Ceilidh for Palestine

 A Palestinian Ceilidh

I am helping South East Kent Palestine Solidarity Campaign to raise funds for a commemoration of Palestine's Nakba Day (on 14th May, 2022, to be held in Canterbury, Kent, in the form of a PALESTINIAN CEILIDH. 

Nakba Day is when Palestinians commemorate the dispossession of their lands and homes. It is a time of mourning and loss but also a time to celebrate the tremendous steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their determination to regain their rights.

The event will showcase the extraordinary solidarity between the Irish and Palestinian people, highlighting shared histories of settler colonialism and will also be a joyful festival of dance and culture. 

We have booked a large airy hall for maximum Covid safety. There will be food and a bar. We are still in the process of booking musicians and dancers.

We must pay our artists the going rate as they have been without work during lockdowns and deserve our support.  We are also budgeting for printing costs for flyers and posters on recycled paper. 

Our aim is to raise enough money to enable us to make this an affordable event. The more funds we can raise to cover the cost, the lower the entrance fee will be. 

Our mission is to break the silence on Palestine: enable Palestinian voices and stories to be heard and to make Palestinian culture visible. All funds raised will be used in pursuit of this objective. 

In the past year a group of us went to the Instro Elbit factory in Sandwich, Kent, where we read out the names of those massacred in Gaza. 

We tied ribbons bearing the names of the dead on the railings outside Instro-Elbit at Discovery Park. 

We picketed companies like HSBC and Puma who are complicit in the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and petitioned local universities to divest from such companies and urged them to safeguard freedom of speech for Palestinian students on their campuses.

As we were preparing this appeal, we learned that the British Government has given a grant to Instro-Elbit, thereby using public money to assist Israel's brutal war crimes. This makes us even more determined to demand justice and adherence to international and human rights norms and laws.