Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
29 September
DEATH OF MARION WOOLFSON - ANTI-ZIONIST PIONEER
On this day in 2012, SPSC Honorary President, Marion Woolfson died. Marion was a successful journalist for many years and author of a work on Jews in the Arab countries, Prophets in Babylon. When SPSC members were charged with 'racially aggravated conduct', Marion leapt to their defence: "Anyone who stands up for Palestinians is accused of being 'anti-Semitic'. I am Jewish and proud to be Honorary President of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, an anti-racist group that opposes Israeli apartheid."
وفاة ماريون وولفسون - رائدة معاداة الصهيونية
29 سبتمبر
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2012 ، توفيت ماريون وولفسون ، الرئيس الفخري لـحملة التضامن الاسكتلندية مع فلسطين. كانت ماريون صحفيًة ناجحًة لسنوات عديدة ومؤلفًا لكتاب عن اليهود في الدول العربية ، الأنبياء في بابل. عندما اتُهم أعضاء حملة التضامن الاسكتلندية مع فلسطين بـ "سلوك التفرقة العنصرية" ، قفزت ماريون إلى الدفاع عنهم: "أي شخص يدافع عن الفلسطينيين متهم بأنه" معادي للسامية ". أنا يهودية وفخورة بكوني رئيسا فخريًا لحملة التضامن الاسكتلندية مع فلسطين وهي مجموعة مناهضة للعنصرية وتعارض الفصل العنصري الإسرائيلي
Marion described several times over the years her personal epiphany when she was a young woman on a visit to Israel and commented casually during a guided tour on the 'beautiful patterns' on the traditional Palestinian dress of a passing woman. The racist contempt and hatred this evoked from her Israeli guide set Marion on a political and personal journey that led Israeli daily Maariv to respond to one of her letters in The Times in London to call her "the most dangerous enemy of Israel in Britain". (Maariv 10.07.72)
Many of her Palestinian friends were assassinated, including poet Ghassan Kanafani.
Marion's was one of relatively few Jewish voices in Britain for many years painstakingly telling stories of atrocious Israeli crimes at considerable personal and professional cost to herself.
When SPSC members were charged in 2008 with 'racially aggravated conduct' for activities in support of the Palestinian appeal for boycott of Israel, Marion leapt to their defence: "Anyone who stands up for Palestinians is automatically accused of being 'anti-Semitic'. I am Jewish and proud to be Honorary President of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, an anti-racist group that opposes Israeli apartheid."
Marion's grandparents were penniless Jewish refugees who fled the massacres of Jews in Tsarist Russia, but Marion's father was wealthy and a pillar of Edinburgh society by the time she was born. Marion was very proud of her father, who was a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews before it succumbed to Zionism, and a man who during the thirties insisted against others who wanted to help only Jewish refugees that a project he sponsored should help all those fleeing Nazi Germany.
Marion was a foreign correspondent for several major UK papers and the author of several works, including The Story of a Palestinian, a biography of Nablus Mayor, Bassam Shaka, and a 1980 work on Jews in the Arab countries, Prophets in Babylon. This work was timely reading when Netanyahu tried to exploit the emigration of Jews from Arab countries, an emigration which Zionism successfully worked to achieve, in order to replace the labour of Palestinians Zionism had driven from the land.
Marion's pamphlet on the racism and criminality of the Jewish National Fund, exposed the scandal of this body being granted tax-exempt charitable status in the UK to enable it to carry out its role in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Tony Greenstein:
"It is with great sadness that I learnt today of the death of one of the unsung heroes of the anti-Zionist struggle. As I became more involved in the anti-Zionist struggle in the 1980’s, one name that kept reoccurring was that of Marion Woolfson, who became the honorary President of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign."