Review: Palestine Expo London

All walks of life came togeth­er last week­end at Palestine Expo held in the heart of Lon­don. Organ­ised by the UK non-profit organ­isa­tion Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA) it was the debut of the largest event of its kind in Europe. Two days of cel­eb­rat­ing Palestini­an her­it­age and cul­ture but also more import­antly to acknow­ledge and dis­cuss the effects of the severe mil­it­ary occu­pa­tion and apartheid Palestine is cur­rently for­cibly under by the Israeli mil­it­ary, and has been for sev­er­al years.  With over 15,000 attendees of diverse back­grounds, this event was clearly a huge success.

It felt extra spe­cial to be hos­ted in the heart of Lon­don at the Queen Eliza­beth Con­fer­ence Centre, over five floors of pan­el dis­cus­sions, speeches on human rights in Palestine, music, dance, food and activ­it­ies, there was some­thing for all the fam­ily. Only a stone throw from the Houses of Par­lia­ment it was also iron­ic as this year marks 100 years since the Balfour declar­a­tion, but also a remind­er that gov­ern­ing bod­ies do not always rep­res­ent the people they stand for.

There was a long list of bril­liant inter­na­tion­ally renowned guest speak­ers who each gave very mov­ing talks of their own per­son­al exper­i­ences backed up with fac­tu­al inform­a­tion. On a very com­plex and layered issue. I liked how each talk addressed some­thing spe­cif­ic and was very focused on a par­tic­u­lar area. I learnt a lot. Some­thing new for me was hear­ing how illeg­al set­tle­ments are often fun­ded by char­it­able organ­isa­tions who may not declare where their funds are going. It was also very heart warm­ing to see all the lec­ture rooms so full, people had to end up stand­ing at the back or sit­ting on the floor. Some of the many top­ics covered included, ‘Women of Occu­pa­tion’, ‘The ori­gins of Zion­ism’, ‘Why Jews for Justice for Palestini­ans’ and ‘Gaza: 10 years of Israeli siege’. There were also a few talks on what we can do in terms of act­iv­ism to sup­port Palestini­ans and spe­cif­ic advice for stu­dent groups.

Iyad Burnat, who leads the ‘Friends for Free­dom in Bil’in’ and ‘Bil’in Pop­u­lar Com­mit­tee against the Wall’ gave a very emo­tion­al talk. I had been humbled to vis­ited him home a few months ago dur­ing my stay in Palestine so I was some­what aware of the crush­ing occu­pa­tion he has to endure on a daily basis. He told us every time he leaves Palestine for his act­iv­ism work the Israeli mil­it­ary attack his fam­ily home and five chil­dren in the vil­lage of Bil’in, they have been attacked over 20 times. On his recent trip to New York to speak at the United Nations, Iyad’s son was shot mul­tiple times and whilst he was receiv­ing treat­ment he was arres­ted so his heal­ing was dis­rup­ted. It was a very power­ful talk which had us all won­der­ing about his fam­ily’s safety at that moment he was in Lon­don to talk to us. This is a well known tac­tic of the occu­pa­tion, where fam­il­ies espe­cially the chil­dren of act­iv­ists are tar­geted so they do not speak out of fear of intim­id­a­tion. I have much respect for him know­ing his fam­ily are in danger but the import­ance of his travel around the world to speak his truth, which is often manip­u­lated by the media as a form of ‘ter­ror­ism’.  His talk was fol­lowed by a stand­ing ova­tion, it was extremely moving.

Anoth­er speak­er who made it hard to hold back tears was Malaka Mohammed, run­ning from talk to talk. A stu­dent ori­gin­ally from Gaza spoke about her every­day exper­i­ence of grow­ing up under the occu­pa­tion where the sounds of war­planes and drones is just back­ground noise to the chil­dren and the dif­fi­culties of try­ing to leave Gaza to pur­sue an edu­ca­tion in the UK. Obstacles included closed bor­der cross­ings, mil­it­ary har­ass­ment and hav­ing to apply for mul­tiple visas. The Rafah bor­der is only open once or twice a month and on the day Malaka tried to cross the mil­it­ary decided to not allow any stu­dents to cross, des­pite this Malaka was determ­ined to try and formed a stu­dent protest at the bor­der where the mil­it­ary then allowed only 30 stu­dents to cross, at first Malaka’s name was not called, but as a stroke of luck the last per­son called was not present and Malaka’s was allowed to cross as the last per­son. Hav­ing made it to Shef­field uni­ver­sity, Malaka then spoke about the resent­ment she has faced liv­ing here being accused of anti-semit­ism for speak­ing out against injustices to Palestini­ans and her fam­ily. Of course speak­ing out for human rights does not make you anti-Semit­ic, but this is yet another tac­tic employed by the pro-Zion­ist lobby. Des­pite facing con­tin­ued dif­fi­culties, Malaka said she felt priv­ileged to now be in the UK and is determ­ined not to give up her act­iv­ism work, her strength and cour­age is such an inspir­a­tion and she is a strong role mod­el for women every­where. Much respect.

