George Galloway - From London to Gaza

[johrae]

[faceless]

that's some video - it could well be a satire, but it's well done for sure

[faceless]

[luke]

on the subject of a unity government;

Hamas: Factions agree to form national unity government

A spokesperson for the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, said on Wednesday evening that factions have agreed on the terms of establishing a national unity government.

Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum added that the government will be formed after elections, though the date has not been finally set.

In a statement to Ma'an, Barhoum said that "there is an agreement regarding the nature of the next government," and that it will be one of national unity, and will be temporary until the next Palestinian elections.

He said Palestinian officials in Cairo are "studying the issue of its political composition and the ministerial issues.”

Barhoum added that the Higher Coordinating Committees continued discussions and meetings on Wednesday in Cairo "with all seriousness and interest in all cases brought by the five committees regarding the Palestinian issue," pointing out that they considered a number of obstacles and unresolved issues related to the government, security and elections in order to complete discussions to solve them.

Speaking about the security file, Barhoum said, "This issue is still under discussion by the Higher Coordinating Committee in order to collect views from everyone."

On elections laws, Barhoum stressed that there are different views regarding the system, where Hamas wants to provide the opportunity for all Palestinians to participate in the elections process on the basis of a "mixed system."

from http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=36527

[faceless]

GG in Birmingham yesterday at a meetup for the people who went on the Viva Palestina convoy.

[faceless]

‘A political attack from both sides of the Atlantic’
vivapalestina.org

In an extraordinary move, the Charity Commission in Britain has issued a hostile briefing about the Gaza solidarity campaign inspired by Respect MP George Galloway, just before he arrived in North America for a speaking tour.

The Viva Palestina campaign, which organised a convoy of over 100 vehicles bringing aid to the besieged population of Gaza, has been in contact with the Charity Commission over the last week and sent it a substantial letter today in response to letters only received this morning. Before receiving that letter, however, some officials at the Commission have issued a statement to the media to say they are launching a “statutory investigation”, even though the Viva Palestina campaign has sought to co-operate with all relevant authorities throughout. As Galloway touched down in the US to begin his speaking tour he made the following statement:

“If anyone needs investigating, it is the Charity Commission itself. There is no good reason why the Commission should jump the gun and issue a statement that it is launching an investigation when, in fact, it was about to receive the information and correspondence it had asked for. But there are plenty of bad reasons for this outrageous behaviour. Let the facts speak for themselves. On Friday, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun reports that a right wing, pro-war, Bushite in Canada is stamping all over free speech and seeking to ban me from the country. On Saturday, Hazel Blears wrote to the largest Muslim organisation in the country calling for the head of its Deputy Director General Dr Daud Abdullah, because of his support for the Palestinian cause.

“On Monday morning, I set off to the US and Canada for a sell out speaking tour on the issue of Palestine. While I’m in the air the Charity Commission decides not to wait for a letter it had asked for and which will reach it tomorrow, Royal Mail permitting, but instead launches a public attack on the aid convoy I led.

“This isn’t the first time the Charity Commission has intervened in a blatantly political way. It did it over the miners strike a quarter of a century ago and against other solidarity movements. It did it over my campaign against sanctions on Iraq, when it repeatedly went though the books of a political campaign despite the fact it never found anything untoward. In truth, I expected this kind of attack. So, I’m sure, did the millions of people whose support for the people of Palestine is an affront to the establishment and its organs. Doubtless supporters of the Iraq war and Israel’s aggression against the Palestinians will hope that this will damage solidarity efforts. They are deluded.

“We won’t be intimidated. Viva Palestina will continue to campaign. And if the reaction in Canada to these kind of attacks is anything to go by, I anticipate an even greater outpouring of support for our campaign – moral, political, financial and in every other way.”

-------------------

Now, I'm no charity expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if the investigation doesn't centre around the intended target for the charitable appeal. I've already pointed out that I was disappointed that the aid went directly to Hamas, so I'm sure others were too.

[faceless]

I just found this, from last week - it's from Al Jazeera.

[luke]

Convoy of imams, rabbis and priests bring aid to Gaza

A group of rabbis, imams and priests entered the Gaza Strip on Friday, March 20, to present a message of hope and peace and to deliver several truckoads of aid..

The 'convoy for peace' traveled first to the southern Israeli city of Sderot where they met with a rabbi and some children from the area. The children decorated a large banner that contained the word peace in three languages, Arabic, English, and Hebrew.

This event was organized by Hommes De Parole an independent, non religious, political, philosophical, ideological or economic movement based in Geneva.

According to Angela Prevot chief of mission, "This is a way to bridge people together despite the tensions. The wall has separated both people from each other and there is no way to really know what is happening on the other side unless you visit the other side".

