Say no to normalisation!

BREAKING NEWS:
Thanks to all the constituents writing to their MSPs to protest, the normalisation event at the Scottish Parliament has been cancelled!

14 November 2022

NoNormalisationScottish PSC calls for the ‘Friends of Roots UK’ event scheduled to take place at the Scottish Parliament on 16 November to be cancelled and for all who support Palestinian rights and opposes Israel’s violations of human rights and international law to withdraw from the event.

The event will feature ‘passionate Zionist settler’ Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger who lives in the Gush Etzion settlement which is illegal under international law. While Friends of Roots promotes normalisation, Gush Etzion continues to expand on Palestinian land while Palestinian communities face destruction through state and settler violence, home demolitions and expulsion from their own land. Amnesty International’s comprehensive report sets out Israeli apartheid as ‘a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity’.

‘Friends of Roots UK’ subscribes to normalisation, the promotion of ‘joint activity between the oppressed and the oppressor that is not based on the recognition of the rights of the oppressed and does not aim at the elimination of oppression’.

Normalisation is a weapon used by Israel to whitewash its regime of oppression and to undermine solidarity with the Palestinian people.

This normalisation event is shamefully being held at the Scottish Parliament, hosted by Scottish Labour MSP Paul O’Kane.  O’Kane is a member of the Cross Party Group ‘Building Bridges with Israel’, a group comprised of prominent Israel lobby groups, Israel’s honorary consul in Scotland, and includes updates from the Israeli Embassy on their agenda.

We agree with the position of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, representing a broad range of civil society:

Normalization activities ought to be boycotted because they are intellectually dishonest and morally reprehensible activities that, in effect if not in intent, serve to cover up the underlying system of apartheid and settler colonialism that Israel wants the world to unsee.

Reject normalisation.  Send a letter to your MSPs - ask them to support the call for the cancellation of this event.

SEND A LETTER HERE - JUST TYPE IN YOUR POSTCODE