The Zionist lobby are now trying to get pro-Palestinian book launches shut down

On the evening of Wednesday 26 February, protesters led by the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) marched into Camden Town Hall and occupied the building’s lobby for over an hour. This followed a decision by the charity King’s Cross Brunswick Neighbourhood Association (KCBNA) to cancel the RCG’s booking for a public launch of the book Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings which was due to take place that evening in the Chadswell Healthy Living Centre, a community venue run by KCBNA. The decision came after pressure from the Zionist lobby.

Zionist lobby now trying to stop… book launches…

Camden Council is the freeholder of Chadswell and one of KCBNA’s key funders. Another venue booked for the RCG’s book launch meeting, in Islington, had also cancelled the group’s booking after a visit from the police who warned they would post officers ‘outside the book launch to monitor the situation’.

On the day of the meeting, the book launch organisers received a call from Labour Councillor and KCBNA Executive Director Nasim Ali to warn that he had been under pressure from Camden Council to cancel the booking due to concerns over the advertised guest speakers at the event: Dr Louis Brehony, one of the book’s editors; and Charlotte Kates, co-ordinator of Samidoun, the Palestine Prisoner Solidarity Network.

Online trolls including the notorious Zionist X/Twitter account @Habibi_UK had demanded the police and Camden Council intervene to stop the event, claiming falsely that ‘Samidoun is a front for the PFLP terrorist group’. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is not a proscribed terrorist organisation in Britain.

An email seen by the RCG, from Camden’s Director of Equalities and Community Strength Hanad Mohamed to Ali, read:

We have been made aware of an event being planned for this evening with guest speakers Louis Brehony and Charlotte Kates.

We are writing to you to request that this event does not go ahead this evening.

As a Council, we have a statutory obligation to ensure good relations between our ethnic and religious groups.

Based on research, we believe there is a significant risk that speakers this evening may say something that will be contrary to our statutory obligations and our values. We look for the organisations that we fund to share these values with us.

Not having it

After Ali informed the RCG that the booking was cancelled, the organisers of the book launch gathered the attendees outside Chadswell and marched with banners and Palestine flags to Camden Town Hall where they entered the building lobby and held a protest:

The crowd of around 40 protestors was addressed by Louis Brehony and Charlotte Kates over video link on a PA system. It coincided with a 7pm Camden Council Cabinet meeting which was disrupted by the protest.

As Brehony noted in his address:

Ghassan Kanafani was murdered 52 and a half years ago, but still it’s remarkable that [his] message continues to be an object of erasure and silence.

Kates spoke against censorship:

They want to divide us by listing Palestinian resistance organisations as so-called “terrorist organisations”… in Britain today the Terrorism Act is being used to impose state terror on the population so people will be silenced and frightened of speaking in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The crowd cheered as Kates announced that 620 Palestinian prisoners were being released on the same night as the book launch in a prisoner exchange deal between the Israeli state and the Palestinian resistance.

Protesters then unfurled a banner outside the building reading ‘Isolate the Zionist state – sanctions now’. They chanted slogans including ‘free Palestine from the river to the sea’ and ‘Camden Council: blood on your hands!’

Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings (2024) is published by Pluto Press and is edited by Louis Brehony and Tahrir Hamdi.

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