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Merseyside and The Palestinians

sinisterpenguin | 07.12.2005 15:20 | Anti-militarism | Education | Repression | Liverpool

Palestine continues to be one of the major issues for activists on Merseyside with film showings, music nights and a stunning student twinning campaign all in the past few weeks.

Student Under Occupation
Student Under Occupation


Twinning Campaign

Liverpool University Guild of Students has finally realised the long fought for dream of twinning with Birzeit University Students Union in Ramallah. The campaign began in the summer of 2003 when a large group of activists at the University attempted to show solidarity with the Students of Birzeit, who made a call out to support their Right to Education.  http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/news/article5 Birzeit students loose on average a third of their study days each year, because of Israeli roadblocks, curfews and other aspects of the occupation.

It was decided that the best way to tackle the campaign was to call for an Extraordinary General Meeting in the Guild and pass a motion twinning the two institutions. This required a certain percentage of students (about 500) to turn up at a certain time and then debate and vote on the motion. The campaign was filibustered, lied about, people were intimidated and one member of NUS NEC who turned up on the day was assaulted. Despite this over 450 students attempted to vote on the day, but unfortunately the numbers were not enough and so the motion failed.

The motion then returned in a standard fashion, was voted upon and passed by the elected Guild Council, but not before certain amendments, which linked Birzeit to bomb making and suicide attacks, were inserted. Birzeit students were offended by the amendments and so the originally motion was resubmitted last month and passed with a clear majority. The student newspaper ran a (deliberately?) misinformed article on its front page this week, ( http://www.liverpoolguild.com/main/media/liverpoolstudent/latest)
suggesting that outside agencies were behind the motion and that activists have snuck the issue through without informing the student body.

There is a planned ‘Twinning Ceremony’ for the new year to celebrate the event, which will hopefully include representatives from Bizeit, speaker meetings, workshops, cultural exhibitions and an unveiling of a plaque.

Students at Birzeit are, apparently, loving it.


Images from Palestine

It is unfortunate that more people didn’t turn out for the genuinely unique and informative presentations by on Palestine a week last Tuesday. The audience of around 30-40 people gathered in the Friends Meeting House on Paradise Street and stayed until the Quakers were threatening violent eviction for over staying the allotted time.

The first presentation was entitled ‘Homeland to Diaspora’ 1830-1967 and covered a period of history often ignored. The pictures were unique and informative. The audience were surprised at the Palestinians in western in dress, living in large and extravagant housing. The presentation covered the first three intifadas by the Palestinians, upset by the mass immigration and British occupation. Similarities were drawn between the British and Israeli tactics.

The second Presentation focussed on University life under occupation; the pictures were both inspiring and upsetting, as the speaker talked about his friends and colleagues who had been shot by Israeli troops in the past few years.

A debate followed the presentations focussing on possible solutions to the ongoing conflict. Some people argued that a two state solution was the only possibility of peace and that campaigns should focus around getting the best deal for the oppressed Palestinians. However others, including prominent members of the Palestinian Diaspora in Liverpool argued for the Human Right to return to their home land; furthermore they pointed out that as long as Israel remained a racist state their would be no hope for any Palestinians who lived inside Israel’s borders.

‘To Exist Is To Resist’

The Liverpool Student Friends of Palestine fundraising event, organised by Extravoganzamania Productions was a massive success. The evening, upstairs at Hannah’s on Hardman Street, attracted around 150 people and raised over £300 for campaigning purposes.

Acts included Amro ‘The Shukrun’ Bilal, a Palestinian Keyboardist, Karen an acoustic singer songwriter, local band The Kesey Experiment, African drummer Mamadou and Merseyside’s finest belly dancer Karen.

Despite acts cancelling at the last minute and some technical difficulties, Extravoganzamania’s Ginger said, ‘The event was amazing,. It’s great to see this many people turn up to an event in aid of Palestine on a Friday night when there is so much other stuff going on. Everyone is having a great time; it is a brilliantly eclectic mix of music and will mean that local campaigning can continue.’


sinisterpenguin
- e-mail: sinisterpenguin@yahoo.com

Comments

Hide the following 4 comments

Palestinian terrorism is a major problem too!

