Friends of Israel – what do they promote in schools?
This is a referenced version of the brochure available for distribution to school teachers and educationists, school students and their parents and relatives, or anyone else with an interest in challenging the well-funded disinformation campaign by the pro-Israel group One Voice through its front campaign, Solutions not Sides, in Scotland during March. You can download an electronic version here or order hard copies from SPSC Glasgow or Edinburgh offices. Contact details at bottom of page.
Schools in Sc
otland are being approached from 12-16 March 2018 by a group called 'Solutions not Sides’ that promises 'conflict resolution' sessions and claims to be ‘non partisan’ on the process of violent dispossession that it calls the ‘Israel-Palestine conflict’.
The guise of neutrality is a response to rising world-wide condemnation of Israel’s behaviour towards the long-suffering Palestinian people. An open defence of Israeli crimes has become impossible.
The initiative is being promoted by One Voice Europe, a thinly disguised pro-Israel group who support and defend:
- Israeli apartheid, e.g. separate roads and legal codes for Palestinians and Jews
- the siege of Gaza
- all Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity
- Israeli annexation of illegal settlement blocs and large parts of ethnically-cleansed East Jerusalem
- the continued holding of thousands of hostages/prisoners - many without trial - by Israel’s occupation forces until all resistance ceases
- a nuclear-armed Israeli military superpower alongside a demilitarised Palestinian statelet
Defending War Crimes
One Voice defends Israel’s Operation Protective Edge of summer 2014, during which 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza were killed, including 550 children.
The mass killing led to an international outcry and pressured the Scottish Government into calling for an arms embargo against the State of Israel for the “depth of inhumanity that we have witnessed over civilian deaths in Gaza”
An investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Council concluded that Israel deliberately targeted civilians.
Israeli soldiers themselves admitted that “they were ordered to shoot to kill in Gaza – even if targets were civilians”. Officers made it clear that meant “every person you see”.
One Voice refuses to call for an end to the siege of Gaza, labelled as a war crime and crimes against humanity by the UNHCR and as ‘incremental genocide’ by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé.
One Voice refuses to condemn Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinian populations, a crime under international law. This includes the demolition of family homes as punishment for a family member’s resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation.
One Voice refuses even to recognise that Israel is in illegal occupation of the West Bank
International Court
One Voice and Solutions not Sides defend Israel’s rejection of the 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice in the Hague that the Wall then being built by Israel in the West Bank was in breach of international law. The ICJ called on Israel to tear it down and compensate Palestinians harmed by its construction.
By a majority of 14:1, the judges predicted what later came to pass, “that the barrier could become tantamount to annexation of Palestinian land if it is completed and that it impeded the Palestinian's right to self-rule”.
The Israeli Wall is part of a policy of dispossession of Palestinians and the building of Jewish-only settlements, or colonies, on the confiscated land.
Although Palestinians secured the support of the International Court of Justice, Israel defied the Court and has continued until today its lawless oppression of the Palestinian people, including children:
- sentences of 20 years for Palestinian children for throwing a stone at a vehicle of the Occupation forces
- attacks on Gaza schools that are war crimes
- a pseudo-legal system with over 99% conviction rates for Palestinian children
Israel and Palestinian children
Ahed Tamimi was 16 when she slapped a heavily armed Israeli soldier who invaded her family’s property. An hour earlier an Israeli soldier had shattered her cousin Mohammed Tamimi’s skull by a shot to the head at close range.
Soldiers snatched Ahed and her mother from her home in a night raid. Minister of Defence Lieberman has called for Ahed to die in prison, and a pro-Government politician, Oren Hazan told the BBC: “If I was there, she would finish in the hospital. For sure. Nobody could stop me. I would kick, kick her face, believe me."
“The systematic ill treatment and torture of Palestinian children has been widely documented in recent years.”
“Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, including children, remained pervasive and was committed with impunity.”
Amnesty International
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child confirmed Israel’s routine torture of Palestinian children, and condemned Israel’s denial of health care and clean water to these children, keeping children in solitary confinement for long periods, and using them as human shields in potential combat situations.
Balance or neutrality?
One Voice and its Solutions not Sides programme are far from neutral. They seek peace without justice, the permanent inferior status of Palestinians under Israeli control, as well as impunity for those who have carried out war crimes and crimes against humanity. Their defence of Israeli behaviour, including Operation Protective Edge in 2014 shows their claims to neutrality are bogus.
Even if they were striving for neutrality, however, we ask you to agree with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a veteran of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
Israel has carried out regular massacres of Palestinians ever since the ethnic cleansing of the majority of Palestinians that founded the State of Israel in 1948. It has developed a sense of impunity unique in the world.
