Living without your name

From Neve Gordon:

My friend’s wife was accepted to a PhD program at McGill University in Montreal. They decided to move to Canada with their two children at about the same time that I was offered a fellowship at Princeton and decided to move with my family to New Jersey for a year. Hoping to rent out our apartments while we’re away, we both posted ads on the most popular website in Israel. I received about five calls a day and found a tenant within a couple of weeks. My friend received only three calls in four weeks, and none of the people who called came to look at his flat.

A few days ago he removed his ad from the website and posted a new one, only this time he changed his name from Hussein to Rami. Rami is an ethnically indeterminate name – it can be either Jewish or Palestinian – but there are no Jews called Hussein. Within three days ‘Rami’ received about thirty phone calls, and six people came to look at the flat. He expects to sign a lease with one of them tomorrow. In Israel, if you are a Palestinian and want to rent a flat, at times, to misquote Arthur Miller, you have to live without your name.
First published in London Review of Books

Israel: how racist laws imprison a nation

"Like apartheid in South Africa, the one practised against Palestinian citizens inside Israel and Palestinian non-citizens outside the Israeli borders, in the occupied territories of Palestine, is legal and supported by laws." >> MORE

Israeli Nazis

"The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors from World War II are using tactics against the Palestinians that were used against their ancestors by Nazi Germany..."

Zionist "left" and "right": a tactical difference over a secondary matter

From Henry Lowi:

This article, by Zeev Sternhell, a respected Israeli professor, exemplifies the difference between the Zionist “left” and the Zionist right as a tactical difference over a secondary matter. Not a difference over values. The Zionist right denies the rights of the people of Palestine by military domination of the country, enforcing the Nakba, and enacting apartheid-like legislation. The Zionist “left” -- that led the Nakba and the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights -- now says that, to preserve the “Jewish state”, what is required is an international border separating Jews and Arabs.

So, those are the options offered by Zionism: apartheid legislation within one state, or apartheid partition into two states. In both cases, Palestine refugees are not welcome home. In both cases, no effect is given to the values of equality, democracy or human rights. Is it any wonder that the Israeli “peace movement” cannot gather any steam?! It has nothing to offer!

As you read the article, pay attention to Prof. Sternhell's reference to the "number of marriages between Israeli citizens and foreigners" as a negative factor. What Neanderthalism!

And "the idea of special legislation for Arab Israelis would not have even come up" because ... there would have been no "Arab Israelis". They would all have been ethnically cleansed! Like dust!

This is the self-described voice of "sanity" in Israeli society. This is the current that claims to be in sync with enlightened universal norms. These are the people for whom "a common political framework for everyone living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, thus creating a multinational, multicultural, androgynous entity, turning Zionism into a passing episode" is the worst nightmare!

Oh, the longing for the ethnically homogeneous ghetto, crucible of backwardness, inbreeding and oppression!

These are the people who say: "Don't impose an international boycott on Israeli academic and cultural institutions because WE, YOUR ALLIES, will be its first victims!"

Well, actually, our allies are the workers, the farmers and the refugees, who have nothing to lose but their chains, and who have a world to win.

"Sleeping with the enemy" and "enforced separation between Jews and Palestinians"

From Henry Lowi:

The widely accepted myth is that the State of Israel is a Western-style democracy whose bloodthirsty neighbours want to destroy. Even critics of Israeli policies echo that myth, pretending that Israel is, or was, just fine, and that only some undesirable features need to be reformed.

Here are reports of Israeli state-sponsored racist incitement. Not spontaneous grassroots bigotry. Racist incitement and segregation sponsored by the Kiryat Gat municipality, its Welfare department, the Ministry of Education public schools, and the Israel Police.

I don’t know about you, but the “Sleeping with the Enemy” programme reminds me not only of a Hollywood movie. It reminds me of a programme of a long-gone militarist genocidal regime that targeted Jews as “the enemy”.

Kiryat Gat tells its school girls: No romancing with Bedouin

Kiryat Gat teens warned against dating Bedouins

Israel tells schoolgirls: Don't bed the Bedouins

Culture of fear
“In the vacuum left by enforced separation between Jews and Palestinians, rampant fabrication runs riot, and fiction becomes truth in the minds of the masses.”

