Went to my Cooperative group annual members meeting for the region. Having gone in the past I was expecting a quiet & uneventful evening. Oh how I was wrong. The local Friends of Israel group were there and had taken umbrage to the coop not doing business with any company in the occupied territories. It started pretty much straight away with an objection to the minutes of the last meeting centred on the wording occupied territories over their preferred disputed territories (which sounds a lot fluffier than occupied). When a vote was taken on if the minutes should be changed it was decided to keep occupied in, promoting shouting from some of the pro-Israelis. Then it was normal agenda until the open questions from the floor session at the end when the vast majority of questions were from the pro-Israelis. Some made their point without disrupting the meeting, such as the lady that handed a partition over or the man that asked if the impact on the ban on effected Palestinians. However others used the opportunity to launch ill-informed rants about boycotting Israeli goods, which isn't the case. During the shouting & someone being asked to leave the room an elderly lady stood up and started singing loudly in Hebrew. Frankly the whole thing was bonkers & had been thoroughly hijacked by the pro-Israeli supporters. The chair certainly had her work cut out. I get the feeling the next members meeting could be a repeat of this if the same policy is still in place then.
Fri 18 October 2013