Public meeting – How Israel can be defeated in Scotland

British journalist YVONNE RIDLEY has made several documentary films on Palestine visiting the West Bank, Gaza and refugee camps in the region. She was presented with a Palestinian passport in 2008 and became a roving ambassador for Palestine after breaking the siege of Gaza by boat. The boats were the first to run the gauntlet of Israeli gunboats and successfully entered the port of Gaza, the first to do so in more than 40 years. A founder member of Viva Palestina she also helped lead a convoy of ambulances across North Africa and into Gaza in 2009. Having moved to Scotland, she is now a member of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Dr ESAM HIJJAWI is an ophthalmologist practicing in Edinburgh. He was a leader of the Palestinian student movement in 1974-76 against the first illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank at Serbastia, near Nablus. During the First Intifada, Esam was a member of the Joint Leadership Council for the West Bank. He resigned from the PFLP in protest at the Oslo Accords. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Association of Palestinian Communities in Scotland.  Esam survived an Israeli assassination attempt in 1990.

MICK NAPIER is a founder member of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He has been illegally handcuffed and assaulted by police in both Israel and Scotland for Palestine solidarity activities. He and four other SPSC members defeated charges of ‘racism’ for protesting against Israeli musicians affiliated to the Israeli military. He is a contributing author, with Archbishop Atallah Hanna and others, to Generation Palestine: Voices of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement published last year. He is currently writing a book on effective Palestine solidarity campaigning to be finished when Israeli massacres allow.