. Stop arms sales to Israel!

by Theo Russell

Last Saturday around 80 people marched from Kentish Town to Mornington Crescent in north London in one of many local protests across Britain calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and for Britain to end arms sales to the extreme Zionist government in Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Passing close to the famous Camden Market, the protest as usual ended near Sir Keir Starmer's constituency Labour Party office.
Unlike the previous week there was no pro-Israel counter-protest, although strangely there was coincidentally a small anti-vaxx protest at Mornington Crescent.
The spirit of those protestors who have stuck out the protests which have now continued come rain or shine for six months (at one point the local Camden protests drew over 600 people) was still as strong and determined as ever, and as usual many passing cars, buses, lorries and van drivers hooted loudly in support.
At the rally in Mornington Crescent Luca Salice, the co-Chair of Camden Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) , said the protest coincided with the 30th  anniversary of the Rwanda genocide but as he pointed out "the Western countries looked the other way and did nothing while that genocide was taking place. This time the Western countries are actually supporting and assisting Israel as it conducts genocide against the people of Gaza". Luca also said that Britain is also using its bases on sovereign British territory in Cyprus to supply arms to Israel and to launch fighter jets to bomb Yemen, as it did previously in Iraq and Syria.
Sabby Sagall, also co-Chair of Camden PSC, said that Palestinian refugees driven out of Israel for many decades should be compared to the Jews who fled Nazi Germany and many other countries it occupied.
For the protestors in local actions across the country it is hard to believe that the living nightmare in Gaza is still taking place after six months, but they are as determined as ever to force the British government to unequivocally condemn the Israeli military's actions and call for an immediate end to the deliberate targeting of civilians and creating an inhuman collective punishment in Gaza, demands which only 13 per cent of people in Britain oppose. Every other major party in Britain apart from the Tories, Labour and the Unionists in the north of Ireland supports those demands, and the Government must be forced to listen.