Palestinian flag raised outside new embassy

Husam Zomlot at the opening

by New Worker correspondent

The Palestinian flag was raised outside the premises of what is now Palestine’s embassy to the United Kingdom in London on Monday marking Britain’s historic but long-overdue recognition of the Palestinian state. The Palestinian envoy Husam Zomlot raised the flag watched by Labour government ministers including Health Secretary Wes Streeting – as well as Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, Scottish First Minister John Swinney and Jeremy Corbyn who leads the Independent Alliance bloc in the House of Commons.
Husam Zomlot said recognition was about “righting historic wrongs and committing together to a future based on freedom, dignity and fundamental human rights”. He called on people to remember “that this recognition comes at a time of unimaginable pain and suffering as a genocide is being waged against us – a genocide that is still being denied and allowed to continue with impunity.
“It comes as our people in Gaza are being starved, bombed and buried under the rubble of their homes; as our people in the West Bank are being ethnically cleansed, brutalised by daily state-sponsored terrorism, land theft and suffocating oppression”.
Zomlot said the recognition was occurring “as the humanity of Palestinian people is still questioned, our lives still treated as disposable and our basic freedoms still denied. Yet, this moment stands as a defiant act of truth, a refusal to let genocide be the final word; a refusal to accept that occupation is permanent; a refusal to be erased and a refusal to be dehumanised”.
And Corbyn said “well done to all those who have tirelessly campaigned for the recognition of Palestine – an inalienable right of the Palestinian people. Next, the UK should recognise the genocide in Gaza, end its complicity in crimes against humanity, and stop arming Israel”.

Lush says Stop Starving Gaza!

by New Worker correspondent

Beauty chain Lush shut its UK shops, factories and website on Wednesday in protest at the Israeli government "preventing urgent humanitarian assistance from entering Gaza".
The cosmetic giant said “we share the anguish that millions of people feel seeing the images of starving people in Gaza, Palestine. Like the rest of the world, we struggle to find ways we can help whilst the Israeli government is preventing urgent humanitarian assistance from entering Gaza. One thing Lush can currently send into Gaza is our love and a strong message that we stand in solidarity. This will take the form of halting business-as-usual by shutting our UK shops, website and factories for one day on Wednesday 3rd September 2025…
“Whilst Lush is losing a day of takings, this also means that the UK Government is losing a day of tax contributions from Lush and our customers. We hope they too hear the message our closure sends, with more Government action needed to bring an immediate stop to the death and destruction, including an end to arms sales from the UK”.
Lush’s Watermelon Slice soap has been the most successful single issue fund-raising product in the history of Lush, indicating how strongly our customers feel and we are grateful to have been able to raise funds towards child mental health support in Palestine. Lush plans to make this soap available again, with the funds going to medical services, including charities that are gearing up to provide prosthetic limb services to adults and children injured in Gaza. 

End British support for Zionism!

by New Worker correspondent

In London last week Palestine solidarity campaigners took part in a rolling picket of companies that are complicit in the Israeli genocide and starvation of Gaza, starting at Google’s office in the heart of the capital. 
And in the capital of Scotland the screen-writer Paul Laverty was arrested at a pro-Palestine protest outside a police station for allegedly supporting a banned organisation. Laverty is best known for his collaborations with director Ken Loach including the award-winning I, Daniel Blake and The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which both won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. 
"Following a protest outside St Leonards Police Station on Monday 25 August 2025, a 68-year-old man has been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 for showing support for a proscribed organisation" said Police Scotland. Laverty, who was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Genocide in Palestine, time to take action", told the media that “although we have the law on our side, we cannot implement it. So I think we have to change the narrative. I think we’ll have to remember is that the most important court in the world is the court of public opinion. Ordinary people are appalled to see starvation and genocide and the selling of arms to the apartheid state in Israel, and are just appalled by it”.
Laverty is accused of supporting Palestine Action, which was banned in July following acts of vandalism at an RAF base. Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, announced the ban days after activists from the group broke into RAF Brize Norton and defaced two military transport aircraft with spray paint causing some seven million poundsworth of damage.
More than 700 people have been arrested, mostly at demonstrations, for supporting the group since it was outlawed under the Terrorism Act 2000.
Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said in July that the UK’s decision to proscribe the campaign group as a terrorist organisation was “disproportionate and unnecessary” and called for the designation to be rescinded. 
He said: “UK domestic counter-terrorism legislation defines terrorist acts broadly to include ‘serious damage to property’. But, according to international standards, terrorist acts should be confined to criminal acts intended to cause death or serious injury or to the taking of hostages, for purpose of intimidating a population or to compel a government to take a certain action or not.
“It misuses the gravity and impact of terrorism to expand it beyond those clear boundaries, to encompass further conduct that is already criminal under the law”.

