Five Jewish donors on joint GOP-Trump fundraising team

While many Jewish Republicans remain wary of the controversial candidate, others are joining his election bid

Donald Trump attending the 2016 New York State Republican Gala in New York City, April 14, 2016. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images via JTA)

BY JTA May 25, 2016, 9:02 pm

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee announced a fund-raising team that includes five current or former Republican Jewish Coalition board members.

Of 20 members of the Victory Leadership Team announced Tuesday, five are or have been on the RJC board: Mel Sembler, a Florida developer and former RJC chairman who was the finance chairman of the presidential campaign this cycle of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Elliott Broidy, a venture capitalist who is influential among Hollywood conservatives; Sam Fox, a St. Louis businessman and past chairman of the RJC, whose son, Jeff Fox, backed the campaign of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; Lewis Eisenberg, a New York investment manager, who will serve as Trump Victory’s finance chairman; and Ronald Weiser, an Ann Arbor businessman and philanthropist who was chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

The team coordinates fundraising strategy between the party and Trump’s campaign.

Sembler, Fox and Weiser all served as ambassadors during the presidency of George W. Bush. Sembler’s former favored candidate, Jeb Bush, has refused to endorse Trump, now the presumptive GOP nominee. Trump peppered the former Florida governor with personal attacks throughout the primaries campaign.

Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate, megadonor to Republican candidates and pro-Israel philanthropist, this month endorsed Trump and reportedly has pledged to spend more than $100 million to elect him. Adelson also is a major giver to the RJC.

A broad swathe of Republican Jews remain wary of Trump, a real estate magnate, in part because he has equivocated on support for Israel, but also because of his broadsides against women, Hispanics and Muslims.

Earlier Tuesday, the RJC condemned anti-Semitic attacks on journalists by supporters of candidates, prompted in part by Trump followers who have flooded with abuse and threats Jewish journalists critical of the candidate. Trump has said that he does not feel it necessary to condemn the attacks.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/five-jewish-donors-on-joint-gop-trump-fundraising-team/

To understand American Jews who support Trump, read this

By Uriel Heilman

March 8, 2016 12:05pm

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Concord, N.C., March 7, 2016. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) – America’s political system is broken, and the last thing the country needs is another career politician at the helm.

With money more than ever a corrupting influence in politics, the White House should be occupied by someone who isn’t beholden to well-funded lobbyists or super PACs.

Politicians have a real problem with honesty. The country needs someone authentic who isn’t afraid to speak the truth and disrupt convention, even if it’s not politically correct.

If you’re planning to vote for Donald Trump for president, you’ve probably argued one or more of these points.

Trump’s electoral success may be bewildering to many American Jews, the vast majority of whom vote reliably Democratic, and alarming to those disturbed by his delay in disavowing the support of white supremacist David Duke, the bullying at Trump rallies and his specific positions (or lack thereof) on a range of issues.

But Trump’s Jewish supporters see the candidate as refreshingly honest, unafraid to challenge political orthodoxies (including conservative ones) and successful in business – which, they say, is just the sort of experience a president needs. They also believe he’ll be good for Israel, not least because, they say, he’s a savvy negotiator who knows enough not to publicly take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“People are bent out of shape because he won’t take sides. I’m a negotiator myself; that’s how you do things,” said Gedaliah Shaps, 49, an entrepreneur and self-described modern Orthodox liberal Jew from New York’s Long Island. “But I believe he truly has Israel’s best interests at heart. He says Israel is going to love him, and I believe that.”

Like many other Jewish supporters of Trump, Shaps noted that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, is an Orthodox Jew (she converted before she married husband Jared Kushner).

While Trump’s opponents see him as a demagogue and vulgar blowhard who would lead the country to disaster, his supporters minimize his bullying, believe his lack of detailed policy prescriptions is a sign that pragmatism would trump ideology in a Trump presidency, and are generally willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

“I think he’s honest. Obviously he has a good business background,” said Marc Rauch, 64, a film producer in Los Angeles who is originally from Brooklyn. “He’s not a politician, so I think a lot of stuff he’s responding to on the fly. He hasn’t spent 20 years running for office. We need real leaders, not professional politicians.

“Trump is somebody who has real experience. What I don’t want is another guy who has done nothing in his life other than run for public office.”

For many Jewish Trump supporters, as for many Americans who back him, Trump’s main appeal is they believe he has the best shot at defeating Hillary Clinton in the general election in November.

