ISLINGTON FRIENDS OF YIBNA HOLD VIGIL OUTSIDE MILIBAND’S HOUSE
Yibna is a refugee camp in Rafah, Gaza, that has a friendship twinning with a solidarity group in Islington. A group of Islington residents and supporters of Yibna will hold a vigil in front of the house of David Miliband in Primrose Hill. They will protest against the appeasement by Foreign Secretary Miliband of the 2 week long Israeli blitz of Gaza.
The inhabitants of Yibna refugee camp in Gaza, near the border with Egypt, were threatened and ordered by Israeli forces to leave the refugee camp. The message was clear, the intention is to bomb the camp to the ground. Fearing for their lives, 20,000 of Yibna’s residents were forced to leave Yibna on Tuesday 6 January.
Jenny Linnel, a British volunteer in Rafah said, “Shortly before midnight on the 6th of January, missiles began raining down on Rafah in one of the heaviest Israeli air strikes since the current atrocities began. Continuous sorties pounded the southern Gaza city for over 12 hours. Many homes were destroyed or severely damaged, especially in the neighbourhoods along the border with Egypt.”
By leaving Yibna, many of the impoverished camp’s inhabitants would be made refugees for the third time, after having been forced out of their homes in 1948, and ethnic cleansed into Gaza. They were left to live in the refugee camp and then during 2003-4, a massive Israeli house demolition programme made 17,000 of the refugees in Yibna homeless for a second time. In the last few days, the remaining refugees in Yibna have been thrown out to the mercy of the bitter cold and the constant shelling and bombardment by the Israeli occupying forces.
Since 2007, a group of Islington residents have stretched a practical hand of friendship between Islington and Yibna refugee camp. In their latest practical initiative, against all the odds, just a few days before the Israeli blitz of Gaza, Islington Friends of Yibna [IFY] delivered a consignment of high protein baby milk to Yibna to feed malnourished babies. IFY Patron MP Jeremy Corbyn of Islington was phoning a group of friends in Yibna when there was an explosion and the line went dead. The next day he found out that 2 of his friends were killed in the bombing that he was almost witness to.
The vigil today by supporters of Islington Friends of Yibna in front of the house of Foreign Secretary David Miliband in Primrose Hill will be in protest against the continued refusal of the Foreign Secretary to denounce outright Israel for the bombardment and demand that Israel unconditionally and immediately stop the bombardment. This destruction of people and life in Gaza could have been prevented had the Foreign Secretary not appeased Israel. Instead he blamed the Palestinian victims for the Israeli aggression against them.
There is still hope to save parts of Yibna, not all of the houses have been destroyed yet. The UN Resolution allows Israel to carry on with its bombing campaign until other conditions and agreements are met. IFY asks Foreign Secretary Miliband to be brave and take a principled and moral stand and ask Israel to immediately stop the bombing. Through his long silence Israel is being allowed to continue with the bombing and still has more time to complete its plan for the total destruction of Yibna. We believe that if Miliband speaks out now, he would save Yibna from complete destruction.
Tye activists urge Miliband to call upon Israel to unconditionally and immediately stop the bombing.
Vigil at Foreign Secretary Miliband’s house: Edis Street, Primrose Hill NW1 8LE: TODAY 2PM
I saw Milliband on TV saying that one of the conditions of a ceasefire would be to stop weapons allegedly flowing into Gaza from Egypt and from Iran.
I doubt whether stopping the weapons flowing into Israel from Britian and the US will be a term of the ceasefire.
Comment by Adamski — 9 January, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Board of Deputies of British Jews Cancels Sunday’s Solidarity Rally
The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, in consultation with a coalition of prominent organisations in the Anglo-Jewish community, have decided to cancel the planned Israel Solidarity Rally, due to occur on Sunday 11th of January.
This decision has been taken after intense discussions within the community, due to a feeling that such a demonstration would not be in accordance with the Board’s wish to bring the conflict to an immediate conclusion. It was thought that the demonstration might be perceived as the community taking one side in the tragic war in Gaza and Israel, and might be seen as supporting Israel’s military campaign.
The Board calls for an immediate ceasefire, immediate negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and for lifting the economic blockade of Gaza, in order to allow the Gazan and Israeli people to live together in peace. There is no military solution, only a political one.
The Jewish community does not wish to be seen as a participant in the conflict, and in taking this stand we hope to be a part of the solution. The Board stands in solidarity with the besieged and injured people of Gaza, as well as the victims of terrorism in Israel, and we oppose all violence as contrary to the tenets of the Jewish religion. We would like to reach out to the British Muslim community, as well as those of no religion who have demonstrated against Israel’s military campaign-we share your anguish at the destruction and loss of life caused, and hope that our action in calling off our demonstration will be a small step towards peace.
Board of Deputies of British Jews and The Jewish Leadership Council
Comment by MichaelRosen — 9 January, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
It seems this is a hoax.
Comment by Faust — 9 January, 2009 @ 5:39 pm
Yes indeed. Thanks Faust for catching up on this. I was had. After I’ve got over my blushes, I’ll start to see the funny side. I think the response is supposed to be ‘As if!!’ Mine, however, was ‘wow!’ More fool me!
Comment by MichaelRosen — 9 January, 2009 @ 6:02 pm
It’s OK. You assumed a bunch of religious dignitaries in nice homes, not being systematically bombed by a war machine, were compassionate enough to distance themselves from Israeli actions. Evidently not.
