Over 500,000 protesters shut down London to demand ceasefire in Gaza
Police have clashed with protesters in London today as around half a million people took to the streets to demand a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
In London on Saturday, demonstrators gathered with banners and posters and let off fireworks and red and green flares.
Crowds started to gather near the Golden Jubilee Bridge holding signs saying ‘Gaza, stop the massacre’ and ‘Free Palestine, end Israeli occupation’.
As they marched, a sound system led people to chant ‘Stop arming Israel. Stop bombing Gaza’, ‘We are all Palestinian’.
The event is thought to be one of the largest anti-war demonstrations in British history.
More than 1,000 Metropolitan Police officers were in attendance at the demonstration, who warned the force would be vigilant in responding to crime.
‘Officers will respond to any criminality where they see it and take decisive action, but there may be things not seen in the moment,’ a Met spokesperson said.
‘We’ll also be reviewing CCTV and images/video shared by the public to identify offences.’
Several conditions have been imposed under the Public Order Act, including that protesters should follow a specified route and should not gather in a specified area outside the Israeli Embassy.
A Section 60 and Section 60AA authority was also put in place until midnight, giving police stop and search powers in the London boroughs of the City of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea.
Elsewhere throughout the day, there were reports of violent clashes between police and protesters close to Downing Street.
Officers appeared to be detaining someone before demonstrators began scuffling with them.
Punches and kicks were thrown and officers ordered the demonstrators to move away.
One person was taken to the floor and carried away to chants of ‘let him go’ from other protesters.
At around 2:30pm, over 200 activists shut down London Waterloo station by staging a ‘sit-in’ in the concourse, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s UK-backed attacks on Gaza, chanting ‘ceasefire now!’.
The protest comes after the Israeli military plunged Gaza into darkness and a communications blackout on Friday night, cutting off all phone and internet signals and launching an unprecedented bombing campaign which has claimed the lives of over 7,700 Palestinians to date.
Speaking on a stage at Parliament Square, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: ‘The world’s nations voted at the United Nations last night in the General Assembly by an overwhelming majority to demand a ceasefire.
‘It’s not much to ask, a ceasefire, when children are being killed by weapons coming through the rooms of their homes.
‘It is in eternal stain that the British Government abstained on that vote.’
Alia Malak, a British-Palestinian activist in attendance at the sit-in, said: ‘Israeli leaders have been explicit about their genocidal aim to exterminate Palestinians in Gaza and are carrying out this slaughter live as the world watches.
‘The British political and media elite who have let Israel get away with murder for 75 years have the blood of thousands of Palestinian children on their hands.’
‘The government must call for an immediate ceasefire right now. Then it must end its arms trade with Israel and take action to end Israel’s occupation of Palestine once and for all.’
Naomi Greenberg, a Jewish activist from the group Black Jewish Alliance who was also in attendance, said: ‘Israel is waging a genocide in Gaza using weapons our government sold them. The slaughter of my family members in the Holocaust was enabled by the same racist dehumanisation which we now see directed against the Palestinians by our own political leaders.’
‘I came here today to demand an immediate ceasefire and end to the blockade of Gaza – all of us must stand against the genocide being carried out in our name and with our tax money.’
Similar demonstrations took place throughout the country, including Glasgow and Manchester, where thousands gathered in St Peter’s Square to demand an immediate ceasefire.
On Friday, Manchester mayor Andy Burnham joined international calls for ‘a ceasefire by all sides and for the hostages to be released unharmed’.
But Foreign Secretary James Cleverley said calls for a ceasefire ‘aren’t going to help the situation’.
‘Of course we want to see Israel safe, peaceful and secure,’ he said, but added there was no indication from Hamas that they would accept or abide by a ceasefire.
Commander Kyle Gordon, who is leading the police operation in London, has insisted that the protest would be policed ‘right up to the line of the law’ and include discussions about ‘anything we’ve learnt from previous weeks’.
New York (AFP) – Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters poured onto the streets of Brooklyn, New York's largest district on Saturday to voice their anger at Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
AFP
Issued on: 29/10/2023 -
Home to between 1.6 and two million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Muslims, New York has for the past three weeks been rocked by demonstrations, rallies and vigils in support of the Palestinians and Israel.
Left-wing American Jewish activists are also up in arms against Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
Hundreds of people were arrested Friday when police broke up a large demonstration of mostly Jewish New Yorkers who had taken over the main hall of Manhattan's Grand Central station in protest at Israel's bombardment of Gaza.
"We're mobilizing all across New York City, flooding Brooklyn," to call for the "liberation (of) each and every single Palestinian", said 21-year-old protester Abdullah Akl.
Protest organizer Nerdeen Kiswani took aim at American "politicians" for their unwavering support of Israel.
"We are here as New Yorkers to say that we're against this and we're against the politicians, the local politicians as well like New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, who have both pledged unconditional support to Israel," said Kiswani.
