Israel | >Re-PHOTO

End Gaza Killing Now – 2014

End Gaza Killing Now: Ten years ago today on Saturday 19th July thousands were marching through London towards the Israeli Embassy demanding an immediate end to the invasion and the crippling siege of Gaza and peace with freedom for Palestine.

Of course the situation is much worse in Gaza now where the whole population is under threat from Israeli bombs and increasingly without access to clean water, food and medical treatment. Every day brings news of a new massacre – last Saturday more than 90 Palestinians were killed and 300 injured in a tent camp at al-Mawasi – an area in Gaza that Israel had designated as safe.

Last week 10 independent UN experts issued a statement accusing Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that has resulted in the deaths of children in Gaza. They said this “is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.” And the global monitor Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) recently stated that more than a fifth of the population of Gaza are facing the most severe, or “catastrophic”, level of food insecurity, in danger of starvation despite a small increase in humanitarian aid.

Wikipedia states “As of 12 July 2024, over 39,000 people (38,345 Palestinian and 1,478 Israeli) have been reported as killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 108 journalists (103 Palestinian, 2 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, including 179 employees of UNRWA.

The vast majority of those deaths have been in Gaza. And these figures do not include “those who have died from ‘preventable disease, malnutrition and other consequences of the war'”. As the Wikipedia article points out, research in 2008 suggested “that that total deaths caused by major conflicts were then a minimum average of five times the count of direct deaths.”

The 2014 Gaza War was one of the more deadly of the many previous conflicts between Israel and Palestinians since the formation of Israel in 1948. Wikipedia reported that “between 2,125 and 2,310 Gazans were killed …and between 10,626 and 10,895 were wounded (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled).

What is now taking place is genocide on an industrial scale, and it is being carried out with support and weapons from both the USA and the UK. Although our politicians have called for a ceasefire they have not taken any of the kind of actions that might persuade Israel to stop the killing, and have continued to supply weapons.

There has to be some way to allow peace in the area between Israel and Palestine – and it cannot be through wars. Oslo seemed to show a possible way forward, but Israel decided not to take it, refusing to make concessions that the Palestinians could accept. Recognition around the world of the Palestinian state now by over 75% of UN member states might be a first step on the road to peace, and the UK should do so without delay.

Before the march in 2014 there were speeches in Whitehall. I photographed the marchers as they went up Whitehall, stopping at Trafalgar Square until the end of the march had reached there around 45 minutes after it began. I took the tube to Hyde Park Corner only to find the front of the march had already gone past, so I rushed back down to get the tube to Kensington High Street, close to the final destination a short distance from the Israeli Embassy which is a short distance down a private road.

Several thousand marchers had beaten me there and the street soon became very crowded as more arrived. Eventually it became too crowded to move and take pictures and I retreated into a small area reserved for the press close to the speakers. Among a long list perhaps the most moving was a young Palestinian woman who told us something of what had happened to her own family who were given 90 seconds warning before their home in Gaza was destroyed.

The protest had remained entirely peaceful, but as it ended and we left to go home, there was a minor incident where some police officers appeared to be making trouble, intervening in a heavy-handed fashion in a minor argument between a protester and a shop-worker who had shouted in support of the Israeli attack.

More on My London Diary, including the names and photographs of many of the speakers and rather more of the protesters:
Police & Gaza Protesters
End Gaza Killing Now

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Israel Celebrates 60 Years – 2008

Israel Celebrates 60 Years: The first liberation movement I was aware of in my toddler years led to independence for Israel in 1948 and like much of the British left I was for some years a supporter of Israel.

To be fair our media hadn’t really told us much about what had actually happened in the country, concentrating on the Stern Gangs attacks on British personnel before independence, and we were almost unaware of the Palestinians and the effect of the formation of Israel on them.

The UN had adopted a ‘Plan of Partition with Economic Union‘ for Palestine as General Assembly
Resolution 181 (II) in 1947, but the Arabs generally rejected this as being pro-Zionist, giving too much land to the much smaller Jewish population as well as violating the UN’s own principles of national self-determination. Jews in Palestine generally welcomed it but the Zionist leaders saw it as “a stepping stone to future territorial expansion over all of Palestine.“

A civil war broke out in Palestine after the adoption of the UN mandate and was largely ignored by the British who got on busily preparing for their withdrawal (also contained in the resolution) in May 1948. On 14th May 1948 “the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by the future prime minister David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.”

