October 2023:
I was invited to be a participant in ‘When is Now’, an art archive project created by local artist, Sarah Holliday: https://sarahholliday.com/when-is-now/
Sarah is interested in individual ordinary people’s views and actions in the context of current events, recording them as they talk, creating their portrait from sketches and photos.
The morning we met, Friday 20th October 2023, the harrowing news was of Palestinian civilians suffering the cutting off of water, food, power and medical supplies, the destruction of hospitals, homes, churches and schools where they sought shelter from Israel’s relentless bombardment, and Israeli troops massed to invade Gaza in a devastating attack. On the West Bank armed settlers continue to drive people out of their villages and shoot more Palestinians with impunity.
These are the notes I made to take along with me:
I’m Frankie Green; I’m a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Like so many people and my fellow campaigners I’m distressed, fearful and angry about the horrific situation happening right now: atrocities and unbearable suffering.
I’m 75 next year, which feels like quite a long time. So, for slightly longer than my lifetime so far, Palestinians have been suffering from 75 years of al-Nakba, the catastrophe, when the state of Israel was violently imposed on historical Palestine.
The current heart-breaking and terrifying situation was and is both predictable and preventable. It is precisely what we have foreseen and dreaded and have been working for decades to try to prevent. We have been explaining that only addressing the root cause of the spiralling violence will allow any progress toward justice; without justice there can be no peace. At the root of this horrendous situation is the dispossession of the Palestinian people by the Nakba, from which stems the ongoing injustice and attritional bloodshed. And that of course has roots in the tangled legacy of the British empire, and the Balfour Declaration. Without understanding something of that history, it is hard to make sense of the nightmare. And the Nakba was not a one-off past event, it is ongoing.
As campaigners we have tried for so long to attempt to democratically influence the stance of the UK toward Palestine, to change the policies of politicians and mainstream media. We have been supporting Palestinians calling for an end to the brutal Israeli military occupation, apartheid, dispossession and forced exile of the Palestinian people, calling for the upholding of international law and human rights principles, lobbying governments to pressure Israel to stop ignoring UN resolutions, for the upholding of the Palestinian right to self-determination and freedom. We support non-violent boycotts similar to that against South African apartheid; the bringing of cases to the International Criminal Court; protests and spreading of information.
The Israeli–centric narrative dominates western media and policy, but in the last few years the truth has become more widely known. Predictably, states that collude with Israel are now clamping down on the dissent that has grown from this raising of consciousness; protecting their vested economic interests in weapons, surveillance and military cooperation with Israel. This country remains deeply implicated and continues to be complicit. E.g. bringing repressive legislation to clamp down on protest or ban local government bodies from upholding the Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign https://bdsmovement.net. Close to home, we have here in Kent a company in Whitstable that produces components for the Israeli military; an Israeli weapons factory in Sandwich; we hear booms across the water from Sheerness where drones and other military equipment are tested.
I became involved in this campaign about 25 years ago, after leaving my paid job and having spare time. I offered to volunteer in a minor way. But quickly I was swept up in helping to organise and became very involved. I went to a PSC AGM at SOAS in London where I had a moment of epiphany, at a workshop given by Dr Salman Abu-Sitta, researcher and historian. https://prc.org.uk/en/speaker/81/dr-salman-abu-sitta His maps showing the ruthless expulsion of Palestinians driven from their land and the hundreds of villages destroyed during the Nakba frankly blew my mind. Now known by that horrible phrase, ethnic ‘cleansing.’ I’d lived in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia when younger, so witnessed something of the harm that settler-colonialism wreaks upon indigenous populations, and knew of Native American and Irish suffering under colonialism, etc., and I had been aware of the 1967 occupation of Palestinian land, but like so many westerners was ignorant of more history. It’s embarrassing to admit, but then such ignorance is deliberately created.
