Brighton and Hove Palestine March Says ‘We Don’t Trust Israel Not to Restart the Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing

 Trump’s 'Peace Plan' is Already Unravelling as the Zionists Use Dead Bodies as a Pretext  to Kill More Live Palestinians

To keep that flame alive - Carsie Blanton's beautiful song on the Gaza Flotilla

Ever since  PSC’s national demonstration at the weekend X has been full of Zionist trolls asking why, with the ceasefire, are we still marching. The answer they say is ‘anti-Semitism’.

Of course the obvious answer is that Israel is not to be trusted since there hasn’t been an agreement it has made in Gaza or elsewhere that it has kept. To the Zionists a Ceasefire means you cease, we fire.

⭕️ Earlier today, several suspects were spotted crossing the yellow line and approaching IDF troops in northern Gaza, a clear violation of the agreement.

After multiple attempts to distance them, the suspects refused to comply, prompting troops to open fire to remove the threat.…

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 14, 2025

The Israeli military gunned down seven unarmed Palestinians a few days ago.  It has increased the number of people it has murdered since then. What we are seeing is a managed genocide as Trump’s great 'peace plan' is being shown for the farce it always was.

Demonstration Against Genocide 12 October 25 Brighton & Hove PSC

This was never a ceasefire because it was never a war. It was a one-sided slaughter of civilians as Israel determined that it would destroy all society in Gaza.

As of yet the bombing hasn’t restarted but that is only a matter of time. Having got its hostages back Israel is determined to renege on the agreement and the client Arab regimes that pressed for the deal will of course go along with whatever further atrocities Israel commits because the alternative – turning off the oil – would mean coming into conflict with their ally, the United States.

On the pretext that Hamas hasn’t returned all the bodies of their hostages Israel has announced that it is cutting aid flowing into Gaza by half and possibly more. Israel has also refused the request of Turkey to bring in heavy lifting equipment in order to try and retrieve the bodies beneath the rubble demonstrating that Israel's concern is to find a pretext to go back and finish the job. At the same time as Israel restricts the flow of aid and food it says it isn’t starving the population!

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Israel is looking a way out of the temporary lull in fighting that Trump strong-armed them into. That is why it would be foolish for the Palestine solidarity movement to stand down. On the contrary we need to step up our activity.

Last Sunday about 2,000 people took to the streets with banners in Brighton marching from the Level to the Hove Lawns. Whereas previously we have had a few supporters of Jews and Christians 4 Genocide heckle us on Sunday there were no Zios in evidence.

However it is clear that whatever else it is going to do, the so-called ceasefire is not going to bring peace. It is a racing certainty that the reason why the neo-Nazis in Israel’s  cabinet didn’t resign is because they were reassured that hostilities would be soon resuming.

Ethnic cleansing is not off the agenda even if it has been put on hold for the moment.  Zionism is still seeking to colonise Gaza as part of the Greater Israel.

The Arab regimes behind the plan have continued to play their treacherous role. Whilst opposing Israel’s genocide officially, behind the scenes it is a different story.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that ‘Even as key Arab states condemned the war in the Gaza Strip, they quietly expanded security cooperation with the Israeli military, leaked U.S. documents reveal.’

Bob Woodward, the veteran American reporter who broke the Watergate scandal revealed in his book ‘The War’ that

the stance of countries like Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia was not one of silence or abandonment of the people of Gaza, as was previously believed. Instead, the details presented in the book suggest that the governments of these countries are complicit in the destruction of the Palestinians, just like Israel

Based on transcripts of hundreds of hours of secret conversations that Woodward conducted with numerous White House officials

The reader is astonished by the agreement of Arab leaders on the necessity of waging war on Hamas and eliminating it, coupled with their complete indifference to the scale of Palestinian bloodshed.

The Arab regimes today are the junior partners of both Israel and the United States in the genocide in Gaza. It is clear that the road to Jerusalem passes through Riyad, Amman, Cairo, Doha and Damascus amongst other Arab capitals. There is no act of treachery that Sisi, King Hussein, MBC and the other scoundrels are not capable of.

This also means that the Palestine solidarity movement cannot remain indifferent to the Arab regimes collaboration with Israel.

Having got back its hostages Israel is now preparing for a new phase in the war on Gaza. Hamas was probably given assurances by Trump and his emissaries that Israel would be forbidden from finding a loophole in the agreement. If so they are going to be bitterly disappointed. All the indications are that Israel is straining at the leash like the mad dog that it is.

