Cambridge University Palestine Society - Palsoc

Our brand new website is now live! We'll be keeping it up to date with our latest news, events and campaigns, so make sure to give it a visit. We've also put together a list of resources which may be useful for those interested in academic and policy research, news and comment and further reading. https://cambridgepalsoc.weebly.com

// PALSOC STATEMENT ON APPEARANCE OF EHUD OLMERT, FORMER ISRAELI PM, IN CAMBRIDGE THIS EVENING //
It is deeply shameful that the Judge Business School has invited former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert to speak in Cambridge tonight. As Prime Minister of Israel from 2006-9, he directly ordered and oversaw the bombardment and massacre of thousands of civillians in Lebanon and Gaza, decried as war crimes by Amnesty International and UNHRC inquiries.
Olmert is a war criminal who belongs i...n the dock of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, not at a canapé-laden reception and discussion in Cambridge.
The Judge Business School’s banners declare that “Collaboration Keeps You Ahead”. By collaborating closely with arms companies such as BAE systems and inviting war criminals like Olmert onto campus, JBS and the University of Cambridge shame themselves and us all.
The title of Olmert’s appearance, ‘Israel as a start up nation’, adds insult to injury, revealing utter contempt on the part of JBS for the millions of Palestinian refugees dispossessed by Israel and denied the right to return to their homes, some of whom study and work at this University.
We urge them to cancel the event, and to cease their ongoing complicity in grave violations of international humanitarian law.

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*2018/19 COMMITTEE NOMINATIONS OPEN*
Nominations are open for our new committee, closing Wednesday 13th June! Join PalSoc for an important year of solidarity campaigning ahead, building on our major event programme and recent arms boycott statement. Officer roles:
-Chair... -Vice Chair -Strategy and communications -Society development -Secretary -Treasurer -Events -Social media and design -Open place
Please message the page or email cambridgepalsoc@gmail.com for role descriptions/responsibilities and more information. Only short paragraph outlining interest in the role necessary.
AGM details tbc soon.
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Argentine national football team cancels planned match against Israel in Jerusalem following major popular pressure from Palestinian civil society and solidarity campaigners! Reports suggest Messi and Mascherano were key in pressuring the Argentine FA president to pull out of the game. #NothingFriendly

Great event next week! - a book launch about a new book which provides a platform for children and young people, from all over the occupied land of Palestine, to speak in their own voices about the day-to-day experience of living under the occupation.
7th June @ 6:30pm - Heffers Bookshop, Cambridge

Coverage of our statement with Cambridge University Kurdish Society, now signed by 40 groups, from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement!

Following Israel's premeditated massacre on May 14th of 62 Palestinians protesting in Gaza for their internationally recognised rights as refugees, we are releasing a statement, signed by 60+ Cambridge academics and a major coalition of 38 student groups, demanding that the University end its complicity in war crimes by immediately terminating links with BAE Systems and Caterpillar Inc.
We issue this statement, jointly initiated with Cambridge University Kurdish Society, in ...solidarity with the Palestinian, Kurdish and Yemeni people. It heralds the beginning of a sustained campaign to end our University's complicity in these heinous war crimes and violations of international law:
"BAE Systems and Caterpillar Inc. supply essential products and services to the perpetrators of war crimes, facilitating the killing of thousands of Palestinian, Kurdish and Yemeni civilians. As members of the University of Cambridge, students and staff alike, we are deeply ashamed that our institution maintains such large and active links with corporate entities trading in mass murder and human misery...”
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"The Movement for Black Lives stands with the Palestinian people and especially those in Gaza, that have been engaging in resistance at the Gaza border... We understand that we are connected to the Palestinian people by our shared demand for recognition and justice and our long histories of displacement, discrimination and violence...
We stand on the side of those fighting for the freedom of Black people, Palestinians and oppressed people all around the world."

Beautiful scenes of defiance from the streets of Haifa earlier this evening in response to this week's tragic events. Sending all our love and solidarity!
نفديك_يا_غزة#

Please give all you can!

JOINT STATEMENT REGARDING THE GAZA RALLY TODAY:
As organisers of today’s solidarity rally with Palestinian protestors being massacred by Israel in Gaza, we were horrified at the end of the rally to discover that someone had written in chalk on the pavement: “Does this remind you of the Holocaust?”.
Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany are grossly offensive and anti-semitic, demeaning the seriousness and particular horrors of the Holocaust, whilst trivialising the oppr...ession of, and genocide against, the Jewish people.
We condemn in the strongest possible terms the person (whom has no association with any of the organising groups so far as we are aware) responsible for this racist graffiti, and are disgusted by its presence in Cambridge. As soon as being notified as to the existence of the graffiti, we returned to the protest site to erase it.
We affirm that anti-semitism, in all its forms, has no place in our organising for justice, which is rooted in a universal commitment to anti-racism, and justice for all historically oppressed groups, including the Jewish people.
We are committed to rooting out and eliminating antisemitism from our organising spaces. Again, we encourage everyone to read this brilliant document by Jewdas on tackling anti-semitism in relation to Israel: https://www.jewdas.org/how-to-criticise-i srael-without-bei…/
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A few pictures from today's rally. Thank you to all who participated in this wonderful demonstration of solidarity. Keep an eye out for updates on our activities in response to unfolding events in Gaza.
IN OUR THOUSANDS IN OUR MILLIONS WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS!