What you can do
- Share the electronic version of this brochure
- Order more copies of this brochure
- Invite a Palestinian SPSC speaker to give a talk
- Write to the principal of your child’s school, PTA or Director of Education to ask that only speakers be invited to address students who:endorse full political & human rights for all, do not defend war crimes and crimes against humanity, and do not promote the violation of the rights of occupied people and refugees
Order copies of Friends of Israel - What do they Promote in Schools from
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
101 Rose Street South Lane
EH2 3JG, Edinburgh
07910 406431
edinburgh@scottishpsc.org.uk
180 West Regent Street
G2 4RW, Glasgow
07931 200361
glasgow@scottishpsc.org.uk
www.scottishpsc.org.uk
Twitter: @scottishpsc
www.facebook.com/scottishpsc/
- apartheid, e.g. separate roads and legal codes for Palestinians and Jews
- the siege of Gaza
- all Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity
- Israeli annexation of illegal settlement blocs and large parts of ethnically-cleansed East Jerusalem
- the continued holding of thousands of hostages/prisoners - many without trial - by Israel’s occupation forces until all resistance ceases
- a nuclear-armed Israeli military superpower alongside a demilitarised Palestinian statelet
Defending War Crimes
One Voice defends Israel’s Operation Protective Edge of summer 2014, during which 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza were killed, including 550 children.
The mass killing led to an international outcry and pressured the Scottish Government into calling for an arms embargo against the State of Israel for the “depth of inhumanity that we have witnessed over civilian deaths in Gaza”
An investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Council concluded that Israel deliberately targeted civilians.
Israeli soldiers themselves admitted that “they were ordered to shoot to kill in Gaza – even if targets were civilians”. Officers made it clear that meant “every person you see”.
One Voice refuses to call for an end to the siege of Gaza, labelled as a war crime and crimes against humanity by the UNHCR and as ‘incremental genocide’ by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé.
One Voice refuses to condemn Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinian populations, a crime under international law. This includes the demolition of family homes as punishment for a family member’s resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation.
One Voice refuses even to recognise that Israel is in illegal occupation of the West Bank
International Court
One Voice and Solutions not Sides defends Israel’s rejection of the 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice in the Hague that the Wall then being built by Israel in the West Bank was in breach of international law. The ICJ called on Israel to tear it down and compensate Palestinians harmed by its construction.
By a majority of 14:1, the judges predicted what later came to pass, “that the barrier could become tantamount to annexation of Palestinian land if it is completed and that it impeded the Palestinian's right to self-rule”.
The Israeli Wall is part of a policy of dispossession of Palestinians and their building of Jewish-only settlements, or colonies, on the confiscated land.
Although Palestinians secured the support of the International Court of Justice, Israel defied the Court and has continued until today its lawless oppression of the Palestinian people, including children:
- sentences of 20 years for Palestinian children for throwing a stone at a vehicle of the Occupation forces
- attacks on Gaza schools that are war crimes
- a pseudo-legal system with over 99% conviction rates for Palestinian children
Israel and Palestinian children
Ahed Tamimi was 16 when she slapped a heavily armed Israeli soldier who invaded her family’s property. An hour earlier an Israeli soldier had shattered her cousin Mohammed Tamimi’s skull by a shot to the head at close range.
Soldiers snatched Ahed and her mother from her home in a night raid. Minister of Defence Lieberman has called for Ahed to die in prison, and a pro-Government politician, Oren Hazan told the BBC: “If I was there, she would finish in the hospital. For sure. Nobody could stop me. I would kick, kick her face, believe me."
“The systematic ill treatment and torture of Palestinian children has been widely documented in recent years.”
“Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, including children, remained pervasive and was committed with impunity.”
Amnesty International
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child confirmed Israel’s routine torture of Palestinian children, and condemned Israel’s denial of health care and clean water to these children, keeping children in solitary confinement for long periods, and using them as human shields in potential combat situations.
Balance or neutrality?
One Voice and its Solutions not Sides programme are far from neutral. They seek peace without justice, the permanent inferior status of Palestinians under Israeli control, as well as impunity for those who have carried out war crimes and crimes against humanity. Their defence of Israeli behaviour, including Operation Protective Edge in 2014 shows their claims to neutrality are bogus.
Even if they were striving for neutrality, however, we ask you to agree with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a veteran of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
Israel has carried out regular massacres of Palestinians ever since the ethnic cleansing of the majority of Palestinians that founded the State of Israel in 1948. It has developed a sense of impunity unique in the world.
What you can do
- Share the electronic version of this brochure
- Order more copies of this brochure
- Invite a Palestinian SPSC speaker to give a talk
- Write to the principal of your child’s school, PTA or Director of Education to ask that only speakers be invited to address students who:endorse full political & human rights for all, do not defend war crimes and crimes against humanity, and do not promote the violation of the rights of occupied people and refugees
Order copies of Friends of Israel - What do they Promote in Schools from
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
101 Rose Street South Lane
EH2 3JG, Edinburgh
07910 406431
edinburgh@scottishpsc.org.uk
180 West Regent Street
G2 4RW, Glasgow
07931 200361
glasgow@scottishpsc.org.uk
www.scottishpsc.org.uk
Twitter: @scottishpsc
www.facebook.com/scottishpsc/