“This is to me more about who I don’t like than who I like,” said Lawrence Stern, 69, an attorney in Los Angeles. “I have been a lifelong registered Democrat. However, in the last few federal elections I have seen the Democratic Party move away from what I believe were its roots and its core foundation to a closer relationship to those who are both anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.”

Stern said he’s voting against Clinton because of her support for the Iran nuclear deal, her infamous 1999 embrace of Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha, and the support given to the Clinton Foundation from Arab donors.

Some of the political sentiments driving Jewish support for Trump echo widely held views among Americans of all political stripes. They are fed up with the political gridlock and dysfunction in Washington. They decry the corrupting influence of money in politics. They don’t trust politicians.

Indeed, widespread exasperation with the ways of Washington helps explain both major surprises of the 2016 presidential campaign: the rise of Sen. Bernie Sanders on the left and Trump on the right. In each candidate, supporters see a great hope for major political change.

“He’s not without flaws,” Sheldon Wolf, 53, the CEO of a computer software company in Tampa, Florida, said of Trump. “But I look at what he can bring to the table. People are so upset about our do-nothing Congress. If there’s one guy who can possibly bring these people together and work together, it’s Trump. It’s sure not Bernie Sanders, and it’s sure not Ted Cruz.”

Asked about Trump’s delay in disavowing Duke, or the remarks some found offensive at last fall’s Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Washington, D.C., when Trump seemed to invoke classic stereotypes about Jews and money, Trump’s Jewish supporters say they don’t believe he’s a white supremacist or a bigot. Many noted his longstanding support for Israel, including his 2004 role as the grand marshal of the annual Salute to Israel Parade in New York.

“Some of his behavior raises questions, but I’m ready for that risk because the other Republicans I find horrible,” said Dr. Ben Enav, 44, a pediatric gastroenterologist from the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia.

“He definitely says some things I am not always comfortable with when it comes to race or sexism,” Enav said. “But I always wondered: How does someone have such a big organization and he has never been accused of bigotry or sexism? I think some of his rhetoric is showboating and I think some of it is reality. He is willing to say what a lot of people are thinking.”

There appear to be some inherent contradictions in the qualities many of Trump’s Jewish supporters say they like about him. They see his brash and sometimes crude persona as authentic, but believe he’ll behave differently as president. They admire his business successes but disregard or explain away his business failures. They acknowledge his big ego but say Trump understands that being president is more about assembling the right team of advisers than about the man himself.

In short, his supporters project onto Trump the positive things they want in a president and downplay the negative signs Trump opponents find so alarming.

“People say he’s failed so many times — well, you learn from failure. You’re not going to succeed unless you fail many times,” said Lisa, a 32-year-old Jewish voter from Los Angeles who asked that her last name not be published. “I think a lot of his brash statements that people bag on him for are because you have to get a political conversation started. I don’t think he’d necessarily act that way in a presidential meeting. The person you see on TV is actually very different than how he’d be as president.”

In fact, many Jewish Trump supporters see him as a relative moderate, someone guided more by reason than by ideology.

“Compared to the other Republicans, on certain issues he’s probably the most liberal out of all of them,” said Orna Enav, 45, an Israeli immigrant and Ben Enav’s wife. “On social issues like gay marriage or abortion, which he’s not vocal about, I believe he’s probably more liberal than anybody else.”

She added, “I can understand why some people in the Republican Party don’t want him.”

http://www.jta.org/2016/03/08/news-opinion/politics/to-understand-the-american-jews-who-support-trump-read-thi
s

Donald Trump Recruits Corporate Lobbyists to Select His Future Administration

Donald Trump Recruits Corporate Lobbyists to Select His Future Administration

Lee Fang

November 8 2016, 5:19 p.m.

AS DONALD TRUMP finishes his campaign with a promise to break the control of Washington by political insiders, his transition team is preparing to hand his administration over to a cozy clique of corporate lobbyists and Republican power brokers.

“Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you the American people,” Trump says in his closing campaign advertisement, followed by flashing images of K Street, Wall Street, and Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein.

But the Trump transition team is a who’s who of influence peddlers, including: energy adviser Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist for Koch Industries and the Walt Disney Company; adviser Eric Ueland, a Senate Republican staffer who previously lobbied for Goldman Sachs; and Transition General Counsel William Palatucci, an attorney in New Jersey whose lobbying firm represents Aetna and Verizon. Rick Holt, Christine Ciccone, Rich Bagger, and Mike Ferguson are among the other corporate lobbyists helping to manage the transition effort.

