Hundreds of thousands in show of solidarity and to demand a #ceasefirenow
Hundreds of thousands of people have again flooded the streets of UK cities in a mass show of solidarity with Gazan civilians against the brutal violence of the Israeli military, against the oppression and apartheid they have suffered for decades – and for the immediate ceasefire that international law demands but Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will not.
Last week’s demo in London saw at least 300,000 gather and march – under-reported by police and media as 100,000 – and this week’s looks larger still, as a Palestine Solidarity Campaign video also tweeted by Palestinian ambassador Husam Zomlot and a video posted by Patrick Henningsen give a hint:
In Manchester, a crowd of perhaps 20,000 gathered in St Peter’s Square before marching through the city. Skwawkbox was there to cover it for readers:
Many Jewish people also came to take part in solidarity against Israeli genocide:
And local union branches marched – including Unite, despite the grotesque inaction of the union’s general secretary over the Gaza slaughter:
But sinisterly, anti-terror police were filming the demonstrators:
Large marches also took place in Glasgow, Belfast, Sheffield and other UK cities and Liverpool will march tomorrow.
Solidarity with the people of Gaza and all who are united against apartheid and violence. Ceasefire now.
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The following statement was published by Unite on Monday 16/10/23
Unite unreservedly condemns the recent appalling acts of violence in Israel and Gaza and calls for the protection and upholding of human rights under international law
Unite unreservedly condemns and expresses its revulsion at the recent appalling acts of violence by Hamas against innocent civilians in Israel. We further deplore the subsequent suffering and loss of life being endured by civilians in Gaza arising from the actions of the Israeli government.
Unite sends its solidarity to all emergency and humanitarian workers seeking to alleviate suffering in the conflict and its deepest sympathy and condolences to all those who have lost loved ones – both Israelis and Palestinians.
While all nation states have a right to defend themselves within the parameters of international law, the targeting and attacking of civilians, taking of hostages, and imposition of collective punishments are war crimes. Unite condemns such actions in the strongest possible terms.
We therefore call for the immediate and safe release of hostages held by Hamas and for all involved in the conflict to respect international law. We further call on the international community to do everything possible to ensure that human rights are protected. Unite renews its calls for the British government to work for peace, for the respect of international law and to find a pathway towards a two state settlement and a peaceful, democratic solution to the conflict.
Unite has many members of the Jewish and Muslim communities, including Rabbis and Imams, who will be deeply worried by those trying to use these appalling events to stoke up tensions in the UK. Unite will not tolerate any antisemitism or anti-Muslim racism in any of its guises.
https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2023/october/unite-unreservedly-condemns-the-recent-appalling-acts-of-violence-in-israel-and-gaza-and-calls-for-the-protection-and-upholding-of-human-rights-under-international-law
Unite Statements are full of Hot Air! Carefully worded Shite!
Every member of Unite should read that press-release CAREFULLY and both terminate their membership (hopefully tempoararilly) and demand Graham is discharged immediately.
Covid, Ukraine, Palestine. Lies, lies, lies!
If that is the case then you have something in common. 🥱
Liverpool tomorrow, Sunday.
Any idea where/when?
Jonathan Cook’s newly published blog is worth a read
Jonathan Cook: the Blog from Nazareth
With Hamas gone, Gaza still wouldn’t be free – 28 October 2023
As a classic settler-colonial state, Israel is doing the only thing it knows how to do. So long as the West keeps cheerleading, that includes genocide
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2023-10-28/hamas-gaza-free/
In supporting Israel, Starmer is logically implementing his declaration that he supports Zionism without qualification. In doing so he has placed himself on wrong side of history and humanity.
Indeed Paul – “in doing so he has placed himself on wrong side of history and humanity” and disclosed himself as the leader of the wrong party.
There’s every chance that the next leader of the Conservative party* will be mere left-wing than Sir Kier.
Here’s a small insight into the ongoing everyday injustices of life in Gaza and the inhumane horrors being perpetuated now.
