The PSC dayschool event was held in the London School of Economics (LSE) last Saturday. I'm glad I went, despite a thoroughly horrible week at work. While I was slightly late (as per usual Arab timing :P), luckily they had just started.
Daud Abdullah, from the Muslim Council of Britain gave the first speech. Obviously passionate about the Palestinian cause, he focused on how it was now the 90th anniversary of the cursed Balfour declaration, essentially marking the beginning of the Palestinian tragedy. Next was Manuel Hassasian, who would be the official Palestinian ambassador to the UK if Palestine was an actual state (as opposed to the big prison created by Israel, referred to as the "occupied territories). He gave us a run down of the terrible situation in Gaza, and of Israel's near-endless crimes. He was very sceptical of the Annapolis conference actually producing any results, and said that there was no partner on the Israeli side for peace ( I agree - Succesive Israeli governments, whether Likud or Labour, have never been prepared to offer real concessions to rectify their crimes against the Palestinian people and to rectify the destruction of the state of Palestine by the formation of the state of Israel ). He dissapointingly made some silly comments towards the end of his speech concerning the Fatah-Hamas split and his view that Islam and democracy were incompatible, but it wouldn't have been a suitable time and place to properly challenge those assertions.
We were also told of the great difficulty involved in garnering support for the Palestinian cause within the National Union of Students (NUS) By Ruqayyah Collector (NUS Black students officer) and George Woods (PSC representative in the NUS), although there was the good news of the NUS supporting Khaled Mudallal's right to an education ( He is a Gazan who is studying in the University of Bradford, who has been prevented by the Israeli government from being able to return to the UK to complete his studies, thus denying his legitimate human rights ), which apparently is the first time that the NUS has come out openly in support of any Palestinian, ever ( the same NUS refused to support calls for an immediate ceasfire in Israel's war on Lebanon last year, putting in the same camp as Bush and Blair ).
We next had a live phone-in session with Khaled Mudallal in Gaza, where he spoke of his troubles in trying to leave Gaza to return to the UK, including the lies of the Israeli embassy saying he could leave whenever he wanted to. A piece of good news for him was that the LSE student union had elected him honorary vice-president, a success guaranteed to raise his profile and that of the Palestinian cause.
The final part consisted of a speaker from Friends of Al-Aqsa, who went into his own visit to Palestine and emphasised how important it was to go and see for ourselves as to what was happening, so as to appreciate the desperation of these people. Dan Judelson from Jews for Justice for Palestine gave an impressive speech, followed by closing comments from Jeremy Corbyn MP, who said, despite all the terrible things that have happened in recent years, how much more "mainstream" the Palestinian cause had become, with many recent EDMs being passed in parliament, compared to brave individuals soldiering on alone 20-30 years ago.
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