Arab armies marched in starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War but were repulsed by the Israel Defense Forces which expanded the borders of Israel beyond those of the UN Plan. And there was further territorial expansion in other wars, particulalry the 1967 Six Day War,

There were extensive celebrations for the 60th Anniversary in Israel from the beginning of May 2008 as well as in other Western cities, with events continuing for some months – such as this London march on June 29th.

As the marchers came into Trafalgar Square they passed people from Israeli Jewish organisation Zochrot founded in 2002 to promote awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, including the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. They held a banner ‘Remembrance – Zochrot‘ and others stood in silence with placards with names of some of the over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed in the 1947-8 catastrophe.

While I watched, several people left the parade and went across to harangue them and wave Israeli flags in their faces.

There were more protesters that police had moved into a pen by the side of South Africa House. They had come to point out that for Palestinians the sixty years had meant an increasing loss of their land through both military actions and settlements, as well as a loss in liberty.

Later I saw police moving away a group who had lowered a banner reading “60 YEARS OF ETHIC CLEANSING IS NOTHING TO CELEBRATE” over the high wall on the side of the square. They were rapidly surrounded by Jewish security guards, who called the police who told them that unless they moved to the pen on the other side of the road – where their banner could not be seen from the square – they would be arrested. And they moved.

Later other people with Israeli flags came to argue and insult the protesters here and several groups were moved away by police. At one point I moved towards one of my colleagues as one of these men appeared to be about to physically assault him. He then accused the photographer of being a paedophile on the ridiculous basis that some of the other troublemakers in the group were his teenage sons. Eventually police took over and politely asked us to move away while they sorted things out.

As my final paragraph in 2008 I wrote “Of course I met many nice people who were having a good day out, but it is the others who stick in the mind. But I also hope that after 60 years the state of Israel will soon be ready for peace and justice for the Palestinians.” Unfortunatley there is far too little evidence of this among their political leaders 16 years later.

60 Years of Israel

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Palestine, Orange Order, Naked Cyclists & RFH – 2007

Palestine, Orange Order, Naked Cyclists & RFH: On Saturday 9th June 2007 I photographed a protest against the occupation of Palestine,the Orange Order celebrating 200 years of parades, the London World Naked Bike Ride and the re-opening of the Royal Festival Hall.

End the occupation – Palestine

The largest of these events was part of an international day of action marking the 40th anniversary of the 1967 six day war which had ended in complete and massive military victory for Israel, and a shameful defeat for not just the Arab nations but also the UN and the rest of the world.

And, as I commented then “in the longer term it is proving a disaster for Israel too, chaining them to a policy of brutal oppression of their Palestinian neighbours.” I continued; “Over the past few months, reading and hearing eye-witness reports of life in the occupied areas have shocked me, just as the reports from South Africa under apartheid did. And just as in South Africa, in time these things must come to an end with peace and reconciliation. War doesn’t settle things, it just prolongs the agonies.”

Seventeen years later we are seeing things that are orders of magnitude more shocking still happening in Gaza, witnessing the genocide of the Palestinian people.

Two members of the Palestinian government who had been invited to speak at the event were unable to come as they in jail in Israel. As usual until recently there was little coverage of this event or Israels apartheid policies in the UK media. Now their is considerable international interest in what is happening in Gaza but reporting is severely hampered as the international press are not allowed access other than in a few very limited Israeli army led tours.

More at End Occupation in Palestine.

Orange Order celebrates 200 Years of Parades – Park Lane

The Grand Lodge 200th Anniversary Parade marked 200 years since the first recorded Orange Parade by the Portadown Lodge of the Orange Order, Loyal Orange Lodge No. 1 (LOL 1), on 1 March 1807.

Although King William III, Prince Of Orange had successfully invaded England in what was later known as the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the first Orange Association was founded a few days after his landing in Brixham when he reached Exeter, organised parades are only known to have started 119 years later.

This anniversary event was an impressive display with several thousand marching including lodges from all our major cities. The Orange Order still has a strong following in some former protestant working class areas but as I commented, despite “own protestant roots … such sectarian solidarity now seems a relic of ancient enmities, a throwback to a less civilised age.”

Many more pictures at 200 Years of Orange Marches

World Naked Bike Ride, Hyde Park,

I arrived in Hyde Park a little late but was able to photograph the riders setting off on their ride around London and went with them along Piccadilly before taking the tube to wait for them to reach the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.

You can read my thoughts about the ride which I think rather fails to get its message across although causing a great stir on the busy streets it goes through, as few of the riders have anything on their bodies or bikes to state its purpose on My London Diary.

