Sheffield’s cinema Palestino film season has been a fixture for 8 years now. This year we are showing 3000 Nights, an award winning film set in a Israeli women’s prison contratsing the britality of her treatment with the care given to new life and community
We are also showing a documentary by Hind Shoufani about her father, Elias Shoufani, academic, activist and exile. Winner of Best Non-European Documentary at the European Independent Film Festival, Paris this film is a personal, poetic and political archive and interview journey to discover family history.
if you are ordering on behalf of a branch please fill in this form (pdf) or this one (Word format) and send with a cheque to Sheffield PSC, 118 Upperthorpe, S6 3NF
Two years ago, Sheffield PSC and others lobbied the council vigorously, concerned that the council persisted in purchasing good and services from organisations complicit in the occupation and denial of basic human rights to Palestinians
As a result, Sheffield City Council voted unanimously to adopt an Ethical Procurement policy. Such a policy tries to ensure that the best, most trustworthy companies are used to provide local services.
But, after two years, Sheffield still does not have an Ethical Procurement Policy.
Please add your name to this petition saying two years is long enough to carry out what the Council voted to do.
Lajee dancers spend some time off in the Peace Gardens
On 9th July this summer, over a hundred people saw at Sheffield’s Broomhall Centre a performance by 20 Palestinian teenagers, from Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem.
The previous day, Sheffield’s Deputy Mayor had welcomed the group, the Lajee Dance Troupe, at the Town Hall. On Wednesday, October 5th, three of the 14-year- old dancers, Mustafa Bdair, Mutaz Barakah and Omar Radi were arrested by masked Israeli soldiers.
Attacks by the Israeli army on the Lajee centre have escalated since Celtic football fans raised over £170,000 divided between Medical Aid for Palestine and the Lajee Centre in Aida Camp.
These night raids by Israeli soldiers fit into a pattern of reprisals that have followed international gestures of solidarity with the Centre under an Israeli military occupation that the UK and other governments consider to be illegal.
Israeli soldiers attacked the Lajee Centre with teargas and rubber bullets on 19 Sept while the children were inside. The following night they forced open the gate of the centre, threw teargas grenades inside and closed the gate, trapping the children inside, forcing them to inhale toxic teargas.
Mutaz, Mustafa and Omar have been released on bail but will be tried by an Israeli military court where defendants are routinely found guilty.
In total, 440 children under 18 are currently held in military detention almost two-and- half times the number imprisoned a year ago. According to the Defense for Children International–Palestine (DCIP), no other country in the world systematically prosecutes hundreds of children in military courts each year.
Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign are urging Sheffield MPs to call on the Foreign Office to condemn the Israeli government’s campaign of intimidation against the Lajee Centre and to press for the dropping of the charges against the teenagers.
What better image can there be of cultural resistance to occupation than dancing under the separation wall. In spite of the occupation, destruction of civil life and countless barriers to cultural engagement, Palestine, Palestinians and their culture does not go away, or become invisible.
In solidarity with the right to roam walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and in Hebron, children in the north of the Gaza Strip participated in a walk organised by Al Asria children centre in Jabalia in walk on June 4th
At the end of the Land’s End to John O’Groats trail, Caroline and helpers at Duncansby Head a few miles east of John O’GroatsSheffield PSC assemble at the same time as Caroline at Duncansby Head (nearly the same time!)