Large faith presence at latest London pro-Palestinian demonstration

London witnessed one of the largest pro-Palestine demonstrations since the ceasefire agreement signed in October 2025, as more than 100,000 people marched through central London on Saturday 31 January. Participants included large Jewish, Christian and Muslim blocs together with many trade union and community groups, families and individuals of all ages - united in their rejection of the so-called 'Board of Peace' led by US President Trump, calling for an end to the genocide and ethnic cleansing, and demanding the release of thousands of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons. They called for accountability for war crimes and an end to UK arms exports to Israel. The demonstration was organised by the Palestine Solidarity coalition.

Addressing the rally on behalf of the Jewish Bloc, Jonathan Rosenhead pointed out that the Nazi slaughter of European Jews in the Holocaust which gave rise to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and generated the slogan NEVER AGAIN, FOR ANYONE, also produced the state of Israel and its genocide against the Palestinian people.

His message was clear: the 11 organisations in the Jewish Bloc would continue to take action for the liberation of Palestine and the Palestinians.

Mr Rosenhead said: "Last Tuesday was Holocaust Memorial Day. It marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where so many - Jews and non-Jews - were murdered.

"There is probably no Jew on this march whose family did not lose relatives - parents, cousins, grandparents - in the Holocaust. Their deaths were from brutal slave labour, starvation, and murder. They were the work of a fascist regime which brought terror to much of Europe and the world.

"That slaughter gave us the concept of genocide. It also gave us the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a precious defence.

"And it also gave us the principle, the slogan if you like - NEVER AGAIN, FOR ANYONE.

'But that slaughter also gave us Israel. Israel - a misconceived apology from Europe and America, for not having prevented the Shoah, the Holocaust.

"Now 80 years later, we have a genocide for the 21st Century. It has rolled out across our screens for more than two years. Carried out by that same state, Israel, a settler-colonial state, which was established on the territory of another people, the Palestinians.'

Mr Rosenhead continued, "After World War Two, British scholars and jurists were at the forefront of establishing the international legal system to outlaw such barbarities.

"The outrage against humanity we have been witnessing has been enabled by the United States. But it has also been connived at by our own British government. The one U-turn that our current lawyer Prime Minister has not made is to find his principles and denounce Israel's genocide."

Mr Rosenhead noted, "The Jewish Bloc does not only march. Our organisations have:

- protested at the World Zionist Organisation's 'Aliyah Day', trying to recruit new settlers
- engaged with the Metropolitan Police over their absurd ban on demonstrations anywhere near synagogues
- brought hundreds to celebrate the end of Chanukah in Trafalgar Square, with chants including - ZIONISTS DON'T SPEAK FOR ME, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE
- confronted our communal leadership's complicity and silencing of anti-Zionist Jews.

He concluded by saying: "The Jewish Bloc is a coming together of 11 Jewish and Jewish-led groups. We are proud to march here with our comrades of many ethnicities, of many religions or none, as we have done for two years plus. We will continue to march - for the liberation of Palestine and the Palestinians. Palestine will be free."

Speaking on behalf of the Muslim Association of Britain, Shaima Dallal focusing on the catastrophic humanitarian reality left in Gaza. She referred to the recent acknowledgement by Israeli authorities of the casualty figures announced by Gaza's Ministry of Health, which exceed 70,000 people killed, stressing that each number represents an entire human story, a family that has lost its children and its future. She said the tragedy could not be reduced to statistics but remained an open wound on the human conscience.

Thanking everyone for their solidarity, Jeremy Corbyn, the Your Party MP for Islington North, said: "We're here today because it is the international day for solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

"At the present time, there are 11,000 Palestinians being held, three and a half thousand of those have no charge against them, no opportunity to defend themselves, no legal process whatsoever.'

He said he believed that the 'so-called ceasefire' was not a ceasefire at all [28 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Saturday itself, including seven children and nine women]. According to his good friend Dr Mustafa Barghouti, of the Palestinian National Initiative, Israel had violated it 1320 times so far.

Mr Corbyn said, "Trump and the so-called Board of Peace want to take over Gaza, re-occupy Gaza, build the Riviera, the casinos, build the hotels and hand the land over to global speculators.

"Those buildings will be built on the rubble that contains the bodies of some of those thousands of Palestinians who have been killed. And so the idea of a Board of Peace - I call it a Board of thieves and a board of rogues. Those people will be presiding over the re-occupation. And the idea that Tony Blair should be involved. I simply say this. Tony Blair has no place whatsoever in anything to do with the Middle East. He and his foundation should keep well out of the way.

"What is needed is the end of the occupation, the removal of all Israeli forces from Gaza and the West Bank, and those countries that have bombed Gaza and the West Bank should be the ones who should pay for the re-building of Gaza. That means Israel, it means the United States. It means Britain. It means every country that supplied the weapons to destroy the homes of people in Gaza.

