My Story (this person has requested to remain anonymous)
My support for Palestinian Solidarity Campaign
I am a British citizen with no religious affiliation. I long been interested in the relations between state and state power, interstate rivalries, and different forms of imperialism and colonialism. This has important implications for the role of Israel in the Middle East, the increasing role of Zionism in the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and its role in interstate rivalries. A land without people for a people without land is one way to express the Zionist occupation project. More generally, Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism was a firm commitment to military superiority to build an iron wall to suppress Arab opposition to a Jewish state from the river to the sea and is strongly supported by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long opposed a “two-state solution”.
I first became interested in Israel and Palestine during the Six Day war in 1967, which was falsely justified by Israel as self-defence against Egypt but involved a pre-emptive air strike and was motivated by territorial expansion into the Sinai peninsula, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. I later met a Palestinian, who informed me about the effects of the Israeli occupation on her family, neighbours, and community. She also told me how Israel manipulated the water supply to privilege access to Israeli settlers and deprive Palestinian subjects when water was low. Another Palestinian told me about the unfair planning regulations that discriminated against Palestinian subjects in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, leading to restrictions on house building and house demolitions.
As a result, I became even more convinced that Israel was an occupying power that was aiming to repress the Palestinian population, expand illegal settlements, and impose apartheid. I also understood better that the USA supports Israel as its key player in the regional struggle for power.
I was motivated to support Palestine because of my sympathy for Palestinians in the largest open-air prison in the world in Gaza and its parallels in the West Bank and the ability to situate 7th October in its historical context. The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in Lancaster is one way to express our support for all Palestinians and join in the chant that "one, two, three four, occupation no more, five, six, seven, eight, Israel is a terror state".