An open letter to Nadine Gordimer

from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine

Dear Nadine Gordimer,

Many of us who paid attention to, and valued, your writing during the dark days of apartheid are dismayed to see that you are participating in the International Writers' Festival in Israel in May.

It can only send a dispiriting message to the Palestinians that a writer of your moral standing and international renown is prepared to appear in a city at least half of which is under illegal military occupation by a state founded on ethnic cleansing. ("Ethnic cleansing" isn't just our term – it's what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe says he has finally accepted as the most accurate description for what Israeli forces did to the Palestinians in 1948.)

Think of a Palestinian villager in the occupied West Bank – hemmed in by Israeli army roadblocks, cut off from her fields by the Wall, the water in her wells drained by a nearby settlement, some of her sons and daughters in prison without charge or trial, her other children unable to leave the village to go to school. There are hundreds of thousands like her. In this context, isn't it a contradiction to be sitting in occupied Jerusalem, discussing the morality and responsibility of "the writer" with Amos Oz?

We take it as given that you still believe everything you said during apartheid times about the responsibility of the writer not to ignore injustice, and about your hatred of racism. But how does your visit square with this? By taking part in an event substantially funded by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you will be lending credibility to the state that has for decades subjected Palestinian towns and villages to collective punishment, that boasts of its extrajudicial killings, that carpeted south Lebanon with cluster bombs in 2006 when the ceasefire had already been agreed (the list truly is endless).

In one of your essays you describe Professor John Dugard as a friend. You must know that in his capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, John Dugard unequivocally denounced the wrongs inflicted on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. His doing so has not brought Palestinian suffering to an end. But he did, to his great credit, unmask the systematic cruelty of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.

The whole of Palestinian civil society has called for a cultural boycott of Israel. Please don't give the Israeli establishment, the Israeli press, the whole Israeli PR machine, the prize they want – your apparent condoning of their policies.

Your reputation as a figure of conscience is world-wide.

Your withdrawal from the May event will have a great impact on an Israeli public largely in denial about the cruelties it perpetrates. Please don't go.

Yours sincerely,
Professor Hilary Rose
Professor Steven Rose
Professor Jonathan Rosenhead

British Committee for the Universities of Palestine
BM BRICUP
London WC1N 3XX

Rabbi calls for hanging Arab children from trees

Palestinian Information Center

28 March 2008

Nazareth (PIC) -- The chief Rabbi of Safad, Shmuel Eliyahu, urged the Zionist state to exact "a horrible revenge" on Palestinians in retaliation for their attacks to serve as a deterrent.

In an article published in the newsletter "Eretz Yisrael Shelanu", which will be distributed to Synagogues this weekend, Eliyahu criticises the leaders of the Zionist state for not taking or allowing revenge against the family of Alaa Abu Dheim who carried out the Merkaz Harav attack in Jerusalem.

"A state that really respects the lives of its citizens would have hanged the 10 sons of the terrorist on a tree 50 amot [25 meters] tall, so that others would see it and be afraid," wrote Eliahu, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Eliahu called on the Zionist state to take "horrible revenge" for the attack at the Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

"We have to exact a revenge that is so painful, it will burn into the souls of all our enemies the message that Jewish blood is more valuable than gold and platinum."

On Wednesday [26 March], Mossawa Center, an Arab human rights group, called on the Attorney General to take legal action against the rabbi for inciting racism and violence.

An olive tree for solidarity

Manchester students reaffirm commitment to Palestinian right to education

On 14 November 2007 the University of Manchester Student Union (UMSU) held a General Meeting with attendance of over 1000 students and strengthened their commitment to the Palestinians' right to education and their twinning with Al-Najah University with almost a two-thirds majority.

A motion called "Peace through Education" had been proposed which aimed at undermining the twinning of UMSU with Al-Najah. It gave the Palestinian university the ultimatum of signing a statement condemning terrorism within two months or the twinning would be abandoned.

It was a racist motion that caused vast indignation amongst the student population by stereotyping Palestinians as terrorists and accusing Al-Najah University of actively supporting terrorism. The writers of the motion cited an unreliable website as a resource which included many inaccuracies and racist quotes.

The movement against the motion involved a very wide layer of groups and societies from different backgrounds and interests, who were unified by the will to defeat the racist motion and support UMSU's stance on solidarity with Palestinian students under occupation. One student who attended the meeting said: "The motion shows that the racism against the Palestinians is one of the last forms of acceptable racism. If we had been twinned with a black university during apartheid in South Africa and they had been given them the ultimatum asking them to condemn gun crime there would have been international outrage, and rightly so."