08.12.2005 10:11

Palestinian terrorism is a major problem too, but you never see people protesting against Palestinian terrorism. Why not? Are Israeli lives less important than Palestinian lives?

Concerned


On the violence of the colonised

08.12.2005 11:59

Poor settler; here is his contradiction naked, shorn of its trappings. He ought to kill those he plunders, as they say the djinns do. Now, this is not possible, because he must exploit them as well. Because he can't carry massacre on to genocide, and slavery to animal like degradation, he loses control, the machine goes into reverse, and a relentless logic leads him to decolonisation.

But it does not happen immediately. At first the European's reign continues. He has already lost the battle, but this is not obvious; he does not yet know that the natives are only half-native, to hear him talk, it would seem that he ill-treats them in order to destroy or to repress the evil that they have rooted in them; and after three generations their pernicious instincts will appear no more. What instints does he mean? The instincts that urge slaves on to massacre their master? Can he not there recognize his own cruelty turned against himself? In the savagery of these oppressed peasants, does he not find his own settler's savagery, which they have absorbed through every pore and for which there is no cure? The reason is simple; this imperious being, crazed by his absolute power and the fear of losing it, no longer remembers clearly that he was a once a man; he takes himself for a horsewhip or a gun; he has come to believe that the domestication of the 'inferior races' will come about by the conditioning of their reflexes. But in this he leaves out of account the human memory and the inneffaceable marks left upon it; and then, above all there is something which perhaps he has never known: we only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of what others have made us. Three generations did we say? Hardly has the second generation opened their eyes than from then on they've seen their fathers being flogged. In psychiatric terms they are 'traumatized' for life. But these constantly renewed aggressions, far from bringing them into submission, thrust them into an unbearable contradiction for which the European will pay sooner or later. After all, when it is their turn to be broken in, when they are taught what shame and hunger and pain are, all that is stirred up in them is a volcanic fury whose force is equal to the pressure out upon them. You said they understand nothing but violence? Of course, first the violence is the settler's; but soon they will make it their own; that is to say, the same violence is thrown back upon us as when our reflection comes forward to meet us when we go towards a mirror.

introduction to Fanon's "The wretched of the Earth"

Jean Paul Sartre
- Homepage: http://www.cooper.edu/humanities/core/hss3/Sartre.html


Is there a doctor in the house

08.12.2005 12:01

Seriously Concerned, it's starting to look like you have OCD.

Sim1


More Satre: Putting violent resistance to colonialism into context

09.12.2005 17:11

Make no mistake about it; by this mad fury, by this bitterness and spleen, by their ever-present desire to kill us, by the permanent tensing of powerful muscles which are afraid to relax, they have become men : men because of the settler, who wants to make beasts of burden of them - because of him, and against him. Hatred, blind hatred which is as yet an abstraction, is their only wealth; the Master calls it forth because he seeks to reduce them to animals, but he fails to break it down because his interests stop him half-way. Thus the "half natives" are still humans, through the power and the weakness of the oppressor which is transformed within them into a stubborn refusal of the animal condition. We realise what follows; they're lazy: of course - it's a form of sabotage. They're sly and thieving; just imagine! But their petty thefts mark the beginning of a resistance which is still unorganised. That is not enough; there are those among them who assert themselves by throwing themselves barehanded against the guns; these are their heros. Others make men of themselves by murdering Europeans, and these are shot down; brigands or martyrs, their agony exalts the terrified masses. Yes, terrified; at this fresh stage, colonial aggression turns inward in a current of terror among the natives.

By this I do not only mean the fear that they experience when faced with our inexhaustible means of repression but also that which their own fury produces in them. They are cornered between our guns pointed at them and those terrifying compulsions, those desires for murder which spring from the depth of their spirits and which they do not always recognise; for at first it is not their violence, it is ours, which turns back on itself and rends them; and the first action of these oppressed creatures is to bury deep down that hidden anger which their and our moralities condemn and which is however only the last refuge of their humanity.

Concerned for the mental health of Concerned
- Homepage: http:// http://www.cooper.edu/humanities/core/hss3/Sartre.html