The next day imams, rabbis, priests and Hommes de Parole staff from France entered into Gaza through Erez. This was the first time in many years that a rabbi has entered Gaza. The point of the visit was to bridge peace between all three religions and to deliver three truck loads of hygiene kits offered by Caritas.

Caritas Jerusalem participated in this peace campaign through donating 2112 hygiene kits (60 palettes) to the people of Gaza. Each kit contained soap bars, hand washing detergent, star dishwashing liquid, star bath foam blue, tooth paste, tooth brush, floor detergence, dish washing sponge, hair shampoo, towels, Dettol and all purpose gel.

The process is long and lots of paperwork must be done for the delivery of aid into Gaza. A detailed paper of the goods first must be sent to the Israeli army with lots of procedures then to be followed. The trucks arrived at the Karm Abu Salem (Karem Shalom) checkpoint at 8am but only reached Gaza at 7pm. Then the goods were unloaded into the Holy Family School warehouse in Gaza City. The goods were received by Caritas assistant Amin Sabbag and Parish Priest Fr Mussallam.

As the convoy awaited the hygiene kits to be unloaded the rabbis and priests spoke and visited Holy Family School run by the Catholic Church. Children ages 6 to 17 years welcomed the convoy with lots of smiles. The rabbi was amazed to see that the children were still smiling despite what they had gone through. It was hopefully the beginning of something new, according to the rabbi.

The children of Gaza handed the convoy letters written about their feelings as children living under siege and war. Each letter described hardships of everyday life of a Palestinian child. They described the fear they face daily. Then the children expressed the wish to have a normal life like other children in the world. They want to be able to travel, play in the park, and swim without any fear of jets and missiles falling on them.

"The children here are traumatized. They live in constant fear. Everyday they are threatened of another attack. They have been deprived of their childhood. Most students here in the school are unable to take their exams or sit still. Any noise they hear they are afraid," Fr Mussallam said.

The convoy also visited the Palestinian university and spoke to students about inter-religious dialogue between the three main religions as part of their course in the university.

Fr Mussallam is very grateful for what Caritas is doing but he said: "The need is still great. It does not mean if the war has stopped that things have improved. Still there is much to be done."

"I understand that what we do as organizations is like a small drop in comparison to the great needs and suffering of the people of Gaza but we hope we can do more in the future with Caritas" and the "hands of God to help us with."

Since the attacks on Gaza in December 27, 2008 Caritas Jerusalem responded to the emergency immediately. We reached out to 4,240 families with food provisions. A thousand blankets were donated to 1000 families. Two thousand families will receive cash money. Two ambulances will be donated to two local hospitals. Approximately 100 Gazans with amputated legs or arms will receive prosthesis. The doctors and medical team will continue to conduct dressing on thousands of injured in several areas in the Gaza Strip.

At the end of the day Fr Mussallem said: "To talk about peace is not enough. We must talk about justice, this is the real peace."

from http://www.indcatholicnews.com/peacvonv324.html

[faceless]

George Galloway writes to the Charity Commission

To the Charity Commission,

I have been travelling for many weeks in North Africa and the Middle East, Europe, and North America. I have returned to a London address I seldom visit to find a blizzard of correspondence from you. Your correspondence, when read together, as I have just done, seems to represent a wildly disproportionate and inappropriate reaction to our recent delivery of aid to the suffering Palestinians in Gaza, and must raise the question: Why?

The peremptory letters from you, and by you I mean the Charity Commission, are full of bluster and threat, issuing absurd deadlines to people it does not seem to occur to you are not even receiving your letters, either because they are working abroad (Ms Razuki and Mr Al-Mukhtar), travelling abroad on high profile political business (myself), or you are writing to them at the wrong address.

In my own case, Easter Saturday opened with your, latest, threat to go before a High Court judge in a bid to force me to appear before you. That will not be necessary. I look forward to telling you to your faces what I think of you. Which is this.

I have become increasingly concerned about the abuse of your powers displayed in your brazenly obvious political double standards. About your attempts, under the guise of regulating British charities, to police the democratic efforts of political activists in Britain in a way never envisaged by parliament. About your preparedness to waste large sums of public money in political stunts, either at the behest of others or in the hope that you are properly anticipating their wishes. And above all, in the context of this issue, your almost laughably obvious prejudice against the Palestinian cause and against Britain's two million-strong Muslim community.

Just one example will suffice for now, although I have more, much more.

During Israel's 22-day attack on virtually defenceless Palestinian civilians in Gaza - condemned by virtually everyone in the world from the United Nations to the Pope and including the British government – an organisation The Zionist Federation took out a full page advert in the
Jewish Chronicle on 9th January asking readers to send "care packages" to "our [ie Israeli] soldiers fighting on the front line” in Gaza and to send charity vouchers to a British registered charity Operation Wheelchairs Committee (charity number 263089) for the same purpose.

