By Paul Seligman

Palestine solidarity activities in Wales have grown hugely since Cardiff Palestine Solidarity Campaign was formed in 2012 and a few peace groups took up the cause in the same period. Over the years, each attack on Gaza has brought many thousands on to the streets.

Important conferences and events, such as the one on the anniversary of the Balfour declaration and, more recently, discussing Israeli apartheid and how to fight it, have attracted hundreds. Numerous smaller actions, educational events, film showings, concerts, picnics and vigils have taken place.

Understandably, the latest brutal war on Gaza, which Israel initiated after the attacks on its army posts, police stations and villages near the Gaza Strip on October 7th last year, has multiplied the number of solidarity groups and activities.

The membership of the ‘Palestine Events in Wales’ Facebook group has more than doubled and is now approaching 2,000. In a typical week, there will be solidarity events in every major town and city, and in many villages, from North to South and East to West. Such events are supported by a wide cross-section of Welsh society.

Cardiff-born Charlotte Church became famous as a classical singer when still a child, before becoming a pop star. By 2007, she had sold more than ten million records worldwide and was a significant Welsh ‘celebrity’. She is now, primarily, a business woman, running a wellness retreat – but she is also someone who takes a stand on political issues.

She is a strong supporter of Palestinian rights and has attended several rallies and boycott actions to speak, sing and lend her support.

In January, Charlotte decided that she wanted to organise a singing event for Palestine. She got in touch with Wendy Lewis, the Director of Côr Cochion Caerdydd (Cardiff Reds Choir) since 1987.

Côr Cochion has supported progressive causes for over 40 years. As part of this, they have raised thousands of pounds for humanitarian projects in Palestine, donated repeatedly to PSC, and visited the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

As it happened, Wendy was already running a series of “Songs for Freedom for Palestine” workshops in Cardiff. It seemed a perfect match.

With Cardiff PSC supplying volunteers, organisational support and sponsorship, the next step was to find a venue for “Songs of Freedom for Palestine with Charlotte Church, Côr Cochion and friends”.

Venues approached in Cardiff were too nervous about ‘Palestine’ to hire their premises – a sign of the chilling effect anti-Palestine propaganda is having.

Wendy Lewis then thought of the Bedwas Workmen’s Hall and Institute, where she has volunteered for years. The striking building near Caerphilly was built in 1923, primarily thanks to local coal-miners who raised the money by donating a penny a week.

The Hall has always been at the centre of the community. During the Spanish Civil war, when Bedwas itself was suffering deprivation of the Depression, food donations for Aid for Spain were collected on the steps of the Hall. Striking coal miners and supporters used the Hall in the 1984-5 Miners’ strike.

A £500,000 National lottery grant has recently been approved to make major improvements to the Hall and ensure it can continue its role for many years.

Wendy convinced the Hall’s committee that hiring the space would not contravene any regulations, and would be a positive event. The committee liked the plan to raise funds for The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), a non-profit humanitarian aid organization based in California. MECA will use the money for appropriate emergency aid to children in Gaza, with an ambulance appeal being one of the current projects.

February 24th was fixed as the date for the ‘Big Sing’ and the hard work of detailed planning, publicity, programme design and production, and choir rehearsals began. Each rehearsal attracted more people, with over 100 people present for the final run-through.

All 450 available ‘donate what you can’ tickets were pre-ordered, and a wait-list was opened for others eager to attend.

After a short introduction, the programme started with an adaptation of the anti-apartheid song “Freedom is Coming”. English songs ware interspersed with Arabic and Welsh numbers and the event concluded with a rousing rendition of the Welsh National Anthem, Mae hen Wlad fy Nhadau.

It had been a memorable afternoon. There was a tremendous atmosphere, people felt uplifted, contacts were made.

More than £5,000 – a quarter of the sum needed to buy an ambulance to replace the one destroyed in the Israeli army attack on Al Awda Hospital – was raised for the Middle East Children’s Alliance.

One of the Hall’s committee officers was so enthused that he wrote to the local MP, arguing for a ceasefire.

All was good.

That is, until the newspaper headlines the next day. The Sun led the attack, saying “’TONE DEAF’ Charlotte Church blasted for leading ‘antisemitic’ sing-song during pro-Palestine concert. British Jews say the song references a desire to destroy Israel”.

You might think that News Group Newspapers Ltd., the Sun’s publishers, would be cautious in attacking Miss Church after paying her and her parents a reported £600,000 in 2012 for the phone-hacking activities of their now-defunct rag, the News of the World.

Within the hour, the Mail had joined in with the headline “Charlotte Church told to ‘hang her head in shame’ for singing ‘from the river to the sea’ at pro-Palestine concert as Welsh singer sparks fury for leading chorus of ‘genocide’ song”.