With over 16500 students enrolled in its 19 faculties and two colleges, Al-Najah is one of the largest universities in Palestine. It is located in the city of Nablus, part of the territories that, according to the United Nations, the state of Israel has been illegally occupying since 1967. On 11 November, members of the Right to Education Campaign at Al-Najah University published a response to the motion in question - through it, they stated: "Neither the university nor its Student Council is a terrorist organization, and the implication that they are is insulting" and, further, "The motion 'Peace Through Education' is defamatory because it repeatedly implies that ANU and it's Student Council promotes, facilitates or has links with terrorism".

It is a fact that the Israeli occupation and the apartheid policing tactics that they uphold cause great suffering to the Palestinian people. Moreover, the Palestinian youth's basic human right to education has been systematically denied by the state of Israel: Universities have been shelled, broken into and forced to close for large periods of time - not to mention the very practical difficulties students must face when trying to pursue their degrees against the backdrop of a military occupation.

The motivation for our Union's twinning with Al-Najah University was based around the ideal of showing solidarity with fellow students enduring acute hardship in Palestine and helping to break the isolation imposed on the Palestinian people. Also it highlights the importance of a right to education globally, and how it should be fought for. These beliefs are something that is part UMSU's long history of internationalism and it's excellent commitment to supporting just causes all across the world.

The motion resolved to accept the invitation made by Al-Najah University for an olive tree from the university to be planted on campus at Manchester as a gesture of peace and as a symbol of life, and allow for a fortnightly article from Al-Najah University students to be printed in Student Direct, the students' official news paper.

The reaction from Al-Najah after the new amended motion was passed was very positive. A statement from them included, "we are very pleased that the amended motion was passed. The solidarity from Manchester Students Union is something we are glad to have. We hope that this will help us to get more attention to our right to an education".

The strengthening of the twinning in Manchester is part of a nationwide movement for solidarity with Palestinians students. Many universities in the UK are now twinned with Palestinian Universities and many others are in the process of finding a twin. A student from Leeds University who was involved with the campaign to get Leeds University twinned with Berzeit University said, "This is an exceptionally significant victory, and can only help other forms of solidarity with Palestinian."

Action Palestine

Israel builds new apartheid road

New Israeli highway separates Palestinians

By Steven Erlanger

JERUSALEM: Israel is constructing a road through the West Bank, east of Jerusalem, that will allow both Israelis and Palestinians to travel along it - separately.

There are two pairs of lanes, one for each tribe, separated by a tall wall of concrete patterned to look like Jerusalem stone, an effort at beautification, indicating that the road is meant to be permanent. The Israeli side has various exits. The Palestinian side has few.

The point of the road, according to those who planned it under the previous prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is to permit Israel to build more settlements around east Jerusalem, cutting the city off from the West Bank but allowing Palestinians to travel unimpeded north and south through Israeli-held land.

"The Americans demanded from Sharon contiguity for a Palestinian state," said Shaul Arieli, a reserve colonel in the Israeli Army who participated in the 2000 Camp David negotiations and specializes in maps.

"This road was Sharon's answer, to build a road for Palestinians between Ramallah and Bethlehem but not to Jerusalem," Arieli said. "This was how to connect the West Bank while keeping Jerusalem united and not giving Palestinians any blanket permission to enter east Jerusalem."

Sharon talked of "transportational contiguity" for Palestinians in a future Palestinian state, meaning that although Israeli settlements would jut into the area, Palestinian cars on the road would pass unimpeded through Israeli-controlled territory and even cross through areas enclosed by the Israeli separation barrier.

The vast majority of Palestinians, unlike Israeli settlers, will not be able to exit in areas surrounded by the barrier or enter Jerusalem, even the eastern part, which Israel seized in 1967.

The road bars such stops by having Palestinian traffic continue through underpasses and over bridges, while Israeli traffic will have interchanges allowing turns onto access roads. Palestinians with Israeli identity cards or special permits for Jerusalem will be able to use the Israeli side of the road.

The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has recently made conciliatory gestures to the Palestinians and says it wants to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state. But Olmert, like Sharon, has said that Israel intends to keep the land east of Jerusalem.

