Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Activities

• The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is a leader and chief proponent of BDS and anti-Israel campaigns in the UK, which frequently invoke the “apartheid” libel.

Due Diligence

• In 2015, the Cooperative Bank closed PSC’s bank account. According to the Jewish Chronicle, the Co-op “revealed it closed the PSC account because of fears that money could inadvertently be funneled to illegal groups in Gaza. Following advanced due diligence checks on the anti-Israel group’s account, the bank said it was not satisfied that it would not be used to aid prescribed activities in the Palestinian territories.”
  • In response PSC launched a legal case against the Co-op on the grounds of discrimination and called on supporters to abandon their Co-op accounts and send a complaint letter to the CEO of the bank stating, “You have unilaterally chosen to close or deny accounts to at least 20 organisations working for Palestinian human rights, including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. In doing so have turned your back on the ethical principles that led so many to bank with you.”

Anti-Israel Activities

• PSC supports the Deadly Exchange campaign led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) that aims to “end police exchange programs between the US and Israel.” JVP claims that American Jewish organizations and programs are to blame for police violence against minorities in America. The campaign also invoked antisemitic tropes.
  • The initial “Deadly Exchange” video labeled AIPAC, ADL, Birthright and other Jewish organizations as being responsible for these exchanges, and urged viewers to “Hold accountable the Jewish institutions who run and fund the deadly exchange.”
• On November 28, 2022, PSC and 197 other regional and international civil society organizations sent an open letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan urging him to “Investigate and Deter Israel’s Apartheid Regime.” According to the letter, “Though mindful of the Court’s limited resources and budgetary complications, as well as your office workload and challenges, we are compelled to stress that Palestinian victims deserve justice and require equal attention as in other situations…we will continue our cooperation with your office and our support of your investigation into the Situation in the State of Palestine.”
• In August 2022, PSC signed a joint statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. The statement called for the international community to “take effective measures to end all other actions that deny Palestinians their inalienable human rights” and to “their support and increase funding to the organizations and engage with financial institutions to ensure the transfer of funds to the organizations.”
• In May 2021, PSC hosted a series of events for “#Nakba73” as “The Nakba continues today… Palestinians living abroad and their descendants, uprooted by Israel’s ethnic cleansing, are denied their right of return, enshrined in international law.”
• In April 2021, PSC published a “Legal Guide for Palestine Solidarity Student Activists” to “to help students in their campaigning in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality.” The guide includes “campaigning, holding protests, holding speaking events, and obtaining funding for your campaigning.”
• In March 2021, PSC published an article stating that “The IHRA definition of antisemitism is not fit for purpose as a tool in contributing to the fight against antisemitism…It disrupts coherent anti-racist politics by draining antisemitism of all meaning and by undermining efforts to address the institutionalised racism that underpins the laws, polices and acts used by Israel to oppress Palestinians and to deny their inalienable rights.”
  • • The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by nearly 30 countries and counting, represents the international consensus definition of antisemitism, as well as how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. An example of the latter includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• In September 2020, following the Trades Union Congress opposing Israeli annexation and identifying “Israel as a state practicing apartheid,” PSC Director Ben Jamal stated, “We welcome this motion which reaffirms the strong support across the UK trade union movement for the rights of Palestinians. By rightfully identifying that Israel is practicing a system of apartheid, the consequences become clear: There can be no normalised relations with any state practicing apartheid unless one is to become a reinforcing part of the system. We applaud the TUC for calling clearly for sanctions.”
• In December 2019, PSC participated in a campaign against the Jewish National Fund (JNF) as “JNF UK is complicit in the historic and ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. They should not receive financial benefits from their charity status.”
• In November 2019, PSC signed a letter to Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda, calling to open “an official, full-scale investigation into the ‘situation in Palestine’” and the “possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed” as the “absence of an official investigation…has fuelled the already existing culture of impunity.”
• In May 2019, PSC organized the “Not the Eurovision: Party for Palestine” to “highlight and protest human rights violations experienced by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli state, arguing that Israel is deploying “artwashing” tactics by using the Eurovision Song Contest as a way to mask its regime of apartheid and occupation and put forward a “progressive” image to the rest of the world.”
• In November 2018, to mark 101 years since the Balfour Declaration, PSC hosted a “lobby day” in Parliament as “It’s time for the British government to finally make some amends.”
• In September 2018, PSC stated that it “regrets the Labour Party National Executive Committee’s (NEC) decision to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism despite many calls to reject it.” PSC alleged that the “IHRA document has been used to attempt to prevent Palestinians bringing into the public domain facts about their ongoing dispossession and the denial of their rights.”
  • The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by nearly 30 countries and counting, represents the international consensus definition of antisemitism, as well as how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. An example of the latter includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• On May 12-13, 2018,  the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, BADIL, and the Trade Union Friends of Palestine hosted the “Palestinian Freedom Conference: Overcoming the Ongoing Nakba” discussing how “In late 1947, colonial Zionist paramilitary forces began the process of ethnically cleansing more than 750,000 Palestinians…70 years later…in Palestine a process of ongoing ethnic cleansing via occupation, colonisation, apartheid, and cruel siege continues apace, with no intervention from the international community.”
• In August 2014, PSC was the primary organizer of demonstrations that specifically targeted Jewish-owned TESCO and Sainsbury’s Stores. In a blatant display of Jew-hatred, PSC-affiliated demonstrators destroyed kosher food items at the stores. In fear of further destruction of kosher food products and the possible targeting of Jewish customers, store managers subsequently removed all kosher food. The fact that Israeli products not displayed as specifically kosher were not targeted, suggests that protestors specifically targeted products associated with Jews.