In short order, virtually all other ‘mainstream media’ carried similar stories, using many of the same words. Several headlines used variants of “Charlotte Church denies antisemitism”.

It was almost as if they had all received the same press release and images. Oh, wait – they all quote the Campaign Against Antisemitism. The CAA’s charitable objectives say they aim to “promote racial harmony for the public benefit between Jewish people wherever in the world and other members of society by the elimination of antisemitism.“ They say they work in the area of “Human Rights/religious Or Racial Harmony/equality Or Diversity”.

Even according to what the CAA calls ‘the International Definition of Anti-semitism‘, calling for Palestinian freedom is not defined as antisemitic.

Despite Charity Commission guidance that it is legitimate for a charity to use “emotive or controversial material, where this is lawful and justifiable in the context of the campaign,” but that “such material must be factually accurate and have a legitimate evidence base”, the CAA claimed that by leading choir and audience to sing the lyric “From the River to the Sea”, Charlotte Church was “genocidal”, “anti-Semitic” and “calling for the annihilation of half the world’s Jews”.

Emotive and controversial language? Check.

Legitimate evidence base? None provided.

Defamatory? Well, that would be for a court to determine.

Such hysterical attacks may be intended to deflect attention from the real war crimes and massacres being committed by Israel in Gaza.

Israel is losing the struggle for public opinion worldwide. Its hard-line, and increasingly right-wing, supporters and advocates are getting desperate.

It will be sad if the CAA carries out its threat to complain about the Bedwas Workmen’s Hall. The Hall has done nothing wrong – Charity Commission guidance explicitly allows charities to raise funds from hiring their premises, including to political organisations (barring certain circumstances which do not apply here).

The CAA, whose CEO is  Gideon Falter, specialises in litigation with many of their volunteers preeminent lawyers. They must know that they don’t have a valid case. Any such complaint would be malicious and intimidatory.

Update March 5^th: Bedwas Hall is now under investigation by the Charity Commission in relation to the event; complainant undisclosed.

Mr Falter is also a director and vice-chair of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in the UK. The JNF is one of the main organisations that has promoted and funded settlement and colonisation of Palestine and it has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the CAA.

The CAA was registered in October 2015, a month after Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party. It then proceeded, in the words of the Guardian (January 4^th, 2023), to be “at the forefront of antisemitism allegations against Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership”. Last year the Charity Commission said it was “assessing concerns” about the Campaign.

Neither Wendy Lewis, Charlotte Church nor the wider movement in Wales will be intimidated by these scurrilous attacks.

In Cardiff alone, on the Saturday following the Bedwas event, there was an Amos Trust ‘Run the Wall’ event raising funds to rebuild destroyed Palestinian homes, a Cardiff PSC “Boycott Israel” action outside Barclays Bank, and a march calling for a ceasefire.

Charlotte Church attended the march, which was organised by Cardiff Stop the War and Cardiff Black Lives Matter, and backed by Cardiff PSC, to lead a ‘sharing circle’.

Asked about the accusations by Nation.Cymru, Wendy Lewis said they were “absolute nonsense”.

She said: “It was the most positive life-enhancing event I’ve ever taken part in. The range of people who attended was very broad and included Muslims, Christians, Jews and others who came together to celebrate the ideas of peace and goodwill.

“Our hearts are heavy because of the slaughter of more than 29,500 people in Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces since the invasion last October.”

Wendy, a Jew whose family tree includes members were killed in pogroms, concluded: “I know very well what antisemitism is, and it wasn’t present at all in the hall.”

As another Jew who has experienced violent  antisemitism and who lost relatives in the Holocaust, I fully endorse Wendy’s comments.

Speaking to Novara Media, Charlotte said that she “hates the idea that anybody thinks I am at all antisemitic or trying to make things more divisive. I stand by everything that we sang on Saturday, it was really beautiful. It was an intergenerational choir from all over the country, it was a deeply spiritual experience for me.”

Who would have thought that a community singing event in a Welsh village would hit every national newspaper and TV channel?

Paul Seligman was conceived on a kibbutz, raised in a Zionist family in Cardiff. After High School, he received a year’s training in Israel to be an elite Zionist youth leader. He subsequently lived in Israel on border settlements for several years and served in the IDF. After becoming disillusioned, he returned to Wales and has been involved in campaigns for justice, and Palestinian rights for some 50 years. He has family in Israel as well as Palestinian friends. He posts on X as @PaulMSeligman.

Main image: Photo credit: Martin Davis Photography

First inset image: Bedwas Workmen’s Hall & Institute Creator: Jeremy Bolwell  Credit: Jeremy Bolwell Copyright: © Jeremy Bolwell and licenced for reuse under cc-by-sa/2.0

Final inset image: c/o Voice.Wales, reproduced with kind permission.