Anti-apartheid campaigner Andrew Feinstein delivered a rousing call for justice and freedom for Palestine to a packed room in Hertfordshire. Notably, he joined the local community to hold Hertfordshire County Council’s feet to the fire over its gargantuan investments in companies complicit in Israel’s brutal genocide.
Andrew Feinstein: calling out Israel in Hertfordshire talk
At Jubilee Centre in St Albans on Wednesday 9 April, Andrew Feinstein spoke at the invitation of local group St Albans Friends of Palestine.
He told some 120 attendees about a career that began as a teenage activist against apartheid in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Feinstein served as a member of the South African parliament under Nelson Mandela. Today, he continues his work speaking out against apartheid and injustice. Significantly, he detailed how this has led to his concerted campaigning on the arms trade. Notably, Feinstein has become a leading voice in the international movement for Palestinian rights.
In last year’s general election, he ran as an independent candidate against Keir Starmer in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency. Impressively, he came second with nearly a fifth of the vote.
The title of Andrew Feinstein’s talk was ‘South Africa and Israel: Apartheid Then and Now’. During this, he noted that it is a “legal fact” that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians amounts to apartheid as defined in international law. It’s a finding judges at the International Court of Justice recently confirmed. Consequently, he reflected on similarities and differences between the two cases.
On top of this, he also condemned crackdowns on the movement for Palestinian rights. He expressed his horror, as the Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor, at recently being threatened by Austrian police during a protest in Vienna. Harrowingly, he recounted how this was very close to where his own mother had spent years hiding in a coal cellar in the 1940s.
Hertfordshire County Councils complicity in Israel’s genocide
Andrew Feinstein praised the Herts Palestine Support Coalition, which gathered signatures from audience members for its petition calling for Hertfordshire County Council to end its £95m investments in companies linked to grave human rights violations against Palestinians.
In the coming days, HPSC will launch a page on its website where voters in the upcoming County Council election. There, constituents will be able to check which candidates in their area have pledged to advocate for divesting from these companies.
Member of the St Albans Friends of Palestine committee Peter Segal said:
It was truly inspiring to hear from such a seasoned campaigner. In the current situation, it’s all too easy to feel dispirited. But Andrew reminded us that there are always meaningful things that all of us can do to work towards a better future, in Israel and Palestine and in our own society.
Featured image supplied
