Bea Foster tells MEE she was left 'heartbroken' after being forced out of anti-racism charity [that she helped to found] over Facebook post in which she called Israel an 'apartheid state' ... "APARTHEID – IT WASN'T OKAY IN SOUTH AFRICA. IT WASN'T OKAY IN NAZI GERMANY. WHY IS IT OKAY IN PALESTINE?"

Building Bridges Burnley (BBB), an interfaith anti-racist organisation she helped found more than 20 years ago, which was awarded the King's Award for Voluntary Service (KAVS) in November 2024.

Methodist preacher Bea Foster helped to found the anti-racism charity she was forced to leave- The case stems from an article published by the Jewish Chronicle newspaper in February 2025 alleging links between BBB and antisemitism which referenced Foster's involvement in protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and a social media post in 2023 which read: "APARTHEID – IT WASN'T OKAY IN SOUTH AFRICA. IT WASN'T OKAY IN NAZI GERMANY. WHY IS IT OKAY IN PALESTINE?"

Preacher launches legal challenge against UK government over IHRA antisemitism definition

Areeb Ullah

Published date: 9 July 2026

An elderly Methodist preacher is set to launch the first legal challenge to the UK government's use of a contested definition of antisemitism after ministers used it to force a charity to remove her as a trustee over a Facebook post in which she described Israel as an apartheid state.

Bea Foster, a 76-year-old community worker from Burnley, Lancashire, will argue that the government unlawfully penalised her for expressing political views on Israel and Palestine, breaching her rights to freedom of expression, freedom of association and protection from discrimination.

Speaking exclusively to Middle East Eye, Foster said her motivation to pursue the case stemmed from the misuse of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) definition of antisemitism by public and private institutions to shut down criticism of Israeli government policies. 

"The IHRA definition is proved to be used to undermine our ability to hold Israel accountable for its actions against the Palestinian people," Foster told MEE.

"Criticising the Israeli government is not saying you are antisemitic." ... READ MORE  https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/methodist-preacher-launches-legal-challenge-against-uk-governments-use-ihra-antisemitism

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How apartheid history shaped South Africa’s genocide case against Israel- in The Guardian

"Feinstein noted that while Jewish South Africans featured prominently in the struggle against apartheid, they were shunned by the Board of Deputies, which claimed to speak for the majority of the Jewish community. The organisation collaborated with the white regime and chose instead to honour figures such as Percy Yutar, the prosecutor who sent Nelson Mandela to prison.

Feinstein said that underpinning South African criticism of Israel is the ANC’s longstanding support for the Palestine Liberation Organisation and what he saw as the growing view that Israel was practising its own brand of apartheid in the occupied territories..."

How apartheid history shaped South Africa’s genocide case against Israel

Jewish groups have accused the ANC of antisemitism, but ICJ case stems from party’s longstanding support for Palestinians 

Chris McGreal

Mon 8 Jan 2024

Protesters hold flags and placards at a demonstration organised by the South African Jews for a free Palestine group in Johannesburg. Photograph: Kim Ludbrook/EPA

"South Africa’s lawsuit seeking a halt to the Israeli assault on Gaza in response to the Hamas cross-border attack in October comes after years of deteriorating relations rooted in the ANC’s decades-long support for the Palestinian cause and the legacy of Israel’s close military alliance with the apartheid regime during some of the most oppressive years of white rule"

READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/08/south-africa-genocide-case-israel-apartheid-history

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Painted on the apartheid separation wall in Bethlehem city in the occupied West Bank #Palestine

Painted on the apartheid separation wall in Bethlehem city in the occupied West Bank #Palestine

 

 

Outraged That Israel Designated 6 Palestinian Human Rights NGOs as "terrorist organizations"

"Defending human rights is a legitimate work and must be respected, not shut by flawed terrorism laws." #UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Association commenting on the Israeli decision to label #Palestinian human rights NGOs as "terrorist" groups. #FreePalestine

 

Visual map of how the Israeli ID system is stratified to limit democratic access to home ownership, security, services & participation in the polical system which creates and sustains the Israeli ID system

http://visualizingpalestine.org/

In response to the concerns raised by Palestinian churches in Palestine and Israel, the World Council of Churches expresses its own grave concern about the law passed by the Israeli Knesset on 24 February 2014, which would define the status of Palestinian Arab Christians in the State of Israel against their own will.