Although this was immediately drawn to your attention you appear to have done absolutely nothing at all about such an abuse of charitable status. The Zionist Federation is presumably not a registered charity any more than Viva Palestina was. The Zionist Federation appeal was for money for “care packages” with donations possible online to www.zionist.org.uk and to the charity Operation Wheelchairs Committee. By the logic of your actions towards Viva Palestina, surely you should have immediately declared the Zionist Federation to be a charity with all that that entails. But you did not do so. Why? In any case, the Operation Wheelchairs Committee is a charity, soliciting for funds in this advert to support a foreign army involved in a widely condemned military action, in which thousands of civilians were killed, maimed and orphaned. Yet the Charity Commission did nothing. No freezing of bank accounts, no press releases, no carefully briefed "concerns", no threats of High Court judges.

It will only take the reader (I am publishing this letter as widely as I can) a moment's thought to imagine what the Charity Commission's attitude would have been if a British - Muslim - Charity had taken a full page advertisement in a different British newspaper raising money for "care packages" for "our [ie Palestinian] soldiers fighting on the front line” in Gaza.

Not only would you have gone into overdrive and immediately begun freezing their assets, the hue and cry in the press you would have fed, would have seen the charity's trustees under arrest.

This is an incontestable example of your persistent bias. Because in contrast to your inaction on a British charity raising money for the Israeli army and in the absence of such a hypothetical Muslim charity, you have launched this hysterical campaign to try and wreck the work of Viva Palestina instead.

Without any knowledge of the intentions of Viva Palestina and on the basis of press reports, you pronounced, as is your wont, that we were in effect a charity, to give yourselves locus in our affairs. You misunderstood - I believe deliberately - the structure of our Gaza convoy, purporting to believe that we - the subscribers (whatever that means) - were holding more than a million pounds about which you expressed "concerns", when in fact, as you have been told but continue to ignore, this was never the case.

You first frightened the banks into refusing our attempts to open a bank account. When we finally found a bank which would allow us to open an account you intimidated them into freezing it, I believe exceeding your powers. You then began procuring documents - possibly illegally - about us from the Islamic Bank. As a result of your press briefings about your "concerns" newspapers began to refuse to accept advertisements from us, donors turned away, and the public were encouraged to believe that Viva Palestina was something to be avoided - conjuring-up an undisclosed but lurking suspicion about it.

In all this you acted not as the public would expect a Charity Commission to do, but rather as a self-appointed state policeman of the activist sector, a mission-creep towards a style of work which simply must be contested.

Here are the facts. Accept them and save the public purse a lot of money it can't afford. And get off the backs of Britain's Muslims and the Palestinian people.

I am not a trustee of Viva Palestina. You say I am a "subscriber" though you do not say what that means. I have nothing to do with Viva Palestina's finances, I am not a signatory to its frozen bank account. I will attend the meeting with you, because I intend to launch a parliamentary campaign, and take it to the country, to put you back in your place.

I did inspire the creation of Viva Palestina and I am very proud of that. If those running it listen to me they will refuse to take anything off their website at your behest. The example you cite of an item which should be taken down, could just as easily have been any one of a hundred items. And would become so, once your right to dictate the activities of a political campaigning organisation was conceded.

For that is what Viva Palestina was, and is. Its constitution - its actual constitution not the one you wish it had - makes this abundantly clear. So does everything it says and does. If all that renders Viva Palestina not eligible to be a charity, then that's fine. Let me emphasise this as strongly as I am able. Viva Palestina does not want to be a charity.


It is you, for transparently political reasons, who insisted that charitable status should be sought. You registered Viva Palestina as a charity in record quick time and without the great bulk of the information you normally required. And then you froze the record-quick new charity's bank account so that it could not operate. These are police state tactics, entirely inappropriate and without any basis.

Viva Palestina simply provided a focus for an aid convoy from Britain to Gaza. It was de-centralised. Each participant was responsible for raising their own money, bringing their own vehicles, filling their own vehicles with their own aid, making their own donations in Gaza. You have been told this but continue to misrepresent the position. The money raised by Viva Palestina itself - a much smaller amount - was publicly declared to be intended as a donation to a British charity for work in Gaza - Interpal, with which you are depressingly familiar for having harassed it for years on repeatedly debunked smears.

The vast majority of the participants in the convoy, and the vast majority of those who helped them with money and aid, were British Muslims.

