The Morning Star publishes the Communist Party of Britain's 58th congress address by general secretary ROBERT GRIFFITHS, delivered on November 15 2025
Day 1: Bethlehem. There are lots of warnings to group members before we arrive: “If asked just say you are visiting the Holy Land and Israeli sites, suspend your Facebook and Twitter accounts, don’t mention divestment, boycott and sanctions.”
We catch a sherut (shared taxi) from Ben Gurion airport to Hotel Jerusalem, meet the Israeli Commission Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) group and transfer by minibus to Bethlehem, a Palestinian neighbourhood under the Palestinian Authority (PA).
From our hotel window, we can see the eight-metre-high separation wall with its barbed wire running along the top, watchtowers and cameras.
Israel’s messianic settler regime has moved beyond military containment to mass ethnic cleansing, making any two-state solution based on differential rights impossible — we must support the Palestinian demand for decolonisation, writes HUGH LANNING