Now I woke up very quickly. Information came thick and fast about the daily suffering of Palestinian people. It was scarcely credible at first, then it became normal: the sheer, gratuitous, sadistic cruelty meted out to the Palestinians. Israel was routinely bombing schools, ambulances, hospitals, homes, refugee camps; committing murder and massacres; shooting and beating kids; stealing more and more land; destroying farms, wells, olive groves; lobbing teargas and bullets into kindergartens – traumatising further generations thus guaranteeing new waves of fighting; building a wall through peoples’ land; besieging Gaza and using its trapped population for target practice; trying to erase Palestinian culture; refusing the right of refugees and the global Palestinian diaspora to return to the homeland they’d been driven from, as international law demands. Attacks on Israeli civilians were highlighted by media; Palestinian suffering rarely got a mention – it was like the dark matter of the oppressive space, unseen yet the causal explanation of what was visible.
It was obvious this ruthlessness was far beyond security or geo-political concerns, it was also some sort of ultra-macho nationalistic acting out of generational historical trauma. What decent person could fail to be appalled by the genocidal persecution of Jewish people? But why was it being taken out on Palestinian people?
Israeli politicians advocating forced expulsion and genocidal policies made clear the state’s intention to prevent Palestinian self-determination and to increase colonisation and control of all Palestinian land.
I didn’t imagine back then how much worse things could get, or anticipate this hellish scenario, with the carnage and atrocities now off the scale. Perhaps naïvely I hoped that things could be changed for the better, that reason and justice could prevail eventually. But while individual acts of terrorism are rightly condemned, state terrorism goes unchecked. The UK government, the USA, Europe, are giving a supportive green light to Israel, having always allowed it to act with impunity. Outrageously, political figures are condoning Israel’s war crimes of collective punishment, their cutting off water, food and power supplies to trapped Gazans – already suffering from an illegal 17 years siege -rather than calling for ceasefire, negotiation, the rule of law, humanitarian aid. It is left to civil society to advocate these things, including the Jewish groups worldwide currently protesting.
Being critical of the Israeli State has deliberately and destructively been conflated with being anti-Semitic. We have to reiterate that we are against the oppression of Palestinians not because it is perpetrated by a Jewish state, but because it is oppression.
One thing that hit me as I woke up back then at the turn of the century, angry at how we had all been lied to with cosy propaganda myths of kibbutzes, was how in political organising here in England we usually had the material means of resisting, i.e. in campaigns I’d been part of in the 60s 70s and 80s: Women’s Liberation Movement, the Gay Liberation Front, housing and squatting movements, anti-racist and anti-fascist action, while it was not always easy we could usually take for granted that there was a building to squat, a hall to rent, a flat or house to meet in; we may have been attacked by men or surveilled by undercover police but we were not having our homes bulldozed or NGO offices and community centers raided and destroyed.
Seeing Israel literally smashing up the physical infrastructure of Palestine clarified how without it we can make little progress – that’s the point of destroying it. Together with that destruction by Israeli military, and the increasing pressure and restricted lives women in Gaza spoke of as fundamentalism took hold, I felt committed to feminist solidarity. I am discouraged by how the women’s movement in the West in the main was little more concerned with the struggle of Palestinian women than Western society as a whole – it had swallowed the same narrative. If we wish to support other women’s quest for freedom we must also recognise how much harder that is made by occupation, apartheid laws, siege and bombardment. There needs to be understanding that Israel is a racist state, and one cannot be a Zionist and a feminist, for any feminism worth its salt must be anti-racist, and side with the oppressed not the oppressor.
From a feminist perspective it has seemed to me that campaigning for these goals is essential internationalist solidarity with Palestinian women and that’s what partly motivates me. The growth of patriarchal, religious fundamentalist movements worsens under Israeli control; the cynical political fact is that Israel originally funded Hamas to undermine the secular national liberation movement. The oppressive effects on women and LGBT people are obvious.
Under the boot of constant attack from Israeli military and illegal settlers who invade and rampage around the West Bank mercilessly shooting and beating civilians, destroying crops, burning and destroying olive trees, checkpoints, ethnic ‘cleansing,’ arbitrary arrests and imprisonment of children, women and men in vicious night raids on homes, and neighbourhood demolitions, Palestinian women suffer layers of oppression.
Although with a devastated infrastructure it is hard to organise, to struggle for women’s rights and liberation, inspiringly, many do.
The Palestinians have a guiding term, sumoud, meaning steadfastness, endurance. Tested to the limits at the moment, obviously. It’s a principle campaigners need to embody as well.