For most who see it, this is simply an unusual spectacle of nudity, and an illustration of the great variety of the human form rather than the very limited body types which we see on advertising hoardings and other images of the fully or partly unclothed om the press or elsewhere.

This was the one event of those I covered that was widely covered in the media, making the national news that evening, though I think there was little attention to why the ride was taking place.

More about it and more pictures at 2007 World Naked BikeRide.

London’s Royal Festival Hall Reopens

The Southbank centre was staging a weekend of events across its site marking the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall after a considerable refurbishment which began in June 2005 and I managed to take a few photographs of these across the day.

The foyers inside the building were opened up more but I think the main purpose was to provide more commercial space to provide an income for the centre. The Royal Festival Hall was built as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951 and was funded and managed by the London County Council and their successors, the Greater London Council until that was abolished by Thatcher in 1988.

The Southbank Centre states on its web site that it “does not receive any funding from the Government to run and maintain its 11-acre national heritage site. All essential repair and maintenance work to our buildings and site has been funded from our own commercial revenues or from fundraising.“

More pictures begin at London’s Royal Festival Hall Reopens

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UEFA gets a Red Card for Israel – 2013

UEFA gets a Red Card for Israel – On Friday 24th May 2013 UK campaigners met those who had arrived by Eurostar at St Pancras to march to the Mayfair hotel where UEFA was holding its annual congress. They demanded it to kick out Israel and protested against the UEFA under-21 men’s football final being held in Israel in June 2013.

The event was organised by the London-based Red Card Israeli Racism Campaign founded by members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of al-Aqsa and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods and followed protests at UEFA’s Swiss offices following a letter signed by 52 leading players deploring Israel ’s attacks on Gaza.

Previously the Red Card campaign had led protests over the detention of Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak detained without charge in 2009 while travelling from Gaza to a new club on the West Bank. He lost almost half his body mass in a 3 month hunger strike and was only finally released in July 2012 after appeals from the international professional footballers association FIFPro, Eric Cantona, Frédéric Kanouté and the presidents of EUFA and FIFA, as well as others from outside football.

Israel’s participation in international football has long been controversial, and in 1974 they were expelled from the Asian Football Confederation of which they had been a founder member when several nations refused to play against them. They became a full member of UEFA in 1994. In February 2024 UEFA turned down demands from 12 Middle East Nations to suspend Israel from international competitions.

International football is clearly a political football. And Israel’s team have clearly demonstrated their intention to use it as such when captain Eli Dasa held up a small sports shoe of a missing child hostage and talked about it ahead of a Euro 2024 qualifier against Switzerland.

The Palestinian Football Association called in April on FIFA/UEFA to suspend Israel from international competition and are asking other FAs to join them. FIFA is carrying out a legal assessment before it makes a decision on whether to agree to Palestine’s call to suspend the Israeli federation over the war in Gaza was repeated a few days ago at FIFA’s congress in Bangkok.

PFA president Jibril Rajoub was quoted by the BBC as saying “How much more must the Palestine football family suffer for FIFA to act with the same severity and urgency as it did in other cases?” and others have also accused FIFA and UEFA of double standards.

As a petition by some football fans calling on the English FA to support the suspension of Israel states: “It took FIFA/UEFA less than one week to ban Russia from international competition following the invasion of Ukraine. Apartheid South Africa was suspended from FIFA for ten years before being expelled in 1976 and was only permitted to re-join in 1992 as the apartheid regime was dismantling. In that same year, the Yugoslavia national team was suspended by FIFA from international competition as a part of UN-led sanctions against the former state during the Balkans war.“

*Palestinian footballer and former hunger striker Mahmoud Sarsak*

You can read an account of the May 2013 march and the static protest outside the hotel in Park Lane on My London Diary with many more pictures. One of the speakers at this was former hunger striker Mahmoud Sarsak and he received a huge welcome and “the couple of hundred people present really sounded like a rather larger football crowd.”

UEFA gets a Red Card for Israel.

Don’t hang Prof Bhullar!

Also on Friday 24th May 2013 I photographed a protest by Sikhs at the Indian High Commission against the intended hanging of Professor Devender Pal Singh Bhullar who had then served 18 years on death row following his conviction for involvement in a car bomb in Delhi. His conviction was based on a confession based on torture in police custody. The Indian Supreme Court commuted his sentence to life imprisonment in March 2014. More on My London Dairy at Don’t hang Prof Bhullar!.

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Obama, UoL, Ethiopia, Israel & Ukraine 2014

Obama, UoL, Ethiopia, Israel & Ukraine – Another disparate set of protests ten years ago on Friday 23rd May 2014 had me rushing around London to document them.

Obama keep your promises – Trafalgar Square

My working day began in Trafalgar Square where the London Guantánamo Campaign and others had come as a part of an international day of action coordinated by the US organisation Witness Against Torture, with protests in 40 cities in three continents calling on President Obama to make good the promise he had again made a year earlier to close Guantánamo.

The campaigners many dressed in black hoods and orange jumpsuits stood in a long line on the North Terrace holding posters. Some had brought a giant inflatable figure of Shaker Aamer, a London resident, still there, held without charge for 12 years despite having twice been cleared for release.

As spokesperson for he London Guantánamo Campaign Aisha Maniar stated:
“In over five years as US president, Barack Obama has failed to deliver a change we can believe in on Guantánamo Bay. Twelve years of indefinite detention almost wholly without charge or trial for 154 prisoners has made the world an infinitely more insecure, dangerous, and lawless place… Obama’s words remain purely rhetorical. There is little intention to close Guantánamo Bay and the legal black hole it has created.”

Obama keep your promises

Defend University of London Garden Halls workers – Senate House

At 1pm I was Senate House with members of the Independent Workers of Great Britain, the grass roots trade union to which many low paid workers at the University belong, as well as supporters from the Joint Shop Stewards Network and university students and staff. Both the UoL and the contractors Cofely and Aramark who they have outsourced the workers to refuse to recognise the IWGB, preferring the more compliant traditional unions. But most of the cleaners and others had left these after finding they were unwilling to stand up to the employers on their behalf and joined the IWGB.

London University announced the closure of three of its Central London halls of residence – the Garden Halls – without consultation with the IWGB and intended to make over 80 workers redundant at the end of June.

The IWGB had asked supporters to send letters to London University Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Adrian Smith listing their demands that there should be no compulsory redunddancies and the the length of service of the workers be respected, as well as calling for meaningful consultation withe the IWGB and that workers transferred to other contracts should retain their pay, terms and conditions. They stated “the University bears responsibility for the treatment of these workers, regardless of the fact that their roles are contracted to private companies.”

Around 30 protesters were outside the main entrance to Senate House when I arrived and were drumming a very noisy demonstration while handing out leaflets and displaying banners.

Soon after they were joined by IWGB organiser Alberto Durango they left to walk around the outside of the building. Security had rushed to close the door on Montague Place but when the protesters reached Russell Square the doors to Stewart House, part of the University estate joined to Senate House they found an open door and around half of them walked in to protest noisily inside the building for a few minutes, still beating their drums before finding another exit into the Senate House car park.

Here the protest came to to an end with the IWGB’s usual message, ‘We’ll be back!’. The IWGB was balloting its members for strikes against both Cofely and Aramark.

More at Defend UoL Garden Halls workers.

Oromo and Ogaden against Ethiopian killings

I rushed to Parliament to meet Ethiopians protesting outside Parliament over the Ethiopian government’s killing of Oromo university students peacefully protesting the grabbing of Oromo land. The protest was coming to an end as I arrived but I was able to quickly take a few pictures

The protest was by supporters of the Oromo and Ogaden National Liberation Fronts founded shortly before the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie. Since then the military government, the Derg regime and the new Ethiopian state has continued the suppression of the Oromo, and initiated mass resettlements from Northern Ethiopia onto Oromo lands and moved millions of Oromo into camps run by the military.

The USA was found by BBC Newsnight and and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism exposed in 2011 to have worked with the the Ethiopian government in an alliance “using billions of dollars of development aid as a tool for political oppression” with programmes of deliberate starvation of communities, and “of mass detentions, (and) the widespread use of torture and extra-judicial killings” against what they describe as terrorism.

In early May there had been mass killing by the authourites of Oroam University students and civiliams protesting peacefully against illegal forcible evictions of Oromo farmers from their ancestral lands around Addis Ababa under the governments Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan which will give their land to government supporters or sell it to foreign investors.

Oromo and Ogaden against Ethiopian killings

Support Hunger Strike in Israeli Jails – G4S Victoria Street

It was a short walk to the London HQ of G4S where campaigners supported by the Islamic Human Rights Commission were protesting in solidarity with the mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails demanding an end to Israels’s illegal policy of rolling Administrative Detention which can jail them for years without charge or trial.