Having exerted that mighty effort, those British Muslims now find that their peaceful democratic response to the crisis in Gaza has been criminalised by you, and their aid confiscated. This all follows the high-profile police raid on vehicles from the Muslim community in the North West heading to join the convoy the night before its departure. This raid, blazed across the media, saw the arrest of ten Muslims headed for the convoy. All ten of them were later released without charge, but not before sowing the seeds of tremendous bitterness in the communities from which the men came.
This is dangerous as well as foolish. There are extremists on the edge of the Muslim community even now saying "I told you so" to those who had been naive enough to think Britain was still the kind of country where efforts like ours could be appreciated and, at least, be free from the kind of arbitrary and unjust actions taken by you. These actions undermine the confidence of British Muslims in the democratic system in Britain and are therefore dangerous and against the interests of our country.

I understand from my colleagues that you have now frozen more than £100,000 intended to help the suffering Palestinian people. Shame on you. I suppose it is too much to hope that you might have that on your conscience. But be sure I intend to let as many people as possible know, here and abroad, what you have done.

Viva Palestina's work has effectively come to a halt since your intervention in its affairs and in my absence. This was, I'm sure, your intention. Viva Palestina has not spent any money improperly. It would not do so. Indeed it could not do so. It has spent hardly anything at all - thanks to you. But it intends to get its money back from you. Viva Palestina have instructed lawyers to deal with you and a barrister will accompany us to the meeting with you. If necessary we will start a new organisation free from your wrecking efforts. But we want this money back, please be sure about that. There are Palestinians dying as a result of the malignant, sinister, cynical actions taken by you. Trust me you'll be hearing more about this.

Yours faithfully

George Galloway MP

[Brown Sauce]

you beat me to it .. what these creeps are doing is just plain nasty.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Viva Palestina Cricket tournament - Birmingham 10th May

For more details visit http://www.vivapalestina.org/events/cricket_100509.htm

[faceless]

I didn't realise the ins and outs of how they'd manipulated the situation, bastards indeed.

That cricket tournament sounds a laugh, but £500 a team?

[Brown Sauce]

Does sound a tad steep, but if every player gets 5 sponsors at a tenner each ... it's still steep ..

[faceless]

Quite a damning indictment on the 'Galloway Agreement'... it's the first I've heard of it, but I hope the truth of the matter isn't exactly this.

[faceless]

Galloway hits out at ‘police state tactics’ over frozen funds
Exclusive by MARTIN WILLIAMS
April 27 2009
theherald.co.uk

The Charity Commission has frozen more than £100,000 held by an aid organisation founded by George Galloway. The move, understood to involve funds in a bank account belonging to Viva Palestina, comes after the independent regulator of charities in England and Wales said last month it had begun a statutory inquiry into the use of "charitable funds" by the organisation, also known as Lifeline for Gaza.

The decision has prompted a stinging response from the Respect MP. In a letter to the commission, he says he has nothing to do with Viva Palestina's finances and says the regulator is trying to "wreck" the organisation's work.

He wrote: "You registered Viva Palestina as a charity in record quick time and without the great bulk of the information you normally required. And then you froze the new charity's bank account so that it could not operate. These are police state tactics, entirely inappropriate and without any basis.

"Viva Palestina's work has effectively come to a halt since your intervention in its affairs and in my absence. This was, I'm sure, your intention. Viva Palestina has not spent any money improperly. It would not do so. Indeed it could not do so. It has spent hardly anything at all - thanks to you. But it intends to get its money back from you.

"If necessary we will start a new organisation free from your wrecking efforts. But we want this money back, please be sure about that. There are Palestinians dying as a result of the malignant, sinister, cynical actions taken by you. Trust me you'll be hearing more about this."

The appeal claims to have raised more than £1m through fundraising events to provide humanitarian relief to Gaza. A convoy of 100 vehicles led by the Scottish politician delivered medical supplies to Gaza in February.

The Charity Commission said last month it was concerned to ensure the appeal was registered as a charity and that its duties "in terms of financial and accounting requirements" were followed. The commission said it had tried without success to contact the appeal on repeated occasions over a month to get acknowledgement that the funds were held for charitable purposes. The commission has the power to suspend any trustee, officer, agent or employee of the charity, to freeze bank accounts, and to appoint an interim manager.

Mr Galloway, 54, added in his letter: "In all this you acted not as the public would expect a Charity Commission to do, but rather as a self-appointed state policeman of the activist sector, a mission-creep towards a style of work which simply must be contested." He said that the vast majority of the participants in the convoy and of those who helped with money and aid were British Muslims.

In February, the commission said another charity backed by Mr Galloway working in the West Bank and Gaza Strip did not do enough to check partner organisations were not promoting terrorism. Palestinians Relief and Development Fund (Interpal) was Mr Galloway's chosen charity when he appeared on Celebrity Big Brother three years ago.

Two years ago, the Charity Commission found the now-defunct Mariam Appeal set up by Mr Galloway received sizeable funds from "improper transactions" under the UN Oil-for-Food Programme. Mr Galloway said that was "a complete and utter lie".

-----------------

Well done The Herald for this 'exclusive'!! Only 2 weeks after the event...