Presidential transition teams develop policy plans and come up with a list of more than 4,000 people an incoming president appoints, including White House jobs, cabinet secretaries, and lower level positions that oversee the military, agriculture, trade, and beyond.

Trump for America Inc., a nonprofit group chaired by Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., to oversee the Trump transition, has quietly moved ahead, meeting with interest groups and reaching out to lobbyists to plan a future Trump administration.

The group has held regular meetings at the Washington, D.C., offices of Baker Hostetler, a law and lobbying firm.

On Thursday, the group hosted a breakfast at Baker Hostetler attended by Microsoft’s Ed Ingle and Steve Hart, two lobbyists who, according to filings, have worked to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Other transition meetings have included briefings with the Financial Services Roundtable and the Investment Company Institute, two lobby groups that represent Wall Street interests, as well as with the BGR Group, a lobby firm that represents Saudi Arabia and the South Korean government.

Trump, of course, isn’t alone is relying on entrenched political insiders to shape his future administration. The Hillary Clinton transition team is led by Ken Salazar and Tom Donilon, two former Obama administration officials who now serve on the lobbying teams of major law firms. Though the Clinton campaign gained headlines for banning registered lobbyists from managing her transition, the distinction between registered and unregistered lobbying is largely a question of semantics.

Trump’s decision to embrace lobbyists while denouncing them on the campaign trail should come as no surprise to any seasoned observer.

The reality television mogul seized on distaste for big money politics as a potent campaign issue, denouncing the role of Super PACs during the Republican primaries. “I have disavowed all Super PACs,” Trump said, adding that he would oppose any support from lobbyists and other special interest groups. After shoring up the nomination, the candidate quickly reversed himself, not only raising cash from lobbyists but switching gears to aggressively embrace the the same Super PAC strategies used by more traditional candidates. Several Trump staffers moved from his campaign to Super PACs supporting the Trump-Pence ticket.

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/08/trump-transition-lobbyists/

One Hundred Years and Counting: Britain, Balfour, and the Cultural Repression of Palestinians

One Hundred Years and Counting: Britain, Balfour, and the Cultural Repression of Palestinians

by Aimee Shalan on October 26, 2016

If Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour passes over the perimeter of her home’s driveway in her village of Reineh in the Galilee, an alarm will sound at the British multinational security firmG4S and the Israeli authorities will be alerted. Israeli police arrested Tatour in the early hours of October 11, 2015 for her poem, “Qawem ya sha‘abi qawemhum” (Resist My People, Resist Them), which was posted to her YouTube account earlier that month. On November 2, Israel charged her with incitement to violence and support for a terrorist organization.

In January, after three months in prison, Tatour was placed under house arrest near Tel Aviv, far from her village. After a lengthy struggle, the prosecution conceded in July that she could be held in her family’s home. While Tatour’s trial proceeds, she will remain under house arrest and will continue to be monitored by G4S as a “threat” to Israel’s security. 1

Such British complicity in the cultural repression of Palestinians is not a recent phenomenon. One can argue that it has its roots in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which, by calling for the establishment of a nation for the Jewish people while all but disregarding the existence of the Palestinians inhabiting the land in question, set in motion the process of dispossession, exile, and social and cultural fragmentation that continues to the present day. And this was but the beginning of a British approach to the Palestinian people that has suppressed their culture and history.

Indeed, today, as Israel funnels substantial financial resources into promoting its cultural output internationally, the United Kingdom (UK) is taking measures to censor Palestinian cultural expression and creativity. From the involvement of private companies such as G4S in the house arrest of Tatour to ministerial moves to block the cultural boycott and stifle academic debate, while UK visas are frequently denied to Palestinian artists and educators, Britain’s repressive actions are aiding Israel by supporting its one-sided narrative – a narrative that helps Israel continue its occupation of Palestinian territory and deepen its apartheid regime.

There will likely be much scholarly and policy analysis of the fallout from the Balfour Declaration for Palestine and the surrounding countries over the past 100 years (including by think tanks such as Al-Shabaka.) This commentary makes the case for a focus on the cultural dimension and provides the background and arguments for such a focus by examining the British role, then and now.