The put up a stall and banners on the wide pavement outside the building and spoke to people passing, handing out leaflets. Some stopped to talk and mostly expressed surprise at what was happening in Israel, although one man stopped to argue, telling the protesters that no one was held unjustly in prison in Israel and there was no torture in Israel. He was clearly deluded.

The world’s largest security firm G4S provided security services for Israel’s prisons until December 2016 when pressure from this and many other protests led it to sell is Israeli subsidiary divesting from Israel’s military checkpoints and illegal settlements. After further protests the company to sell its decided to sell its remaining business in apartheid Israel in June 2023.

Support Hunger Strike in Israeli Jails

Solidarity with Ukrainian Miners – Holborn

Finally I joined Ukrainian Socialist Solidarity and IWGB trade unionists who protested outside the registered offices of London mining company Evraz who own mines in the city of Kryviy Rih in south-east Ukraine.

Kryviy Rih is the centre of the largest steel industry in Eastern Europe an has a population of around three-quarters of a million people. Miners there have protested as the unrest and devaluation in Ukraine has caused a rapid rise in the cost of living with a fall in real wages of around 30-50% and a rise of 20% they had been promised in April was not paid. In its place they were given an small “insulting” one-off handout.

The Independent Union of Miners of Ukraine has demanded an immediate doubling of the real wage “in the interests of preserving social peace in this country.” They say the main cause of the economic problems in Ukraine “is the greed of Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, who pay a beggar’s wage to workers, send all their profits off-shore and don’t pay taxes in Ukraine. In fact the oligarchs are almost completely exempt from taxes on their profits.” Evraz is owned by Russian Oligarchs Roman Abramov and Alexander Abramovitch who are based in the UK.

The protest took place after the Ukrainian union called upon the British public to picket the offices of EVRAZ plc and the offices of other Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs’ corporations in London and other cities in Europe.

But police attending the protest told the protesters these offices are cimply those of a firm providing accounting, tax, Human Resources and payroll services to various businesses and are not really a part of Evraz. Further protests were planned outside the Chelsea Football ground, also owned by Roman Abramovitch and for an EVRAZ Investor Day the following month which company chair Alexander Abramov is due to attend.

Solidarity with Ukrainian Miners

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Free Palestine March & Rally 2005

Free Palestine March & Rally – May 21st 2005. George Galloway, then MP for Bethnal Green, was clearly the man of the hour at the rally in Trafalgar Square, fresh back from his hearing in front of a US Senate committee. As I commented in 2005, “the senators were clearly outclassed and outgunned as Galloway gave them a verbal ‘Glasgow kiss.’ It was an impressively sustained performance of concentrated power, a pit-bull seeing off a pack of ineffectual spaniels.”

The crowd gave him “a tumultous ovation when he arrived at the Trafalgar Square rally” at the end of the march, and his speech there did not diappoint them. I commented “he has built up a great rapport with the many muslims now living in this country, not least in his own Bethnal Green constituency, the youths from Bradford were excited when he promised to come and visit their city.” Of course many things have happened since then, but it wasn’t surprising to see him elected for Bradford West at the 2012 by-election or more recently when he won the seat at Rochdale this February.

Galloway was not the only powerful speaker at the rally, with putting in his usual performance as “probably the best living political speaker at least using the english language” and Jeremy Corbyn, still a much underrated speaker, also showing what he could do. And there were others too, including Paul Mackney of the higher education teachers’ union, NATFHE.

The march from Embankment to Trafalgar Square had been reasonably large but not huge, though more had arrived for the rally. Waiting at the side of the march as it reached the square was human rights activist Peter Tatchell with a group from Outrage!

They supported the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice, but demanded an end to the “so-called ‘honour’ killing of Palestinian women, and the arrest, jailing, torture and murder of lesbian and gay Palestinians by factions of the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority.”

At first police stopped the group from getting to the march and handing out leaflets, but after a complaint by Tatchell they were allow to do so. Some march stewards tried to stop people taking the leaflets, but many did so and expressed their support.

You can read more about the event on the second May page on My London Diary under the heading George’s Triumph and the pictures begin at the right of this page.

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Holloway, Nabja, Vegans, Refugees & Topshop – 2016

Holloway, Nabja, Vegans, Refugees & Topshop – I celebrated 14th May 2016 with a busy day of protests around London.

Reclaim Holloway

Islington Hands Off Our Public Services, Islington Kill the Housing Bill and the Reclaim Justice Network marched from rally on Holloway Road demanding that when Holloway prison is closed the site remains in public hands, and that the government replace the prison with council housing and the vital community services needed to prevent people being caught up in a damaging criminal justice system.

