Do you live in Southwark?
Tell your councillors how you feel about the Council’s silence on the genocide happening in Palestine! Find contact details for your local councillor and council leaders using this tool on the Southwark website. Below is a ready-made letter with some of the points you could make – or just give your views, however you want to say it. Silence = complicity!
Dear Councillor _______,
Like millions of others, over the last four months I have watched with rising horror and grief the Israeli state’s onslaught on the people of Gaza. As the interim report of the ICJ acknowledges, a genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza is at the very least ‘plausible’.
Given this, I am appalled at Southwark Council’s silence on this matter, its refusal to offer any public expression of solidarity with the Palestinians. There has been no call from the Council for a ceasefire, no condemnation of Israel’s targeting of civilians, especially women and children, and of the infrastructure necessary for the maintenance of life in Gaza. In my view and that of thousands of Southwark residents, this constitutes a genocide.
A common excuse for inaction during this historic outrage is the Hamas attack on 7 October which led to 1,154 deaths and around 250 hostages being taken. But as UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres said, this attack ‘did not happen in a vacuum… The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.’
The facts since 7 October show how disproportionate the Israeli response has been: over 30,000 Palestinian have been killed, with the total number of dead and severely injured people at over 100,000.
Methods of killing used include carpet bombing, sniping, targeted assassinations, summary executions, massacres and torture, as laid out in South Africa’s case at the ICJ.
The entire population of Gaza is being deliberately subjected to ‘collective punishment’-including homelessness, forced migration, starvation, and disease.
The level of killing by Israel may have even increased since the ICJ ruling.
Meanwhile the number of Palestinian ‘prisoners’ (hostages) held by Israel has also increased since October 7th. The numbers held are now estimated, by many agencies, at between 8-10,000 people detained, with many held indefinitely and without trial, including men, women, and children.
I have also discovered from research produced by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign that Southwark’s pension fund involves huge investments(over £55 million), in companies that are complicit in the brutal oppression of the Palestinians.
In my view the Council must:
- Call for an immediate ceasefire, the lifting of the blockade and the end of the occupation
- Condemn the genocidal actions of the Israeli state
- Divest from companies that are complicit in Israel’s actions
- Oppose any moves by the Tory government to legally restrict expressions of solidarity with Palestine
- Make a substantial donation to UNRWA
- Recognise the state of Palestine. (Palestine was recognized as a ‘Non-Member Observer State’ by 138 member countries of the UN in November 2012.)
I urge you, as my elected representative, to support these demands and to present them, by resolution and other means, to a full Council meeting as soon as possible.
In addition, could you please tell me what support, if any, the council has provided for Southwark residents with family or connections to those living in Gaza, the West Bank and the wider Middle East.
I await your response.
Yours faithfully,