*
Subject: No safe spaces for women in Gaza: MPs must act
Date: 16 November 2023 at 14:06:56 GMT
To: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk
Dear Letters Editor,
Our MP for Canterbury and Whitstable, Rosie Duffield, has been quite active for some time in campaigns calling for the right to safe spaces for women, apparently to protect us from a putative threat from transgender women. A great deal of time appears to have gone into such actions: lunching with J K Rowling, speaking at the LGB Alliance conference, uniting with rightwing Tory Miriam Cates, e.g.
Perhaps we can deduce from this that she would consider herself a feminist.
Yet it is noticeable that she has not taken the opportunity to protect women currently suffering under one of the most horrific wars of our time. While condemning the appalling attack by Hamas, she has failed to vote for the desperately needed ceasefire which would save the lives of countless women and children from Israel’s retaliatory onslaught on Gaza. Seventy per cent of all those killed by Israel’s merciless regime are women and children. The atrocities of Israeli military assaults, raids, and bombings have slaughtered and injured thousands of them or left them dying in agony in childbirth under the rubble of their bombarded homes; hospitals, schools, churches, mosques and UN shelters are devastated; thousands of pregnant women have nowhere to deliver their babies; some are dying giving birth trapped under bombed buildings. They are being terrorised and traumatised, shot at, murdered and maimed while fleeing, watching their children die for lack of medical treatment and being starved. Ethnic cleansing is wiping out whole families. A Palestinian child is killed every ten minutes by Israel, perhaps by the very weapons produced for Israel here in Kent.
There is no safe space for women or anyone else dying and suffering in this horrific hellscape.
Palestinian women’s organisations have issued a desperate call to global women and women’s organisations to end these genocidal war crimes. It behoves female politicians and all people of conscience to respond by demanding an immediate end to this bloodshed. The issue of justice for Palestine represents, as Angela Davis has said, a ‘moral litmus test’ for the world. It is shameful that some women MPs professing to care about women’s rights and safety have not shown the moral courage or found the humanity to join their colleagues taking an ethical stand on this.
Concerned constituents deserve an explanation.
Yours sincerely, Frankie Green
Subject: Safe spaces for women
Date: 15 November 2023 at 14:10:23 GMT
To: rosie Duffield <enquiries@rosieduffieldmp.co.uk>
Cc: rosie.duffield.mp@parliament.uk
Dear Rosie Duffield M.P.,
I have not received from you any reply to my most recent letters (other than an automated response on 26 October) requesting you support all moves calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the genocidal massacres of Palestinian people by Israel, including such measures as signing EDMs or using your vote in parliament.
You have been quite active for some time in campaigns calling for safe spaces for women, apparently to protect us from a putative threat from transgender women. A great deal of time and effort has gone into such campaigns. I deduce from this that you would consider yourself a feminist.
I am therefore, as a constituent, requesting that you inform me as to exactly what action you are taking to protect the women of Gaza and the West Bank from the atrocities of Israeli military assaults, raids, and bombings that have slaughtered thousands of them or left them dying in agony and in childbirth under the rubble of destroyed homes and shelters. There is no safe space for women or anyone else dying and suffering in this horrific hellscape. 70 per cent of all those killed are women and children. Palestinian women living in this country and all in forced exile are grieving the loss of many members of their families.
Earlier this month women’s organisations and trade unionists, (General Union for Palestinian Women, Palestinian Federation of Women Action Committees, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, Mothers school society, Women’s collection for justice and equality, “ERADA”, Women Struggle Block, Al- Najdeh Social Association for Palestinian Women’s Development, Women’s Campaign for Boycotting Israeli Goods, Roles for Social Change Association “ADWAR”, The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy MIFTAH, Association of Women’s Action, Al- Najdeh Social Association for Palestinian Women’s Development, the Association of Women’s Actions) put out a call from which I quote:
‘Palestinian women’s movements have historically been central to the struggles against oppression, discrimination, colonialism and militarism. In the same spirit, and in response to Israel’s unfolding genocide in Gaza, we, women’s unions and grassroots movements representing Palestinian women inside historic Palestine and in exile, call on women and women’s organizations worldwide to speak up and rise up, to support our struggle to end this genocide.
