UAE says mediation between Russia, Ukraine secures release of 168 prisoners
LONDON: Green energy tycoon Dale Vince plans to keep flying the Palestinian flag at his company's headquarters, saying a 'shadowy' group of pro-Israel lawyers is forcing local authorities to remove them across the UK.
Vince said he would fly the flag at the Ecotricity headquarters in defiance of Stroud district council, which told him he needs to seek permission as Palestine is not recognized by the UK.
He said as Palestine is recognized by 147 countries, the flag counts as a national one — which can be flown without permission — rather than an advert, as Stroud council suggested.
Vince added that a group called UK Lawyers for Israel may have complained to the council, prompting the request for him to remove it.
'There's a shadowy group called UK Lawyers for Israel that do complain to councils about flags and to hospitals about pin badges and all kinds of trivia that they don't like because it's in support of Palestine and they consider to be racism, which is just an incredible thing to say,' Vince said in the Stroud Times.
'I think what they do is in the shadows, that's why I say shadowy. They send threatening letters to people that do innocent things like fly a flag, wear a pin badge and that kind of stuff.'
In the local paper, Vince wrote earlier this week: 'Nobody ever got asked to take down a Ukrainian flag. With Palestine it's different and much of this is due to a shadowy group of lawyers acting for Israel.
'They've bullied several councils into forcing the removal of flags and into event cancellations — it's a pernicious stifling of free speech on behalf of a foreign power.'
Vince said no one should feel threatened by the flag, which is being flown 'in solidarity' with the Palestinian people.
'What's been happening these last two years has been exceptional,' he said. 'It is genocide, it is ethnic cleansing, it's daily acts of barbarity against civilians, mass starvation of millions of people.
'I mean it's off the scale in terms of human abuse and there's not enough by far being done about it by western nations who have punished Russia incredibly for their invasion and occupation of Ukraine in a recent timescale.
'Half the G7 will recognise Palestine in September and it's absolutely important that we show our solidarity with the Palestinian people and we show Israel that we can see what they're doing and we don't accept it, we don't condone it. They won't get away with it, they will be judged for it in the future. It's an absolute atrocity.'
Vince added: 'Obviously what Hamas did on October 7th (2023) was an atrocity but the atrocity visited on Palestine in return in the last two years is off the charts.
'It's unimaginably bad and this is from a democratic country that we call an ally, not from a terrorist organisation known as Hamas.
'So they're not comparable and I don't think anybody that's Israeli should look at the Palestinian flag and feel threatened. I don't understand that.
'This is not the flag of Hamas and these are the shadows that UK Lawyers for Israel operate within, conflating the flag of a country with the flag of a terrorist organisation.'
UKLFI calls itself a 'voluntary association of lawyers which seeks the application of rules and laws to counter boycotts and other actions targeting Israelis.'
Last year, it succeeded in forcing the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to remove Palestinian flags from local authority buildings, after suggesting that flying them broke the law.
A spokesperson for the group denied it had contacted Stroud council because officials had already contacted Vince to remove the flag when they learned of its presence.
Stroud council said it received complaints from members of the public about the flag, so was 'obliged to take (legal) advice on the matter.'
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said the UK will recognize Palestine at the UN next month unless a ceasefire is reached in Gaza before then with commitments to plans for a two-state solution.
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