Their stance "means that they provide unconditional support to the killing of our people," added Kiswani.
Adams, who governs a city of nearly nine million people, including the world's largest Jewish community after Israel, has repeatedly assured pro-Israel rallies that Israel's "fight" is New York's fight too.
New York media and AFPTV estimated the crowd at thousands of demonstrators, who waved "Free Palestine" and "By any means necessary" placards.
Israel unleashed a massive bombing campaign after Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seizing 230 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
Since then, relentless Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed more than 8,000 people, half of them children, the Hamas-controlled health ministry in the territory said.
© 2023 AFP
Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched in central London on Saturday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the deadly war between Israel and Hamas.
AFP
Issued on: 28/10/2023 -
It was the third consecutive weekend that the British capital had seen a large rally in support of Palestinians since the attack by Hamas on Israel earlier this month.
Israel unleashed a bombing campaign after Hamas gunmen stormed across the Gaza border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seizing more than 220 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Israeli strikes had killed 7,703 people, mainly civilians, with more than 3,500 of them children.
Saturday's protest in London came as Israel's army intensified its assault on the war-torn Gaza Strip late Friday.
Many demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans including "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
They also held signs that read "Free Palestine" and "Gaza, stop the massacre," while some protesters let off fireworks and red and green flares.
Dani Nadiri, 36, said UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's call for a "humanitarian pause" in the fighting to allow aid into Gaza and hostages to leave was not enough.
"A full ceasefire needs to happen," the TV producer told AFP, adding: "It's time now to do something rather than let it escalate any further."
Noori Butt, from Luton in southern England, said she just wanted the war "to end".
"It can't go on like this. The world is dying and I want lasting peace for everybody. That's the way it should be," the 38-year-old teacher told AFP.
About 100,000 people were expected to join the "March for Palestine," according to London's Metropolitan Police, which said it had deployed more than 1,000 officers to patrol the march.
The demonstrators gathered at Victoria Embankment at midday, before making their way to the British parliament in Westminster.
The force said it would not tolerate any hate crimes during the march.
Expressing support for Palestinians is allowed in Britain but praising Hamas -- a banned terrorist organisation in the UK -- is not.
The Met said officers would intervene if protesters used the word "jihad" in chants.
Nearly 100,000 people attended a similar march in London last Saturday. Thousands also rallied in the British capital on October 14.
Other rallies took place Saturday in Manchester and Glasgow, Scotland.
The UK government's stance on refraining from calling for a ceasefire is in line with the position of the United States -- both say Israel has the right to defend itself within international law.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said Saturday that Hamas has given no indication it "desires or would abide by calls for a ceasefire".
© 2023 AFP
The flare-up in the Middle East sparked by the Hamas attack on Israel is rekindling deep tensions in France.
RFI
Issued on: 25/10/2023 -
"The French debate is highly inflammable," said Jean Garrigues, a professor of political history at the University of Orleans in central France. "Even many of the so-called experts are biased, which makes it very difficult to establish an objective neutrality."
Garrigues said there was an undercurrent of what he called "repentance" in France.
It is linked to both its history as colonial master in the Arab world, notably in Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, and to collaboration during World War II, when some officials in France helped the German occupiers round up Jews and send them to death camps.
This makes President Emmanuel Macron's government mindful of balancing its strong support for Israel's fight against Hamas with an equally firm stance on the protection of Palestinian civilians.
In the latest example of deep polarisation among politicians, National Assembly Speaker Yael Braun-Pivet drew heavy criticism for her trip at the weekend to Israel, where she gave public support to Israel's "right to defend itself".
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon accused Braun-Pivet of "setting up camp in Israel to encourage the massacre" in Gaza.
Braun-Pivet retorted that she was "very shocked" and in turn accused Melenchon of using the French term "camper" as a veiled reference to concentration camps.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne quickly weighed in, saying the parliament speaker had been the target of "despicable accusations", with others accusing Melenchon of anti-Semitism.
The remarks were tantamount to "calling Jews the party of foreign interests and of war", said Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF).
'Beyond community lines'
Melenchon's party, La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) has also stayed clear of calling Hamas a "terrorist" organisation after the attacks.
That has created deep divisions with the Socialists and Greens, with whom it is allied in a loose leftist opposition coalition known as NUPES.
"The Israel-Palestinian conflict resonates far beyond community lines in France," said Marc Hecker, a researcher at IFRI, a French think tank on international relations.
It is also the only geopolitical topic "that can make tens of thousands of people take to the streets", he said, unlike the war in Ukraine.
Hecker said pro-Palestinian sentiment could be found as much in neo-Gaullist quarters seeking closer ties with the Arab world after the colonial war in Algeria, as among leftist Catholics and far-left anti-imperialist movemements.
Thousands of people demonstrated in several French cities at the weekend in support of Palestinians, some shouting slogans designating Israelis "murderers" and Macron as "their accomplice".
