Israeli Terror in the Jenin & the West Bank Attracts No Criticism from Western Leaders

Go Fund Me Has Frozen Donations to the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre in Response to Israel’s Attacks on Jenin – all Palestine solidarity Activists Should Boycott GFM

For nearly five years, from April 2020 until the present day, The Brighton Trust has run a crowdfunder on the Go Fund Me platform for the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre in Jenin. In fact we have been raising money for the Centre since December 2018.

It made sense originally to transfer our haphazard appeals to a Crowdfunder and GFM seemed as good as any. In that time we have raised over £65,000 of which GFM took approximately 3%.

In recent years all payments from the crowdfunder have gone via PayPal’s charitable arm. It was a convenient and simple way of raising money. For nearly 5 years the appeal ran without a hitch.

Indeed the major problem we had in the past year or so was transferring money to the Centre. Originally we had done this via Western Union but since Israel smashed up their offices in Jenin this had not been possible. We were relying on couriers at one stage.

Go Fund Me is a billion dollar American corporation and I was under no illusions that one day it might pull the plug. This is exactly what has happened. Fortunately I made preparations for what might happen by taking care to collect donors emails.

On 5 January 25, out of the Blue, ‘The GFM team’ sent me an email which couldn’t even get my name right. It was clearly disingenuous. It began thanking me ‘for your efforts to help those affected by the conflict in the Middle East.’ Jenin is under occupation by the Israeli state. It is not part of a ‘conflict’ in the Middle East.

The email then said that ‘Due to recent developments within the region’ presumably Israel’s Genocide in Gaza,

we’re carefully reviewing fundraisers related to this conflict. This is an important step to help ensure fundraisers are in compliance with all applicable laws and strictly enforced policies from our payment partners and our Terms of Service.

A totally meaningless word salad.

‘Because of this, we’ve temporarily placed your fundraiser under review as we gather more information on your plan to help those abroad. [their emphasis] During this review, although transfers from your fundraiser are paused, your fundraiser remains visible to the public and can continue to receive new donations.

In other words it would continue to accept money but it wouldn’t pay it out. It gave no reason for freezing our funds.

The email then proceeded to ask a series of questions, the answers to most of which they already had when I set up  the Crowdfunder and some of which were none of their business. A clue to the real purpose of the attack on the Crowdfunder was in the additional question which asked:

‘if the funds raised will be used for exit/evacuation purposes, please also provide the following:

A detailed plan on how the funds will be used to ensure a secure departure out of Gaza. If available, please include the full names of any known coordinators, organizations, travel agents/agencies, or regions that may be involved in the passage.

It finished off by saying that ‘To complete our review, we need a direct response from you as soon as possible.’  The following day I sent an answer to their questions, with an accompanying message

I have now drawn up my response to your email.  In view of the genocide taking place in Gaza (please don't play with words) and the settler and military terror that has descended on the West Bank in the past year, which is entirely to do with settlers wanting to displace the native Palestinians, I find it difficult to judge your email in a neutral manner.

Your email has a hidden agenda and is not simply an information seeking exercise. Nonetheless I have supplied all the info that you requested.

Back came a response from ‘Brad’ of GFM Team asking a further set of questions and completely ignoring my response to the first set of questions. It talked about keeping your account safe when the only people endangering it were GFM.

‘Brad’ asked for Al Tafawk’s ‘beneficial ownership structure’ and ‘If any individuals have a 25% stake or greater in the organization, please also provide their full legal name.’  As if the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre was some piece of real estate in Manhattan rather than a wobbly building in the middle of a refugee camp. What possible reason would GFM have for asking this kind of information unless they were passing it on to the Israelis or their American sponsors? 

GFM clearly had a hidden agenda which they were intent on not revealing. I responded refusing to answer their stupid and illiterate questions. Instead I made it clear that Jenin is under military occupation. It is not a sleepy town in America’s mid-West. Normal civil society norms don’t pertain in such a situation.

By this time I had decided that GFM were highly unlikely to restore the Crowdfunder and even if they did I wasn’t sure we wanted to continue with this racist US Corporate Scum.  So I set up a new Crowdfunder with Chuffed, which I encourage people to contribute to. The situation in Jenin is not good. Whether there will even be a children’s centre to go back to after Israel has finished what it is doing in the Jenin Refugee Camp is open to question.

