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 November
LIAR THREATENS LEGAL ACTION - THEN SILENCE
this day in 2010, SPSC received this: “Dear Sir/Madam You will be hearing soon from my lawyers about this below. Yours etc, Dr James MacMillan CBE”. A Commander of the British Empire is a mighty fellow; this Commander resented an article "James MacMillan CBE is a shameless hypocrite and serial liar" on the SPSC website. The response, after fear and trembling had subsided, was an article: "SPSC calls bluff of slanderer, liar and hypocrite Dr. James MacMillan CBE". No reply has come.
الكذاب يهدد بإجراءات قانونية - ثم يلوذ بالصمت
29 نوفمبر
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2010 ، تلقت حملة التضامن الاسكتلندية مع فلسطين ما يلي: "سيدي العزيز / سيدتي ، سوف تسمع قريبًا من محاميي عن الأمر أدناه. تفضلوا بقبول فائق الاحترام ، الدكتور جيمس ماكميلان سي بي ي ". سي بي ي تعني قائد الإمبراطورية البريطانية وهولقب يدل على مكانة الشخص الملقب. استاء هذا القائد من مقال على موقع حملة التضامن الاسكتلندية يعتبر جيمس ماكميلان سي بي ي منافقًا وقحًا وكذّاب . وكان الرد بعد أن هدأ الخوف والارتجاف هو مقال : حملة التضامن الاسكتلنديه تتحدى د. جيمس ماكميلان المفتري، الكاذب والمنافق. لم يأت رد.
James MacMillan CBE is a brazen liar
On 27 May (2009), Scottish composer James MacMillan CBE denounced to the Scotsman 'the attempt to prevent Tel Aviv University graduate Tali Shalom Ezer...from travelling to Edinburgh for a screening of her film...at this year's International Film Festival.' This despite no-one attempting any such thing, and film director Ken Loach urging all to make the Israeli film maker welcome.
Furious at the EIFF's severing links with the the brutal regime in Israel, MacMillan ranted against a supposed 'appalling act of vindictive censorship [by Ken] Loach. There is nothing more sanctimonious, self-glorifying, wrong-headed and nauseating than the literati liberal elites on a moral crusade.' This high-profile Catholic despises 'moral crusades', but only, it seems, when it concerns Palestinians.
James MacMillan CBE is a hypocrite...
Two years earlier, however, James MacMillan put pressure an another Edinburgh institution when he 'threatened to return [his] honorary degree from Edinburgh University unless the institution immediately strips Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe of his own award.' (Scotland on Sunday, 06.05.07)
...who was challenged to carry out his threat:
Proceed with legal action for the article in question and we will have the opportunity to meet you in a courtroom. There, we will demonstrate the aims and methods of the growing international campaign to boycott Israel, its profound humanitarian and anti-racist impulses, and the dishonesty of those who support the insupportable, the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
MacMillan promoted the politics of the Israeli extreme right in a bizarre email he wrote to an SPSC member.
He was, though, something of a trailblazer in his own way, years before Jeremy Corbyn was brought down by fake anti-semitism claims. He smeared Palestine solidarity as 'Holocaust desecration' for arranging meetings with an Auschwitz survivor who opposed Israeli crimes against the Palestinians
SPSC has treated other legal threats - demands for damages, payment of their legal fees, stop telling the truth, publish apologies and more - in the manner they deserve.
- from the JNF (Jewish National Fund) in 2004
- from the Caledonian Hotel, via Mishcon de Reya solicitors in 2007
- from Zionist activist and Glasgow lawyer, Matthew Berlow, in 2017
Six years later, it was revealed that while this "celebrated composer" was spitting feathers at a BDS campaign success, a more substantial opponent was also working behind the scenes