Israel’s devasting military assault on Gaza has now killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, 70% of them women and children, with thousands more missing, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes. Every weekend, thousands of people attend marches in London; across the nation, there have been protests in dozens of towns and cities. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), the largest Palestine solidarity organisation in Europe, has been at the forefront of these actions, and support for our work has mushroomed. Yet as public pressure has built for a ceasefire, the efforts to repress these calls have accelerated, too.
I made a recent speech calling for people to peacefully lobby their MPs inside parliament. I said that so many protesters would arrive that parliament would have to lock its doors. But this was reframed in national media as a call for violent insurrection. Peaceful but loud and vigorous protests at council meetings and outside MPs’ offices have been characterised as acts of physical intimidation. Now we have Lord Walney, a politician with a track record of unabashed support for Israel, calling for political leaders to ban any contact between MPs or councillors and members of the PSC. Rishi Sunak has told us he will carefully consider these proposals. We must resist this political desire to shield Israel from accountability and from the charge of genocide, and attempts to suppress people’s right to protest, manifested in the repressive legislation passed by this government.
Having destroyed the civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including schools, universities and hospitals, Israel’s denial of adequate food, water and essential supplies is now leaving hundreds of thousands of people facing starvation. The ICJ has found claims by South Africa that Israel is violating the genocide convention to be “plausible”, and has ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent and punish the incitement to commit genocide. Israel’s assault, combined with the weak response from British political leaders, has led to unprecedented waves of solidarity in the UK.
The PSC has organised and mobilised demonstrations to pressure politicians to call for an immediate ceasefire. We have also sought to help people understand how this violence is rooted in Israel’s decades-long military occupation, and its imposition of a system of oppression now accepted by leading human rights organisations including Amnesty International as meeting the legal definition of apartheid. Since 1982, PSC has been campaigning to end this oppression and support a just peace based on respect for the rights of everyone in the territory between the river and the sea. Over the past few weeks, the number of people subscribed to our email list has grown from 75,000 to 300,000. We have opened a further 25 branches, and 15 national trade unions have formally affiliated with us.
All of those who campaign for the rights of the Palestinian people are used to attempts to delegitimise their actions. Since October, politicians and parts of the media have attempted to demonise those who have been marching in London as hatemongers and extremists. The reality, as confirmed by the Met Police in the evidence it recently gave to the home affairs select committee, is that despite very heavy policing, the marches have been overwhelmingly peaceful, with proportionally fewer arrests than at Glastonbury music festival. And every march has included a bloc of Jewish protesters, sometimes several thousand strong – a fact that has rarely been reported in the media.
These interventions from politicians are framed as a defence of democracy, but they are in reality an attack on it. Seeking to limit the legal and legitimate activities of established groups such as PSC, whose work is endorsed across UK civil society, is profoundly anti-democratic. At a time when civil society and human rights defenders are under attack around the world, the government should be upholding our democratic freedoms, not seeking to remove them from people with whom it has a political disagreement. Rather than seeking to silence those standing up for justice and peace, political leaders should be focused on exercising maximum pressure on Israel’s extreme rightwing government to cease its assault.
Ben Jamal is director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign
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