Three times in the past three years Israel has entered the Al Tafawk Centre and wrecked it. The first time was in July 2021, (see Question asked about this in the House of Lords). The second time was in November 2023 and the third time more recently when it also cut the power cables to the Centre in order to ensure that the children would freeze in the winter.

It has been very difficult to find out the exact situation in Jenin and in particular the Al Tafawk Centre. I have had messages from the headteacher Mona at the Centre, who along with her family has been evicted from her home.

On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 at 10:45, Mona wrote: 

Dear Tony 

Didnt hear from you since awhile hope u are ok. Here the situation is more and more strict from both sides ! The Israeli helicopters  over us all the time ready to bomb ! We are still able to be in the center in the mornings  

Again hope you are ok 

Wednesday 22 January 2025  

The words couldnt really describe the horrible situation we are facing here…. Hundreds of people cant survive inside the camp  

My father is missed from yesterday … we are here taking people and children who kicked from the camp 

Mater is Arrested" 

Thu 23 Jan, 04:35

Dear Tony 

I cant go to the bank right now! People are kicked from the camp ! They arrested all the men nacked for unknown places and we as women and children collected and stay in one place ! As now the center is still standing ! I gave karen my sister number if something bad happen to me ! But be sure the center is still there ! WE NEED YOUR VOICE TO SHOUT FOR ALL OF US TONY. WE are facing things we never believed could happen .

Mona

Fri 24 Jan, 11:35

Tony sadly the news is very bad 

We are (the families surround the camp) kicked from homes but we are not allowed to go farther about 200 people don't have a place. But there are a lot familes and children inside and use the center 

Thank you very much we cant reach the bank right now . Things are really horrible. We lost the connection with my father .

While we were walking outside we had to be each 5 people together and made picture for each one and then they arrested randomly or   

Send us to a place they decide.

MichaEL

11:38 25 Jan 25

Yesterday Mona informed me via WhatsApp that her family was forcibly evicted from their home in the Jenin Camp as part of the current IDF operation in Jenin. Mona's father is now missing. Her brother has been arrested. 

Today Mona informed me that she and her family are in a 'safer place' near the camp, so presumably outside the camp itself. Mona said that she herself is "very sick" but she didn't go into detail. Possibly from all the stress.

So it is uncertain whether Mona and her family will be able to return to the camp, let alone reopen her Children's Centre. I hope you can help her in some way to give her some hope of opening her Centre again, if not in Jenin then somewhere else in Palestine.

Mona Jalamnh

16:26 25^th January 2025

Dear Tony 

I got inflammation from the gaze when we were going out side the camp . The situation is more than awful . There are too much people couldn't go out with us cause the ways are horrible so we lost connection with the families who are inside . I am staying near by the camp and we are not allowed to move farther . We called the ambulance to move me to hospital but sadly they are not allowed to come to the place me and my family . I didn't expect  this . I will update you. We are here moving from home to other home with the children and women .who could leave with us

See my articles in Al Jazeera

Why did Israel raid and wreck a children’s centre in Jenin? – 5 July 2021

Palestinian children in the West Bank are also under attack – 14 Nov 2023

 

Today the situation in Jenin is horrendous as you can gauge from the articles below.

Hundreds flee Jenin amid Israel’s deepening West Bank crackdown

At least 10 killed, dozens wounded in Israeli attacks across Jenin

Security operations in Jenin put spotlight on Palestinian Authority

 

It is clear that with the advent of the Trump Presidency Netanyahu and his far-right government intend to proceed to not only the annexation of the West Bank but a policy of subjugation and ethnic cleansing. Settler terror, aided and abetted by the Israeli army, is the rule now in the West Bank. Trump has withdrawn even the pathetically puny sanctions on violent settlers that Biden imposed.

How this plays out with ‘normalisation’ with the Saudi regime is anyone’s guess but I suspect that in the end we can rely on Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman to sell the Palestinians out. The Saud’s have no loyalty except to the American dollar.

