers in the UK that it will stop processing standing order payments to the Palestinian aid charity Interpal from next month.

The bank sent out letters earlier this month to account holders who make regular donations in support of the London-based charity, informing them any payments would stop on 17 May. It gave no reason for taking the action. 

The move from HSBC will come as a particularly heavy and bitter blow to Interpal because it has been announced during Ramadan, when traditionally Muslims give far more than at any other period of the year.

Muslims donated more than £100m during Ramadan of 2016 alone, according to the UK Charity Commission.

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The UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign won what it said was a historic legal victory for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement on Wednesday.

BDS campaigners celebrated as the Supreme Court in London struck out an anti-divestment rule imposed by the government in 2016.

As the ruling was made by the UK’s highest court, it cannot be appealed.

The Conservative government in September 2016 imposed a new guideline which stopped local authorities using their pension schemes to divest from Israel or any other country – regardless of human rights concerns.

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Aljazeera has many documentaries on Palestine as part of the Remix series.

View the documentaries here.

Racism the Red Card has capitulated to demands it drop Ken Loach as a judge in its schools competition, after an Israel lobby intimidation campaign said to have threatened its “very existence.”

However the charity, which works against racism in football, emphasized that Loach remains “a member of our Hall of Fame, in tribute to the work he has done over many years in combating racism and his support is greatly appreciated.”

Earlier this month the charity announced that it was standing by its appointment of the socialist filmmaker as a judge of their annual schools competition, alongside children’s poet and author Michael Rosen.

But in a new statement on Wednesday, the charity said that they and Loach “have together agreed that Ken will not act as a judge” for this year’s competition.

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Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old American peace activist from Olympia, Washington. She was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer on 16 March 2003, while undertaking nonviolent direct action to protect the home of a Palestinian family from demolition.

Since her killing, an enormous amount of solidarity activities have been carried out in her name around the world.

Rachel’s journals and emails from her time in Palestine are available in a variety of forms. They have been published in books, turned into plays, dramatic readings, and used around the internet. They are not always reproduced in their entirety and have been collected at the Rachel Corrie Foundation, uncut, for easier reading. Read Rachel’s emails from Palestine.

A new Palestinian support group has  formed recently in Melbourne.

Free Palestine Melbourne,  a community organisation dedicated to raising public awareness of the Palestinians’ hundred year struggle for freedom. They seek to build Australian-Palestinian solidarity by engaging in political activism in Melbourne and joining international campaigns that oppose Israel’s ongoing colonisation of Palestine.

Find out more at their website.

Imagine a gorgeous home for your next getaway: a well-stocked kitchen, through the patio doors to a pool, nice linens, flowers on the bedside table. Sounds great, right?

Here’s the problem:
That house: STOLEN
That land: STOLEN
The roads on that stolen land to take you to the stolen house: SEGREGATED
The borders and checkpoints and airports you took to get there: CLOSED to the very people whose homes they are.

Airbnb, the global tourism giant, is profiting off vacation rentals in Israeli settlements, built on stolen Palestinian land and illegal under international law.

Join Jewish Voice for Peace and allies — American Muslims for Palestine, CodePink, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network — to demand that Airbnb stop listing stolen homes as tourist destinations. Read the rest of this entry »

The Palestinian Circus School has issued a call for action for Mohammed Abu Sakha, a trainer/performer at the school.
He was issued an administrative detention order for imprisonment without charge or trial by the Israeli military courts. Follow all updates on Mohammed’s case at their site.

Last Monday, December 14, Israeli soldiers arrested a member of the circus family, Mohammad Faisal Abu Sakha, 23 years old, at Zaatara checkpoint, while on his way from his family home in Jenin to Ramallah to attend a music concert. Mohammad has been detained for a week now, and is being kept in military detention centers in the West Bank. Palestinians arrested under Israeli military law, are mostly exposed to serious physical and psychological violence, transfers and harsh interrogations, sometimes aiming to obtain false confessions.

Mohammad is part of the Palestinian Circus School since 2007, first as a student and since 2011 as a full time trainer and performer. Mohammad is very passionate about his work in general and about the social programs of the school in particular. He’s known with his magic ability to draw smiles on all people’s faces. Mohammed his entire life is dedicated to the circus.

He was arrested without any reason and no charge was made against him.

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