The prison is in Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency and the then Labour leader turned up on his bike to speak before the march to give his support.

There was a long rally outside the prison with speeches by local councillors, trade unionists and campaigning groups.

Islington Council wanted to see the site used for social housing and in 2022 gave https://www.ahmm.co.uk/projects/masterplanning/holloway/ planning permission for a development by Peabody, who bought the site in 2019 with help from the GLA, and London Square for 985 new homes. 60% of these will be affordable, including 415 for social rent, together with a 1.4-acre public park, a Women’s Building, and new commercial spaces.

Reclaim Holloway

68th Anniversary Nabka Day – Oxford St

A rolling protest outside shops which support the Israeli state made its way along Oxford St from Marks and Spencers, with speakers detailing the continuing oppression of the Palestinian people, and opposing attempts to criminalise and censor the anti-Zionist boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

It came on the day before Nabka Day, the anniversary of the ‘day of the catastrophe’ which commemorates when around 80% of Palestinians were forced to leave their homes between December 1947 and January 1949, and later prevented by Israeli law from returning to their homes, or claiming their property.

The protesters included both Palestinians and Jews opposed to the continuing oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli government. They were met by a small group of people holding Israeli flags who stood in their way and shouted insults, accusing them of anti-Semitism.

The organisers were clear that the protest was not anti-Semitic but against Zionism and some actions of the Israeli government. Both police and protesters tried hard to avoid confrontation with those who had clearly come to disrupt and provoke.

Many UK businesses play an important part in supporting the Israeli government by selling Israeli goods and those produced in the occupied territories and in other ways, and their were brief speeches as the protest halted outside some of them detailing some of these links.

More on My London Diary at 68th Anniversary Nabka Day.

This Saturday, 18th May 2024, you can join the march in London, starting at the BBC on the 76th anniversary of the Nabka calling for an end to the current genocide in Gaza.

Vegan Earthlings Masked Video Protest – Trafalgar Square

Vegans in white masks from London Vegan Actions were standing in a large circle on the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square, some holding laptops or tables showing a film about the mistreatment of animals in food production, bullfighting, etc. Although bright sun made the laptop screens almost impossible to see and the sound outdoors was largely inaudible the large circle of people standing in white masks did attract attention.

More pictures Vegan Earthlings masked video protest.

Refugees Welcome say protesters – Trafalgar Square

Also protesting in front of the National Gallery were a small group holding posters calling for human rights, fair treatment and support for refugees. Some held a banner with the message ‘free movement for People Not Weapons‘.

More pictures Refugees Welcome say protesters.

Topshop protest after cleaners sacked – Oxford St

After Topshop suspended two cleaners who were members of the United Voices of the World trade union for protesting for a living wage and sacked one of them protests were taking place outside their stores around the country.

The UVW were supported by others at the London protest which began outside Topshop on Oxford Street by others including trade unionists from the CAIWU and Ian Hodson, General Secretary of the BWAFU as well as then Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Class War.

A large crowd of police and extra illegal security guards wearing no ID blocked the entrance to the shop stopping both protesters and customers from entering. The several hundred protesters held up placards and banners and protested noisily but made no serious attempt to go in to the store.

*A man wears a mask of Topshop owner Phillip Green*

Some protesters, led by the Class War ‘Womens Death Brigade’ moved onto the road, blocking it for some minutes before the whole group of protesters marched to block the Oxford Circus junction for some minutes until a large group of police arrived and fairly gently persuade them to move.

They stopped outside John Lewis, another major store in a long-running dispute with the union as it allowed its cleaning contractor to pay its cleaners low wages, with poor conditions of service and poor management, disclaiming any responsibility for workers who keep its stores running.

The protest there was again noisy and there were some heated verbal exchanges between protesters and police, but I saw no arrests. After a few minutes the protesters marched off to continue their protest outside another Oxford Street Topshop branch close to Marble Arch.

More at Topshop protest after cleaners sacked.

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March & Rally for Palestine – 2002

March & Rally for Palestine: I find it interesting to look back at the march and rally in support of Palestine which took place in London on Saturday 13th April 2002 for several reasons.

The march was organised by the Muslim Association of Britain and came after the start of the large scale Israeli Operation Defensive Shield in towns and villages across the West Bank and battles against Palestinians in Jenin and Nablus in early April.

Operation Defensive Shield was aimed at at halting Palestinian suicide bombings against civilians in Israel which were taking place during the Second Intifada.

