More Than 100,000 Demonstrate In London Despite Obstructionist UK Police Tactics

(MENAFN- Palestine News Network ) London / PNN/ Roddy Keenan

Over 100,000 people gathered in central London on Saturday to demonstrate their continued support for the Palestinian people and to voice their opposition to the ongoing genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli apartheid state. The demonstration was the 23rd national protest to have taken place in London since October 2023.
Gathering outside the UK parliament on the eve of a ceasefire in Gaza, speakers called for the cessation of hostilities to be permanent. However, there were also calls for an end to the murderous settler-colonization of Palestine that has led to decades of military occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the Palestinian people.

Numerous speakers highlighted the role of successive British governments' support for the Zionist entity and their complicity in the latest phase of Israeli ethnic cleansing. The UK government has refused to prohibit arms sales to Israel, provided extensive military support to Israel from its bases in Cyprus, rendered diplomatic cover to Israel in international institutions such as the United Nations, and has ensured that British state institutions are fully supportive of Israel. UK complicity in genocide is without question.

The latest demonstration went ahead despite the London Metropolitan Police force doing its utmost to sabotage the event. Protestors were initially due to assemble outside the offices of the British state broadcaster, the BBC, to voice their opposition to the BBC's overt and unvarnished pro-Israel bias. However, prior to the event, the police said that this would not be allowed.

The excuse offered by the Metropolitan Police was that the march could cause disruption to a nearby synagogue that was not even on the planned route of the march. Indeed, the police acknowledged there has not been a single incident of any threat to a synagogue attached to any of the previous 22 marches. Moreover, the suggestion that pro-Palestine marches are somehow hostile to the Jewish community ignores the fact that Jewish people have been joining the marches in their thousands.

Attempts to reach a compromise ultimately failed due to police intransigence and heavy-handed use of powers under the UK's Public Order Act.

The obstructive tactics of the Metropolitan Police were demonstrated vividly at the end of the rally, when a small delegation that included the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ben Jamal and former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, announced they would silently make their way towards the BBC offices, where they would lay flowers in memory of the thousands of children murdered in Gaza. However, the group announced that it would not attempt to cross police lines if prevented from doing so. On reaching a line of police in Trafalgar Square, they duly stopped and waited as the police officer in charge sought instructions as to whether the group would be allowed continue.

While the delegation waited, the police inexplicably and without warning aggressively detained and arrested the chief steward of the rally. 77 other activists were also arrested on the day, many on the flimsiest of pretexts.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), one of the organisers of the event, slammed the police decision to prevent demonstrators from assembling outside the BBC as a denial of the public's basic right to protest.

'The BBC is a major institution – it is a publicly-funded state broadcaster and is rightly accountable to the public,' the PSC asserted. 'The police should not be misusing public order powers to shield the BBC from democratic scrutiny.'

Since October 7th, 2023, the UK media has played a particularly mendacious and murderous, yet extremely effective role, in providing cover for Israeli war crimes and facilitating a genocide. Mainstream media 'journalists' have continually fostered the impression that everything began on that day. There is no history, no context and no background to any of their 'reporting'.

Palestinians are portrayed as the embodiment of evil, whilst their Israeli occupiers and jailers, who have had their iron heels on the necks of Palestinians for 75 years, are innocent victims of an inexplicable and irrational hatred.

And it is this narrative that allows Western governments and media to fabricate stories about mass rapes and the beheading of babies, and in doing so, to provide a justification for systematic mass murder by the Israeli apartheid regime.

A detailed study by the Centre for Media Monitoring highlighted the role played by the UK mainstream media in perpetuating the Zionist narrative and covering up an ongoing genocide.

Aside from the lack of historical context, Israel's 'rights' were given considerable priority over those of Palestinians.

The study found that over 70 percent of the time when the words 'atrocities,' 'slaughter' or 'massacre' were used, it was in reference to attacks against Israelis, while terms used to describe the deaths of Palestinians were often qualified with phrases such as 'what they say is a massacre.' Language was also used to reinforce the Zionist narrative, with Palestinians 'dying' while Israelis are 'killed.' And the BBC played a leading role in perpetuating Zionist propaganda and disinformation.

Analysis by data specialists Dana Najjar and Jan Lietava of BBC coverage highlighted the dehumanising agenda of the British state broadcaster. For example, humanising terms such as 'mother' or 'husband' were used far less often when describing Palestinians, while emotive terms such as 'massacre' or 'slaughter' were almost exclusively applied to Israeli victims of violence.

Of course, the BBC applied the same bias when describing British citizens attending pro-Palestine demonstrations, echoing the government line of hate marches and conflating anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. Those on the marches were reported as 'voicing their backing for Hamas.'

The extent to which the media has sought to minimize coverage of the slaughter of the Palestinian people and to regurgitate Israeli and British government narratives, has seen them play an unforgivable role in facilitating months of murder.

'One thing is certain,' British journalist Peter Oborne wrote, referring to South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. 'If the court does find Israel guilty, the British media will have been complicit.'

Ultimately, the British state may use all the tools at its disposal to shamefully defend its Zionist allies. And its stenographers in a supplicant and perfidious mainstream media may do their utmost to shamelessly assist them. However, as seen by the turnout on Saturday, the public will not be fooled and shall continue to take to the streets to voice their opposition to settler-colonialism, apartheid and genocide.

And as we are seeing across the world, there are millions more who will continue to demonstrate, protest and voice their solidarity for the Palestinian people, and they will do so until every single Palestinian man, woman and child is free.

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