Exclusive video: Israeli anti-genocide protester Kahn arrested, goes on hunger- and sleep-strike

Veteran Jewish anti-Zionist held in custody by Met, begins protest

Yael Kahn, the Jewish Israeli anti-genocide protester who has been repeatedly targeted by the UK state for her uncompromising opposition to Israeli war crimes, apartheid and occupation and was arrested this evening while protesting outside the London residence of far-right Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, is being held in police custody and has begun a hunger-strike and sleep-strike.

Footage of Ms Kahn’s arrest, despite demands of other protesters to release her, can be seen below:

Ms Kahn, who was raised in Israel but has campaigned against the occupation for more than fifty years, has said that she ‘had no excuse’ for not working for Palestinian freedom after realising that her life in Israel was ‘built on the destruction of other people’:

When you find out that your life was built on the destruction of other people, you have a responsibility. I lived on the land stolen from them, so I have no excuse.

Her friends and allies told Skwawkbox that Ms Kahn is ‘angry, very angry’, but otherwise ok – on this occasion – and was beginning her strike immediately in protest at the targeting of pro-Palestinian campaigners.

A growing number of Ms Kahn’s supporters is picketing Holborn police station where she is being held.

The Starmer government, which has refused to condemn Israel’s actions and has said it considers the use of the word ‘genocide’ unhelpful, is engaged in an escalating campaign of abusing anti-terror legislation to raid and arrest journalists and activists – many of them, like Ms Kahn, Jewish – who expose Israel’s war crimes. The International Court of Justice is investigating Israel for genocide, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, and UN experts have confirmed that Israel is committing exactly that, along with a string of other war crimes during its slaughter of more than 200,000 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians and mostly women and children and its targeting of journalists, medics, aid and emergency workers in Gaza, along with its use of starvation as a weapon against Gaza’s two million surviving people.

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