Balfour and the Origins of Cultural Repression

Despite its devastating impact on Palestinians, the Balfour Declaration means little to most people in Britain. If you were to ask the average person on a UK street what it was, they would most likely know next to nothing about the document.

However, the British government is planning to commemorate the centenary of the declaration in November 2017. Earlier this year, former British Prime Minister David Cameron said he wanted the UK government to mark the anniversary together with the Jewish community “in the most appropriate way.” At the time, it was not altogether clear what he meant by “appropriate.” Today, we are none the wiser, but plans to mark the occasion are nonetheless still rumored to be in the pipeline, though now under the auspices of Britain’s controversial new foreign secretary, Boris Johnson.

In his brief but fateful 1917 declaration, then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour proclaimed the British government would “use their best endeavors” to facilitate “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people.” Thus, even before the British Mandate had officially begun, Balfour promised Palestine to the Zionist Federation without the consent of its Palestinian inhabitants. His concise erasure of Palestinian culture and history is found within the very vocabulary he used, referring to the indigenous, majority population only as “non-Jewish.”

"The prejudicial sentiment expressed by Balfour underscores the UK’s relations with Israel to this day."

Though Balfour did acknowledge Palestine’s inhabitants two years later, he assigned their lives less value than the Jewish people who would take possession of the land. He announced in a memorandum, “Zionism be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in an age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”

The logical outcome of this denial of Palestinian culture and history was the eventual dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian population in 1948, followed by the demolition or Judaization of towns and villages emptied of their inhabitants.

The prejudicial sentiment expressed by Balfour underscores the UK’s relations with Israel to this day. It therefore comes as little surprise that the government did not consult with the UK’s Palestinian community before announcing its intention to mark the centenary.

Nevertheless, Palestinians are already mobilizing to take action against the UK for its historic role in the purloining of Palestine. Last year, Egypt’s “Popular Palestinian Campaign to sue the United Kingdom”initiated a case to “restore the right of the Palestinian people to their land.” In addition, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently announced that he intends to sue the UK government over the Balfour Declaration. He also accused Britain of supporting “Israeli crimes” since the end of its mandate over Palestine and called on the Arab League to help the Palestinian Authority launch its lawsuit.

The legacy of Balfour and the British Mandate includes a long history of Israel repressing Palestinian expression, from the plundering of Palestinian libraries and the imprisonment of Palestinian writers to the banning of Palestinian cultural activities and the obliteration of cultural sites and schools in Gaza.

Immediately after the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, Palestinians who remained within the borders of what then became “Israel” were forbidden to study their cultural inheritance or to remember their immediate past.

An obituary of Mahmoud Darwish in 2008 recalled how, when he was eight years old, the young poet recited a poem at his school’s annual celebration of Israel’s birth about the inequality he noticed between the lives of Arab boys and Jewish boys. Afterward, the Israeli military governor summoned him. “If you go on writing such poetry” he said, “I’ll stop your father working in the quarry.” The utterance of the simplest of truths by a Palestinian child clearly frightened the Israeli military governor enough to threaten the livelihood of his family.

Then, as now, the Israeli authorities could not countenance the cultural expression of a Palestinian consciousness. Darwish went on to be imprisoned five times by the Israeli authorities, mostly charged with reciting poetry thought to be seditious and detrimental to Israel’s status and stability.

Attempts to stifle Darwish’s voice have continued beyond his death. In July 2016, Israel’s defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, went so far as to equate the poet’s work to Mein Kampf after Israeli army radio unexpectedly broadcast Darwish’s poem, “ID Card.” Lieberman’s comments came after the Israeli culture minister, Miri Regev, called on him to stop funding the radio station on the grounds that it had “gone off the rails” and was providing a platform for the Palestinian narrative.

It would thus seem that very little has changed since the early days of Israel’s establishment. And recent moves by the UK to block the cultural boycott and stifle academic debate show a significant rise in the extent to which Britain has become openly involved in the censorship of those speaking out against Israel.

Current British Complicity

It is not only corporate entities such as G4S in the case of Dareen Tatour that are infringing on free speech on Israel’s behalf. At a time when international pressure on Israel is increasing, the UK government and a number of British institutions are moving in the opposite direction, deepening their support for a Zionist ideology bent on repressing Palestinian culture and history.

