31 October, Manchester: Protest the Balfour “Celebrations” #ApartheidOffCampus

Tuesday, 31 October
6:30 pm
University of Manchester – Whitworth Hall
Manchester, UK
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/710174839180731/

We have learned that the University of Manchester plans to host an event co-organised by the Israeli embassy and the Zionist Federation, to celebrate 100 years since the Balfour Declaration on Tuesday 31st October at 7.30pm. Although not yet made public, despite numerous requests, this event is planned to be held in the Whitworth building at the University of Manchester. It will ‘celebrate’ the Declaration that lead to the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and the destruction of over 400 villages during Al-Nakba in 1948. To celebrate this is to dance on the rubble of Palestinian homes, to rejoice at the massacres of innocent people, and mock the ongoing horrors of Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza for the past 50 years.

This perverse celebration compounds the University of Manchester’s existing institutional and investment links with Israeli institutions complicit in war crimes.

FULL STATEMENT: https://bdsuom.com/2017/10/12/statement-from-student-societies-demanding-the-university-cancel-the-balfour-celebrations/

We call on all students, academics, trade unionists, and concerned individuals to take a stand for the Palestinians, still occupied, still violently forced from their land, and still the victims of the shameful support of UK institutions, from the Balfour Declaration to the University of Manchester today. Join the ‘Apartheid Off Campus’ protest at the Whitworth building Tuesday 31st October.