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Israeli occupation of Gaza

05/06/2025

Dear Editor,

Yuval Abraham, a co-director with Hamdan Ballal of the film No Other Land, reported yesterday, 4th June, 2025, via X, that “Israeli settlers and soldiers stormed Hamdan’s village and began building a new illegal outpost directly in front of his home. The village is called Susiya, it’s in Masafer Yatta, which is being systematically destroyed faster than ever before. Hamdan said he hopes journalists urgently come to the area because the lives of everyone there are in danger.” His post was commented on by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory is illegal under international law. However, there are now around 737,000 Israeli settlers living in illegal settlements in the West Bank. Their objective is to make the West Bank part of Israel, under the name Judea & Samaria, harking back literally thousands of years to where the biblical Samaritans and Judeans were supposed to be living. 

To achieve this aim Israel turns a blind eye to the settlers’ methods of getting rid of the Palestinians. Settlers vandalise homes, set up new illegal outposts that the Israeli government leaves alone, attack farmers, destroy crops such as traditional olive groves, and steal livestock under the supervision of the Israeli army.

Of late the settlers have become even bolder and more fierce than usual, since the Israeli government has given the go-ahead for 22 new settlements, plus legalising the many current  illegal ones. As the film’s title, No Other Land, implies, there is no other Palestinian land for Palestinians to dwell peacefully in. They are not welcome in Israel now, even less when Greater Israel comes into existence, incorporating Gaza and the West Bank, unless the international governments take decisive action to stop Israel’s current murderous activities and turn it into a decent country obeying international laws.

Devra Wiseman 

<29/04/2024>

Alzheimer’s Society Ambassador Sir Jonathan Pryce CBE Asks Readers in the North West to Support Forget Me Not Appeal for Alzheimer’s Society.

Dear Editor,

As a proud Ambassador of Alzheimer’s Society, I know all too well the enormous impact dementia is having on families all over the UK. Over 900,000 people’s lives are presently being turned upside down by this cruel illness.

However, there is hope that one day dementia will no longer devastate lives. Thanks to scientific advances and the determined efforts of researchers and charities like Alzheimer’s Society, we can defeat dementia.

There is so much we can all do to help and support people who are walking this very hard road. I support the Forget Me Not Appeal in honour of my late aunt, and up and down the country many other people give their time, their energy and raise their voices to make sure that people with dementia and their families don’t feel forgotten.

This May, you too can help ensure that people with dementia are remembered by wearing a Forget Me Not badge to show your support. I’m asking you to donate to Alzheimer’s Society’s appeal and wear your Forget Me Not badge with pride; to show people living with dementia that they are not forgotten. Every three minutes someone in the UK develops dementia. There still is no cure, but thanks to huge advances in medical research, there is finally real hope.

You can purchase your badge or other Forget Me Not items, volunteer as a collector or take part in a range of fun activities from crafting to climbing…! Just visit alzheimers.org.uk/forgetmenot  

This little blue flower has come to represent remembrance – I’ll be wearing mine for my Aunt. Who will you wear yours for?

Sir Jonathan Pryce CBE

Last weekend the people of Hilden, Germany, were stirred to march

<07/02/2024>

Dear editor,

Hilden is a pleasant, modest-sized town in North Rhine-Westphalia, not far from Düsseldorf. 3,500 ‘ordinary’ citizens demonstrated against the fascistic neo-Nazi anti-immigrant rhetoric of the far right – specifically ‘Alternative für Deutschland’. AfD is Germany’s populist anti-immigrant, pro-Putin party. The good citizens of Hilden were not alone, across Germany from the largest city to small towns and villages, citizens are making a public stand in their own communities in their hundreds of thousands.

Hilden’s march had been coordinated by church and civic groups, with modest publicity. Professionally printed posters of organised political groups were absent, placards were homemade, the demonstrators were young and old, middle-aged, made up of families with children – and they knew why they were there.

Germans do not use words like fascism or Nazism lightly, they understand the unutterable horror of what they mean, and decry their use as flippant descriptions of unpleasant organisations or wicked regimes. Yet these words are used now: new lyrics for an old folk song: ‘Gegen den Faschismus hier im Land’ (‘Against fascism here’) and ‘Nie wieder ist jetzt’ (‘never again is now’) as well as stronger messaging specifically against Nazism. 

Yet, if AfD is to be understood as such, and is so much to be stood up against – what does it say about us in the UK – puffed up proud as we appear to be? When there is not so much as a cigarette paper’s thickness between the rhetoric of successive prime ministers, home secretaries, the populist UKIP and Reform UK parties, and AfD? Why are there no such civil society driven marches in the UK? When there was a uniting cause – Brexit – a million marching on the streets of London was deemed scarcely newsworthy and totally ignored by the politically privileged, conveniently detached as they are from those they rule. 

The ordinary folk on the streets in Hilden grew up in a formerly ‘great’ country destroyed in an evil folly generated and sponsored within itself. Its modern constitution and entrenched rule of law and human rights are an essential antidote to the past evil and are held dear in media, in education, and without cynicism by the majority of political and social leaders. 

Human nature, in Germany and in Britain is not so different – the propensity to respond to events, and slogans, with hate or love is no different. Political institutions, understanding and culture are, however, clearly very different, and if these ordinary Germans on the street are awake to the threat, then why do our Anglo-Saxon politics exhibit to such a deplorable degree, that of Trumpian populist rhetoric? 

I particularly loved one placard I saw on the march in Hilden: ‘NATONALITÄT: MENSCH!’  ‘Nationality: Human being’’; also a fabulous slang word in English which implies admirable, honourable qualities – and integrity. Are there any UK parliamentary candidates up for the challenge?

Yours faithfully,

David A Powell