Efforts to freeze the funding of arts groups and productions deemed “pro-Palestinian” by Israel’s Culture Minister Miri Regev follow on the heels of 2011’s “Nakba law,” which enables the withholding of funds to public institutions deemed to be involved in challenging the founding of Israel or any activity “denying the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” This draconian law appears to have provided a template for the UK government to start censoring cultural voices in Britain that critique the state of Israel.

This development came to light in August 2014, when London’s Tricycle Theater refused to host the UK Jewish Film Festival (UKJFF) while it was partially funded by the Israeli embassy – a response to the loss of life resulting from Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Although the Tricycle offered to provide alternative funding to cover the cost of the contribution from the Israeli embassy, the UKJFF was unwilling to decline embassy sponsorship and withdrew its festival from the theater.

The Tricycle came under sustained attack and was soon subject to an intervention from the then secretary of state for culture, Sajid Javid. Together with the minister for culture and the digital economy, Ed Vaizey, Javid worked closely with the Israeli ambassador at the time, Daniel Taub, to pressure the Tricycle to withdraw its objections to Israeli embassy funds. Unable to stand fast against threats to its own funding, the small venue withdrew its objection and invited the UKJFF back on the same terms as the previous year.

"Israel’s policies and practices are no longer simply being ignored by UK ministers; now they are being adopted."

While attending an event organized by the Board of Deputies of British Jews in 2015, Javid noted that his intervention the year before was also intended to deter other organizations from exercising their right to boycott. “I have made it absolutely clear what might happen to [the theater’s] funding if they try, or if anyone tries, that kind of thing again,” he said.

Javid’s message rang loud and clear: Any boycott of Israel by British cultural institutions is out of bounds if they wish to receive funding. Israel’s policies and practices are no longer simply being ignored by UK ministers; now they are being adopted.

The Tricycle’s stance, while short-lived, nevertheless marked the beginning of a public debate about threats from pro-Israel government advocates to the independence of cultural institutions in the UK. In October 2014, a public discussion entitled “After the Tricycle: Can Arts Organizations Say ‘No’ to Embassy Funding?” was held at Amnesty International Action Center. During the discussion the need for effective strategies to contest political pressure on the arts became more apparent as other instances of institutional censorship and manipulation were reported.

One example cited was the April 2014 decision by the Donmar Warehouse, a theater located in London’s West End, to censor a podcast that was part of a discussion series that accompanied Peter Gill’s production of “Versailles.” Entitled “Impossible Conversations,” the series featured leading political and cultural commentators exploring the legacy of World War I. Twenty-four hours prior to one of the discussions – “Mr. Balfour’s Letter to Lord Rothschild: How the Great War Remapped the World” – the Donmar Warehouse received a complaint from a funder claiming that the event was an attack on the state of Israel, an anti-Israel rally, and anti-Semitic. Threats to withdraw funding accompanied the complaint, as well as a pledge to raise grievances with publicly funded cultural institutions at which the event’s programmer worked or served as a trustee. Although the Donmar Warehouse held the discussion, it chose not to post the podcast online along with the other discussions that took place.

Institutional and government censorship in support of Israel has also entered the academic sphere. In 2015, Eric Pickles, then secretary of state for communities and local government, ensured the cancellation of an academic conference on the legal status of the state of Israel at the University of Southampton. The conference included both an Israeli law professor and a Palestinian human rights activist, but Pickles claimed that the event would give voice to “the far-left’s bashing of Israel, which often descends into anti-Semitism,” rather than offer “a platform to all sides of the debate.” Michael Gove, then chief whip, joined the fray, declaring that “[i]t was not a conference, it was an anti-Israel hate-fest.”

In response to the government’s intervention, the university withdrew permission for the conference to be held on its property on health and safety grounds. The university claimed that the event could give rise to protests and that it did not have the resources to mitigate this risk, despite a statement from the police confirming they could ensure the security of the event. In April 2016, the conference was blocked for a second year when organizers were not able to pay the £24,000 ($29,000) the university required of them to cover the cost of hiring private security and erecting fencing.

Britain’s increasing involvement in the cultural repression of Palestinians is also occurring through the denial of UK visas. Arts, culture, and education help create spaces in which difficult problems can be addressed creatively – especially when people from different backgrounds and contexts are brought together in them. This is why cultural and educational exchanges between Palestinian and international artists and academics have been blocked by Israel’s occupation regime for decades. Most recently, Israel banned UK academic Dr. Adam Hanieh from entering Israel or Palestine for 10 years after he attempted to travel to Birzeit University to deliver a series of lectures. Israel also refused entry to the UK-based Palestinian writer Ahmed Masoud to participate in the Palestinian Festival of Literature in the West Bank earlier this year.

