The JC reports on another service, to take place tomorrow:
Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods has organised a second annual carol concert with its trademark alternative carol songs. Bethlehem Now: Alternative Lessons and Songs of Protest for Palestine will take place on December 8 at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden with the support of organisations including the interfaith Amos Trust, the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the charity War on Want.
The service will include new lyrics to traditional carols, including The Holly and the Ivy, which has been renamed The Olive and the Army and will include the lines: “O the rampaging of settlers/and the rolling of the tanks/the grinding of the bulldozers/as olives fall in ranks.”
Organiser Deborah Fink, a Jewish ‘human rights campaigner’, said: “Our songs and readings will reflect the seldom-heard Palestinian experience since Israel was founded in 1948.”
Participants will include Palestinian writer Ghada Karmi, veteran campaigner Bruce Kent, Baroness Jenny Tonge and Lauren Booth, and will feature a scene from the play Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea by Justin Butcher and Ahmed Masoud.
Which scene from Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea will it be? Perhaps the one that features the scene in which a mountain of shoes is used to draw a visual parallel between the situation in Gaza and the extermination of six million Jews in Nazi death camps. Or will it be the section which repeats the lie that Israel bombed a UNWRA school?
Will Baroness Tonge repeat her claim that “The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they’ve probably got a grip on our party”?
Will Lauren Booth hand out copies of The Palestine Telegraph: a rag which repeatedly features the writings of Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists, and of which she is the Patron?
There is only one way to find out.
Join the counter protest, 6.45pm, Tuesday, 8th December.
Deborah Fink in action:
