Roadmap To Apartheid: Film Screening 01.03.13

Aberdeen City, Information No Responses »

Feb 252013

As part of Israeli Apartheid Week SPSC Aberdeen presents a screening of the award-winning documentary Roadmap to Apartheid. The film presents a detailed look at Palestine/Israel and how the concept of apartheid can be used to understand the historical and ongoing situation.

About Israeli Apartheid Week

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an annual international series of events held in cities and campuses across the globe.

The aim of IAW is to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.

Lectures, films, and actions will highlight some of the successes of the BDS movement and build / support ongoing campaigns.

Speakers and full programme for each city will be available on this website. Join us in making this a year of struggle against apartheid and for justice, equality, and peace.

“In this award-winning documentary, the first-time directors take a detailed look at the apartheid analogy commonly used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Narrated by Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple), Roadmap to Apartheid is as much a historical document of the rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa as it is a film about why many Palestinians feel they are living in an apartheid system today, and why an increasing number of people around the world agree with them” (official website).

More on Israeli Apartheid Week here: http://apartheidweek.org

We hope to see you there for what should be a very interesting watch and discussion.

Where: Room NK11, New Kings College, University of Aberdeen
When: 7pm, Friday March 1st
Light refreshments provided

Aberdeen Against Apartheid: Johannesburg To Jerusalem

Aberdeen City, Information No Responses »

Aug 172012

Aberdeen SPSC extends an open invitation to the above event which will take place upstairs in the Blue Lamp at 7:00pm on Friday 24th August.

The evening is part of Aberdeen Against Austerity’s Summer Lecture Series and will feature talks and discussions, on the parallels between the struggle for justice in South Africa and Palestine.

Speakers, Tommy Campbell and Harry Bygate, will address the struggle against South African apartheid in Aberdeen and aspects of Israeli apartheid, including freedom of movement, political prisoners, ‘settlements’, water, access to land and the JNF and energy resources.

We hope you can join us on the 24th.

Aberdeen Against Austerity Host ‘Summer Series’

Community, Events, Information No Responses »

Jul 202012

With thanks to Aberdeen Against Austerity.

Aberdeen Against Austerity’s ‘Summer Series’ of talks and film showings continues this Friday with a presentation by Hannah Knight entitled ‘Animal Rights and the Philosophy that Underpins it’. This will be number 2 in a series of 5 talks organised this Summer to explore radical and alternative ideas, lifestyles and histories.

All talks will be free (donations accepted) and will take place in The Blue Lamp (upstairs) at 7.30pm.

The Program is as follows -

20th July

‘The Philosophy of Animal Rights’ followed by ‘The Animals Film’

Hannah Knight

27th July

‘Energy: The Impact of Big Biomass’ and film TBC

Ally Coutts

10th August

‘Feminism 101’ followed by TBC

Aberdeen Feminists

24th August

‘Aberdeen Against Apartheid: From Johannesburg to Jerusalem’

Short talks plus discussion:

Tommy Campbell (Leader of Unite the Union Aberdeen)
Fiona Napier (Chair of SPSC Aberdeen)
Dave Black (Stop the JNF UK)
Karolin Hijazi (‘Welcome to Palestine’ participant)
Stuart Maltman (SPSC Aberdeen)

Followed by live music.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign Hosts Jordan Valley Speakers

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Events, Featured, History, Information, News No Responses »

Feb 192012

On March 1st the Aberdeen branch of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign will be hosting three exciting speakers at Aberdeen University: Fathe Kdirat and Itaf Njoum Karma from Jordan Valley Solidarity, and Leehee Rothschild from Boycott from Within (Israel).

Fathe and Itaf, both Palestinians, will be discussing Israel’s destruction of communities and the environment in the Jordan Valley, and the on-going illegal Israeli settlement construction that continues to drive Palestinians from their land.

The Jordan Valley makes up a large section of the West Bank, around 28% in total. It has been one of the worst affected areas of the West Bank during the Israeli occupation, which began in 1967.

The occupation saw the Jordan Valley’s population drop by 88% and was thereafter the site of Israel’s first settlements.

Since the occupation Israel has gone about taking almost complete control of the area. This map (click to follow link) published in December 2011 by the United Nations Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) shows that 15% of the Jordan Valley comprises settlements (blatantly illegal under international law[i]), 27% comprises nature reserves, often used to control natural resources such as water supply (to the detriment of Palestinians) and 56% comprises closed military areas.

