Israel/Palestine

That this AGM condemns the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and denials of Palestinians' human and national rights. This AGM condemns the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, including Israeli military air strikes and the economic blockade of Gaza, as well as the arbitrary murders of Israeli citizens by suicide bombers and rocket attacks. We note both the Israeli and Palestinian victims of the conflict are usually working-class people, targeted by political and military forces that seek to de-humanise Arab and Jewish workers using anti-semitism, Jew-hatred and anti...

Submitted by Guy's and St Thomas's Unison. We are for the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli state from the Occupied Territories. We condemn recent actions by the Israeli Government in blockading the Gaza strip leading to food shortages and electricity cuts We condemn bloodshed both by the Israeli military, and by Palestinian suicide bombers. We oppose Hamas and Islamic Jihad who are fighting not just against Israeli occupation, but for the destruction of Israel and the creation of a theocratic state. We support a fully independent Palestinian state on the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem...

While many, perhaps most, Jews globally do feel some sense of identification with the Israeli-Jewish nation (if not the nation-state of Israel itself), and while many Jews are understandably a great deal more sensitive to the threat posed by Hamas' anti-Semitic project than many on the British left, it is by no means the case that world Jewry is united in support for the colonialist adventures of the Israeli government in the occupied territories. The “Israel solidarity rallies” orgainsed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (the most significant and influential communalist organisation...

Jerusalem, January, 2008 - Al-Qaws, the Palestinian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) community project of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance (JOH), has achieved a milestone development in which it decided to become an independent entity, constituting the first-ever official Palestinian LGBTQ organization. The Al-Qaws ("Rainbow") project was initiated in December 2001 by the JOH in order to address the special needs of the Palestinian LGBTQ community in Jerusalem. The project was specifically designed to reflect the special nature of one of the most traditional...

Israeli Defence Minister and ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak has announced that Israel is getting closer to a large-scale incursion into Gaza with “every passing day”. Recent weeks have seen Gaza — which relies in the Israeli state for half of its electricity and almost all of its fuel — have its fuel supply cut, and a plan to cut off its electricity was only aborted following intervention from the Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazouz. This kind of collective blow, dealt out to Palestinians in Gaza as a whole, further exposes the careless brutality of the Israeli state. Mainstream NGOs such...