… An open-air prison for over 16 years, Israel has in the last few weeks indiscriminately carpet bombed entire civilian neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, churches and mosques; ethnically cleansed 1.5 million people; and cut off water, food, fuel and medical supplies, turning Gaza into what a former UN official calls, the “world’s largest open-air death camp.”
… Palestinian women have been struggling for decades against the intersection of national, social and economic oppressions, calling out the inherent patriarchal core of Israel’s regime of oppression.’
Their demands which they ask us to support:
‘Implement an immediate ceasefire and ensure unhindered life-saving aid supply to Gaza
Reject any forced transfer of population
Ensure UN protection for Palestinians trapped under Israeli siege in Gaza
Impose a comprehensive military-security embargo on Israel as well as other sanctions to end their own complicity.
Demand that the ICC investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the crime of genocide and apartheid, perpetrated by Israel.’
I do not know how many more women have been brutally slaughtered since I began writing to you. I have heard that a Palestinian child is killed very ten minutes by Israel. To kill the children is of course to kill the future, and that is what Israel, in its state terrorism, cynically knows. Angela Davis has said that the issue of justice for Palestine represents ‘a moral litmus test for the world.’ In parallel, I suggest, for the feminist and women’s movements of the world and our allies, this is a litmus test of our internationalist solidarity and commitment. An opportunity to look beyond the narrow horizons of Western preoccupations to actually stand with women in the quest for liberation from all forms of oppression, rather than the vested interests protected by dishonest official narratives. It would be a positive step if female MPs professing to care about women’s rights and safety at the very least joined those backing the call for ceasefire now.
*
From: Frankie Green
Subject: Re: URGENT: Crisis in Gaza (Case Ref: RD52950)
Date: 26 October 2023
To: Rosie Duffield Dear Rosie Duffield M.P.,
In your 23rd October response to my letter of 13th October, you close by saying that if ‘there is anything further I can do for you, please do get back in touch.’ I am therefore doing so, in the hope you can do something further for me. Firstly, I request as a matter of urgency, if you are sincere in the “belief that the international community must work to finally secure peace in the region,” that you join your parliamentary colleagues who have signed EDM 1685, on protecting civilians and Gaza and Israel, calling for de-escalation and cessation of hostilities. (Ideally this would have covered the West Bank also, where Palestinians are being attacked, killed and incarcerated by Israeli military and settlers.) This would be an honourable step to take given the overall failure of political parties to call for a ceasefire and the upholding of international law. Additionally, I would be grateful if you would explain your apparent failure to express any understanding of the fact that unless the roots of the current horrendous situation, from which stem all the violence, atrocities and suffering, are dealt with, there can be no resolution of this terrible crisis. Without real justice there can be no peace. Without acknowledgement of the 75 year long dispossession and occupation of the Palestinian people – or indeed the events leading to that catastrophe – it is impossible to understand the atrocities of today. You must be aware of this, as the comments made on Tuesday to that effect by UN Secretary General António Guterres have been widely reported, and misrepresented. Campaigners have been predicting and trying to prevent exactly such atrocities for decades – they were predictable and preventable. It ill behoves politicians to continue to ignore the causes and ramifications of the injustices wrought by violent settler colonialism. I note your letter chooses to focus on Hamas, which you mention twenty times. Hezbollah you reference twice. ‘Palestinian’ gets three mentions; ‘Gaza’ twelve; ‘Palestine’ not a single one. ‘Israel’ gets nineteen mentions. ‘Israeli’ villages and kibbutzim and moshavim are referred to, several by name; no Palestinian towns under attack are named. The words ‘occupation’ and ‘siege’ are glaringly absent. You refer to Hamas as being fanatically committed to the extermination of the Jewish people but make no mention of the ethnic cleansing and threat of genocide the Palestinian people face. You use the term ‘terror’ six times, but do not refer to Israeli state terrorism. For what is it raining down upon millions of people, an unarmed civilian population besieged in Gaza, but sheer terror? As I write the figure of those massacred is rising above seven thousand. Your party line, in concert with other western states, repeats ad nauseam the usual mantra. But Israel is not “defending” itself, it is “defending its colonial project, continuing a 75 year policy of occupation and ethnic cleansing aimed at forcing Palestinians to abandon their land”, as Diana Buttu, international law scholar and former negotiator, states. Your letter is replete with misleading suggestions, such as “Hamas has instructed its citizens to remain in their homes despite being encouraged to evacuate by Israel.”This is risible. As you must be aware, desperate Palestinians who fled in accordance with this cynical instruction have been bombed and slaughtered by Israel as they travelled to the south, where those that survive remain under relentless Israeli attack, trapped, starving and unable to leave. The systematic cruelty and enormity of current Israeliwar crimes is off the scale.”I wonder, if Gaza is wiped off the face of the earth, whether our politicians will look back and reflect … they should be ashamed of their cowardice, knowing that others will pay the price for the wear crimes they refuse to oppose.” These are the words of Jeremy Corbyn M.P., whom you took every opportunity to traduce during his leadership, in accordance with your friends in the ‘Jewish Labour Movement’ and Labour Friends of Israel. As your letter rightly says, there is an appalling amount of “dis- and mis-information surrounding circumstances on the ground.” It is therefore essential to speak truthfully, while working for an end to Israel’s impunity for war crimes, its devastating bombardments, invasions, apartheid regime and lawless disregard for human rights and the sanctity of life.
*
2016: Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival
To: Regional Secretary, South West TUC; cc Morning Star
Thank you for all your work organising this year’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival – it gave people the inspiration we need to carry on defending our rights.
It is axiomatic that racism has no place in Trade Unionism, and that racists have no place in such events. You will have received many expressions of protest from people shocked to find a zionist stall in the Martyrs’ Tent (with banners reading ‘Bournemouth Action for Israel’ and ‘Trade Union Friends of Israel’) and I hope you will give thought to us and heed our voices. We all – organisers and attendees – have a responsibility of solidarity with oppressed peoples everywhere as part of our internationalism. During the apartheid South African regime I do not recall seeing supporters of white supremacy presenting themselves as ‘TU friends of SA’ – it would have been as risible as the situation we were appalled by at Tolpuddle. To cite the principle of freedom of speech as justification is entirely misleading. It is matter of pride that Trade Unionists here and around the world have aligned with their colleagues in Palestine against the genocidal actions of Israel, a racist state, and a matter of shame that its supporters were allowed a presence at a festival dedicated to human rights and justice.
Furthermore, it is imperative that Palestinians, people of colour or anyone who may be subjected to racism who participates in TUC events such as Tolpuddle can attend confident that their right to be free from persecution will be upheld by organisers and comrades. Obviously this cannot be ensured if zionist groups attend. Is this not a space where progressive people of all ages, backgrounds, genders and ethnicities can come together in common cause knowing we are with others committed to liberation? It was disgusting that a South African woman who has experienced apartheid was subjected to racist harassment by one of the people from the zionist group, who asserted that ‘Palestinians breed too much’ (apropos of the children slaughtered by Israel in its latest assault on Gaza) and accused people fundraising for Medical Aid for Palestinians of collecting money for weapons!
As the South African sister said, quoting Mandela: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” It would be disappointing if some within progressive movements have not yet understood this, but is heartening that public awareness of the truth about Palestine has increased to the point that most people knew that this group’s attendance at Tolpuddle was unacceptable and challenged the organisers for allowing it.
Setting themselves up to be opposed and subsequently claiming victimhood is a time-worn tactic for Israel’s supporters, who clearly have no concern for justice and no place at Tolpuddle. I trust this situation will not recur in future years.
Thank you for your time.
Solidarity, Frankie Green
*
Through involvement with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign I have met a lot of inspirational people, both Palestinians and their allies in their quest for justice and self-determination, from whom I’ve learnt a lot. One of these was the late Hanna Braun. Here are two pieces I wrote about her for the PSC journal Palestine News, a review of her autobiography, Weeds Don’t Perish, and an obituary, below.