Around 30,000 people, mainly Muslims, had gathered at Hyde Park to march to the rally at Trafalgar Square (police estimates of the number at 10-15,000 were clearly too small.) According to CNN “they clambered on to Nelson’s Column chanting slogans before burning and tearing Israeli flags.”

Well, a few of them did burn flags, though not in my sight, but rather more joined in the chanting of ‘”Down with Israel,” “Down, down U.S.A.” and “Jihad!” or holy war.’ Later in their article CNN do quote a MAB spokesman telling them that jihad “means ‘struggle', it does not mean war“.

They also quote the MAB spokesman telling them that the youth “tend to get a bit excited just as a large crowd does at a football match” and making clear that the MAB “do not believe in the burning of any flag.”

I think you can see from my pictures that this protest had a very different atmosphere from the current protests calling for a ceasefire and the end of the massacres of the Palestinian people. The current protests involve the whole range of the British population – including many Jews – and are largely about ending the senseless wholesale killing and destruction while many in 2002 were clearly showing support for the activities of Palestinian militants including suicide bombers. There are a number of posters and placards in my pictures which would now result in arrests.

Tony Benn was one of the speakers at the rally and is of course no longer with us, but Jeremy Corbyn still speaks at today’s protests. CNN quotes him in 2002 as saying:

“This is a demonstration by thousands of British people, Muslim and non-Muslim, demanding peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state and withdrawal by Israeli forces. And the message to Tony Blair is now clear, he must stop speaking on behalf of George Bush and instead on behalf of peace and justice in the Middle East.”

Replace Blair by Sunak, Bush by Biden and it still makes sense.

This was also I think the first time I had posted colour pictures of a protest on My London Diary. Back in March 2002 I was still working with film, both black and white and colour negative.

Of course film does not come with EXIF data, but I think the colour pictures were probably made using a Konica Hexar F, with various Leica M fitting lenses, with those in the crowd using a 15mm Voigtlander. They were scanned with the first film scanner I bought, a Canoscan which had just come out in 2002, and neither hardware or software were really up to the job. The final picture is not one I posted in 2002, and I have improved the scan made then a little in Photoshop.

A few more pictures on the April 2002 page of My London Diary.

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Palestinian Land Day – 2019

Palestinian Land Day remembers the day in 1976 when unarmed protesters were killed when marches in Arab towns against the confiscation of land were confronted by Israeli army and police. Six unarmed Palestinians were killed around a hundred wounded and hundreds arrested. Most of the information here on Land Day is from Wikipedia.

The numbers involved now seem so small compared to the over 32,000 murdered in Gaza in recent months but it was a significant event as the marches were the first since 1948 in which Palestinians had organised nationally together against Israeli policies with these marches and a national strike.

The protests were against plans to confiscate Arab land and to expand Jewish settlements in Galilee were a part of an increasing seizure of Arab land.

In response to the planned strike and marches there had been a much increased police and military presence in the area, with armoured vehicles and tanks being driven “along the unpaved roads of various villages of the Galilee“. Some of these military convoys were attacked by youths with stones and even, according to Israeli government sources, Molotov cocktails.

The Israeli government had declared the strikes and all demonstrations illegal and some Palestinian leaders had voted against supporting them, but these actions seem only to have hardened the resolve of the Palestinians.

According to the Wikipedia article, quoting an academic source, the events led to “a new sense of national pride, together with anger toward the state and police and sorrow over the dead protesters, developed among the Arab community in Israel.” And in 1988, Land Day was announced as “a Palestinian-Israeli civil national day of commemoration and a day of identification with Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, to be marked by yearly demonstrations and general strikes.“

The Freedom, justice & equality for Palestinians protest in London close to the Israeli Embassy in Kensington on Land Day, 30th March 2019 came a year after the 2018 Land Day Protest in Gaza, also known as The Great March of Return. On that day in Gaza, 30,0000 Palestinians took part in a largely peaceful march some distance from the border fence. But Israeli snipers in safe positions opened fire on those who approached the fence, some to burn tyres or through objects at the fence. 17 Palestinians were killed, including five Hamas members, and more than 1,400 injured.

*A small group of Zionists had come to oppose the protest*

Smaller marches in Gaza continued at weekly intervals and by Land Day 2019 a total of over 250 mainly unarmed protesters had been killed and thousands injured.

It’s hard to look back on history to Land Day (and beyond) and not see how Zionist right wing policies have failed both Israel and Palestine and are continuing to fall all those in the area. Balfour is often blamed for kicking the situation off, but had his “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” ever been taken seriously we would not be where we are now.