Jenin was first softened up by the Quisling Palestinian Authority forces, which are funded by the West. It is a disgrace that Britain’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign has refused so far to call them out for what they are. The Anti-Apartheid Movement in this country never failed to call out a similar force in South Africa under Apartheid, Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party which also attacked the liberation movement.

Although we are now in Phase 1 of the ceasefire it is highly unlikely that it will proceed to Phases 2 and 3. Netanyahu has already promised the fascist and ‘proud homophobe’ Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister and Gauleiter of the West Bank, and his Religious Zionism party, that war in Gaza will be resumed. Zionism is now off the leash and it is clear that by themselves the Palestinians are not strong enough to throw them back, despite the magnificent resistance in Gaza to date which has resulted in a situation whereby the resistance forces and Hamas are now estimated to be as strong today as they were 15 months ago.

Israel is the only state in the world not to have defined borders. We saw what that meant with the fall of Assad when Israel promptly invaded Syria, grabbing more land and bombing Syrian forces  All of which happened without one word of criticism from the West’s leaders who only wake up when, as happened on October 7th, the Palestinians strike back.

Vladimir Jabotinsky - founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement

But if it was Syria today then we can be sure that if Israel succeeds in ethnically cleansing the Palestinians of the West Bank or subduing them that the Jordanian border will be the next place where Israel will feel bound to exercise its ‘right to self-defence’. After all the original slogan of the Revisionist Zionists was ‘the West Bank is ours and the East Bank too.’

It is long overdue for the Arab working class and the Arab street to wake up and remove the corrupt and repressive leaders of their countries who have squandered their oil wealth propping up the economy of the United States and the West.

Tony Greenstein

Bristol University has just been found to have unfairly dismissed Professor David Miller - Yet Palestine Solidarity Campaign REFUSED to support him

We Need a New Palestine Solidarity Organisation since PSC is neither Democratic, Anti-Zionist or Politically Coherent

In 1982, just before Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Operation Peace for Galilee, a group of about 15 of us decided, at a meeting held at the University of London Union, to form Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

PSC then was anti-Zionist calling for a democratic, secular state in Palestine. This was a very different period from today. There was a radical Labour administration at the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone which gave us support.  There was the Miners’ Strike in 1984-5. PSC fitted into all of this activism.

The decay in PSC began with the Oslo Accords, the single greatest political defeat for the Palestinians since the Nakba. It led to the legitimisation of Zionism as the United Nations overturned Resolution 3379 of 10 November 1975, which stated that Zionism was a form of racism.

Caroline Lucas, Brighton's Green MP, signed a statement with Tory racists calling for David Miller to be Sacked

As a result of Oslo, on 16 November 1991 the UN passed Resolution 46/86 overturning Resolution 3379. In exchange for minor concessions the PLO agreed to recognise the Israeli state.

In 1993 PSC voted at an Emergency AGM to endorse the Oslo Accords believing that Israel was going to agree to a Palestinian state. As I predicted at the time, the Oslo Accords, with the Palestinian Authority as Israel’s military subcontractor, substituted the faces of Israeli police for Palestinian ones.

I resigned from PSC and it wasn’t until 2005 that I rejoined at the invitation of PSC’s then General Secretary, Betty Hunter.

On 6 April 2022 I resigned again when PSC removed opposition to Zionism from a new Constitution.  In August 2022 I posted an email exchange I had had with Ben Jamal, PSC’s Director concerning the reasons for my resignation.

I did not take this step lightly but I felt that to remain a member of an organisation which was politically bankrupt and which consistently tried to appease the British Establishment and the Zionists was pointless.

Imagine the Anti-Apartheid Movement confining itself to opposing human rights abuses by the South African state whilst taking no position on Apartheid itself. By refusing to oppose Zionism, PSC refuses to oppose the ideology of the Israeli state that lies at the heart of its Jewish supremacist policies and ethnic cleansing.

PSC’s Disastrous Failure to Oppose the ‘Anti-Semitism’ Attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Left

PSC’s most egregious error was to ignore the Zionist attacks on Corbyn and the newly resurgent Labour Left. Corbyn had been PSC’s main parliamentary supporter. The failure to stand up to those crying ‘anti-Semitism’ was a fatal error that led to a serious defeat for the whole Palestine solidarity movement. It stemmed from PSC’s desire to present itself to Britain’s pro-Zionist Establishment as a safe and trustworthy pair of hands.

