On Saturday 19 October 2019, Palestine activists including supporters of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and Palestine Action Group held a protest inside Newcastle’s city centre library. This was in response to Newcastle Labour council and the library which it runs shutting down an exhibition marking the Nakba of 1948 when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and lands by Zionist terrorist organisations as they violently established the Israeli state. The library said the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) exhibition was cancelled because of ‘the one sided nature of the display.’ Newcastle Council has adopted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism but claimed that the definition would not lead to any ban on events in the city expressing support for Palestine. Labour councillors lied and so protestors took action.
For background on the banning read our statement here: Newcastle Labour council bans Palestine Nakba exhibition
Protestors started their demonstration outside Marks and Spencer – the biggest British corporate supporter of Israel. They then went into the library to hand out leaflets about the banning and then held their own pop-up Nakba exhibition without waiting for permission from the library. Library staff manhandled protestors, tried to confiscate banners and scrumpled up leaflets, throwing them in the bin. The exhibition went ahead anyway, with protestors speaking loudly and clearly on the megaphone about the events of the Nakba, the current situation in Palestine and the role of the council and the library in trying to undermine solidarity with Palestine.
In stark contrast to this principled action, PSC have made it clear they do not want anything to do with a campaign challenging the IHRA definition or its implementation. Instead they claim they will wait until May 2020 to try and hold a purely ‘humanitarian’ exhibition on the Nakba in order to comply with the library’s policies. This is of course impossible, as any mention of the Nakba as ethnic cleansing would contravene the IHRA definition. Making a firm stand against this censorship would require the PSC to face up to the Labour council when its members and allies are made up of Labour councillors and their supporters. This is something they are not willing to do.