To Daniel Seidemann, a lawyer who advises Ir Amim, an Israeli advocacy group that works for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in Jerusalem, the road suggests an ominous map of the future, in which Israel keeps nearly all of east Jerusalem and a ring of Israeli settlements surrounding it, between largely Arab east Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, which would become part of a future Palestinian state.

In a final settlement, Israel is expected to offer the Palestinians land swaps elsewhere to compensate.

The road will allow Israeli settlers living in the northern West Bank, near Ramallah, to move quickly into Jerusalem, protected from the Palestinians who surround them. It also helps ensure that Maale Adumim, a suburban settlement of 32,000 east of Jerusalem, where most of its residents work, will remain under Israeli control, along with an empty area designated E1, between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, that Israel also intends to keep.

For the Palestinians, the road will connect the northern and southern parts of the West Bank. In a future that may have fewer checkpoints, they could travel directly from Ramallah north of Jerusalem to Bethlehem south of it, while being forced to bypass Maale Adumim and Jerusalem.

"To me, this road is a move to create borders, to change final status," Seidemann said. "It's to allow Maale Adumim and E1 into Jerusalem but be able to say, 'See, we're treating the Palestinians well - there's geographical contiguity.' "

Measure it yourself, he said. "The Palestinian road is 16 meters wide. The Israeli theory of a contiguous Palestinian state is 16 meters wide."

Khalil Tufakji, a top Palestinian geographer, said the road "is part of Sharon's plan: two states in one state, so the Israelis and the Palestinians each have their own roads." The Palestinians, Tufakji said, "will have no connection with the Israelis, but travel through tunnels and over bridges, while the Israelis will travel through Palestinian land without seeing an Arab."

In the end, he said, "there is no Palestinian state, even though the Israelis speak of one." Instead, he said, "there will be a settler state and a Palestinian built-up area, divided into three sectors, cut by fingers of Israeli settlement and connected only by narrow roads."

Asked for comment, David Baker, an Israeli government spokesman, said: "The security arrangements on these roads are in place to protect the citizens of Israel. And they are not connected to any other matter."

Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, cited the Bush administration's policy that Palestinians should be allowed to travel more easily through the West Bank "consistent with the need to maintain security."

Asked if this road predetermines final status, she said: "The U.S. government has encouraged the parties to avoid any actions that would predetermine permanent status," but said she was not authorized to comment more specifically.

Tufakji says he has become cynical about the way Israel builds for the future it defines, no matter what it promises Washington. He sees a West Bank divided into three parts by Israeli settlement blocs, the most important of which is Maale Adumim and E1, around the capital that both peoples claim.

"Israel is building the infrastructure to keep E1, to surround Jerusalem," he said. "They are working to have an area of minimum Palestinians and maximum Israelis."

Source: International Herald Tribune

Liquidation of Hamas or termination of the right of return

From Henry Lowi, Toronto, Canada:

There is renewed hype about a “peace process”, promoted by the Right Honourable Tony Blair and his friends and the media. The focus is on the exercise of authority of “President” Mahmoud Abbas over ever-smaller bits of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

No one is talking about the leaders of Palestinian political movements (notably Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat) who are held in Israeli prisons, together with 10,000 other Palestinian prisoners.

No one is talking about stopping the construction of the Wall (aka “security fence”) despite the fact that the World Court declared the Wall’s illegality and required its removal.

No one is talking about Israeli legislation that grants privileges to Jewish citizens, recognized as “racist” and “apartheid” by some well- intentioned and outspoken Israelis.

No one is talking about Israeli persecution of pro-democracy activists like former Member of the Knesset Dr Azmi Bishara and anti-nuclear activists like Mordechai Vanunu.

And no one is talking about nearly 5 million Palestine refugees, exiles, “present absentees”, and their descendants, whose rights are at the heart of the conflict, and without whom no “peace process” has any chance of success.

With this in mind I am RE-SENDING Adel Samara's February 2006 article on "Liquidation of Hamas or termination of the right of return".

Deir Yassin – from remembrance to resistance

By Paul Eisen*

In a recent piece on The Guardian - Comment is Free Tony Greenstein says that Deir Yassin Remembered is an anti-Semitic organization and, along with Roland Rance, Sue Blackwell and Les Levidow, he’s going to try to get the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to have nothing to do with us. Well, good luck to them, and if the PSC is foolish enough to bow to this kind of thing, then good luck to them too – they’re going to need it.