In March 2016 I was singled out by the Jewish Labour Movement  and suspended by the Labour Party. I wrote to PSC Secretary Ben Sofa on 11 April 2016 asking why PSC had been silent over the ‘anti-Semitism’ attaacks. Ben responded on 20 April in what was a master class in complacency. He wrote that

‘I make no apology for the fact that we do not engage in every debate some would wish to involve us in.’

First I was suspended, then Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone and Marc Wadsworth. More were to follow as Corbyn buckled. Throughout this time PSC did absolutely nothing. As far as they were concerned what was happening in the Labour Party was a foreign country yet, as we have seen, the Zionists’ ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign spread into virtually every area of society.

PSC seemed oblivious to how false allegations of anti-Semitism were being used to undermine solidarity with the Palestinians. They preferred engaging in routine activities to taking on the Zionist enemy.

When the Zionists, who at first pretended that their opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ had nothing to do with Palestine, proposed that Labour adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which conflated anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, PSC continued to do nothing. Seven of the IHRA’s 11 ‘examples’ of anti-Semitism were to do with Israel not Jews. PSC refused to even support a picket of Labour’s National Executive in September 2019 which approved the IHRA.

As Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge wrote in Defining Anti-Semitism, the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’

PSC confined themselves to writing letters to local authorities urging them not to adopt the IHRA. PSC made a written submission to the Chakrabarti Inquiry and it helped commission an Opinion on the IHRA from Hugh Tomlinson QC and that was it.

PSC’s Alliance with the Trade Union Bureaucracy

PSC’s main achievement had been in the trade union movement. Most trade unions were affiliated to it. PSC could have used these affiliations to fight back against the adoption of the IHRA by increasing numbers of civil society groups at the behest of the Jewish Labour Movement and the Israeli Embassy funded Labour Friends of Israel. The trade unions controlled the Labour Party. PSC could have supported Corbyn against his Zionist detractors but they chose not to.

When PSC held a trade union conference in October 2019 I distributed leaflets opposing the IHRA at the conference.  Prior to this I had written, as had Brighton and Hove PSC, to Ben Sofa and Ben Jamal, PSC’s Director, asking that the IHRA be placed on the agenda of the conference. What was Jamal’s response? To throw me out of the conference for not having permission to distribute the leaflets! Suffice to say the IHRA was not on the agenda.

The IHRA and the Sacking of David Miller

At a time when the IHRA was being used to attack activists and academics, PSC sat on the sidelines. Over 150 local authorities had adopted the IHRA. Big Ride for Palestine was banned by Tower Hamlets council.

One particularly outrageous case was where the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism attempted to get Rebecca Gould, an academic at Bristol University sacked, because of an article ‘Beyond Anti-Semitism’ which she had written on how the Holocaust and ‘the spectre of anti-Semitism’ is used to suppress discussion of Palestinian oppression. Even Kenneth Stern, the person who drafted the IHRA, condemned this attack as ‘McCarthy like’ and ‘chilling’.

Also at Bristol University Professor David Miller was dismissed as a result of a Zionist witchhunt. PSC refused to support David because his research was into the Zionist lobby. Instead they put out an anodyne statement which implicitly criticised him:

When addressing such issues, it is crucial to apply depth, context, and clarity, and to avoid narratives that oversimplify the interlinks between groups which oppose actions in support of Palestinian rights, and Israeli state actors. Doing so obscures our understanding of the way political actors’ function. At worst, it can risk drawing on anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power.

Whilst some have criticised Professor Miller for lacking such depth and clarity in the way he has couched his remarks, those leading the call for Professor Miller to be sacked are straightforwardly asserting that to define Zionism as a movement and political ideology that is racist is inherently anti-Semitic.

After Miller’s dismissal PSC put out another statement which instead of condemning his dismissal called it ‘deeply concerning and sets a dangerous precedent’. It also failed to call for his reinstatement.

Today David Miller has been vindicated after an Employment Tribunal ruled that he had been unfairly dismissed and that anti-Zionism was a protected belief under the Equality Act 2000.

