Boycott referendum rerun is rescheduled

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Looking for peace? I don’t think so

Judging from the debate at recent event “Looking for Peace in the Israel/Palestine conflict”, I think it’s safe to say we’ll be searching for a long while yet.

The event seemed to be aimed at providing an impartial look at the crisis, with both a Palestinian journalist, Adwan Adwan and an Israeli academic Yossi Mekelberg among the panel of speakers. Interestingly, however, it was Mekelberg who attracted most attention from the audience, facing both the strongest criticism and, it seemed, the widest support.
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Anti-Semitism at Manchester University?

Protests against the recent actions of the Israel military towards Gaza sparked alleged cases of anti-Semitic discrimination at the University of Manchester. Both the Students’ Union General Secretary, Rob Pinfold and UMSU Anti-Racism Secretary, Oliver Worth, claimed to have been victims of anti-Jewish discrimination from fellow students on campus. Read more

Anti-war, not anti-Semitic

It is refreshing to see, in last week’s leading article, a report on the Sussex Occupation in which the writer has taken the time to talk to the occupiers and ask them why they are there.

The large-scale protest has been met with some alarmingly mis-informed articles in this fine paper, including some which spark the claim that because the occupiers heard from Azzam Tamimi, who is pro-Hamas, everyone in the room must also be pro-Hamas and pro-terrorism. Last week’s comment piece, ‘Freedom fighters or terrorists?’, suggested that the Palestine Society, in defending the right of Dr Tamimi to speak, was endorsing ‘a message of hatred’, which included not only pro-terrorism but also anti-Semitism.
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Freedom fighters or terrorists?

Considering the treatment they get on the Sussex campus, you’d think Hamas were Robin Hood and his band of merry men.

The event ‘Get Israel Out of Gaza’ attracted hundreds of students, many of whom wished simply to express their outrage at the huge loss of civilian life in the Gaza Strip as a result of bombing by Israel. The event was held as Israeli troops withdrew from the area. Speakers included Dr Azzam Tamimi, who declared in a 2004 interview that can still be seen on the BBC website that he supports suicide bombing in public places in Israel and would carry one out personally if he could. A year later, 444 civilians, including 80 children, had been killed in Israel as a result of terrorist attacks mostly carried out by Hamas. Read more

Debate over boycott unsatisfactory

On the evening of Monday 26 January the occupants of Arts A kindly hosted what was advertised as a ‘debate’ regarding the boycott of Israeli goods on campus. Personally, and perhaps like a number of other students, I attended because I hadn’t made up my mind about what is an extremely complex and contentious issue. I was hoping to hear both sides of the argument and make an informed decision based on two-way argument and even discussion. Sadly, this was not to be the case. Read more

London students start wave of protests to support Gaza

On Tuesday 13 January a group of School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) students began their occupancy in the Brunei Gallery where the Ministry of Defence(MOD) were holding an exhibition. A list of demands was requested to be met by the university management before the occupancy would retreat. Read more

Pro-Palestinian students occupy lecture theatre after anti-war talk

Students occupied the Arts A2 lecture theatre in protest over the continuing Israeli military action in Gaza, following a speech from a controversial British-Palestinian academic that drew an audience of hundreds of students last Tuesday evening.
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Israeli students speak out over Gaza massacre

Palestinian and Israeli students were among those protesting in Brighton earlier this month in the biggest anti-war demonstration seen in the city since the invasion of Iraq.
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Look further next time

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a topic of interest to many students at Sussex, while others couldn’t care less. It’s also a topic consisting of an endless debate which will never amount to anything more than unwanted tension on our campus. However, the interview featured in last weeks The Badger (‘Existence is resistance’ 24/11/08) with students that visited the West Bank in Israel earlier this term, painted an elaborate picture of what life is like for some Palestinians living there.
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