Apartheid Rhetoric

• PSC is part of a network of NGOs that promote artificial and manufactured definitions of apartheid to extend the ongoing campaigns that seek to delegitimize and demonize Israel. (Read NGO Monitor’s Policy Papers “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State” and “Neo-Orientalism: Deconstructing claims of apartheid in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”)
• In March 2022, PSC published a statement  “welcom[ing]” a report by then Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Michael Lynk accusing Israel of apartheid. The statement drew false equivalencies between Russia/Ukraine and Israel stating that the UK government “must act now to end its complicit support for this crime against humanity. In its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine it has made clear its view that serious breaches of international law require a sanctions-led response and that all public bodies have a duty to ensure they do not invest money in ways that support violations of international law. The same standards of accountability must be applied to Israel to bring its system of apartheid to an end.”
• In September 2021, PSC hosted an event titled “Palestine: From Apartheid to Freedom, Justice and Equality,” to discuss “the current situation in Palestine and what you and your trade union can do to end Israeli apartheid and reach freedom, justice and equality for the Palestinians.”
• In November 2018, PSC held a conference titled “Justice in Palestine: Ending Apartheid, Achieving Freedom and Equality,” calling to “condemn Israeli apartheid, and commit[] to fight back through supporting the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.” The conference featured Jewish Voice for Peace and Al-Shabaka.
• In October 2018, PSC released infographics that illustrate “the parallels between state policies in apartheid-era South Africa and those of contemporary Israel towards Palestinians.”
• Together with the Campaign Against Arms Trade and War on Want, published a July 2015 report, “Arming Apartheid: UK complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people,” funded by the Lipman-Miliband Trust, claiming that “trading arms with Israel makes the UK complicit in Israel’s continuing violations of human rights and international law” and urging the UK “to implement an immediate two-way arms embargo to end all arms sales to and purchases from Israel.”

BDS Activities

• PSC maintains a database of universities and pension funds that invest “in companies complicit in Israeli violations of international law.” According to PSC, “Israel can only maintain its grave breaches of international law and Palestinian human rights because of products, equipment and services it receives from a range of companies and financial institutions.”
• In November 2022, PSC held a conference for trade unionists on the topic of “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: Take BDS action now.” The conference discussed “the work by trade unions and PSC activists aiming to get local government pension funds to divest from companies complicit in Israel’s occupation and apartheid system.”
• In July 2022, PSC published a statement that the UK government “is seeking to enhance trade with Israel at a moment when a consensus has emerged across international civil society that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid,” and called for “ending the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements; taking punitive action against UK companies such as JCB which continue to trade with illegal settlements, and ending the 2-way arms trade with Israel.”
• In June 2021, PSC published on its website a letter sent to Coventry University calling to “end its role in operating the Jerusalem Light Rail… [and] seek to terminate all business relationships with the company.”
• In May 2021, in the context of the 2021 Gaza conflict, PSC published a statement urging the international community to  push “for an end to the arms Trade with Israel, an end to all trade that supports violations of international law, and an end to investment in companies supporting this illegality.”
• In 2020, PSC published “A 10 step guide to starting a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign on campus.”
• In September 2020, PSC called for the UN General Assembly to “Launch international investigations into Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people as a whole, as well as associated State and individual criminal responsibility,” to “Ban arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” and “Prohibit all trade with illegal Israeli settlements and ensure that companies refrain from and terminate business activities with Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.”
• In 2018-2019, PSC lobbied in support of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel.
  • In February 2020, following the release of the blacklist, PSC sent letters to 10 universities “draw[ing[ attention to the fact that your institution is one of 10 UK universities who hold investments in or institutional links to companies included in the UN list…Holding investments in such companies poses grave risks to your institution’s reputation.”
  • In August 2020, “following years of campaigning by students supported by Palestine Solidarity Campaign,” one of the 10 universities, University of Manchester “divest[ed] nearly £2m from companies complicit in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.” According to PSC, “This victory demonstrates that these campaigns can win and sever universities’ links with Israeli apartheid. We call on the University of Manchester to go further. They must to commit to divest from all companies complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses, and sign our apartheid-free pledge, so no complicit investments are made in the future.”
• In September 2020, PSC was part of a coalition that called on the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children not to accept donations from JCB alleging that “JCB equipment has been used repeatedly in Israel’s crimes against Palestinian children and communities. JCB were included on the United Nations Human Rights Office’s list of companies active in Israel’s illegal settlements.”
• In August 2020, following Israel signing a peace deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), PSC sent a letter to UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab calling for “banning trade with illegal settlements; ending the UK-Israel arms exchange; and not providing diplomatic cover for Israel’s ongoing abuse of Palestinians.”
• In September 2019, PSC activists called call on HSBC to “#StopArmingIsrael.”
• On June 4, 2016, PSC held a National Day of Action against the company Hewlett Packard with the “objective of the Day of Action is to highlight HP’s deep participation in Israel’s brutal Occupation and its apartheid system and to encourage more and more people to sign the pledge not to buy HP products.”
• On September 9, 2015, PSC organized a protest against a visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to England. PSC sent a letter to David Cameron that “he should be imposing sanctions and an immediate arms embargo on Israel, not welcoming its war criminal leaders to the UK.”
• In March 2015, PSC hosted an action summit titled “Palestine: The Tipping Point.” The summit was intended to “provide an empowering space for activists to plan around key issues and get involved in PSC’s campaigns, including BDS campaigns, media bias…and tackling the arms trade.” The summit included Omar Barghouti as a speaker.
• Created an infographic supporting BDS and “proudly refusing to do business with occupation, colonisation, and discrimination.”