Slain for telling the truth

by New Worker correspondent

The London Freelance Branch of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) called an emergency vigil at Downing Street last week, following Israel's targeted assassination of five Al Jazeera journalists and a freelance photographer in Gaza.
Names of all the journalists that have been killed in Gaza were read out, which was followed by a prayer in the Muslim tradition. People then silently marched to the Palestine House cultural centre in Holborn, where a candlelit vigil was held in honour of all the journalists that have been slain in their attempt to tell Gaza's story.
At the vigil Laura Davison, the NUJ general secretary, said “we owe a collective debt to those reporting from Gaza in the most horrendous of circumstances. They are representing our profession – that commitment to reporting what is happening on the ground whatever the cost. And they have paid the price. They are the eyes and ears of the world on the ground”.
According to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) at least 195 journalists and media workers – including 181 Palestinians – have been killed since 7th October 2023, making this the deadliest war for reporters and photo-journalists in recent history.  
The NUJ has deplored the killings and supported calls for an investigation into the actions of the Israeli government. The union is also encouraging chapels and branches to hold solidarity vigils at branches and workplaces over the coming days to protest against the killing of colleagues in Gaza. 

Stop Starving Gaza!

by New Worker correspondent

Last Saturday thousands joined Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) actions at over 50 locations around the country, including eight across London, and laid down pots and pans to demand our politicians take action to end Israel's starvation of Gaza. “We must keep the pressure up,” says the PSC “as we once more lay down pots and pans to represent those starved to death by Israel’s genocidal blockade and demand our politicians take action to end Israel’s starvation of Gaza. We won't stop until our government ends all complicity in Israel's genocidal violence”. 
In south London Vanessa Redgrave, the veteran campaigning actress, joined protesters demonstrating for an hour outside Lambeth town hall in Brixton for an end to the genocide and for Lambeth council to divest its pension fund of enterprises linked to the Zionist entity.  
“Tonight, local people responded powerfully to the national call from PSC to protest the genocide and Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinians, a horror we are all witnessing”
said Micki Loebner from the Lambeth and Southwark 4 Palestine campaign. He told the media that “ in Lambeth, we wanted to join the wave of demonstrations happening across the country and also send a clear message to Lambeth Council: stop investing pension funds in Israeli companies complicit in this genocide. They are still refusing to act.The turnout tonight, especially on such short notice, shows that ordinary people are determined to stand up for Palestine. We see the genocide, and we will keep protesting”.

Justice for Gaza!

 

by New Worker correspondent

Protesters rallied outside the Egyptian embassy in London last weekend to call on the Sisi government to open up the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid into the beleaguered Palestinian enclave. Children attempted to post letters by hand, hoping that the Ambassador would read them, but they were stopped by the police guarding the embassy.  
The mass picket was part of an emergency protest in front of Egyptian embassies all around the world called by the Egyptian Revolutionary Council, a Turkish-based movement that supports the Muslim Brotherhood, which was outlawed in Egypt after its government was overthrown by General Sisi in 2013.
But back in Cairo the Egyptian Foreign Ministry condemned the demonstrations saying that they serve the Israeli occupation and divert public opinion from those truly responsible for the humanitarian crisis. They said the Rafah crossing is ultimately controlled by the Israelis who have closed it as part of their campaign to take over the Gaza Strip and denied allegations that held Egypt responsible for the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.

