We Won’t Be Silenced
JOHN ENFER
An award-winning journalist and film-maker will visit Hastings in June for the screening of a film which documents the extraordinary efforts of ordinary people to confront companies in their communities linked to war crimes carried out thousands of miles away.
We Won’t Be Silent is directed by Medyan Dairieh, who filmed at General Dynamics in Hastings as well as the L3 Harris site in Brighton. He pulled together footage from Brighton and Hastings, while also getting witness testimony from Gaza to illustrate how the West impacts the lives of innocent people in Gaza.
General Dynamics is an international company which mainly makes products related to war. In Hastings, it produces components, technology and communications systems for ground vehicles and warplanes, including the F16, which has been involved in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. It was an F16 that bombed the compound of the UK based charity Medical Aid for Palestinians in Al-Mawasi, the coastal community in southern Gaza to which Hastings is officially linked. Satellite images have shown that 81% of structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the Gaza war began.
L3 Harris has its headquarters in the US and is the manufacturer of a wide range of equipment. Its site in Brighton makes bomb release mechanisms for war planes.
In Hastings, a campaign is ongoing to try to persuade Hastings Borough Council (HBC) to terminate the lease for General Dynamics to operate on council-owned land. The crux of the argument campaigners are putting forward is that HBC, in leasing land to General Dynamics, is violating its own policy of not allowing companies to engage in any ”illegal and immoral purpose” on land it leases out, and that equipping a government guilty of genocide falls foul of this policy.
Israel denies any involvement in genocide in Gaza, but an extensive number of Human Rights organisations have concluded that it is guilty of this most serious of all crimes: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Israeli organisations B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars have all concluded that Israel has committed genocide.
March to General Dynamics April 2024
It remains to be seen whether HBC will terminate the lease to General Dynamics now that the Green Party has a clear majority on the council and, in Zack Polanski, a national leader who has accused the Israeli government of genocide in explicit terms.
Speaking of his motivation to make the film, Medyan says: “I felt I had to cover the issue nobody was covering. Throughout my career as a journalist, I have indeed often covered issues that I considered important whenever I felt the media ignored them or did not cover them in an honest manner.”
We Won’t Be Silent will be screened at the Stade Hall, TN34 3FJ, at 3pm on Sunday 7 June. It will be followed by a Q&A with the director. The event is organised by Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Admission is free.
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I’m not for any war. However, we need defence, right? Or should we have no defence and just let any country that feels like it come and attack the UK? We’ll all be speaking Russian soon then. So if we need defence, we need to buy things like F16s. Someone has to make them. General Dynamics employs a few hundred people in Hastings making parts – not whole systems, and not all for defence but some for luxury goods, so they’d rather they are unemployed instead? It’s a very biased view. Where would you draw the line? We can probably link all industry to defence systems, so let’s shut down every employment opportunity in Hastings then? I can’t see why you choose to go with “mainly makes products related to war”, nothing about defending our country? Here’s what they do; General Dynamics is a global aerospace and defense corporation known primarily for manufacturing Gulfstream business jets, nuclear-powered submarines, main battle tanks, and advanced defense and avionic systems”. So here’s hoping for the jobs of the people, that the Green party have more sense than the journalist here.