Hanna Braun 1927–2011
Tributes have been paid worldwide to Hanna, who died just weeks after publishing her autobiography, Weeds Don’t Perish: Memoirs of a Defiant Old Woman(reviewed in autumn’s Palestine News.) This testimony to the power of the awakened human conscience, chronicling a life committed to anti-racist education and campaigning, is a must-read. The book’s launch at the Tottenham Palestine Literature Festival was introduced by Ghada Karmi, who calls Hanna ‘an inspiration to both Palestinians and Jews. Her courage and outspokenness as an anti-Zionist campaigner should be a model especially for all those Israelis and Jews afraid to take a stand against the oppression of their state. She was unique, irreplaceable.’
Taken to Palestine in 1937, Hanna participated in Israel’s creation before becoming ‘a true friend of the Palestinian people,’ as Reem Kelani says. [http://www.reemkelani.com] ‘By her presence, as a survivor of the Holocaust in which most of her relatives perished, a former member of the Haganah and an ex-Israeli, Hanna reminded us that ours is a struggle against injustice in its many forms. She lost so much in Germany, the land of her birth, and yet eschewed the Zionists’ vision of a future built at the expense of another people. Rare in this life are people of such honour and determination as Hanna.’
A tireless activist, Hanna played a major role in PSC, co-founding Coventry’s branch in 1984 and organising, writing, speaking and demonstrating for decades. Sarah Irving writes of ‘the privilege’ of working with this ‘amazing’ woman in 2001’s ISM West Bank visit. ‘Then in her mid-70s, Hanna did a fantastic job of diverting Israeli soldiers trying to harass Palestinian villagers; they never seemed to know quite what to do with this tidy little woman who could have been their grandmother.’
Hanna is hugely missed, for her political passion, humour and zest, and as a beloved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. At her funeral her daughters honoured the complexity of their mother’s difficult, fractured life as well as her steadfastness, affirming that ‘the world is a very different place because Mum lived in it, spoke of her life, reached out to people, charmed, harried and hassled people and just kept going.’ As her friend Gaby Forrell wrote, ‘not everyone is anti-everything that is morally incorrect: racism, class, homophobia, xenophobia. But Hanna was.’ This defiant spirit lives on wherever people strive for justice, equality and peace.
Frankie Green 2012
Remembering Hanna: a few words on behalf of SWAZO – an informal tribute for her memorial gathering at Conway Hall, March 2012.
I first met Hanna at meetings and demonstrations as the second intifada was getting underway. I had just woken up to the true situation of the plight of the Palestinians. One day I was chatting to her at a PSC rally outside Downing Street and naively asked her if she was going to join one of the new Jewish groups starting up. She snorted and laughed uproariously. “Why would I do that? Might as well join a group of short women for justice for Palestine!’ Thus was born the little-known organisation, SWAZO.
Short Women Against Zionist Oppression was organised, like many revolutionary movements, on the basis of a tightly-knit cell – in our case, of two members. Our constitution committed us to avoiding sectarianism, as a split in the group would have left each of us without anyone else to talk to. Voting was always unanimous; we worked on consensus which, as some of you may agree, is generally more successful the fewer people involved. We were feminists and non-hierarchical, and in a respectful nod to the Zapatistas, each designated by the snappy title co-sub-commandante. We did not claim to speak for all short women, and having a mother who was a short woman was not enough to guarantee membership, the criterion for which was to be measured up by standing back-to-back with Hanna – to be a hair’s-breadth taller disqualified you. A couple of men complaining of discrimination were considered for membership, though they quailed when considering the transformation required.
This silly running joke between us baffled and no doubt annoyed many people over the years. However, I wanted to mention it today not just to illustrate Hanna’s sense of humour but because the reality behind the spoof was serious, the principles Hanna held dear, which she embodied and which were behind her retort to me that day in Whitehall. Hanna’s anti-zionism was part of her passionately felt anti-racism. While not denying the value of Jewish people repudiating Israel’s claim to represent all Jews, she firmly rebutted one of zionism’s basic tenets: that simply by dint of being born Jewish she had any particular right to a position regarding the land of historical Palestine, let alone to live there, or the idea that her opinion held a particular weight. She loved Palestine because she fell in love with the land when it was her home, not because she thought it was a homeland for Jewish people. Far from it. She whole- heartedly upheld the right of return for all Palestinians who had been driven out by the Nakba and their descendants. She opposed Israeli occupation and apartheid as a human being committed to human rights, who chose the values of loyalty to a common humanity over ethnic or national identity.