"The decisions on the form of government, the form of society, the form of buildings that are put up should be made solely and only by the people of Palestine, not by the rest of the World. Solidarity is about showing solidarity with people taking their own actions to decide their own future. It is not up to us to tell the Palestinian people how to live their lives."

Mr Corbyn announced that a debate on the genocide of the people of Palestine by the Israeli state was due to take place that Thursday in Parliament.

He said: "I urge you to get in touch with your MP and ask them to take part. And if they supported the sale of weapons to Israel then they might care to speak about the role of those planes [F35s] made in Britain, those bombs supplied from here, the equipment taken through RAF Akrotiri [in Cyprus] and they might take the opportunity to apologise for their failure to support the Palestinian people when they were under bombardment."

Mr Corbyn said he hoped he would be called upon to speak so he could give an idea of the outcome of his Gaza tribunal, held in September 2025 in Church House, which provided 'excruciating and terrifying detail' about what happened in Gaza at the height of the bombardment.

"But it is not over," he continued. "This week alone, a $6 billion contract has been signed by Donald Trump to supply a whole lot more weapons to Israel. Our message here today in London on International Prisoners Day is that we are fed up with Palestinians being taken hostage in Israel. They must be released. We want to see an end to all arms supplies to Israel because of the occupation and because of the genocide.

"We are ordinary people with decent hearts. We cannot stand seeing our government complicit in genocide and the destruction of Palestinian life."

Mr Corbyn demanded an end to occupation and to settler violence in the West Bank. Finally, he provided a message of "solidarity and support'" to the Palestinian refugees whose whole lives have been lived in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. "Let the Palestinian people return home to their land and their country. Let us pledge ourselves to work as long as it takes to help them win their freedom."

Aimee Shalan, Director of Makan and Chair of the British Palestinian Committee, denounced the "brutal system of violent incarceration" rooted in punishment and colonial control, and "the widespread use of officially sanctioned physical and psychological torture."

She said, 'We refuse to get used to the lack of media outrage over Israel's use of violence and imprisonment to wear down and break the Palestinian people.'

She condemned a residual colonialist mindset within the British government which sought to 'criminalise calls for Palestinian freedom once again today while it continues to provide diplomatic cover and military support for genocide and ethnic cleansing.'

"Our calls for Palestinian freedom are born out of love - a love that will never allow the ongoing annihilation of our people to go unanswered or accept that the structures of oppression are everlasting. Love that longs for liberation and allows us to travel far beyond the carceral and racist borders imperialist powers want to chain us to. No-one is free until everyone is free."

Bilal Stitan, from the charity Families in Gaza, also condemned a false ceasefire which, he said, continued to kill children, starve, block aid and commit atrocities. He also condemned the 'campaign of erasure' in the West Bank. He said that in 2025 there had been 1800 illegal settler attacks, five attacks a day, that 44 Palestinian communities had been displaced and that 41 new Israeli settlements had been established the highest number recorded in one year.

He said: "It is clear to me as a Palestinian that my fate is limited by mere chance. What crime did my Aunty Samira commit whose body was found torn and shredded under the rubble of her home? Her children found first her legs, then her torso, then her head. She was a light in this world."

Mr Stitan said, "Gaza is the tip of the spear of exploitation. The plunder does not end with us in a future where strength rules over morality."

Applauding those present, he said: "This is the longest and the largest sustained protest movement in British history for the sake of Truth, for the sake of Love and for the sake of Justice."

Red ribbons were distributed to tens of thousands of participants as part of a global campaign highlighting the plight of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. Organisers said the red colour symbolised the immediate danger facing prisoners amid administrative detention, torture, medical neglect and harsh conditions of confinement, adding that the issue would remain central to public action until all detainees were released.

Speaking to the crowd, Adnan Hmidan, coordinator of the Red Ribbons campaign, said the core message of the demonstration was: 'Not allowing the occupation to finish off what remains of the Palestinian people, particularly the detainees enduring extremely harsh conditions in some of the worst prisons on earth.'

Other speakers on the main stage included prominent political, medical and cultural figures: Ghassan Abu Sittah, John McDonnell MP, Juliet Stevenson, and representatives from several UK trade unions. Tariq Othman delivered remarks on behalf of the Palestinian Forum in Britain, while Samer Jaber spoke representing the Red Ribbons campaign calling for the release of Palestinian detainees.

The London march coincided with coordinated actions around the world, highlighting the suffering of Palestinian detainees, with events taking place from the West Bank to Australia, as well as in Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Germany, South Korea, Mexico and elsewhere. Participants said the synchronised mobilisation reflects the growing breadth of international solidarity and rejection of attempts to normalise or obscure crimes committed against Palestinians.

See also:
Christians pray together before 34th National March For Palestine: www.indcatholicnews.com/news/54260