Not only should BDS be extended and widened but it is incumbent on workers to emulate the example of Italian workers who staged a general strike against the Genocide.

British trade unions leaders, despite making sympathetic noises, have done absolutely nothing to increase the pressure on the Zionists. PSC’s trade union strategy, which was seen as one of its more successful initiatives is shown to be a sham. Resolutions are passed which go no further than the nearest filing cabinet.

The leaders of two of Britain’s biggest trade unions, the GMB and Unite, are open Zionists and have done nothing whatsoever to give support to the Palestinians. Unite passed a strong Executive statement that nonetheless had caveats enabling Sharon Graham to continue doing nothing.

Given that Unite has a strong membership both amongst arms workers and dockers, the refusal to extend any solidarity to the Palestinians is particularly disgraceful.

We also need to extend and sharpen our political critique of Zionism.

Bridget Phillipson - using 'antisemitism' to sanitize genocide

Bridget Philipson, who is likely to be the next Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, in conjunction with the corrupt Priti Patel is already stepping up the ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks. We are told that Jewish students are fearful of revealing their identity on campus.

There is also the confected ‘anti-Semitism’ outrage about the banning of Tel Aviv Maccabi fans from a game with Aston Villa. None of the mainstream media, still less the BBC has told the true story of how the same Maccabi fans attacked Arab taxi drivers in Amsterdam earlier this year chanting ‘death to the Arabs’ and ‘there’s no school in Gaza because there are no children left.’ Since Starmer is so anxious to see the Maccabi fans in England one can only assume that this political misfit has no problem with these slogans.

It is strange how bourgeois politicians are so concerned about non-existent anti-Semitism at the same time as they have no problem demonising asylum seekers and Muslims. In the United States the only form of anti-racism that Donald Trump is concerned with is ‘anti-Semitism’. Here in this country the Home Office is gifting £1m to the pro-Israel Union of Jewish Students. It is not Zionist Jewish students who are under attack but anti-Zionist Jewish students.

It should be clear beyond doubt that Jews have become the alibi and pretext for support for Zionism and the Israeli state. They are not the cause of that support but they are the reason that Western leaders give for supporting Israel’s genocide.

Of course we should not in any way excuse the stupidity and self-inflicted victimisation complex of British and other Jews. However it is as well to focus on the real reason for imperialist support for Israel not the imperialist decoy.

See The billionaire class want you thinking Israel controls the West.

US Threatens Hamas and Israel Violates the Gaza Ceasefire: Will It Soon Collapse? and Alijah Magnier’s From the Knesset to Sharm el-Sheikh: How the US President offered Netanyahu a way out, Complicity of Arab Regimes in the Destruction of the Palestinians

The BBC’s Coverage of October 7 Was on a Par With Its Genocide Denial Throughout the Holocaust in Gaza

No Mention of the Hannibal Doctrine, No Mention of Israel’s 17 Year Siege of Gaza, No Mention of Israel’s Policy of ‘Mowing the Lawn’ – For the BBC History Began on October 7

Tzipi Hotoveli Interview With Piers Morgan

Dear Tim Davie,

You should be congratulated on your coverage of the second anniversary of October 7. Once again, you have faithfully acted as the Foreign Office’s Obedient Servant. I compliment you on your skill in manipulating language in an attempt to erase from memory the Genocide in Gaza.

‘Genocide’ is a word that the BBC decided to ban despite every human rights organisation, from Amnesty to B’tselem  and the UN’s own Commission concluding that genocide was taking place.

Not only did the BBC not use the word Genocide but it interrupted guests at least 100 times when they dared to mention the word. As the Media Monitoring Report on your Double Standards asked

Why has the BBC downplayed genocide allegations over 100 times while omitting Israeli genocidal statements such as Netanyahu’s Amalek reference cited by the ICJ?’ 

It’is a good question but I suspect that you don’t have an answer which isn’t economical with the truth. Either way it shows whose side you were on.

In July 2024 an article in The Lancet estimated that the true figure of Palestinians killed, after 9 months, was 186,000 direct and indirect deaths. After 24 months that figure would be 496,000. However given the starvation blockade by Israel since March 2025 the numbers may be considerably higher.