By the time I met her, she told me the days of thinking Israel had originally had some values that could be redeemed, that the state had somehow lost its way, were long behind her. She had no illusions whatsoever, but she always had hope in the quest for freedom. I believe the core of her anti-racism was a rejection of essentialism: that pernicious notion that groups of human beings are somehow intrinsically different from one another, that another is The Other. I think Hanna was for many people a symbol of optimism because she exemplified the possibility of personal evolution, that the values we choose and make are what count; our identities being not given at birth but created in our lives, and Hanna had a lifetime of working for liberation.
SWAZO was light on ideology and strong on principles, and followed Hanna’s perception of the unfairness of a two-state so-called solution – she announced loudly once she thought the name of the place was less important than the establishment of democracy and equality for all its citizens: ‘why not have one country and call it Pisrael?’
Many people around the world have paid tribute to Hanna – it seems she had, as was said of Edward Said, just a few thousand closest friends . Like everyone else, I consider it an honour to have known and learnt from her. Although SWAZO is now disbanded, I know Hanna’s spirit will live on whenever defiant old women meet to hatch plots and laugh in the face of adversity, and wherever people of all ages, genders and backgrounds come together in human solidarity in the cause of justice.
Frankie Green
From: Frankie Green
Subject: “first Jewish Ukrainian refugees arrive in Israel” 10 March 2022
Date: 10 March 2022 at 13:11:57 GMT
To: guardian.letters@theguardian.com
Dear Guardian Letters Editor,
Israel’s ‘law of return’ is not, as the Guardian claims when reporting on that state’s intention to take in thousands of Jewish people fleeing Ukraine (“first Jewish Ukrainian refugees arrive in Israel,’ 10 March), simply ‘reviled by Palestinians.’ It is a policy which contravenes international law and UN resolutions whereby people displaced by war have an inalienable right to return to their homes and land. The refusal to adhere to this principle after forcing the indigenous people of Palestine into exile when Israel was created, and the ongoing exclusion of those people and their descendants in the global diaspora, was and remains a flagrant and cruel denial of human rights and a clear perpetuation of a state of apartheid. Decent people worldwide are revulsed by such injustice, and see that the double standards at work can only be rightly described as racist.
Yours sincerely, Frankie Green
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Campaign
An address to Canterbury City Council Executive meeting, 21/6/12
Ladies and gentlemen,
Developments since the last full council meeting make it necessary to respond to the leader’s statement made then. Francis Maude has made it clear councils can reject companies for ‘grave misconduct;’ Veolia executive Robert Hunt confirmed Veolia is a single entity; solid legal opinion calls into question the validity of legal advice given to the council. The crisis continues in Israeli-occupied Palestine as armed settlers rampage and kill with impunity. This demands urgent divestment by complicit companies and action by public bodies.
After Monday’s murders of Hebron civilians by settlers Dr Hanan Ashrawi said “the current racist formation of the Israeli government, Knesset and military granted settlers a green light to conduct organized crime, and to directly target unarmed Palestinian people” and the “shameful silence of the International Community” … “grants the settlers amnesty, and encourages them to escalate their assaults.” This week Israeli settler militants invaded farmland, raided and set fire to crops, a settler ran over a 13 year old (hospitalized), villages were invaded in the middle of the night, homes raided, goods stolen, and settlers drove 3 cars deliberately into a funeral procession. People in Hebron were stoned by settlers and shot at by Israeli soldiers. These things happen every day and Veolia facilitates them, by servicing settlers and the occupying military. If this country was invaded and occupied by a foreign military would we not hope people worldwide might help?
The more we research Veolia’s claims, the more unreliable they appear. The company ostensibly divests from its most notorious ventures but tenders for contracts servicing illegal army bases in the Jordan Valley. Mr Hunt claims the company ‘sold’ Tovlan landfill site. In fact it’s transferred to a settler organization while Veolia retains a permanent managerial role. He confirmed that landfill waste is transported from inside Israel, breaching Geneva Conventions. The company continues to profit from Tovlan which is still registered in Israel as belonging to Veolia.
