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Israeli Ambassador Cancels Visit to Edinburgh, Scotland, in Face of Protests

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign | 05.03.2008 23:43 | Palestine | Repression | Social Struggles

Israeli Ambassador cancels visit to Edinburgh, Scotland, in face of planned protests.

The Ambassador of child murder, ethnic cleansing, and threats of ‘Holocaust’ on Gaza has called off his planned talk at Edinburgh University on Thursday. Prosor cites ‘security concerns’: in reality he, and Edinburgh University, realised that the planned protests would have channelled some of the fury that millions now feel at Israel’s never-ending crimes against the Palestinian people.

Questions remain and demand answers urgently:

Why did Edinburgh University officially agree to Prosor’s request to speak there even as Israel intensified the collective punishment of the people of Gaza in stark violation of international law?

Why has no invitation been extended to a representative of the beleaguered students and staff at Bir Zeit University, officially linked to the EU Students’ Association, and heroically struggling to survive under Israel’s illegal occupation?

Edinburgh University says the meeting is ‘postponed and no new date has been decided’. How can the University justify its support for the Ambassador of a terrorist state in a time of mass murder?

Had Scottish police forces given permission to any armed Israelis to come on to British university campuses?

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign pledges to work to the limits of our energy and ability to keep Scotland a country where defenders of genocide, those who threaten ‘Holocaust’ against the Palestinians of Gaza, cannot visit freely. We will maintain the pressure on those, lost to all human compassion, who continue to openly support Israeli ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and its murderous activities in the Gaza Killing Zone.

We build on the labours of those who have made England a no-go area for Israeli war criminals such as Dichter, Almog, Mofaz and others, by amassing data that gave legal officers no choice but to issue arrest warrants. We take forward the decisions of the British juries who found the Israeli military guilty of the murders of British citizens Tom Hurndall and James Miller.

But most of all we will work to remove the stain of British Government complicity, from Balfour to Blair and Brown, in the incessant violation of the heroic people of Palestine, surviving against all odds under the US-supplied weapons of a murderous enemy.

We call upon people of conscience across Scotland and the world to redouble our efforts to isolate apartheid Israel through the growing campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the rogue state until it recognises Palestinian human rights.

We call upon the people of conscience in Glasgow and Scotland to vigorously protest the ‘Holocaust’ Ambassador’s planned visit to the Glasgow Hilton on Sunday. Prosor will participate in a sick fund-raising event to raise money for the racist JNF, where Goldie Hawn, in the shadow of the over 100 Gaza deaths caused by lack of access to medical care, is due to entertain Prosor and other guests with a talk on “Laughter is the Best Medicine”.

We appeal for your support, to join us to build a component of a world-wide campaign to provide solidarity to the people of Palestine. While the hideous/ridiculous figure of Blair slouches towards Jerusalem as a ‘peacemaker’, we have little choice.


Mick Napier 0795 800 2591

John Wight 07738 528 145

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

 http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Additions

Cancelled at Birmingham University too

06.03.2008 09:04

 http://www.newscentre.bham.ac.uk/event/2008/02/Israeli_Ambassador_27_02_08.shtml

Events

27 Feb 08 5.30pm



POSTPONED: Visit by the Israeli Ambassador

This visit from the Israeli Ambassador has been postponed and may be rescheduled in late spring early summer.
Starts: 27 Feb 08
Start Time: 5.30pm
Venue: University of Birmingham, Birmingham Business School Main Lecture Theatre.
Cost: Free
Contact: Eleanor Leftwich, Email:  e.g.leftwich@bham.ac.uk, Tel: 01214142950

Free Palestine!


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Background

06.03.2008 16:00

Good to see the strategy elaborated in this article is a dismal failure so far!