In addition, 87% of the Jordan Valley is designated Area C, i.e. under Israeli control. The 1993 Oslo Accords divided the occupied West Bank into 3 sections: Area A, under the full control of the Palestinian Authority (3% of the West Bank); Area B, under Palestinian civilian control and Israeli military control (25%); and Area C, under the full control of Israel (72%). Designating land as Area C gives Israel unlimited autonomy to do as it pleases and to ignore the rights of Palestinians. For example, according to UN OCHA 94% of Area C planning applications submitted by Palestinians were denied between 2001 and 2007.

One of the main focuses of Israel policy in the area is to clear the Jordan Valley of its Bedouin population. In September 2011 the Israeli government announced its plans to expel 27,000 Bedouin from their homes and lands in the Jordan Valley. This process is due to be completed in the next 3-6 years; the initial stages have already begun.

The role of activism, resistance and international solidarity is crucial in the fight to prevent this attempted ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley. Fathe and Itaf will talk on how Palestinian communities and internationals are working together to witness, catalogue and resist Israel’s actions, and the importance of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against apartheid Israel.

One crucial component of the BDS campaign is the small but important resistance movement within Israel itself. This includes the campaign group Boycott from Within.

“We, Palestinians, Jews, citizens of Israel, join the Palestinian call for a BDS campaign against Israel, inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid. We also call on others to do the same.” Boycott from Within Website

Organisations like Boycott from Within are operating within a state becoming increasingly reactionary to the growing success of the calls for the end of the occupation, equal rights for Palestinians within Israel, and the right of return for Palestinian (the three main tenets of the BDS campaign). In July 2011 the Knesset (Israeli parliament) passed an anti-boycott bill, criminalising those who support boycotts of Israel or its illegal occupation and settlements.

The bill has implications for individuals and organisations alike; for example companies deciding not to source products from illegal settlements in the West Bank may be barred from government contracts. More recent Knesset bills have turned their attention to NGOs working in Israel, such as groups aiming to promote human rights.

One such law proposes to place a limit on the funding NGOs can receive from foreign governments and institutions, meaning many will be unable to function.

Leehee Rothschild will be speaking about her involvement in internal resistance movements such as Boycott from Within and Anarchists Against the Wall, as well as exploring issues of propaganda within the Israeli education system.

The talk starts at 7pm on March 1st in room 268 in the MacRobert Building at Aberdeen University. For more information contact: Aberdeen@scottishpsc.org.uk

[i] for example see the International Court of Justice ruling 2004, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and UN Security Council Resolution 446

Scotlands Tuition Fees – An Anti-English Tax?

Articles, Community, Information, Opinion No Responses »

Dec 312010

By Gordon Maloney.

Talk of an anti-English “educational apartheid” in Scotland is as misguided and naive as it is deceitful

The Scottish National Party have repeatedly ruled out tuition fees in Scotland, for Scottish students at least. This commitment to free education is welcome, but the Liberal Democrats’ widely reported U-turn on their pre-election pledge to vote against any increase in tuition fees has left the Scottish Government and, indeed, the entire HE sector in Scotland in a difficult position.

This is why students in Scotland have – and need to continue to – fight attacks on education in England and Wales as fervently as in Scotland.
One of the dangers, which was spelled out in the SNP’s green paper on higher education funding, is that of fee refugees. If tuition fees go up to £9000 in England and Wales and they remain at £1820 for the same students in Scotland, there is every possibility that an unsustainable number of “fee refugees” could cross the border into Scotland. Because of this, the Scottish Government has considered increasing fees for English and Welsh students to as high as £6500 a year.

This has prompted stereotypically hysterical cries from the right-wing, Unionist media. The Daily Mail has accused the SNP of “planning a new anti-English ‘tax’ to make it harder for students south of the border to escape soaring tuition fees.” This is ironic for two reasons. Firstly because of the Daily Mail’s objection to people coming to the UK to escape dictators, war and disease, and secondly because these papers largely backed the Conservatives – the ones who put the Scottish Government in this position in the first place – at the general election in May.

These arguments, however, distort the reality of the situation. In common with other devolved bodies and local authorities across the country, difficult decisions (and the blame for them) are being passed on from the Coalition Government to the Scottish Government. With very limited revenue raising powers, this essentially becomes a matter of letting others chose who and what to cut, while forcing them to make cuts at all. These bodies may be passionately opposed to the Government’s austerity agenda, yet without the ability to increase taxes they have no choice but to follow the scorched-earth road to recovery (or ruin, as is seeming increasingly likely.)

Let’s be clear about one thing. If the SNP do increase tuition fees for English and Welsh students, the blame for this will lie squarely with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in Westminster. The only “educational apartheid” is one between rich and poor, something that New Labour didn’t do enough to bridge and the Coalition seems intent on turning into an impassable abyss.