Stop starving Gaza!

 by New Worker correspondent

Whitehall was absolutely crammed last week with Palestinian supporters, thousands of people furious with our government’s complicity and participation in the crimes against humanity we see every day. Protesters sent a message to Starmer banging pots and pans outside Downing Street in London to denounce Gaza’s urgent hunger crisis. The emergency protest followed reports that over 1,000 Palestinians have been shot by the Israelis and their auxiliaries while queuing for food and 154 people in Israeli occupied Gaza have already died of starvation.
Meanwhile the co-founder of a pro-Palestinian direct action campaign has won her bid to legally challenge the British government’s decision to ban it under “anti-terrorism” laws.
Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, asked London’s High Court to give the go-ahead for a full challenge to the campaign’s proscription, which was made on the grounds that spray-painting RAF jets and vandalising the offices of arms manufacturers operating in the UK that supply weapons to Israel constituted acts of “terrorism”.
The High Court had originally refused Ms Ammori’s application to pause the ban and after an unsuccessful last-ditch appeal Palestine Action’s proscription came into effect on 5th July. Proscription makes it a crime to be a member of the group, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
However Judge Martin Chamberlain has now granted permission for a judicial review, saying Ms Ammori’s case amounted to a disproportionate interference with her and others’ right to freedom of expression and was “reasonably arguable”.

Stop the Genocide! Stop the War!

by New Worker correspondent

Tens of thousands of protesters defied sudden downpours on Saturday to march through the heart of London to demand an end to the genocide in Gaza. The Israeli terror campaign is reaching new heights as the Zionist army tries to starve the Palestinians into submission and exile. More than 900 Palestinians have been gunned down by the Israeli army and their US proxies just trying to get something to eat. These “aid sites” are death traps – and were designed to be such.
Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who now heads the Independent Alliance bloc in parliament called for the halt of all British arms sales to Israel.
He later said “The UK government says it is doing everything it can to alleviate suffering in Gaza. The UK government won’t suspend the sale of F-35 parts to Israel.
The UK government won’t stop the use of RAF Akrotiri or end military cooperation.
The UK government won’t accept the ICJ ruling that the occupation of Palestine is illegal.
The UK government won’t recognise a Palestinian state. The UK government won’t impose comprehensive economic sanctions. The UK government won’t conduct an assessment of genocide, let alone fulfil its legal obligations to prevent it. The UK government won’t even say that war crimes have been committed.
“Empty words cannot hide the truth: the UK government is complicit in crimes against humanity”.

No War with Iran!

 

Corbyn speaks

by New Worker correspondent

More than 350,000 people marched through the heart of the capital on Saturday 21st June to demand an end to the fighting in Gaza and Iran. Demanding no war with Iran and an end to the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians the protesters marched from Russell Square to a rally in Whitehall on Saturday in a massive show of solidarity with the Arabs and Iranians confronting imperialism and Zionism in the Middle East.
Jeremy Corbyn condemned the normalisation of atrocities carried out by Israeli forces. And
Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal said “for over 20 months now we have all seen the world turned upside down. We have seen our political leaders try to convince us that what we know is right is actually wrong. That what we see with our own eyes is not really what it seems. That a state slaughtering over 55,000 people and forcibly starving children is not a genocidal state, but a ‘democratic ally’ we should still sell arms to and trade with normally.
“That the people who should be regarded as terrorists and treated accordingly are not the perpetrators of those barbaric crimes, but those who protest against them”.

