Police repression and state lies continue
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell are being interviewed under caution by the Met Police this afternoon after taking part in yesterday’s National March for Gaza. The Met has charged ten people and is still holding dozens of others for supposedly entering an area the force had ‘conditioned’ (banned). Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal (visible above in a keffiyeh scarf and glasses) is also being interviewed under caution.
Police had changed the march’s route to appease pro-Israel groups who claimed – falsely – that the original route went past two London synagogues. The Met subsequently claimed that some marchers had “forced its way through the police line” next to Trafalgar Square – and violently arrested march organiser Chris Nineham, who has been charged under the Public Order Act despite acting entirely peacefully and attempting to speak to police to ask for marchers to be allowed to place wreaths in the square in memory of murdered Palestinian children.
In a statement in response to the Met’s claim, Corbyn confirmed that there was no forcing or breaking of the police line – and that the police ‘facilitated’ the laying of wreaths before u-turning and making arrests:
This is not an accurate description of events at all
Jeremy Corbyn MP.
.
I was part of a delegation of speakers, who wished to peacefully carry and lay flowers in memory of children in Gaza who had been killed.
This was facilitated by the police. We did not force our way through.
McDonnell agreed:
We did not force our way thru, the police allowed us to go thru & when stopped in Trafalgar Square we laid our flowers down & dispersed.
John McDonnell MP.
Around seventy anti-genocide protesters were arrested in total, many of them violently despite protesting peacefully. A number of people were arrested simply for arriving at Trafalgar Square via Charing Cross Station, which was on the other side of the police blockade. The Starmer regime is engaged in all-out war on the freedom of UK citizens, many of them Jewish, to assemble, to protest, to report and to resist Starmer’s mushrooming police state, especially but not only on the subject of Israel’s genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
One pro-Israel protester was arrested for repeatedly punching a pro-Gaza protester in the face after failing to incite a reaction.
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Exactly how much corruption as Israel inflicted on British MPs? I am not being Antisemitic. I believe the majority of Jews are decent people, just as the majority of Germans were under Hitler. It is the fanatics under Netanyahu who are to blame.
This is beyond sinister.
The crime here is having a different opinion and a superior set of values to the elites and their lackeys. They cannot abide being shown up by people acting on those superior values and setting a good example.
It shames them, and they lash out like mardy children.
So why did the current Lab Govt & previous Tory Govt takes sides in the Near East (?) supporting the Occupation Force and even as some suggest using spy planes for them & supplying arms when Palestinians have never declared itself as an enemy of the UK.
Shouldn’t we from day one have been trying to broker a peace & a resolution as we peaceful protesters have done every week for almost 16 months now!
Is it a case of Western Lightweight politicians jumping to the tune of the USA/Occupation Force whilst pursuing a share of the profits from arms, from Palestine’s land, gas, oil & possibly a new canal?
It could be argued history is repeating itself and the old quote from the head of the British Palestine Mandate in 1919 “We will have a little Jewish Ulster surrounded by a sea of Arab antagonism” (Bernard Regan, The Balfour Declaration) still applies but with a new actor taking the lead, the USA.
We all hope the ceasefire holds and peace is maintained, & many of us would love to see what Palestinian intellectuals, as well as calling for a new Palestinian grassroots approach, call for: One multi-ethnic democratic state of Palestine with all diverse citizens living there in peace & then class politics becomes the norm.
But capital only knows one thing – being hit in the pocket so need keep up peaceful BDS to support this.
Yours in Peace.
You can listen to Ben Jamal’s very forthright description of yesterdays events here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002744y
(listen from 1:42:40 to 1:54:00, available for 29 days)