Lately, an increasing number of reports have also emerged regarding the denial of visas by UK authorities to Palestinian artists and academics seeking to come to Britain to participate in exhibitions, theater productions, speaking tours, and conferences. Hamde Abu Rahma, a Palestinian photojournalist, was twice denied a UK visa despite financial backing and support from a number of British MPs before he was finally granted permission to come to Scotland for this year’s Edinburgh Festival. Other Palestinian artists whose denied visas have been made public in recent years include Ali Abukhattab and Samah al-Sheikh, writers who were due to appear at the Institute of Contemporary Arts as part of the Shubbak festival, and Nabil al-Raee, artistic director of the Jenin Freedom Theater who was supposed to speak at a number of UK events. The UK visa system is also becoming more of an obstacle to developing academic partnerships with Palestinian universities. Because it is extremely difficult to obtain clear information about the visa process, institutions’ ability to work collaboratively is hindered. Palestinian academics and students alike are being denied entry. According to the British Council, this year for the first time five out of ten of their sponsored Palestinian students were refused visas.

"It is essential that British institutions are not discouraged from inviting Palestinians to participate in their cultural activities."

Arts and education organizations have largely been dealing with such access issues individually, in the hope of reaching a solution by working quietly with the UK authorities on a case-by-case basis. Israeli artists and academics, however, are not subject to the same restrictions, even if they come from illegal settlements in the West Bank. While an Israeli settler can simply obtain a visa on arrival in the UK, a Palestinian living down the road must go through an expensive and complicated application process before they travel, with dwindling hopes of success.

It is essential that British institutions are not discouraged from inviting Palestinians to participate in their activities, especially while the UK government cracks down on the cultural boycott and stifles academic debate under the guise of ensuring a platform for “all sides.”

Promoting Palestinian Cultural Production

Changing attitudes and practices in the UK toward Palestinian culture and identity, which have been relegated to an inferior role ever since the days of Balfour, is no easy task. There is, however, much that Palestinian civil society and solidarity groups are doing, and can do more of, in the run-up to the centenary of the Balfour Declaration to create conditions to put an end to British complicity in the censorship of Palestinians and to the UK government’s prejudicial policies in support of Israel.

Organized public pressure is a key element in creating such conditions. The Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour’s imprisonment has received increasing international attention and the support of over 250 renowned writers, poets, translators, editors, artists, public intellectuals, and cultural workers. Tatour believes this international response could influence the final outcome of her case. “Public pressure,” she says, “may force the Israeli authorities to reconsider the persecution of Palestinian artists, writers, and young activists just because they express their rejection of oppression.” As such, Palestinian civil society and solidarity groups can work jointly to increase international pressure for the release of Tatour and work to intensify the Stop G4S campaign in solidarity with all Palestinian political prisoners.

More generally, these groups can also:

• Use the media, public forums, and other outreach to increase understanding of the Balfour Declaration’s devastating impact on the Palestinian people through its negation of Palestinian culture and identity and keep calling on the UK government to issue an official apology;
• Coordinate a creative public communications campaign focusing on Israel’s attacks on Palestinian culture and history and on the legitimacy of Palestinian civil society’s call for the cultural and academic boycott of Israel until it complies with international law;
• Provide legal and other support to artists, academics, and cultural programmers facing political pressure from pro-Israel advocates and coordinate activities to stop UK ministers from threatening the independence of British cultural and academic institutions;
• Create a comprehensive database documenting cases of denied British visas for Palestinians over the past five years to put pressure on the British authorities to treat Palestinians no differently from Israelis when they apply to come to the UK.

Nearly 100 years after Balfour, one thing is certain: It is time for Britain to adopt a new approach. The centenary presents an opportunity for the UK not only to cease aiding Israel in its bid to silence Palestinians and stonewall cultural exchange, but to actively promote Palestinian cultural production and ensure that Palestinian stories are being told.

An extremely well-coordinated campaign is required, however, to ensure that sufficient public pressure is put on the UK government to finally acknowledge the devastating impact of its historic intervention and begin to make reparations for its past and present complicity in the cultural repression and ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.