Gaza peace marchers: 'the conscience our country needs'

Image: ICN/JS

Neha Shah, vice-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, hailed the 'largest protest movement in British History', as hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of central London on Saturday, to mark two years since the start of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. An estimated 600,000 people bearing flags and banners (often with arresting and witty art) marched from the Embankment to Whitehall via Westminster and Waterloo Bridges and the Strand.

The 32nd National Demonstration in the capital came after government ministers signalled intentions to bring forward repressive measures to restrict protests by allowing the police to consider the "cumulative impact" of repeated demonstrations.

Richard Burgon, the Catholic-born and educated Labour MP for Leeds East, thanked everyone for attending today and month after month. He said: "You've been the conscience our country's needed in these dark times. You've stood up for our common humanity when those in power refused to do so. Our common humanity which meant we could not look away while genocide was live-streamed - that made us scream inside. As children were deliberately starved - that left us outraged. As hospitals were bombed, but governments kept the weapons flowing. Yet our protests have been demonised by those who never lifted a finger to stop the genocide."

"Millions of voices like yours all across the world have meant we now have a ceasefire with those beautiful scenes of those children dancing with joy as it was announced," he continued. "Now we need to get all the hostages out and a sea of aid in. But we also need to create a future - a future where the laughter of those Palestinian children never again falls silent." Loud cheers rang out at these words.

"So we need more than just a pause in the genocide," he said, "We need real peace. We need a total end to Israel's war on the Palestinian people. An end to the entire occupation. An end to all Israel's illegal settlements. An end to the ethnic cleansing. And we need the war criminals to face justice.

"In recent months, the International Court of Justice and the United Nations have been clear. Israel's entire occupation is illegal. They say every government, including our government has a legal duty to impose sanctions on Israel. So in my hand I have my new bill for sanctions on Israel. A bill that Parliament will publish in the next few days. A bill for widespread sanctions until Israel's occupation ends. From economic sanctions on Israel to a ban on all trade with Israel's illegal settlements . For a full arms embargo on Israel. And for an end to the UK-Israel trade deal until Israel upholds international law, and for individual sanctions on all of those upholding the occupation just as international law demands."

Burgon concluded: "Martin Luther King once said: "There's no noise as powerful as the marching feet of a determined people." So keep on marching because you are making a real difference that will once day help to bring about a free Palestine."

De La Salle-educated musician Brian Eno decried the "mental illness" of "Israeli citizens enjoying pina coladas on sunny beaches while a few miles further down the coast children and their parents are being butchered."

He slammed another "mental illness" - that of President Trump, Tony Blair and Jared Kushner deciding the future of Palestine. "None of them has any rightful claim whatsoever to the land and apparently none of them has any intention of consulting the people who actually live there. In this mental illness, those who've suffered and died are being treated as the aggressors while those who've murdered and tortured are being hailed as the peace makers."

Referring to the recent packed-out Together for Palestine Concert at Wembley Arena that he had organised, Eno added: "There is Hope. There, twelve and a half thousand people came together in Peace and Love, rather than in Hate and Greed. These people were Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, people of all ages and colours and economic backgrounds. We filled the stage with art and music and with the faces and voices of the people our governments would like to forget. It wasn't just a concert. It was a declaration saying we're not going to shut up, about standing together in solidarity. We stand with Palestine and we won't be quiet."

Independent MP for Islington North and 'Your Party' co-founder Jeremy Corbyn told the huge rally in Whitehall that, despite declaring the ceasefire in Gaza, "the Israeli army killed 17 Palestinian civilians and injured 71 in the past 24 hours." He had also been informed of a further 100 civilian bodies "with signs that they were field-executed."

He said: "This peace agreement has not brought peace and I don't believe can bring long-term peace. Much more needs to be done. The only way there's going to be a permanent peace is when Israel is forced to withdraw completely from Gaza and the West Bank and end the settlement policy and give the right of return to those hundreds of thousands living in refugee camps since 1948."

Corbyn, too, hailed "this global movement that has made this enormous difference." He recalled how the Gaza tribunal he had organised had 'exposed the role of the British army in supplying weapons to Israel and the use of Royal Air Force bases in supplying weapons."