Deir Yassin Remembered is an international organization whose aim is to build a memorial to the victims of the Deir Yassin massacre of 9 April 1948. But the list of victims extends far beyond the 100 to 130 elderly men, women and children who died that day. It extends also to the over 750,000 Palestinians expelled in the concurrent Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine, to the over 500 Palestinian towns and villages destroyed or expropriated by the Jewish ethnic cleansers and now also to their descendants ‑ the now over six million dispossessed Palestinians living either as second-class citizens in Israel, in the towns, villages and refugee camps of post-1967 occupied Palestine, in refugee shanty-towns in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and finally in the many Palestinian communities-in-exile in practically every corner of the world. In short, Deir Yassin Remembered exists to build a memorial to all of Palestinian life and memory.

But Deir Yassin Remembered is not just about remembrance; Deir Yassin Remembered is also about resistance. Yes, there was a time when we spoke passionately about the proximity of Deir Yassin to the Jewish Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem and about the inextricably close and agonized relationship between Jewish suffering and the suffering inflicted by Jews on Palestinians. But not any more. There have been too many deaths, too many disappointments and now the nearness of Deir Yassin to Yad Vashem serves merely to underline the stark differences between abused and abuser ‑ and the continuation of the abuse.

But there's no smoke without fire. If Tony and his colleagues say that we are anti-Semites and the Palestinian solidarity movement should have nothing to do with us, there must be something in it – nobody, surely, nobody could dream up such a thing. Indeed, there is something in it. Tony's complaint rests on three matters: the inclusion of Israel Shamir in our Board of Advisers, a couple of articles written by myself, and a recent visit by Dan McGowan, the founder of DYR, to Ernst Zundel, who was sentenced to five years imprisonment in Germany for Holocaust denial.

To take these in turn: Israel Shamir is indeed on our board – he is one of 20 members of whom half are Jews, half non-Jews; half are men, half women. Shamir is an intellectual, a religious thinker and writer, and an outstanding and tireless supporter of Palestinian rights. He also has severe criticisms to make of the way Jews and Jewish organizations are currently behaving and have behaved in the past. Shamir has also proposed the existence of what he would term a Jewish "spirit" or "paradigm" (which, incidentally, is by no means confined only to those who identify themselves as Jewish) which, if unchecked and unbalanced, can lead to supremacism.

But Israel Shamir has never been guilty of violence nor has he ever advocated violence. He has never discriminated against anyone, nor has he ever advocated discriminating against anyone. Nor has he ever advocated denying anyone the right to free speech, or to a fair hearing. I like Shamir enormously, I find him stimulating and informative and always gentle in his manner and humane in his approach, and I agree with a lot, though not all, of what he says and writes. Shamir is in full agreement with the spirit and meaning of Deir Yassin, has contributed enormously to Deir Yassin Remembered and is an honoured member of the Deir Yassin Remembered Board of Advisers.

Tony also objects to DYR because I, one of its seven directors, wrote, in a personal capacity, two articles with which he disagrees. The first, "Jewish Power", examines Jewish identity and the complex relationship between Judaism, “Jewishness” and Zionism, and distinguishes between Judaism the religion and “Jewishness”, the more complex cultural and emotional identity. It also examines Jewish power, not only in its political manifestation but also, and more interestingly, its cultural, ideological/religious and emotional significance. Finally, it examines the degree to which Zionism, and therefore the abuse of Palestinians is a Jewish phenomenon and, if it is, asks why it is so hard to say so.

The Holocaust Wars was written in three sections. The first, titled “Scum", describes the struggle of Ernst Zundel, now sentenced to five years' imprisonment in Germany for Holocaust denial. This section attempts to contextualize and rehumanize Ernst Zundel and Holocaust revisionism. It also attempts to see the National Socialist regime through the eyes of the German people. In fact, what this part of the essay really tries to do is to see the world through the eyes of the “other” ‑ and for an obsessively curious self-identifying Jew such as myself, who could be more “other” than Ernst Zundel? The second section, "The War for the Truth," examined Holocaust Revisionism ‑ its scholarship and its struggle. Although I stopped short of coming out in definite agreement with revisionists, I did (and do) find their case compelling. The last section was called "The War for the Spirit" and was concerned with the ideological, spiritual and religious meaning of the Holocaust narrative and the use to which it has been put to enforce Jewish power. For me, this was the most important section of the essay.