Inside a Gaza Village: “All of Us Will Die, but We Don’t Know When”
The ongoing Israeli attacks on Palestine have killed thousands of civilians — including Maram Al-Dada’s family. We hear from Al-Dada.
The Gaza Ministry of Health has calculated that more than 7,000 Palestinians have been killed, including nearly 3,000 children, by the latest Israeli bombing on Gaza. Those living in Gaza are under the constant threat of airstrikes, with little food, water, or access to medical care. This week on Deconstructed, Maram Al-Dada, an aviation engineer based in Florida, joins Ryan Grim; Al-Dada’s family is in Gaza, where he grew up. By the time of the interview, a shocking 46 members of Al-Dada’s family had been killed by Israeli attacks, with the rest wondering when their moment will come. Al-Dada talks about his childhood in Gaza, the escalating restrictions placed on Palestinians, and his family’s experience during these past few weeks.
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/27/deconstructed-israel-gaza-family-interview/
(duration 50 minnutes)
The first problem is that non of these casualty figures are accepted by those leading the lynch mob – see statements by US officials in the past few days on this matter.
And herein lies the problem. Because once again its all about the narrative rather than the reality and truth.
From the get go on October 7th everything that has followed has been based entirely on the say so of the key belligerent – the Israeli Regime. The Israeli Regime states 1700 civilians killed by Hamas on 7th October therefore the entire Western political and media class have accepted this statement without testing it and submitting it to evidence.
Its called due process. It exists (or it used to before post-modernism ) to prevent the kind of lynch mob mentality and its intended results which is taking place.
And then we have the 40 beheaded babies which the demented toddler Niki Haley was still pushing a few days ago.
Except that even the Official figures published by the Israeli Government (which are regularly updated) does not list anything near 40 babies among the October 7 deaths. Last time I looked they had listed 900 named deaths which also inconveniently included around 38% as being military, police and rescue workers.
And then we have the testament of surviving witnesses who inconveniently claim a lot of Israeli civilians originally taken hostage lost their lives as a result of fire from the IDF – both live bullet rounds and shelling of houses which indiscriminately and which may have been deliberately – under the Hannibal Directive – carried out to eliminate both hostage takers and hostages.
Testimony which also stated they were treated quote “humanely” unquote by the Hamas personnel.
Until proper due process is applied to test all claims and look at the actual evidence the claim used to justify the genocide of Palestine and its people – that Hamas murdered 1700 civilians, beheaded babies, etc all we have is a narrative constructed to justify the unjustifiable.
We have been down this road too many times. Iraqi WMD’s; babies ripped out of incubators; the beastly Hun babysitting babies among many other examples.
And that’s the problem with the Unite statement. It takes at face value the statement of known liars with an agenda – the Israeli Regime – without any attempt to test the evidence for the claims. Worse, it continues to apply the same double standards. Where is the condemnation of the long standing actuality and policy of the Israeli Regime in taking Palestinian hostages?
Where is the statement on the deliberate and admitted murder by Israel of the families of journalists reporting inconvenient facts? Or of UN personnel?
Too little too late.
Dave – I’m guessing that you intended to attach this response to my first comment above.
It covers both comments.
Just read the previous piece from “the intercept ” with disgust and amazement for
It seems as though the Israel public is completely out of tune with this reaction.
From numerous sources it appears that upwards of 80% of the Israeli public
blame Netanyahu for all this for they think his previous policies were responsible
for Hamas’s murderous acts 3 weeks ago. The public now deem that Israels current
campaign constitutes a war crime.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/s1mlma9z6
ISRAEL AT WAR
“Israel will use all its means to prevent the use of Starlink satellites in Gaza”
Billionaire Elon Musk announced on Saturday that he is willing to operate SpaceX’s satellite internet system Starlink in the Gaza Strip area for the benefit of aid organizations. “Starlink will support connectivity to internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza”, Musk posted on his X (formerly Twitter) account.
Please stop killing people. Indignation, outrage and sophistry can all be exercised without slaughter.
