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Haringey Justice for Palestinians Newsletter |
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Letter to Ronnie Prosor, Israeli Ambassador
11th July 2008
To Ronnie Prosor,
Hi Ronnie. Little did we expect to be sending a missive to the Israeli Ambassador to the Court of St James but because you seem to be so worried about us lot we thought we had better give you a regular update.
We are Haringey Justice for Palestinians and we will be producing this monthly newsletter to let you know about our goings on.
By the way, don’t get the idea we are all Guardian reading Uni
lecturers who spend our time glued to the “left wing BBC”; some of us
have been listening to people like you and Benjamin for years. One
thing we do know is you and Ben don’t half tell some porkies. And no
one could deny that you have been very good at it. Where did you learn
to do it so convincingly? Maybe it is that old adage of Gs. about big
lies being told often enough.
Anyway, that is beside the point. I’ll tell you what we have been
up to. Some of our members have been regularly visiting the West Bank.
We met some very courageous, resourceful and determined people living
in extremely straightened circumstances since you turned their country
into a set of Bantustans. We want Haringey to twin with Aizaria. You
probably know — Lazarus was born and raised there and used to nip over
to The Mount of Olives weekends — not any more! It used to be a suburb
of Jerusalem ‘til you knocked down a few houses and grubbed up some
olive groves to build the Wall.
Last November we had the mayor of Aizaria over for a week to meet
people and make the first contacts in the Twinning process. Since then
teachers and educators have exchanged visits and we’ll try to send 10
computers to one of their schools — so long as your merry crew let them
through the Wall. Hopefully, that should be in late August, ready for
the new school year in Aizaria. What we would love to do is get direct
contact up and running between a girl’s school in our borough and one
in Aizaria. We have a stock of local Palestinian handicrafts we sell at
events. The local Mosque has been great in this regard. We don’t sell
it cheap, but the Al-Aizarian women make some lovely stuff.
In the money-raising stakes we had a very good quiz night in a
local pub and raised £361 just a couple of days after your comments in
the Telegraph. Seventy people to a quiz night seemed good to us - not
that it measures up to the 7000 of your mates who turned up at Aipac to
hear Barack offering obeisance.* But from “little acorns” as they say.
You know what Ronnie, you are right about one thing, the mood is
changing here. See, it seems to us that the vast majority of people in
this country take no interest in politics, and certainly not in
international politics. But there are a small number who are always
interested, and to be truthful — you and Ben have been able to
intimidate them into silence for a long time. but guess what? They just
started talking to each other. Did you hear that the Irish Congress of
Trade Unions are condemning Israel and supporting the Palestinians. They must have been watching the BBC. Wow! 800,000 members, the acorn may have sprouted.
So what we want is to use this newsletter to chat to each other
and to other groups around the country and you can write a few words to
us too if you wish.
Yours fraternally, H.J.f P
* From London Review of Books, 3rd July 2008, Obama on Israel by Uri Avnery
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