*A line of police protects the Zionist pen*

The Oslo Accords were another start to a possible peace process, but again firmly opposed by the right-wing Zionist parties – and Israeli prime minister Yitshak Rabin was assassinated for signing them. Leaders opposed to the accords – Ariel Sharon and current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to power.

*This man shouts repeatedly ‘There are no Palestinians in Gaza!’*

On Land Day 2019, a group of Zionist extremists had come along to the Palestinian protest to try and shout down those speaking. Police kept them a short distance away and with a relatively powerful public address system their efforts were largely inaudible.

Some of the Palestinians took a large Palestine flag and hid the group behind it until police persuaded them back and other protesters moved in to argue with and shout at them. Police tried to move the Palestinians away with little success while I was present

Taking part in the Palestinian protest were as usual many Jews, including the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta who see Zionism as diametrically opposed to Judiasm.

Freedom, justice & equality f or Palestinians.

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Extremists and Mob Rule

Extremists and Mob Rule: Last Saturday I walked along with around 450,000 others from Hyde Park to the US Embassy in Nine Elms calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israeli genocide. The IDF has now killed over 30,000 people, mainly women and children and many more are threatened with starvation and disease as Israel continues only allow a trickle of the food and medicines needed into Gaza.

Humanitarian agencies including UNRWA are ready to distribute aid, but far too little is coming across the borders and the Israeli army are disrupting their activities, while Israeli spokesmen continue to produce lies which even the BBC now feels it has to challenge. The pictures here all come from this march.

Of course it wasn’t a mob, but a peaceful protest. It wasn’t Islamists taking over the streets of London, though there may well have been a few taking part among the more than 99% of us who were protesting because of the terrible scenes we have seen on even the limited reporting which has been allowed to come from Gaza – where Israel still prevents the international press from reporting. And because many of us believe that we should have a peaceful solution which gives freedom to both Palestine and Israel.

It wasn’t one of of my better days. I was feeling a little weak and walked twice as far as I should have done. The march may only have been around two and a half miles, but photographing it I walked at least twice that, going back and forth. And after collapsing for a short rest beside the Thames opposite the US Embassy I walked back to the middle of Vauxhall Bridge. From there I could see almost the length of Vauxhall Bridge Road, around three quarters of a mile still packed with marchers and no end in sight. But I was tired and turned back and took the train home from Vauxhall station.

Later today the UK Government is expected to announce its new definition of extremism, which is expected to be something along the lines of:

“promotion or advancement of ideology based on hatred, intolerance or violence or undermining or overturning the rights or freedoms of others, or of undermining democracy itself“

The point behind this re-definition is to enable the government to list organisations which it considers extremist and to ban these from meetings with ministers and elected officials or receiving public money and ban individuals who belong to them from serving on government boards.

It is clear that it will be used by the current government to list a wide range of organisations that are seen as left-wing in an attempt to embarrass the Labour Party, including those that support the Palestinian opposition to Israeli occupation, and with Sunak’s crazed accusations of “mob rule” could be applied to any organisation that supports large protests on any issue, but particularly calling for freedom for Palestine. And I expect to see Stop The War and CND on that list along with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Muslim Association of Britain and the Palestinian Forum in Britain.

Reports suggest that the largest Muslim group in the UK, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), as well as Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) and Palestine Action will be on the list and any other groups opposed to the UK’s Prevent programme. Government departments have boycotted the MCB since 2009.

Listing will not ban these groups, though it might deny funding to some organisations which many might feel important in maintaining effective democracy. And if this wretched government remains in power much longer we will certainly see further powers given to the police particularly over the policing of protests, probably giving them much greater control over the activities of listed groups.

It will almost certainly be used to stigmatise groups which campaign against the monarchy, and perhaps also those calling for changes to our parliamentary system such as the abolition or reform of the House of Lords or proportional voting systems. And groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil will surely be there.

Michael Gove has apparently rejected suggestions that trans rights activists will be among those listed, but suspicions remain that these and some gay rights groups might also be targeted.

Perhaps too, human rights organisations that launch legal cases against government legislation might feature, and when we have had government ministers in recent years labelling the Supreme Court as anti-democratic it is hard to see where this definition might end.

Like many recent statements from the government, this one from Gove seems dangerous and divisive. It might even itself be seen as “undermining democracy itself.“

You can read more about the protest march last Saturday, 9th March 2024 and see another seventy or so of my pictures at End Gaza Genocide Massive March To US Embassy

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