The cul­tur­al side of Palestine was not for­got­ten, as the occu­pa­tion also tries to deny Palestine as has cul­ture of it’s own. The group ‘Fursaan’ who per­formed a tra­di­tion­al Palestini­an dance known as, Dub­ka was so full, the per­form­ance was inter­rup­ted when one of the staff came to ask those stand­ing to leave the room due to health and safety issues as there was too much over­crowding and the per­form­ance had to be repeated so every­one could get a chance to see it.

There was also a floor of a mar­ket place with a vast array of Palestini­an and middle east­ern goods for sale, Kuf­fiayehs, dates, Oud, mod­est cloth­ing, lit­er­at­ure and of course halal sweets for the kids. Here you could find many human rights organ­isa­tions and char­it­ies sup­port­ing Palestine, such as Inter­pal, and Stop the War Coali­tion, Mercy Mis­sion as well as groups organ­ising trips for tree plant­ing and the holy pil­grim­age to Al-Aqsa. There were many inde­pend­ent busi­nesses selling their goods. One of the my favour­ites from the mar­ket place was the jew­ellery made out of olive wood from Beth­le­hem. Unique designs it’s a won­der­ful way to stand in solid­ar­ity with Palestine and dorn some­thing beautiful.

I also bought a box of the ‘Holy Dates’, dates from Jericho where profits go towards build­ing orphan­ages in Jer­u­s­alem. These dates are not only deli­cious but also money going towards a good cause. I stopped here to dis­cuss our exper­i­ences of trav­el­ing to Palestine with one of the stall hold­ers as I noticed his, ‘Straight outta Palestine’ hood­ie. Fra­grance of the falafel was enough to entice any­one to join the long queue for some­thing to eat in the food court.

The even­ing saw a sold out per­form­ance by the first lady of Hip Hop Shadia Man­sour who is Palestini­an her­self and comedi­an Aamer Rahman.

Sur­pris­ingly there was­n’t an over­whelm­ing police pres­ence which I feel would have over­shad­owed the event. Every­one was very friendly as we were all here for the same reas­on, it was easy to exchange a smile and start a con­ver­sa­tion. All in all I felt there was a very pleas­ant atmo­sphere of pos­it­iv­ity and good vibes.

This event went ahead, des­pite efforts from vari­ous hate groups with false alleg­a­tions and slander, that this event was preach­ing anti-Semit­ic con­tent, sev­er­al of the speak­ers were in fact them­selves Jew­ish, as were some of the exhib­it hold­ers. This is a clev­er tac­tic often used by the pro-Zion­ist lobby, I spoke to the hand­ful (less than 6) pro­test­ers out­side the huge event to inquire about their feel­ings on the event and sur­pris­ingly they told me they would be open to attend them­selves if it was­n’t for cer­tain speak­ers when I asked whom, they handed me a leaf­let of ‘quotes’ clearly mis­quoted and taken out of con­text. There def­in­itely seemed to be a mis­un­der­stand­ing of what the event was actu­ally about, but with the lack of sup­port for the oppos­ing side showed to me the under­stand­ing of the truth is far great­er and grow­ing. The Palestine Expo was in fact a very enjoy­able, pos­it­ive and uplift­ing experience.

It was very reas­sur­ing to see such a massive turnout of a vari­ety of people inter­ested in what’s going on. This event can only grow, I am already look­ing for­ward to the next one. Much love to Friends of Al Aqsa and all the organ­izers! The road to justice is nev­er easy. To all those who say I can­’t make a dif­fer­ence or I can­’t change things, WE can — this event went ahead des­pite vari­ous efforts to have it shut down and slandered with false alleg­a­tions, and that IS pro­gress, res­ist­ance and HOPE. The take home mes­sage for me from this event espe­cially after see­ing the diversity of the dis­cus­sion pan­el was not to be afraid to stand up and speak out, our voices togeth­er can amp­li­fy the urgent need for justice and even­tu­ally we will be heard.