Activist Akram Salhab on the Palestinian experience of British colonialism

This was useful. The reaction to the very word ‘Palestine’ indicates where people stand.

I watched it as well and alerted JVL. I thought C4 did a good job finally. It has taken a long time. Jon Snoiw seemed moved but also strangely surprised that people born here, British Palestinians felt unable to talk about their own history in public. Even the Palestine / Palestinian Cook Book one of these people wrote, where the publishers wanted to remove the word Palestine (as a non-sell) spoke a million truths about how ther narrative has vilified Palestinians. . Snow seemed shocked. I sometimes wonder if these elite journos in their own sort of bubble -and have swallowed the anti-semitism in Labour narrative wholesale. I was also particularly impressed by the Oxford academic, a Jewish Professor of International Relations who was at JVL’s launch, and Daniel Barenboim whose Palestiniahn/Israeli orchestra is held up as an inspiration. But he said it is not true that the orchestra is an orchestra of peace. he meant the sides are too far apart. Barenboim pointed out that Israel is the conqueror here and the Palestinians are the conquered. He said that if he had been occupied and suppressed for 53 years, he would not wish to talk to the occupiers. He said there was ‘no sincere’ dedicated leader ‘on either side’ currently who is who could bring about resolution or progress. He said crucially, “Israel (feels) it needs to win every war or it will not exist”, and, of course there is more than one type of war. It does not have to include guns. It can be a propaganda war filled with hype and misinformation too. He said the young people in the film were right. “They are right. Absolutely right.”

The experience of palestinians in the territories controlled by Israel and elsewhere need to be heard.I welcome this programme as a small but signifacant statement of the alternative to the prevailing discourse on the Israeli -palestinian conflict.