WCC general secretary expresses concern over Israeli Knesset law

 

 Concern over Israeli law on the status of Arab Christian citizens

19 March 2014

In response to the concerns raised by Palestinian churches in Palestine and Israel, the World Council of Churches expresses its own grave concern about the law passed by the Israeli Knesset on 24 February 2014, which would define the status of Palestinian Arab Christians in the State of Israel against their own will. The bill passed into law expands the “Advisory Committee for Equal Opportunity in Employment Commission” from five to 10 members. As expressed in the statement of the heads of the Catholic Church in Israel, the law “introduces a distinction between Christian and Muslim Palestinians and states that Christian Palestinians are Christians and not Palestinians”. Because of recent immigration, not all Christians within the State of Israel are Palestinians. Nevertheless, this law is a matter of great concern to the international ecumenical community for two major reasons:

1. The law establishes, for the first time, a legislative distinction between the indigenous Palestinian Arab Christians and Palestinian Arab Muslims, both of whom are citizens of the State of Israel. This distinction is an unacceptable severing of entire communities from their cultural identity.
2. The Knesset has transgressed all proper distinctions between state and religious authority by attempting to define the nature and character of Christian communities within Israel against their own will and self-understanding. Such efforts are most often seen only in totalitarian regimes. This law defiles the sanctity of Christian identity, which is grounded in Christian faith.

The WCC has long affirmed the right of religious communities to define themselves. Religious identity should not be manipulated for political gain. During the recent core group meeting of the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF), the World Council of Churches heard the voices of Latin Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah and Bishop Munib A. Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land saying, “No one has the right to tell me who I am!”

Rather than creating divisions among communities, the Knesset should pave the way for breaking down barriers that divide people according to ethnicity and religion. Therefore, I call on Israeli authorities to reverse this law to stop an injustice against Christian citizens of Israel. I recommend that all WCC member churches manifest their solidarity with Christian sisters and brothers, and raise this issue with representatives of Israel and with their own governments, and urge the reversal both of this law and of this spirit in the Knesset.

Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit
WCC general secretary

For a deeper understanding of this issue, please see the statement in English, and Arabic, approved by the Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries, which was published by the Justice and Peace Commission. The statement was issued at the bi-annual meeting of the heads of the Catholic Ordinaries in the Holy Land, held from 11 to 12 March 2014 in Tiberias.

'Separate and Unequal' is Unacceptable to Palestinians

"Israeli moderates and American officials will one day look back at this time period and wonder why Israeli leaders did not seize the moment, freeze settlement activity, and strike a deal with the Palestinian people. Hubris and a zealot’s certainty are likely causes of the Israeli leadership’s inability to see with clear eyes what should be done." 

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/240717-separate-and-unequal-is-unaccetable-to-palestinians

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'Separate and Unequal' is Unacceptable to Palestinians

By Mustafa Barghouthi, member, Palestinian Parliament
July 27, 2012

When presidential candidate Mitt Romney arrives in Israel Saturday and travels to occupied East Jerusalem to see the holy sites there he will be entering a city I am no longer allowed to visit – privately or as a medical doctor or as a presidential candidate. He somehow possesses more rights to the city than I do despite the fact that I was born in Jerusalem and worked as a medical doctor in Makassed hospital for several years. During my presidential campaign I was arrested and deported four times for entering the city to meet Palestinian voters....READ MORE

Washington Post: Premier Palestinian medical school graduates struggle to work in Jerusalem

LEFTERIS PITARAKIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS - With the eight-meter-high cement wall, part of Israel's separation barrier, partially seen outside the Palestinian flag-decorated tent, Palestinian students of the Al-Quds University prepare diplomas for graduates in the West Bank town of Abu Dis on Aug. 1, 2004.

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 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/premier-palestinian-medical-school-graduates-struggle-to-work-in-jerusalem/2012/07/15/gJQAlzpDoW_story.html?hpid=z3

By Joel Greenberg, Published: July 16

JERUSALEM — Basel Nassar, a young Palestinian doctor from this city, is not allowed to practice medicine here. So he flew to Houston last week to take the last phase of a licensing exam that will qualify him to work in the United States.

“I am forced to do this,” Nassar, 33, said on the eve of his departure. “Israel is so close, but it is making trouble for us for some trivial reason. I can’t work 15 minutes from my house, where they accepted me in a specialty I was dreaming to get. I simply can’t understand it.”

Nassar’s predicament, shared by dozens of Palestinian doctors from East Jerusalem, is the result of a bureaucratic impasse linked to the long-standing struggle over this contested city.

The doctors in question received their medical degrees from Al-Quds University, a prominent Palestinian institution of higher learning. Although it is the leading Arab university in the Jerusalem metropolitan area, graduates of its medical school are not allowed to take the Israeli licensing exam needed to work in the city.

As a result, a heavily burdened health-care system in the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, where specialists are sorely lacking, is deprived of an infusion of new physicians to help serve a population of about 300,000.