Free Gaza Medics!

by New Worker correspondent

Pro-Palestinian activists interrupted their seasonal celebrations to join an emergency vigil in London's West End on 28th December against the Israeli military's systematic destruction of hospitals in Gaza. The vigil in Piccadilly Circus was organised by the Health Workers 4 Palestine campaign that was co-founded by a group of doctors in October 2023 to combat the censorship they experienced, when standing up for the rights of Palestinian health workers and the rights of Palestinians to healthcare.
On 27th December Israeli troops raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last major health facility in Northern Gaza, removed all the patients and staff, and set fire to it. Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the hospital, was arrested and is still in Israeli detention.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a statement saying it was is appalled by the raid. "The systematic dismantling of the health system and a siege for over 80 days on North Gaza puts the lives of the 75,000 Palestinians remaining in the area at risk". The statement added that "some people were reportedly stripped and forced to walk toward southern Gaza". The Gaza Ministry of Health says that now all three public hospitals in Northern Gaza, the Kamal Adwan, Beit Hanoon and Indonesian hospitals, have been "taken out of service by Israel’s offensive". On 4th January WHO Director-General  chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency had received “no updates on the safety and wellbeing” of Hussam Abu Safia.

End Israeli Aggression!

by New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other activists from International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) who were making the connection between the wars waged by NATO imperialism in Gaza and Ukraine at a Palestinian rally in Parliament Square last weekend. And throughout Europe tens of thousands of other protesters were also on the street condemning the ongoing Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip. Thousands participated in demonstrations in Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Utrecht, Milan, Aarhus and Geneva. And in London in support of the Palestinian people, and to demand a ceasefire and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Palestine will never surrender!

outside the US embassy

by New Worker correspondent

In a powerful display of solidarity, hundreds of thousands gathered in London on Saturday to demand justice for the Palestinians and an end to Zionist terror in the Middle East. Demonstrators also staged a “die-in” outside 10 Downing Street and left toys in memory of the Palestinian children butchered by the Israelis in the Gaza Strip. 
At the rally Maysara Ibrahim, representing the Palestinian Forum in Britain, told the protesters “I have run out of words, as we repeat the same agony and the same pain, while the darkness before us threatens the very existence of our values, our principles, and what remains of our humanity. Yet seeing you all today brings hope. We must not stop until we see Palestine free. We will not bow, we will not surrender, and we will continue our fight until our land is free, until Palestine is free from the river to the sea”.
The march stretched from Whitehall to the American embassy in Nine Elms sending a clear message to global leaders about the urgency of addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
There, protesters were still at the peace camp set up some weeks ago to draw attention to the US role in the genocide. The local response was heartening with residents providing supplies, such as chairs, blankets, and food – including hot meals for the camp in the evenings. The camp finally closed this week to allow the local campaigners to “take stock and build up energy” for their next action following the presidential election in the USA.
In a powerful display of solidarity, hundreds of thousands gathered in London on Saturday to demand justice for the Palestinians and an end to Zionist terror in the Middle East. Demonstrators also staged a “die-in” outside 10 Downing Street and left toys in memory of the Palestinian children butchered by the Israelis in the Gaza Strip.

Stop the Genocide!

by Theo Russell

Tens of thousands of people across England, Wales and Scotland took to the streets last Saturday in support of the demands to Stop the Genocide, Hands Off Lebanon and Don't Attack Iran.
Over 30,000 people packed London's Trafalgar Square, carrying Palestinian and Lebanese flags. One of the speakers from the plinth beneath Nelson's Column pointed out that current opinion polls show that only five per cent of British citizens are opposed to an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, highlighting the huge gulf between the British people and the government --or to be specific, between the British people, the Labour and Conservative parties and the Unionist parties in the north of Ireland. All the other parties with members of the UK’s four parliaments have been calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire for many months now.
This is how Britain's ruling class blatantly defies the overwhelming will of the British people and makes a mockery of Britain's much vaunted 'democracy'.
People in Britain and around the world find it incredible that Israel has committed crimes under the Geneva Conventions – the indiscriminate targeting and collective punishment of civilians – for over a year with impunity. Now we see Israel killing thousands of civilians throughout Lebanon, a country not able to defend itself, and issuing diktats to residents ordering them to move or be bombed, with no condemnation from the leading Western countries.
More and more people are seeing the contradictions between Western outrage against actions by the Russian military in Ukraine and the free pass given to Israel to murder and starve civilians and bomb any country in the Middle East with no international mandate whatsoever.
And of course no politician or mainstream Western journalists is ever allowed to say a word about the Banderite Ukrainian junta’s military deliberately targeting civilians with missile attacks.

