Sindyanna visit UK : Fair trade for long term solutions

A unique opportunity to meet the founders of Sindyanna

Sindyanna of Galilee is unique organisation based on co-operation between Palestinian and Jewish people, based on a mutual belief in equality and Palestinian right to self-determination. Sindyanna has a strong track record in providing women with equal chances and advancing the economic situation of Arab women within Israel. Sindyanna is a ray of hope in an area that suffers from war, occupation and fundamentalism. Founded in 1996, Sindyanna is a member of IFAT, the international fair trade association. www.sindyanna.com

Sindyanna offer a range of high quality, popular products including extra virgin organic olive oil, olive oil soap (plain and with four blends), za’atar herb mixture, honey, carob syrup, baskets and artwork. The social enterprise has recently launched an olive oil soap with olive wood soap dish, in partnership with Holyland Handicraft co-operative society in Bethlehem.

Turning Agriculture into a Source of Income: interview with Abed al-Majid Hussein, farmer, Sindyanna co-founder and management committee member

Meaningful Employment for Women: interview with women Sindyanna workers

UK visit programme

Through a series of public and private meetings across the UK, Sindyanna would like to meet with: fair trade wholesale, retail and consumer organisations; trade unions; media; women’s organisations; and all people with an interest in the middle east. Contact Jo on jobird[at]cooptel.net 0797 007 5704

Friday 3 April in Oxford. Public meetings with Fairtrade Oxfordshire, Witney Area Fairtrade Action Group and Charlbury UNA.
Contact Lee on leenigelthacker[at]googlemail.com

Saturday 4 April in Leicester. Public meeting with Just Peace.
Contact Michele on michele.benn[at]ntlworld.com

Sunday 5 April in Manchester. Product tasting at Unicorn Grocery.
Contact Jo on jobird[at]cooptel.net 0797 007 5704

Monday 6 and Tuesday 7 April in Edinburgh. Hadeel fair trade shop.
Contact Carol on palcrafts[at]phonecoop.coop

Wednesday 8 April in Wimborne. Contact Sharen on sharen_eappi@msn.com

Thursday 9 April in London. Meetings with Zaytoun and others.
Contact Lee on leenigelthacker[at]googlemail.com

Samia Nasser

Samia has been a board member of Sindyanna since 1996.

Samia was born in 1966 in the Galilean village of Majd al-Krum (9,000 inhabitants) to a working class family with four brothers and four sisters. Most of her political education was received in her left wing family home.

Most of her extended family left the Galilee in 1948 and became refugees in Lebanon. Some of them were fighters in the Palestinian resistance during the war against the Israeli invasion.

Israel’s war on Lebanon in 1982 was a turning point in her life as a young Palestinian living in Israel. The war deepened her commitment to the urgent need for a just solution to the ongoing Palestinian tragedy.

Samia’s father, a construction worker, could not afford to pay for her higher education. After finishing formal education in her village, she worked in a textile factory in the nearby Jewish Israeli city of Carmiel. After saving enough money, Samia entered Haifa university, graduating in 1990 with a BA in History and Literature.

After working for 3 years as a teacher in the village primary school, Samia has worked with issues relating to women and youth empowerment in her community. As a co-founder of Sindyanna of Galilee and the Workers Advice Centre, she works to develop the participation of Arab women in the labour market.

Hadas Lahav

Hadas has been the manager of Sindyanna of Galilee since 1996.

Hadas was born in 1953 in a kibbutz near the sea of Galilee. The education in the kibbutz was Zionist with a “left orientation”. The first time Hadas encountered the Palestinian tragedy was when she realized that her kibbutz was built on the ruins of an Arab village. All inhabitants of the village had left during the war of 1948 and became refugees.

Hadas graduated from Tel Aviv University in 1978. She was influenced by mobilisation of Arab citizens of Israel in 1976, in what became known as “The Day of the Land”. The Israeli government confiscated huge portions of Arab land, popular protests began and six Arab civilian demonstrators were shot dead. This changed her whole conception of Israel as a “democratic state for all its citizens”. She left the kibbutz and became a political and feminist activist.

Israel’s war on Lebanon in 1982 gave rise to a large anti-interventionist movement in Israel. The war deepened Hadas’s commitment to the urgent need for a just solution to the ongoing Palestinian tragedy. At that time she started to learn Arabic as a bridge to communicate and dialogue with Palestinian people.

During the mid 1980s, she joined the staff of Hanitzotz Publishing House, a progressive not for profit association. Her work as a political activist and journalist were abruptly interrupted in 1988, when the paper was closed down under ‘administrative law’, and four of her colleagues, including her husband, were imprisoned for several months for ‘having illegal contacts with a Palestinian organization’. Hadas was interrogated by the secret police for two weeks.

In 1992, Hadas co-founded of Al-Baqa center in the village of Majd al-Krum - funded by Hanitzotz Publishing House - and helped establish The Mothers’ School project. In 1995 she published a book, in Arabic, English and Hebrew, ‘The Additional Factor’ (on the crisis of Arab education and the experience of the Mother School).

Hadas is a regular contributor to three publications of Hanitzotz Publishing House: Al Sabar (Arabic monthly); Challenge (English bi-monthly), and Etgar (Hebrew quarterly).

Sindyanna statement about Gaza

Dear partners and friends of Sindyanna,

Once again our region wallows in the blood of the Palestinian people. Sindyanna of Galilee, a Fair Trade association aiming to build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians, watches in pain as Israel’s army wreaks devastation in Gaza. We believe, now more than ever, that we must work with the other forces of peace in our region and the world to stop this war, offering an alternative to Israel’s policy of domination by force. Now more than ever, we need your solidarity so that the idea which unites us, that of a fairer world, may be fulfilled.

In this effort Sindyanna has joined with other organizations that stand behind the views voiced on the Challenge website (www.challenge-mag.com). We invite you to read the pieces published there and to send us your responses.

Here is a citation from one such article. It represents Sindyanna’s position on the war in Gaza: “The responsibility for what is now occurring in Gaza rests, almost exclusively, on Israel. Perhaps Operation Molten Lead will end in an “improved” cease-fire. Perhaps we shall soon see the Hamas leadership in Cairo again. But a renewal of calm will result in no solution. What solution can there be as long as the Palestinian territories continue to sink in corruption, poverty and despair? How long will it take until a new calm gives way to another massacre?”

“And how long can Israeli society go on living as an Occupier? How long until the country’s internal social gaps, together with the ever worsening conflict, land a blow many times worse than rockets from Gaza? The basic problem is not Hamas. It is the nationalist consensus of Israel’s political parties, which have prodded the present transitional government to carry out this massacre, whose only real purpose is to continue putting off the price of peace.”

We call on you to join us in protesting this war, whether en masse in the streets or by whatever means you can, in order to reach at last a just solution to the Palestinian issue.

Sincerely,

Hadas Lahav
in the name of the Board of Sindyanna
12 January 2009