Reproduced below is the text of the leaflet being handed out on the protest.
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Victory to the Intifada
Join the picket of Marks and Spencer on Oxford Street at Marble Arch
Every Thursday 6-8pm
Public Meeting on the Palestine and Iraq
Saturday 8 May, 12-5pm
The Old Theatre, Houghton St, London School of Economics, WC2. Nearest Tube: Holborn
Boycotting Israeli goods is essential to undermining the Zionist regime but there is one company that MUST
be particularly targeted, just as Barclays was a focus against apartheid South Africa. That company should
be a British one to highlight the links to this country and our responsibility. That company IS Marks &
Spencer - the biggest British corporate sponsor of Israel. Marks & Spencer is not just interested in trading
with Israel for profit like other companies, it IS and ALWAYS has been an unequivocal supporter of Zionism
- 'aiding the economic development of Israel is one of our main objectives" said Lord Sieff the M&S chairman
(1999). The boycott Marks & Spencer campaign has been active nationally since the beginning of the
second Intifada. It continues... Support Palestine! Support the picket!
ZIONISTS AND FASCISTS ATTACK PICKETS!
Recently a counter demonstration to the M&S pickets has begun by an alliance of Zionist extremists and
British fascists. Your support is needed more than ever to defeat these racists who spout lies about Palestine.
Join the pickets! Help defeat M&S's Israeli sponsorship AND their fascist backers!
BOYCOTT M&S: BOYCOTT ISRAELI APARTHEID
"The things a Palestinian has to endure, simply coming to work in the morning, ie a long and continuous nightmare that includes humiliation bordering on despair. The present model integrates apartheid."
(Former head of Israeli Security Service Shin Bet, Ami Aylaon. Ma'ariv 5/12/00)
FACT 42,000 Palestinian civilians have been seriously injured and over 3000 Palestinians have been killed since the Intifada began in September 2000 (www.palestinemonitor.org)
FACT Israel is targeting children: More than one in three of the injured are under 18. Over 600 children under 18 have been killed.
FACT Israel has violated international law (UN Resolutions 242 and 338) by blocking 4 million Palestinian refugees from returning to their homeland while promoting the influx of immigrants to settle in occupied Palestine from Europe, Russia and all over the world.
FACT Shelling and demolition have destroyed 3000 houses and damaged over 43,000. Israelis forces have bulldozed over 900,000 Palestinian olive and fruit trees and 15,000 acres of Palestinian farmland.
Why Boycott M&S? Because M&S...
• supports Israel with £233 million in trade each year (Jerusalem Report, 5 June 2000).
• sells goods produced In the illegally occupied territories.
• were key diplomatic allies for Zionism in the 1920s-40s, working closely Chaim Weizmann*
• M&S Chairman Israel Sieff advocated ethnic cleansing: "large sections of the Arab population of Palestine should be transplanted to Iraq and other Middle-Eastern Arab States" (Jewish Chronicle, 21/09/1941)
• sees "aiding the economic development of Israel" as "one of its fundamental objectives" (Lord Marcus Sieff, long-time M&S Chairman, Management: The M&S Way, 1999).
• "was prominent, even essential, from the 1960s to the 1980s ... partly because of its strong links with Zionism; and partly for its success In getting Israeli goods to the British marketplace" (Barry Kosmin).
• received the Jubilee Award, Israel's highest tribute, from Israeli PM Netanyahu in 1998.
• was honoured in 2000 by the Israeli Ambassador to Britain in a ceremony in London.
• "are as close to Israel as we have ever been" (M&S Spokesperson. Jewish Chronicle, 2000)
Our concern is not with M&S' Jewish roots but with its historic and continuing support for Zionism.
THEY SUPPORT APARTHEID. DON'T SUPPORT THEM!
Get Active, Get Involved,
victoryintifada@hotmail.com or 020 7837 1688 Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!
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* "There is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and on the other hand there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, but to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country?"
Chaim Weizmann, future first Israeli President, 1914
"The British told us that there are some hundred thousand blacks [in Palestine], and for those there is no value."
Chaim Weizmann, confiding in a friend, 1917
Finally, in traversing St James Park on the way home, I couldn't resist shooting the ducks against the reflections of the setting sun.
In International Solidarity,
Alex Eisenstein
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