Palestine – we will not be silenced!

By New Worker correspondent

Palestine Solidarity Campaign activists marched once again last Saturday from Camden Town to Barclays Bank in Tottenham Court Road, where the Barclays branch has been forced to close on Saturdays after weeks of protests.
Luca Salice from the Camden Palestine Solidarity Campaign urged the activists to join the national Gaza protest two days after the General Election, saying "It's very important that we tell the new government that we are here, that we are in solidarity with the Palestinians, that we are against genocide, that we are against the slaughter if children, of women, the destruction of schools, hospitals, universities and places of worship."
Sabi Sagal, a British Jew with family in Israel, said "I'm old enough to remember the Nakba in 1948, I was ten years old, and we were lied to. The Zionists put out the false narrative that the Arab armies had invaded Palestine to drive the Jews into the sea. The reality was the opposite – it was the Zionists who drove out three quarters of the Palestinian people into the desert. It was an Israeli professor, Benny Morant, who finally told the truth when he said ‘Yes, we drove the Palestinians out, we had to do so, otherwise we wouldn't have the state of Israel’. He was honest, he was an honest Zionist. What the Israelis are doing now is to complete the ethnic cleansing begun in 1948.
"We often hear the term Apartheid used in relation to Israel, but in fact Israel is much worse than Apartheid South Africa. But it's very important that we're protesting outside Barclays, it was when Barclays Bank was forced to withdraw their investments from South Africa that the Apartheid regime fell in the early 90s. Let's do the same again now, let's force Barclays to withdraw its financial support for Israel, and let's end all the arms that enable Israel to kill and murder Palestinians in their thousands".
Jonathan Fluxman, a health worker from South Africa, pointed out that "even if there are not many of us here today, it's still important that we're here outside Barclays, because all of these people around us can see and hear us."
The Camden protest was one of seven across London and 28 across Britain last Saturday, as far apart as Plymouth and the Orkney Islands. These weekly protests have now been taking place for 38 weeks. Palestine campaigners did not expect, or want, this campaign to be needed after so long. 
Until recently frenzied efforts were being made by government ministers and the media to label these actions as "pro-terrorist", and the police came under intense pressure to close them down.  But in the last few months the political establishment and mass media have tried a new tactic, erecting a 'wall of silence'  on the protest movement in an attempt to suffocate it. But there is no sign of the numbers taking to the streets for an end to the genocide in Gaza going down.
As one of the slogans coined during this incredible protest movement which millions have joined in Britain says: "We are the people – We won't be silenced!"

Don’t bank on Barclays!

By Theo Russell
Last Saturday 70 people protested in support of the people of Gaza in Camden Town, north London, marching to Barclays Bank in Tottenham Court Road to call for the bank to end its financing of the Israeli war machine. For the second time the Zionists and their far right (EDL), and fascist (English Patriots, I was told) friends staged a counter-protest and this time outnumbered us about three to one.  Some pro-American Iranian monarchists were with the Zionists waving the old Iranian flag of the hated Shah who fled the country after he was overthrown in 1979. But the Palestine solidarity activists stood their ground and received lots of support from passers by - unlike the other side.
The Zionists almost certainly brought people from far and wide to target the Camden march, while there were eight other pro-Palestine marches in London alone, and 29 more across Britain, from the Isle of Wight to Orkney. It’s hard to believe the Zionists attempting to stage counter-protests in Orkney!
Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip has killed over 33,000 Palestinians, and displaced over 1.9 million – more than 85 per cent of Gaza’s population. Yet our political leaders still refuse to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
Over the past six months the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been leading massive demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs in London and supporting local initiatives throughout the country. As Israel’s genocidal assault continues, we can’t stop now. We must keep taking action until the Palestinians achieve freedom.

. 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.