I have written asking Caroline Lucas to Apologise for Her Previous Support for David Miller's Dismissal

Internationally the Zionist campaign to target anti-Zionists via the IHRA was proceeding apace. The Bundestag in May 2019 condemned BDS as ‘anti-Semitic’. 

Why then did PSC confine its activities to making paper submissions and writing letters? The reason was PSC didn’t want to offend the trade union leaders who had given the IHRA their support and they didn’t want to jeopardise their affiliations by going to rank and file trade union members.

One of the most despicable of Starmer's supporters Lisa Nandy, a vociferous supporter of Israel's genocide in Gaza that PSC put on its platforms

Two States or a Unitary State? A Failure to Explain What PSC Wants to Achieve

PSC accepted that Israel was an Apartheid State but it refused to draw the obvious conclusions, namely that if Israel was an apartheid, state, then it had to go. It was afraid of saying that a Jewish state was an inherently racist state.

This was not a difficult thing to do. In January 2021 B’tselem, had not only declared that Israel was an apartheid state but that there was a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Jewish Supremacy was not a phrase PSC used.

This was followed up in April 2021 by Human Rights Watch which declared ‘A Threshold Crossed - Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.’  A year later Amnesty International produced a Report, ‘Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians’.

Declaring for a unitary, democratic secular state was not difficult, except that PSC, under the control of a tiny ex-Trotskyist group Socialist Action, alongside various remnants of what had been the International Marxist Group, were unwilling to do so. 

In 2009 I pointed to the role in PSC of the secretive Socialist Action  group which with Jon Lansman had colluded in the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt in the Labour Party which the Jewish Chronicle then cited.

Btselem, which started life as a liberal Zionist group, declared that

‘More than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jews and the other half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule.’

When Jenny Tonge Came Under Criticism From the Right-Wing Press PSC Abandoned Her

There is already a single state in Palestine but one in which half the population have no civil or political rights. PSC Executive’s pretext for refusing to declare in favour of a unitary state was that it was up to the Palestinians to decide this question but Palestinians are in no position to make any decision but it is clear that given the choice Palestinians want to live in the whole of historic Palestine.

An article for the Washington institute for Near Eastern Policy  explained that

the two-state solution (this) is no longer a popular position among Palestinians. Less than 40 percent of the Palestinian public—in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem—supports it over one-state alternatives. Support for a two-state solution has declined steadily since 2018.

Further, most Palestinians believe that a two-state solution is unlikely to emerge from the conflict. Instead, a majority of them say they prefer to reclaim all of historic Palestine, including the pre-1967 Israel. A one-state solution with Arabs and Jews holding equal rights comes in second. Similarly, recent polling from PCPSR finds support among Palestinians and Israeli Jews for a two-state solution has dropped to 43 percent and 42 percent, respectively.

But even if Palestinians did support a two-state solution then that would only be because a state in the whole of Palestine was deemed impossible to achieve. PSC is not addressing Palestinians but British people. When people ask what we would like to see we should be clear – one state with equal rights for Jews and Arabs. 

One state was the demand of the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. Only far-right White racists wanted a White state. The two-state solution in Palestine, which the West supports, is an apartheid neo-colonial solution. It leaves a racist Jewish state intact.

The real reason why PSC won’t support a one state solution is the trade unions. All Britain’s unions support 2 States. This allows them to support both the Palestinians and the Zionists. Not for the first time trade union leaders have faced both ways. On the one hand supporting Israel and on the other supporting its victims.

We saw this during the height of the false anti-Semitism campaign. Dave Prentis, the General Secretary of UNISON, pledged his support for the Palestinians and on the other hand wrote in the New Statesman ‘Why Labour must adopt the full IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.’

Why could Prentis and other union leaders do this?  Because historically the unions have been supporters of British imperialism. Instead of confronting unions with the choice of supporting an apartheid state or a democratic state, two states allows them to face both ways at the same time. They can support Israel (dressed up as opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’) and also support the Palestinians. It enables people like Prentis to work openly with the JLM.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign is a Human Rights NGO not a Political, Campaigning Organisation

Because PSC supports a two-state solution i.e. a ‘Jewish’ state and a Palestinian state, it sees its role as primarily one of opposing human rights abuses and in the current context Israel’s genocide. It allows the field to be clear for the Zionists and their ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign.