Mr Hunt’s claim that Veolia’s projects contribute to a unifying infrastructure – under apartheid conditions?! – is the height of hypocrisy. They never once consulted the Palestinian Authority who twice objected to the Jerusalem Light Railway [in 2001 and 2007.] By making a contract with the occupier, Veolia helped sabotage the Oslo Accords!
Mr Hunt claimed Veolia would withdraw immediately if it was found that the company acted illegally. Yet learned opinion confirmed that the light rail project was illegal. The presumption of illegality could only be reversed if Palestinians sanctioned the rail. A Paris court case Mr Hunt cited brought by Palestinians failed only on a technicality [as only signatories to the Geneva Conventions were eligible to bring such cases in France.] Mr Hunt covered up the fact that the court was unable to consider the substantive matter of whether Veolia’s involvement was illegal per se.
When you hear President Obama and William Hague deploring the expansion of illegal settlements in violation of international law, remember Veolia is complicit in servicing that occupation! Is Canterbury not part of the UK, a country with responsibilities as a High Contracting party to the Geneva Conventions? Is Canterbury not part of the same UK that supported a 2010 UN Resolution [A/HRC/RES/13/7 April 2010], declaring the Light Railway illegal?
Let us not forget: economic sanctions can help the fight against tyranny! Councillors, I believe if you consult your constituents you’ll find many who, as well as caring about local issues, do not feel separate from the rest of the human race! They have a profound wish to help others when hearing bad news but events seem too far away. Here, now, is a chance to do something that will actually help reduce human suffering and injustice! Why would anyone not wish to take this opportunity, or find specious reasons to avoid acting in accordance with ethical principles?
Photo Richard Stainton
Against Pinkwashing
I have been involved in anti-pinkwashing campaigning against Israeli attempts to hijack our cause, and in solidarity with Palestinian lgbt activists. In 2002 I helped draft the letter sent out to the media, as below, which several long-term activists including original GLF members signed, explaining the situation:
‘Dear Editor,
London will host this summer’s WorldPride Festival, four decades on from the Gay Liberation Front’s first Gay Pride events. Simultaneous and overlapping with the civil rights, anti-apartheid and Women’s Liberation movements, GLF also drew inspiration from the national liberation struggles of people freeing themselves from colonialism. The LGBT rights we now celebrate originate in the groundbreaking work of that era.
How ironic it would be if, in an attempt to gain a veneer of respectability by promoting itself as a liberal, tolerant haven for gay people and a prime gay holiday destination, an oppressive regime which routinely violates human rights, practises institutional racism and dispossesses an indigenous population tried to co-opt that progress.
As long-term advocates of LGBT and women’s rights, some of whom created the first Gay Pride events, we wish to express our concern at the cynical hijacking of those rights by Israel’s ‘pinkwashing’ PR campaign. The specious freedoms enjoyed by some Israeli gay people and visitors to Tel Aviv’s nightclubs bear no more relation to real equality than did the privileges accorded white people during South African apartheid. Pinkwashing tries to divert attention from the untold suffering caused by Israel’s subjection of the Palestinians to siege, bombardment, military occupation, ethnic cleansing, land theft, settler violence, killings (180 in 2011 alone), imprisonment, forced exile, the crushing of economic, educational and social infrastructure and denial of legitimate aspirations to self-determination.
We write in solidarity with Palestinian LGBT and civil society organisations who initiated the burgeoning global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to bring pressure to bear upon Israel until it complies with international law, and endorse their insistence on the universality of human rights. We invite all who share our abhorrence of Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians to observe the boycott of Israeli tourism and goods, and hope that LGBT people encountering pinkwashing will take pride in remembering the roots of our campaigning history and support the Palestinian quest for justice.’
Some contributions to Palestine News, PSC’s magazine – articles, interviews, book reviews:
Non Violent Action/Peace News:
Letters to or in Guardian and other media and to politicians:
See more at https://mondoweiss.net/2017/03/zionism-movement-justice/
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In 2002 the journal Feminista published an article by Andrea Dworkin which distressed and angered many women, including myself and friends who sent feedback such as that posted here:
Another article, more info: https://liberationnews.org/04-09-01-women-struggle-palestinian-natio-html/
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Frankie Green 