Comment by Faust — 9 January, 2009 @ 6:27 pm
David Miliband’s dad Ralph will be turning right now:
“Miliband was passionately opposed to the American war in Vietnam. In 1967 he wrote in the Socialist Register that “the US has over…a period of years been engaged…in the wholesale slaughter of men, women and children, the maiming of many more” and that the United States’ “catalogue of horrors” against the Vietnamese people was being done “in the name of an enormous lie”.[2]
In the same article, he attacked Harold Wilson for his defence of the United States’ action in Vietnam, describing it as being the “most shameful chapter in the history of the Labour Party”. He went on to say that the US Government “made no secret of the political and diplomatic importance it attached to the unwavering support of a British Labour Government”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Miliband
Comment by AM — 9 January, 2009 @ 6:54 pm
I fell for the statement as well and thought ‘oh my god!’ how Bostin is that!’…. but my son always says that I am ‘the most gullible person he knows’
Comment by optimistic mark anthony france — 9 January, 2009 @ 7:01 pm
and it would clearly be in the self-interest of British jews to distance themselves from the atrocities - as of course many Jewish people do.
But the Board of deputies go out of their way to seek to create a false associate between every Jewish person with the Israeli state.
Comment by Andy Newman — 9 January, 2009 @ 7:03 pm
Out of interest, does anyone know much about the Board of Deputies? Their website says that the deputies are elected by (250?)synagogues and some community organisations. I’d be curious about the latter, perhaps in terms of organising debates or something. Is there a list of deputies anywhere?
Comment by Geoff Collier — 9 January, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
6. Yep, your son told me that too, Mark.
Are you going down on the cioaches from brum tomorrow? if so, see you ther- with megaphone!!
Comment by RobM — 9 January, 2009 @ 7:29 pm
Activist’s arm broken and one arrest on 9th January Gaza demo in London
http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/activists-arm-broken-as-police-clamp-down-on-gaza-protest/
Comment by David Broder — 10 January, 2009 @ 4:05 am
Re 9: the Board of Deputies are the self-proclaimed leaders of the Jewish community. They portray themselves as a democratic parliament of the jewish community but it’s a sham democracy . Deputeis are elected through synagogues some of whom don’t allow women to vote. Usually a synagogue will have one representative - often a longstanding conservative member, and many Jews are not members of synagogues. The floor of the Deputies is just a talking shop Every signficant decision is made by paid officials of the Board.
Although before World War 2 the Board was officially anti-Zionist, not wanting its British loyalties to be compromised, since 1938 it has been Zionist and you would be hard pressed to find any single occasion since 1948 when any Israeli action or policy has been criticised or condemned by the Board of Deputies.
In the last week some of the anger over what Israel has been doing has spilled over into attacks on soft targets - synagogues and individual Jews.
There is a depressing symmetry among those who wish to blame any and every Jew for what is happening and those like the Board of Deputies who wish to claim the support of any and every Jew for this war on the Palestinians.
Comment by David Rosenberg — 10 January, 2009 @ 9:05 am
Nor is this symmetry coincidental, as the actions of israel are one of the key drivers of contemporary anti-semitism, which then draw from the well of mediaeval anti-Judaic ideology, and “scientific” racialised anti-Semitism.
This is most clear in the Middle East, where after centuries of Jews living there in harmony, now outside Israel only Iran has a significant Jewish population.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 January, 2009 @ 9:36 am
#2 & 3
It’s a very good hoax. One that makes us consider the morality of the Board of Deputies’ current position and hopefully shames them into looking at it.
David, what sort of proportion of British Jews would you say they actually represent?
Comment by Madam Miaow — 10 January, 2009 @ 11:09 am
The Board of Deputies finds the suggestion that they share anguish at death and destruction “hurtful”: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7821594.stm (last paragraph)
Comment by Tim Vanhoof — 10 January, 2009 @ 11:32 am
What proportion of Britian’s Chinese do you represent Madame Miaow?
The Board of Deputies represent an established layer of the organised faith community that calls itself Jewish. In North London (where I originally come from)they represent synagogues in such places as Brownlow Road, in Bounds Green and similar. They also have a dose of the ‘great and the good’. It is not a democratic organisation, but then neither is is Muslim Initiative nor the MAB which you lot seem to like.
That they are willing to criticise, even timidly (I am reading between the lines), Israel’s totally unjustified actions is to be welcomed.
Comment by Andrew Coates — 10 January, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
Yes, #16 cos that’s what war crimes and `totally unjustified’ actions need - mild criticism especially of the type that is so buried `between the lines’ that only an apologist can discern them. Let’s not forget that the blockade itself is a war crime let alone the tanks and F16s hitting civilians.
Comment by Marcher — 10 January, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
Andrew, that was a genuine question as, according to posters here, they assume they represent all British Jews. As there obviously is a slice of British Jewry they do represent it would be nice to know how big that is, not that I’m a size queen.
What proportion of Britian’s Chinese do you represent Madame Miaow?
That’s such a non sequitur I’m still unpacking what it is you actually mean.
… Muslim Initiative nor the MAB which you lot seem to like.
I don’t, and I never have.
Still a good hoax.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 10 January, 2009 @ 5:21 pm