Israel’s bold new UK strategy14/12/2007 - Jewish Chronicle by Jenni Frazer

Israeli diplomats are to mount an aggressive new strategy in Britain, making Israel’s case more actively in the media and taking their message out of London. The marked change in tone is the brainchild of the new Israeli ambassador, Ron Prosor, who in a wide-ranging interview with the JC this week said: “We have to reach out and take our case to places where we have not been for years. “It will be tough, but I have told everyone in the embasssy we are coming out — out of London W8 — to make the case for Israel. Don’t be afraid. I am setting the example — that’s what we get paid for.”

He has already made a “challenging” appearance at St Antony’s College, Oxford, but appeared to relish the experience. In a radical departure from many of his predecessors, Mr Prosor, who arrived in Britain in mid-November, paid his first diplomatic visits not to his German or American counterparts, but to the ambassadors of Egypt, Jordan, and Qatar. He plans to have other meetings with the Moroccan, Tunisian and other Arab ambassadors in Britain. He feels, he says, that such meetings have “added value in establishing relations between Israel and the Arab world”. As well as reaching out to his Arab colleagues, the ambassador is determined to “do much more” in terms of the embassy’s relations with the Jewish community. He is taking his diplomats on the road in January, “moving the whole embassy to Manchester for the day, reaching out to the people who for many years have voluntarily worked for the state of Israel”. Each diplomat will have his or her own schedule, the ambassador said, in the hope that the initiative would “create a much better understanding”. Further regional embassy days are planned later in the year.

Mr Prosor is to invite scores of activists for Israel to the embassy early in the New Year, with the aim of co-ordinating plans for Israel’s 60th anniversary. The ambassador, an experienced diplomat who was director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, clearly has high hopes that the anniversary will provide an opportunity for showcasing Israel in the wider community. Hoping to build on the success of the visit of Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, to Israel last month, the ambassador said he felt that “those in the Foreign Office and Downing Street are ready to continue to develop and enhance bilateral relations”. It was realistic, he believed, to expect a member of the Royal Family to visit Israel during the anniversary year — and, in return, a “high-profile” visitor from Israel to the UK. President Shimon Peres, meanwhile, has invited Prime Minister Gordon Brown to Jerusalem in May, where he is hosting a group of world leaders to celebrate Israel’s 60th birthday.

Mr Prosor is bullish about explaining Israel’s case to the British media and British society. “Our case is not conveyed in a way that explains the dilemmas of Israeli society,” he said. “We feel we are a democracy under fire, encountering phenomena that Western democracies have never experienced. We don’t always have the best answers. Why Israel reacts in the way that it does is not sufficiently set in context. There is a lot that we can be very proud of, as debates in Israeli society show — and this has not been conveyed enough to the British public. I intend to have a much higher media profile and I feel that we should try to present our cause to everyone. The best thing we can do is to conduct a dialogue”.

Though he is determined to speak to other Arab ambassadors and, indeed, the Palestinian delegate to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, Ambassador Prosor is equally clear that there should be no dialogue with Hamas — “that would be the wrong thing to do. Hamas took over in a coup d’etat and treated its own brothers and sisters in an appalling way, throwing handcuffed people out of 12-storey buildings, shooting people in the head... We have Salam Fayyed as prime minister and Abu Mazen as president of the Palestinians. They are weak, but this is the only chance we have to empower them. The nature of what kind of Palestinian state will be next door to Israel is the most cardinal issue which we face. The risks are enormous, the margin of error very small”. The ambassador’s mission is to weed out the extremists from the moderates. A case in point, he says, is the way in which Israel’s MiA’s (soldiers missing in action) are being treated by their captors. “People don’t understand: it’s not just a matter of there not being a signal if our soldiers are alive or dead. They [Hizbollah and Hamas] are not allowing the Red Cross to visit, which is the minimum which people expect. We will not leave any stone unturned to bring our boys back home” — and as part of that process, he said, there was “close co-operation” with the British government in helping to track down and ultimately release the MIAs. “It is very high on our agenda, an open wound for all of us”.

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