He warned: "There's a reckoning to come. It's not just the ICC [International Criminal Court] and the ICJ [International Court of Justice], it's a reckoning for all those politicians that propped up the Israeli war machine and provided political cover and support for them.

"Those who acted in solidarity can hold their heads up high, those who went on the [Sumud] flotilla bless you all and hold your heads high for all that you did."

Corbyn warned that permanent peace would not come through a "colonial-style meeting" at the White House or anywhere else, and - to thunderous boos - "you certainly won't get it from viceroy Tony Blair." [Blair was roundly attacked throughout the demonstration for his key role in the Iraq War which led to the deaths of a million Iraqis.]

"The only people who should govern Gaza and the West Bank are the Palestinian people," Corbyn concluded. "We will be here as often and as long as it takes until the war is over and every Palestinian child can go to school, get fed, get medicine when they need it and lead the life that we want every child everywhere in the world to lead."

The Public and Commercial Services Union general secretary Fran Heathcote was among thousands of trade unionists taking part in the demonstration.

Ms Heathcote welcomed the imminent release of hostages, both Israeli and Palestinian: "We have to all hope that this moment marks the end of the genocide, that there is a lasting peace, and that one day Palestine will be free.

She said: "The UN says that 320,000 children are at risk of acute malnutrition. We need an end to the siege of Gaza and for aid to come flooding in. Our hearts are with the Palestinian people and we should recognise that without our protests, without the global opposition and the resistance to Israel's genocide, that we probably would not be in this situation today.

"The pressure that our global movement of Palestinian solidarity has brought to bear on governments around the World is what has forced concessions and that is why the right to protest is so valuable and has to be protected so intensely."

Referring to Prime Minister Keir Starmer's comments that it would be 'un-British' to continue the marches, Ms Heathcote said: 'And for those MPs who have the cheek to call us un-British, I say if we are un-British, then so were the Chartists, so were the suffragettes, so were the anti-apartheid campaigners. And they were all proved right as well."

"And this is modern multi-cultural Britain here today. We are Muslims, we are Jews, we are Christians, we are those of no faith and we are all united. You will not divide us. There is a great British history of protest and you will not crush it. We owe it to the Palestinian people to keep protesting for Peace and Justice."

Zarah Sultana, the independent MP for Coventry South and a co-founder of 'Your Party,' denounced Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood for switching sides on Palestine and for "locking up pensioners and priests for opposing the ban on Palestine Action."

She said that the Home Secretary "doesn't want to just ban demonstrations, she wants to criminalise dissent - she want to send a message that if you march for Palestine, if you speak out against genocide, if you demand justice, then the state considers you the problem. Shame on her."

Stop the War Coalition convenor Lindsey German compared the demonstration to the far-right "hate march" which took place in London a few weeks ago. She said: "This is what a large demonstration looks like. This is a march of solidarity. We should hold our heads up high today.' She also insisted that "a ceasefire is not enough. We want the war criminals brought to justice."

Poplar and Limehouse MP Apsana Begum slammed the government for failing to call out Israel's genocide. "The best way to achieve a lasting ceasefire is for the government to stop arming Israel," she said.

Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq, director and co-founder of We Are Not Numbers, warned in a litany of grievances that "the suffering is not over", for tens of thousands of orphans not least. He slammed the complicity of the "lie-spewing" main-stream media and the British and American governments. Israel should be treated as a pariah state and its war criminal leaders needed to be in the Hague.

Speaking for the Jewish Bloc, Daniel Wernberg said: "The Zionist state does not care one bit about opposing racist violence."

"The Labour government is cynically using the murder of Jews on British soil to further criminalise the right to protest. They would rather rip up democratic rights than face up to their support of the murder of Palestinians in Gaza."

He added: "No-one has done more to put the targets on the backs of British Jews than the Zionist state and its supporters. Anti-Zionist Jews will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinian movement. We will take no lectures on opposing racist violence from the cheer-leaders of colonial slaughter, genocide or apartheid."

The young Palestinian activist Leanne Mohammad, who came 500 votes short of beating Health Secretary Wes Streeting in Ilford North at the last General Election, exhorted all present to "tear down the moribund world order. We carry the lives of the martyrs with us and in our hearts."

LINK

Prayers before the 32nd National March for Palestine: www.indcatholicnews.com/news/53468