On the face of it, the problem, which is set to be considered this month by Israel’s Supreme Court, stems from a technical dispute.

The scattered campuses of Al-Quds University lie both within and outside Jerusalem’s city limits. Most departments, including the medical school, are concentrated at the main campus in Abu Dis, a Jerusalem suburb in the West Bank, beyond the city line. Others are in East Jerusalem.

The banned doctors assert that they have the right to take the Israeli licensing exam like any other resident of Jerusalem with a foreign medical degree, noting that they studied in a West Bank area under the administrative control of the Palestinian Authority.

The Israeli Health Ministry says that because Al-Quds University also operates in East Jerusalem, which has been annexed by Israel, it cannot be recognized as a foreign institution and its medical school graduates cannot take the licensing exam like other foreign-trained doctors.

Moreover, university departments operating in East Jerusalem do not have the approval of the Israeli Council for Higher Education, which must sanction colleges and universities in Israel...READ MORE

Our lives remain in peril....

"...Neither Hereini nor I nor any of the villagers anywhere in the West Bank is an Israeli citizen. You’d think that as such we shouldn’t need to concern ourselves with law and order in Israel. Except that we do: as long as Israel refuses to abide by the principle of international law that holds it responsible for our protection as inhabitants of the territories it occupies, our lives remain in peril." RAJA SHEHADEH
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/the-folly-of-israels-settlement-policy/?ref=global

The Folly of Israel’s Settlement Policy

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Israeli Arabs mark 'Nakba' in march

Arab Israeli protestors march for the right of return for Palestinian refugees who fled their homes or were expelled during the 1948 war that followed the creation of the state of Israel, in the village of Abu Sinan in northern Israel. (AFP Photo/Ahmad Gharabli)

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http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-arabs-mark-nakba-march-163332912.html

Thousands of Israeli Arabs Thursday marked the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" that accompanied Israel's foundation in a march to where two Arab villages existed before 1948, an AFP journalist said.

Bearing Palestinian flags and banners with names of displaced villages, the procession left Abu Snan in northern Israel for the nearby Kibbutz of Beit Haemek, which was established on the grounds of Kweikat and Omqa villages.

The marchers chanted slogans against peace negotiations with Israel and in favour of Hamas-Fatah Palestinian reconciliation, the correspondent said.

They also bore signs saying "no peace without the right of return," which is claimed by Palestinian communities in the diaspora but rejected by Israel.

It was the fifteenth such march, which each year commemorates different displaced communities.

Ali Ali, who currently lives in the town of Deir Hanna in the Galilee, told AFP he was from a family that was displaced near Tiberias. "I'm here to show my solidarity with all of those displaced from their homes," he said.

To Ahlam Taha, a woman in her twenties from Kafr Kana, the march was "to commemorate a very important memory, which is the day we left everything. We are still suffering the repercussions of this. Their independence is our Nakba.

"With God's help the day will come when all the displaced return to their land and have real independence for Palestine, not Israel."

Israel was on Thursday celebrating the 64th anniversary of its foundation, in accordance with the Hebrew calendar.

Palestinians traditionally mark on May 15 the "Nakba" when hundreds of thousands of them fled or were expelled from their homes in the war that accompanied Israel's declaration of independence.

More than 760,000 Palestinians -- estimated today to number 4.7 million with their descendants -- fled or were driven out of their homes in the Arab-Israeli war which followed Israel's establishment.

Around 160,000 Palestinians stayed behind and are now known as Arab Israelis. They number about 1.3 million people, or some 20 percent of the population.

Arab Israeli protestors hold up signs with the names of towns they have lost as they march for the right of return for Palestinian refugees who fled their homes or were expelled during the 1948 war that followed the creation of the state of Israel, in the village of Abu Sinan in northern Israel. (AFP Photo/Ahmad Gharabli)

War on Palestinian Memory: Israel Resolves Its Democracy Dilemma by Ramzy Baroud

War on Palestinian Memory: Israel Resolves Its Democracy Dilemma

by Ramzy Baroud

April 7, 2011

Palestinian citizens of Israel must have been proud of the fact that their collective tenacity always proved stronger than any Israeli attempt at dislocating them from their rightful historical narrative. Now, they are being told to cease and desist from commemorating al-Nakba, the Catastrophe of 1948, which saw the brutal seizure and depopulation of most of Palestine in order to construct the Israeli 'miracle’.

Currently estimated at a fifth of the population of today’s Israel , Palestinians with Israeli citizenship have endured appalling treatment for decades. As Muslims and Christians, they have been regarded as an anomaly in what was meant to be a perfect Jewish utopia governed by the laws of democracy. This is the quandary that Israel has never mastered, as the non-Jewish citizens of Israel have represented a major obstacle to that vision.

