NOVANEWS
The history of Britain’s biggest clothing retailer Marks and Spencer demonstrates how consumer habits in Britain are tied to the oppression of other peoples. Marks and Spencer has championed the state of Israel and thus connived in the dispossession and suppression of the Palestinians. Our comforts and pleasures, which Marks and Spencer so eagerly service, have been bought at an unacceptable price, as TREVOR RAYNE reveals.
Russian Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. Pogroms against the Russian Jews followed. Many Jewish people fled to the USA, some came to Britain and a trickle went to Palestine – a land they called Zion. Among those coming to Britain was Michael Marks, who was settled in Leeds by 1884.
Read more: Marks and Spencer: ally of Israel
The Al Aqsa Intifada began on 28 September 2000. The Victory to the Intifada campaign has been demonstrating outside branches of Marks & Spencer in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance every week for the 10 years since then, raising awareness about the struggle on Britain’s busiest shopping streets. Come and join us to mark 10 years of opposition to Marks & Spencer’s corporate sponsorship of the occupation of Palestine.
Israel is a racist construct, whereby a land which is holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims, who lived together in harmony there for hundreds of years, is designated as the sole property of the Jewish people. The Zionist project of creating this land would not have been possible without the help of British imperialism, which saw the opportunity to create ‘a little loyal Jewish Ulster’ to look after its interests in the Middle East. This same motivation keeps the most powerful governments in the world today backing Israel with huge amounts of trade and aid, especially military. It is this imperialist support that allows the majority of Israel’s (Jewish) population to live a privileged existence in comparison to the majority of people in the Middle East, and that permits Israel to commit war crimes with impunity.
The ‘peace process’ is a farce. Israel has given nothing while building new settlements and new settlement roads, and intensifying its occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Israel has continued to demolish homes, uproot and burn olive and fruit trees and restrict Palestinians’ movement by humiliating checkpoints. Designated Palestinian areas get smaller and smaller with every new ‘Peace Plan’, with Palestinians forced into controlled enclaves like Bantustans.
The failure of the Oslo Peace Process of the 1990s led to the start of the Al Aqsa Intifada on 29 September 2000, following Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit the previous day to the Temple Mount, which contains Islam’s third holiest shrine, Al-Aqsa Mosque, accompanied by 1,000 riot police, when police used live ammunition and rubber-coated bullets against unarmed rock-throwing Palestinian demonstrators, killing six and injuring 220.
In the first few days of the Intifada the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) fired 700,000 bullets and other projectiles in the West Bank and about 300,000 in Gaza. As in the Intifada that started in 1987, Palestinians began by using non-violent methods. Repeatedly, however, peaceful protest was met with live ammunition.
In the 10 years, 29 September 2000 to 31 July 2010:
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6,545 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF in the Occupied Territories
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1,315 children, 32 medical personnel, 11 journalists and 15 international supporters have been killed
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30,545 Palestinians have been wounded by the IDF in the West Bank and Gaza