Since October 7 there have been a number of very large demonstrations in support of the Palestinians in Gaza. PSC has been one of 6 organisations - CND, Stop the War Coalition, Friends of Al Aqsa, the Palestinian Forum and the Muslim Association of Britain organising the demonstrations. By itself PSC is incapable, given its past record, of mobilising more than 5,000 people. In reality the demonstrations built themselves as people spontaneously joined them, appalled as they were by the continuing genocide in Gaza.

PSC’s Strategy of ‘Mainstreaming’

Emily Thornberry at Labour Friends of Israel dinner

The strategy of PSC is to mainstream the issue of Palestine. What this means is attempting to get the British state to adopt a pro-Palestinian position by winning over the Establishment. It is doomed to failure, as we have seen over Gaza, because it fails to take account of the fact that the British state is an imperialist state. The British Establishment is committed to its financial, economic and political interests world wide. Palestinians come very far down their list of priorities.

Anti-imperialism plays no part in PSC’s politics. That is why PSC has put on its platform vile Zionists like Emily Thornberry who declared at an LFI dinner that 'Israel is a Beacon of Freedom and Democracy'  before going on to say that supporters of the Palestinians (who she called ‘anti-Semites’) should be ‘drummed out of the party.’

I support the Palestinians that is enough and I support Hamas against the Israeli army https://t.co/ICv99vWQAW

— Tony Greenstein (@TonyGreenstein) November 15, 2023

 

Palestine Solidarity Campaign as a Wannabee Establishment Group

PSC and its Director Ben Jamal reacted with horror when Palestine Action, which was set up about 4 years ago, began a campaign of direct action against Elbit’s arms factories and those who were trading with it. They immediately attacked it, got the Boycott National Committee to do the same and issued bogus legal advice about the dangers of PSC branches supporting Palestine Action.

However the popularity of PA amongst PSC activists led PSC’s Executive to have to accept support for PA at the 2022 conference. However PSC have done zilch to implement that policy.

When Mick Napier and I were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 before Xmas Electronic Intifada contacted them. What was their reaction?  ‘No one is available to comment’. The British State is using ‘terrorism’ against Palestine solidarity activists and PSC has nothing to say about this attack on our freedom to speak out on Palestine.

This statement from the Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign is appalling.

And certainly one for the authorities.

It is right there on their website: https://t.co/PWZLSsKaeO

"The brave fighters gave us all a glimpse of a liberated Palestine"@PSCupdates @ManchesterPSC pic.twitter.com/SgSnlNeYab

— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) October 25, 2023

PSC Attacks Its Own Members

PSC took fright when the 7 October breakout from Gaza concentration camp happened. They demanded that Manchester PSC take down a post from its website supporting the breakout. Harry Cole, political editor of The Sun, called the Manchester post “appalling” and suggested it was a matter for the police.

Despite the branch complying with PSC’s demands, PSC decided to suspend the officers of Manchester PSC anyway. As a result Manchester PSC has formally cut ties with PSC nationally and is now an independent group.  See UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign punishes Manchester branch

PSC Refuses to Condemn the Palestinian Authority

Despite its role as Israel’s military subcontractor, arresting Palestinians and handing them over to Israel, PSC has refused to utter a word of criticism of this Quisling Authority. A third of the PA’s budget goes on security, the highest in the world. Its security forces operate on behalf of the Israeli military. The PA are used to suppress demonstrations and opposition by Palestinians to Israel’s occupation. Mahmoud Abbas, its notional ‘President’ considers cooperation between the Israeli state and the PA as ‘sacred.

The security services of the PA are a bunch of thugs who in August 2021 murdered Palestinian activist Nizar Banat. My resolution to PSC AGM condemning his murder was opposed by PSC Executive and the sheep present voted it down.

The invasion of Gaza by Israel and the resulting genocide have created a mass movement in support of the Palestinians.  That movement will not always be around although Israel’s image will have been irreparably damaged. It is important that the opportunity should be taken now, when most groups that have sprung up – from Parents for Palestine to School students groups – have no connection with PSC to take steps to form a genuine, anti-imperialist solidarity movement and not a glorified NGO. We have no time to lose.

Tony Greenstein