“The extermination of those whose land we steal, whose resources we plunder and whose labor we exploit is coded within our DNA. Ask Native Americans. Ask Indians. Ask the Congolese. Ask the Kikuyu in Kenya. Ask the Herero in Namibia who, like Palestinians in Gaza, were gunned down and driven into desert concentration camps where they died of starvation and disease. Eighty thousand of them. Ask Iraqis. Ask Afghans. Ask Syrians. Ask Kurds. Ask Libyans. Ask indigenous peoples across the globe. They know who we are.
Israel’s distorted, settler colonial visage is our own. We pretend otherwise. We ascribe to ourselves virtues and civilizing qualities that are, as in Israel, flimsy justifications for stripping an occupied and besieged people of their rights, seizing their land and using prolonged imprisonment, torture, humiliation, enforced poverty and murder to keep them subjugated.
Our past, including our recent past in the Middle East, is built on the idea of subduing or wiping out the “inferior” races of the earth. We give these “inferior” races names that embody evil. ISIS. Al Qaeda. Hezbollah. Hamas. We use racist slurs to dehumanize them. “Haji” “Sand Nigger” “Camel Jockey” “Ali Baba” “Dung Shoveler” And then, because they embody evil, because they are less than human, we feel licensed, as Nissim Vaturi, a member of the Israeli parliament for the ruling Likud party said, to erase “the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.”
– Chris Hedges
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/exterminate-all-the-brutes?
It will be interesting to see if the Yanks put themselves in range when this escalates
Methinks not
The US appears to have long term plans to increase their presence in the region.
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/27/secret-military-base-israel-gaza-site-512/
Is it too much of stretch to think that this is where Netanyahu is really heading?🤔
Hamas Attack Provides “Rare Opportunity” to Cleanse Gaza, Israeli Think Tank Says
Echoing George W. Bush on 9/11, a Misgav Institute report shows how political leaders find a chilling silver lining in the suffering of their own.
The Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy, an Israeli think tank, published a paper last week stating that thanks to the vicious Hamas attacks of October 7, “There is currently a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip.”
The paper continues, “There is no doubt that in order for this plan to be enacted, many conditions need to exist in parallel. At the moment, these conditions exist, and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if at all.”
The think tank advocates a bizarre scheme in which Israel would ethnically cleanse the entirety of Gaza and pay Egypt to house its former inhabitants in currently empty apartments near Cairo.
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/25/israel-hamas-opportunity/
Another similar briefing paper has also emerged, it certainly makes one wonder about Netanyahu’s true intentions
After this article was originally published, the Israeli outlet Calcalist reported on a separate plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza that is being circulated by the Israeli Intelligence Ministry headed by Gila Gamliel. The leaked document was reportedly created for an organization called “The Unit for Settlement – Gaza Strip” and was not meant for the public.
In the plan being proposed by the Intelligence Ministry, Palestinians in Gaza would be displaced from Gaza to the northern Egyptian Sinai peninsula. In the report, the ministry described different options for what comes after an invasion of Gaza and the option deemed as “liable to provide positive and long-lasting strategic results” was the transfer of Gaza residents to Sinai. The move entails three steps: the creation of tent cities southwest of the Gaza Strip; the construction of a humanitarian corridor to “assist the residents”; and finally, the building of cities in northern Sinai. In parallel, a “sterile zone”, several kilometers wide, would be established within Egypt, south of the Israeli border, “so that the evacuated residents would not be able to return”.
In addition, similar to the plan described in the original story below, the document calls for cooperation with other countries, in fact “as many as possible” so that they may “absorb” the Palestinians who have been uprooted from Gaza. Among the countries mentioned as possible sites for Palestinians from Gaza are Canada, European countries such as Greece and Spain, and North African countries.
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/israeli-think-tank-lays-out-a-blueprint-for-the-complete-ethnic-cleansing-of-gaza/
Does anybody read Steve H bullshit, or simply scroll past as quickly as possible, like myself?
If only there was a way to block its conent
diddibuggmail – Thanks for drawing attention to my comments 😊
ps: Given that with the exception of just one short quip all my comments above provide a link to the source material precisely what have I written above is it that you are claiming is “bullshit”? Or are you just trolling? 🤔