Free, free Palestine!

  by New Worker correspondent

Every year on 30^th March Palestinians observe Land Day recalling the events on that day in 1976, when six unarmed Palestinians were killed and more than 100 injured by Israeli forces during protests against Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian Arab land. This year Palestinian solidarity campaigners remembered their sacrifice as they took to the streets all around the world to support Palestinian rights and demand an end to the slaughter in Gaza. London was no exception. Over 200,000 people marched through central London for a rally on Land Day in Trafalgar Square. Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said “Many thanks to the more than 200k who filled London with us, on Land Day, the day when Palestinians mark the root causes of this current genocide: 76 years of violent colonisation. We do not stop until the genocide is ended and Apartheid is finally dismantled!”

Gaza: Stop the Genocide!

by New Worker correspondent

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched on the American embassy in London last weekend to demand justice for the Palestinian Arabs and an immediate end to Israeli aggression in Gaza. Jeremy Corbyn and the singer Charlotte Church joined over 400,000 thousand protesters in London to demand an end to the fighting in the Strip days after an official said the capital's streets have become a "no-go zone for Jews". But 13 different Jewish organisations took part in the National March for Palestine on Saturday giving the lie to the Government’s commissioner for countering extremism who says the protests had turned London into a “no-go zone for Jews every weekend”.
Jeremy Corbyn said: “we’re here because we’re appalled at the bombing that’s still going on in Gaza. We’re also demonstrating our right to demonstrate, there’s so much talk about people shouldn’t be on demonstrations, well today there’s a lot of us here, all faiths, all ethnic groups, men and women, led by women. No problem, no trouble, it’s a march of love.”
The former Labour leader said "there will be as many of them as it takes. It's all very well for Joe Biden to say they're going to build a port to deliver aid. "(It would) be far better if they stopped delivering arms to Israel and made sure there was a ceasefire".
This was echoed by Charlotte Church, the famed Welsh singer and song-writer, who said “there's been singing, there's been drumming, yes, there's been emotion but, in the majority, that emotion has been love, has been compassion, because that's why we're all here. We're all here because we cannot bear what we're witnessing. We cannot bear to see civilians, children, women slaughtered...we're also showing that we are absolutely not going to tolerate our government being a part of propping up an apartheid regime”.

Boycott Israel!

 

by New Worker correspondent

Around 120 people turned out despite the cold, wind and rain last Saturday in Camden, north London, in solidarity with the people of Gaza and all Palestinians. This was just one of dozens of local protests across Britain with the focus on Barclays Bank as a major financial supporter of the Zionist state. These protests took place against the background of a reactionary campaign, to which prime minister Rishi Sunak has now given his backing, to claim that the pro-Palestinian protestors were seeking “mob rule” and threatening the “democratic” system in Britain. The Government, deeply embarrassed at the growing opposition to Israeli aggression that has swept the country, is now putting pressure on the police to crack down on protesters. On this occasion there was a brief standoff when police asked everyone to move to the other side of the road but eventually the stewards agreed and the situation remained calm.

Cease-fire now!

by New Worker correspondent

Over 250,000 people marched on the Israeli embassy in London on Saturday in support of the Palestinian Arabs and to demand an immediate end to Israeli aggression in Gaza. At a rally near the Zionist embassy former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot both called for justice for the Palestinian people. 
Ben Jamal, the Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said  “At each stage of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza we’ve seen horrors that we never thought possible. The images this week from Israel’s bombardment of Rafah, of children with limbs torn apart, should be seared on the conscience of the world. Despite mounting pressure from world leaders, and in defiance of the international court of justice ruling, the Israeli Government has made clear that it is about to launch an attack on Rafah that will lead to unprecedented levels of carnage.
“The moral imperative is clear. An immediate ceasefire is a simple, absolute necessity. The legal imperative is also clear – the UK must abide by its responsibilities under the Genocide Convention to cease any activities that make it complicit. Our Government and Opposition are guilty of an historic failure of leadership and principle. They have chosen to take the side of those committing genocide over those who are its victims, and over the demands of international law. We, with the majority of people in the UK, will continue to hold them to account on our marches, protests, campaigns and in the voting booths”.