CAMBRIDGE EMERGENCY RALLY FOR GAZA: STOP THE MASSACRE, FREEDOM FOR PALESTINE!
Today, as the Trump administration celebrates the opening of a new American embassy in occupied Jerusalem, the Israeli military is brutally suppressing refugees protesting for their rights in Gaza, and has murdered over 52 Palestinians and injuring more than 1200 so far. In recent weeks, Israeli snipers have killed over a hundred Palestinians protesting in Gaza.
These barbaric crimes against humani...ty take place 70 years to the day since the establishment of the State of Israel, which triggered the ethnic cleansing of over 700,000 Palestinians.
In light of these recent events, and in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s continued struggle for dignity, equality and the right to return to their homeland, the PalSoc will be hosting an emergency rally on King’s Parade tomorrow from 12 pm, in collaboration with the CUSU BME Campaign, CUSU Women’s Campaign, Decolonise Cambridge, FLY Cambridge, FUSE Cambridge, Cambridge Middle East Society, Cambridge Defend Education, Critical Theory & Practice Seminar Series and SolidariTee.
#Nakba70 #مسيرة_العودة_الكبرى #القدس_عاصمة_فلسطين
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As Israel continues to murder Palestinian protestors in Gaza, join the protest in London tomorrow from 1pm!

// Cambridge University PalSoc Statement of Solidarity with Gaza Land Day Protests //
On this day in 1976, thousands of Palestinians staged a protest against the expropriation of hundreds of hectares of their land in the Galilee region for the building of a settlement. Israeli forces murdered six protesting Palestinians and injured hundreds more.
Palestinians have since staged a major commemoration on 30th March each year, protesting Israel’s ongoing project of ethnic clean...sing and settler-colonisation, which sees Palestinian villages regularly destroyed to make way for Jewish-only settlements and millions of refugees denied the right to return home.
By this summer, to take but one example, the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar in Jerusalem will be flattened by Israeli bulldozers to make room for the expansion of two neighboring Israeli settlements, already among the West Bank’s largest. Its nomadic Bedouin inhabitants, many of them forced out of the Negev by Israel in 1952, will once again be violently dispossessed.
Whilst the eliminatory logic of settler-colonialism continues apace, Palestinians continue to resist. Today, as thousands of Palestinians massed at Gaza’s fortressed border as part of a 45 day march in defence of the right of refugees to return home, Israeli generals ordered their occupation soldiers to “use a lot of force”.
With drones and high-grade snipers deployed against teenagers hurling rocks and dancing dabke, Israel has so far today murdered seven Palestinians and injured over 650, as Gaza’s hospitals call for urgent blood donations in events described by the Guardian and BBC as “clashes”.
Eighty years on from the ethnic cleansing of over half of Palestine’s native population in the Nakba, the state of Israel’s founding act, millions of Palestinians are still denied their fundamental rights. Cambridge University Palestine Society sends a message of solidarity to all those continuing to resist on Land Day.
For Omar Samour, the 27 year old farmer killed last night by an Israeli tank whilst working on his land, and for the millions of Palestinian refugees all around the world denied return to their homes and homeland because of their ethnicity, we must continue to campaign and agitate to end international complicity in Israel’s crimes.
#مسيرة_العودة_الكبرى
#GreatReturnMarch
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'Visions of Western empire were made in Cambridge and Oxford: colonial bureaucrats trained; the plunder of empire glossed with the intellectual facade of civilisational hierarchy and cultural difference; and, more recently, neo-conservative adventurism cultivated. Only by claiming the University as our own, democratised and decolonised, can we demolish them.'

// PALSOC STATEMENT ON APPEARANCE OF EHUD OLMERT, FORMER ISRAELI PM, IN CAMBRIDGE THIS EVENING //
It is deeply shameful that the Judge Business School has invited former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert to speak in Cambridge tonight. As Prime Minister of Israel from 2006-9, he directly ordered and oversaw the bombardment and massacre of thousands of civillians in Lebanon and Gaza, decried as war crimes by Amnesty International and UNHRC inquiries.
Olmert is a war criminal who belongs i...n the dock of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, not at a canapé-laden reception and discussion in Cambridge.
The Judge Business School’s banners declare that “Collaboration Keeps You Ahead”. By collaborating closely with arms companies such as BAE systems and inviting war criminals like Olmert onto campus, JBS and the University of Cambridge shame themselves and us all.
The title of Olmert’s appearance, ‘Israel as a start up nation’, adds insult to injury, revealing utter contempt on the part of JBS for the millions of Palestinian refugees dispossessed by Israel and denied the right to return to their homes, some of whom study and work at this University.
We urge them to cancel the event, and to cease their ongoing complicity in grave violations of international humanitarian law.

See More