The question of what to do with Palestinian citizens of Israel has long haunted Israeli politicians. Discriminatory laws, unlawful seizure of land and even violence have all failed to deter Palestinians from demanding equality and exposing the moral inconsistency of Israel ’s selective democracy and dubious history. More, all attempts at fragmenting Palestinian national identity – through different sets of laws for Palestinians in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and millions in Diaspora – were hardly enough to disfigure the innate sense of solidarity and belonging that Palestinian communities felt towards one another. When Palestinian activists gather in Jerusalem , Algiers or London , one fails to trace borderlines, the details of identity cards, or any other desperate forms of classification used by Israel . When Palestinians meet, Israel ’s divisive laws prove frivolous.

Israeli politicians have "lost sight of a basic concept in democracy," claimed the Association for Civil Rights in Israel ( ACRI ) in a recent statement, as cited by the BBC . The statement was a response to the Israeli parliament’s approval of a bill that "allows courts to revoke the citizenship of anyone convicted of spying, treason or aiding its enemies." Like scores of other bills introduced to the Knesset, many of which have been approved, the most recent amendment of the Citizenship Law of 1952 targets the Palestinian population of Israel .

The bill, passed on March 28, was sponsored by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, the proud sponsor of nearly two dozen other discriminatory bills. Liberman’s 2009 campaign was largely based on the slogan: "no loyalty, no citizenship." The latest bill is another manifestation of this idea.

But it was hardly the only bill targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel . Another had been passed only a few days earlier. The "Nakba Bill" passed its final reading on March 22 and was sponsored by Alex Miller (Yisrael Beiteinu). This bill can be understood as a war on the collective memory of Palestinians, as it targets those who mark and commemorate the Catastrophe of 1948.

"We are ready to go to jail," was the response of MK Jamal Zahalka, of Balad party, who warned of "civil rebellion" against recent bills. "Nakba law won’t stop Arabs – we’ll just increase our protests."

Haneen Zoabi, also of the Balad party, told The Electronic Intifada: "This is a kind of law to control our memory, to control our collective memory. It's a very stupid law which punishes our feelings. It seems that the history of the victim is threatening the Zionist state."

A stupid law maybe, but one rooted in Israel ’s historical fear of Palestinian memory. Indeed, the war on memory has its own convincing, albeit cruel logic. From Vladimir Jabotinsky's 'Iron Wall’ of 1923 - aimed largely at sidelining the 'native population' from the 'Zionist colonization’ of Palestine - to Uri Lubrani's desire to "reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters", attempts at forcefully removing or reducing the Palestinian population is the cornerstone of Zionist reasoning. The reasoning, which was essentially predicated on presenting Palestine as a "land without people", is often challenged by the fact that the Palestinian people are too stubborn to terminate their historical, intellectual and very personal relationship to their land. Their persistence has made a mockery of Israel ’s first Prime Minister Ben Gurion’s faulty prediction in 1948 that "the old will die and the young will forget."

Palestinian steadfastness cannot bend natural phenomena. Yes, the old will continue to die. But the young are far from forgetting. So how do you now exact forgetfulness from Palestinians? Israel has always enjoyed a broad definition of 'democracy’, which purported to reconcile ethnic and religious exclusivity on the one hand, and the inclusive parameters of true democracy on the other. Outside Israel , those who dared question this wisdom were labeled anti-Semites. Palestinians in Israel , who fought against the iniquitous and dehumanizing definitions, were often labeled a 'fifth column’ and were designated 'enemies’ of the state. It is they who now risk losing their citizenship or being fined for the supposedly sinful act of remembering the tragedies that have befallen their people.
Although racist and discriminatory laws have defined the Israeli parliament for years, the unmistakably bigoted nature of these laws and the frequency at which they are being passed reflect the level of fear in the Zionist project. The major obstacle to this project remains a people who refuse to be defeated or to be relegated as "woodcutters or waiters." Israel seems to be resolving its quandary of being a Jewish and democratic state, and it has decidedly chosen to be the former. There is nothing democratic about the most recent bills that have passed in the parliament. Israel is now officially an Apartheid state, and all the Hasbra in the world cannot resolve the moral crisis that is now at the core of Israeli politics.

Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported on March 2 that veteran diplomat Ilan Baruch had quit his post as he was no longer able to defend Israeli policy. It seems Mr Baruch made his decision in the nick of time, as it would be a truly arduous task now to try and justify Israel ’s war on Palestinian memory.