US Weapons for Israel & Aid for Gaza. Beyond talk, time to turn up the volume of protest
The eleventh march for Gaza took place in central London on 30th March. Around 200,000 marched to the US Embassy to Trafalgar Square on Easter Saturday. The crowd was diverse and peaceful. Many, many protests and meetings have taken place not only in the UK but around the globe.
The Times which frequently runs Editorials on protests (in the UK a bad thing, elsewhere often to be applauded) determined (29th Feb) that banning demonstrations on Palestine would be wrong. It suggested instead that protesters just stop having them.
This was a point echoed by Home Secretary James Cleverley who claimed protesters had made their point. Particularly after Israel deliberately killed aid workers, reflecting the Western media’s priorities, the volume of talk has gone up. Biden has spoken to Netanyahu and apparently said US support was dependent on Israel addressing suffering in Gaza. In reality the support will continue and Israel will do nothing.
In the UK there has been talk that arms sales to Israel might well be illegal. Starmer has said the ‘war’ must stop now. Nothing has actually happened anymore than the British contribution to UNWRA has resumed, halted after earlier Israeli lies.
The largest protest in British history remains that against the Iraq War on 15th February 2003. Yet while there were many protests on Iraq that march was a one off.
On Gaza since October 2023 not just London protests have taken place but many others around the country. Meeting, marches, walk-outs from workplaces and colleges have all featured.
It’s a mass movement with few historical parallels given the variety and breadth of protests and the short timescale. That no doubt explains why there have been calls from the Islamophobic hard right for protests to be curtailed or banned. They can’t understand why people are protesting on such a scale and if they did they would oppose it.
There are of course some historical parallels but even here we are looking at a time scale of days and weeks not months. In 1848 in London in late May and early June, Chartists marched in their thousands every night in central London seeking to push forward the campaign for the vote which had been frustrated at Kennington Common in April 1848.
When we look at Suffragette protests for the vote in the early twentieth century or climate protesters now we can see sustained protest. The difference with the Gaza protests is the huge numbers consistently on the streets.
That was the real motor behind the UN Resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire passed with a US abstention on 25th March, six months too late. Israel has been ignoring UN resolutions for decades and did the same here. The reality however is that Netanyahu is ever more isolated particularly as the link with the US is perhaps partially fractured.
While the volume of talk has increased action has not yet come. That depends on keeping on keeping on with the protests and turning up the volume
As the late Sam Cooke sang A Change is Gonna Come
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