Finally, Dan McGowan, the founder and US director of DYR, also in a personal capacity, visited Ernst Zundel in prison. Why he did this, what happened there and what he made of it is all is described most eloquently in his piece A Visit in Prison with Ernst Zundel ‑ a piece of writing which, for Tony, renders Dan and the organization he founded now beyond the pale.

But that’s not all; it gets worse – worse even than Tony knows because DYR does indeed include in its solidarity discourse a challenge to the notion of a non-religious Jewish specialness and its possible effects, when empowered, on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Is this racism? Not at all ‑ Jews are not a race so, strictly speaking, any anti-Jewishness cannot, by definition, be racist. Is this anti-Semitic? Maybe it is ‑ it all depends on what you mean by the term. Is it acceptable? Who knows? Let the debate begin.

But look, it really doesn’t matter what anything means or what is or is not acceptable. Tony and his colleagues will tell us what things mean and what we may or may find acceptable because Tony is an arch practitioner of that which he most denies - Jewish power. Does Jewish power exist? Of course it does. Who has not seen someone stand up in a solidarity meeting and begin with the words, “As a Jew...”? And who has not seen the meeting then fall reverently, even fearfully silent? And who, in the course of their solidarity activities, at one time or another has not felt the brunt of Jewish collective power? So, of course Jewish power exists. The question is how does it exist, to what extent and to what effect? Let the debate begin.

So on 10 March at the PSC Annual General Meeting Tony Greenstein, Roland Rance, Les Levidow and Sue Blackwell will propose, and may even pass, a motion which will urge the PSC to shun Deir Yassin Remembered. And their stated reasons are that one out of 20 DYR advisers and two out of seven DYR directors hold views with which Tony and his friends disagree. Why do they do this? Why do these largely Jewish activists see their personal struggle against a perceived anti-Semitism as so important that it overrides any other considerations, including the good work of Deir Yassin Remembered?

The answer is simple. Like so many Jewish activists, and particularly those who style themselves as “anti-Zionist”, Tony and his colleagues’ real priority, despite their protestations to the contrary, is defending Jews, mainly from what they see as anti-Semitism. Of course they care about other things too ‑ Palestinian liberation, civil rights. human rights, etc. etc. but when push comes to shove it is Jewish interests that they will ultimately defend. But why should this be a problem? Why should Jews and others not defend Jewish interests? The problem is twofold: First because not only do they prioritize Jewish interests but they also insist that everyone else must do the same. And they’re not afraid to enforce it either with the ever-present threat of being labeled an anti-Semite. The second reason why their defense of Jewish interests is a problem is that they won't admit that they are doing it and one reason why they won't admit they are doing it is because they don't really know that they are doing it. At least that is how it was. I now have a sneaking suspicion many of them are beginning to realize what they are doing and are now beginning to do it consciously. In effect, self-delusion is becoming conscious lying.

And why should the PSC, without a whimper, pass such a motion? The answer is again simple: Like all of us, they are terrified, terrified of Zionist power and the penalty of defying it – being branded an anti-Semite or, even worse, a Holocaust denier. And this is what this is really all about. Because the real reason for this motion is this: Tony Greenstein, Roland Rance and Les Levidow, three Jewish activists, plus Sue Blackwell their obligatory non-Jewish associate, want to make it clear who really runs the PSC, indeed who runs all Palestinian solidarity.

Deir Yassin Remembered does not “know” what is right for the Palestinian people. Only Palestinians can know that. Deir Yassin Remembered cannot free Palestine. Again, only Palestinians can and will do that. But Deir Yassin Remembered stands in unconditional solidarity with Palestinians and in unflinching opposition to those who oppress them and oppress so many others in the world.

Deir Yassin Remembered has advisers, directors, members and supporters with very many different ideas and beliefs – some will agree with all of the above, some with parts of it and some with none of it. But what they all share is an unconditional commitment to Palestinian remembrance and resistance. Anyone who wishes to join us is welcome and, provided they do not try to impose their views on, or try to silence others, we care little for what else they believe. So, if Tony Greenstein and his friends will mend their ways, they too are welcome.

*Paul Eisen is the UK director of Deir Yassin Remembered.