Breaking: ‘Sickened’ E Sussex residents demand divestment from Israel as 200 more kids murdered in Gaza

Hundreds of ‘sickened’ East Sussex residents have called on their council to finally divest its pension funds from companies enabling and profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children.

As the council met on Thursday, members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) handed in a petition of more than eight hundred residents calling on the council to commit to the divestment from companies enabling Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. 

Representatives from Brighton, Lewes and Hastings were present at the handover as Hastings resident Grace Lally told County Council Chairman Roy Galley:

We have seen, just in the last few days, Israel is in violation of international law, commits war crime after war crime, massacring men, women and children.

We are just so sickened that our county council is complicit in that. And not just complicit – is profiting from it. The investments from our pension fund – we are making money off the arms companies that are profiting from Israel’s actions in Gaza.

In an attempt to dodge the issue that Lally described as an ‘obscene distinction’, Cllr Galley objected that:

…you’re not saying the County Council is profiting. It’s the council pension fund that is presumably profiting.

Lally responded:

Most people who look to East Sussex to invest their pension funds on their behalf so they can have security in their old age… they don’t expect their old age to be reliant on profiting from war crimes.

Israel made clear in the early hours of Tuesday morning that its ‘ceasefire’, which it had breached daily, was a sham by targeting civilians with massive air strikes that have killed more than five hundred Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including over two hundred children. The occupation regime had already re-imposed its complete and unequivocally criminal blockade of food, water, medicines, food and shelter in a return to its starvation tactics against Gaza’s surviving civilian population – and today threatened explicitly threatened civilians, in a clear expression of genocidal intent, with ‘complete devastation’ that would dwarf the slaughter already inflicted and with forced transfer out of Gaza.

Hundreds attended emergency protests in Brighton and Hastings on Tuesday evening, while thousands descended on Downing Street to show their anger and despair at the resumption of Israel’s mass murder.

Pension fund member Jo Hutton said of the council’s investments in genocide:

I’m a pensioner and I really strongly object to my money coming from unethical sources – any – but particularly the killing of men, women and children.

Another petitioner, Gabriel Carlyle, said:

My partner is Jewish and I would hope that if during the Second World War the County Council had been investing in IBM or other companies that were complicit in the Holocaust that the county council would take action. Amnesty International just published at 256-page report called ‘This is Genocide’. This is not a controversial issue. We need to see action.

Figures obtained by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign show that East Sussex County Council has increased its pension fund investments in companies complicit in Israeli war crimes, which now total £170 million. The fund has also increased its investments in companies profiting from illegal settlement activity like Israeli banks, Airbnb, booking.com and Motorola – and includes companies directly supplying the Israeli military, such as BAE Systems (£4.5m), Rolls Royce (£1.2m), Thales, Airbus and Ultra Electronics.

The UN General Assembly backed an historic ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which had declared that all of Israel’s occupation was illegal and voted overwhelmingly to end Israeli occupation of Palestinian land within 12 months. The ruling also demanded member states take ‘steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal occupation’.

Laurie Holden of Hastings & District PSC said:

As of March last year, there were 85,416 members of the pension fund but none of these people have any say in the running of the fund. Only the five members of the committee.

The leader of the East Sussex County Council declined to answer a public question at last month’s full council meeting, asking him for a meeting about the issues raised in the petition. Councils across the country are pledging to divest from Israeli war crimes and apartheid to comply with international law. There is no reason East Sussex shouldn’t do the same.’

Campaigners say they hope to reach the 5000 threshold of signatures to guarantee a full debate is held on the issue at a future council meeting. East Sussex residents who wish to sign can do so on  https://forms.gle/38R7qmi8fD5XzkUg6 

Please remember to support Skwawkbox if you can, to help ensure it can keep running. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (Skwawkbox will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount as it has to be entered by us). Alternatively, if you prefer to make a one-off or recurring donation by simple card payment, please use the form below:

Thanks for your solidarity so Skwawkbox can keep doing its job of inconveniencing the right and helping to build the left!

If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so, but please include the donor information above – see here for more.