Dr Gideon Polya estimated in January 2025 that the true figure of direct and indirect deaths may have been 553,000.

This tallies with the number that Israel’s Ambassador to London, Tzipi Hotoveli estimated might need to be killed, 600,000, when she was interviewed by Piers Morgan in October 2023.

So what does the BBC do after two years of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza?   It focuses its attention on the Israeli ‘victims’ of October 7.

It is as if a history of the Warsaw Ghetto were to focus on a sympathetic portrait of the Nazis who died in the Uprising rather than the Jews who died in the fighting.

It is clear where the BBC’s sympathies lie.  With the modern day Nazis who killed the human animals occupying Gaza Ghetto and who sought to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

Throughout the Gaza holocaust the BBC has deliberately ignored the genocidal statements of intent by Israeli ministers such as Amichai Eliyahu who first called for a nuclear bomb to be dropped on Gaza and in May 2025 called for food reserves in Gaza to be bombed. "They need to starve," he said.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on 6 May 2025 told settler representatives that

Within a few months, we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed

But if the BBC minimised Palestinian suffering it magnified that of Israel. In your coverage you repeatedly said ‘about 1200 Israelis were killed’. In fact 1,139 died according to Bituah Leumi, Israel's social security agency.

Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says (Full with subtitles)

Of the Israelis who died just one baby, Mila Cohen, died and that was accidental. Compare that to the thousands of Palestinians babies murdered. Approximately 400 soldiers and police were killed. Not once has the BBC mentioned that one-third of those killed on October 7 were legitimate military targets.

About 750 civilians died. However it is clear that the majority of them were killed by Israel itself which put the Hannibal Directive into operation as early as 7.18 a.m. when an order was issued to despatch a Zik, an attack drone, against soldiers at Erez Junction.

The Hannibal Directive says that if a soldier is in danger of being captured he should be killed. It was employed throughout October 7. Is there a reason that the BBC has never, not once, mentioned the term Hannibal Directive even though Israeli papers have frequently discussed it?  This is news management worthy of Pravda.

The only survivor of a house in Kibbutz Be’eri that was shelled by an Israeli tank, Yasmine Porat, told Israel’s Kan Radio that 13 Israeli hostages were killed by Israeli security forces. She also said that she and other civilians were treated humanely by the Palestinian fighters.

Israeli State Radio 15.10.23. (jpg)

Tank fires on Israeli civilian home in Kibbutz Be'eri, 7 October 2023

In Samantha Simmons broadcast on October 7 she mentioned the attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, where 101 Israelis died.  What was not mentioned was the fact, (Ha'aretz 7.7.24) that Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram gave orders for a tank to fire on a house holding 14 hostages including Yasmine Porat.  The same happened throughout Kibbutz Be’eri but the BBC thought that such matters might confuse people and its message that the October 7 attack was unprovoked. 

Ha'aretz’s Nir Hasson quoted a resident of Be’eri, Tuval, who spoke about the ‘difficult decisions’ of Israeli commanders which:

 Include(d) shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages... The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed.”

Why has none of this been mentioned by the BBC?

The implication is clear. The Israelis who died at Be’eri, one-seventh of all Israeli civilians killed, were killed by Israeli tanks.

Video released by Israeli army shows helicopters firing indiscriminately on 7 October

Sourced from YNet

This is how so many cars at the music festival ended up destroyed. Apache helicopters!
FYI : The IDF collected all the destroyed cars and arranged them one month after the incident pic.twitter.com/sHVL4YIMIT

— Syrian Girl (@Partisangirl) November 9, 2023

The lie that October 7 was the beginning of history is best illustrated by the Israeli phrase that it was moving the lawn (or grass) in Gaza. As John Feffor of the Institute of Policy Studies explained:

Ever since it withdrew its settlements in 2005, Israel has periodically attacked Gaza. This shelling of locations throughout the narrow strip of land gave rise to the Israeli expression “mowing the lawn.” In other words, Israel was bombing Gaza on a regular basis to “maintain order.”

Razan al-Najar 

In other words Israel has periodically attacked Gaza with overwhelming force every few years in order to ensure that Gazans understood who was in charge.  Attacks by Israel occurred in 2008/9 (Operation Cast Lead), 2012 (Pillar of Defence), 2014 (Protective Edge), the Great Return March (March 2018) and May 2021. Thousands of Palestinians were killed and injured in these attacks so the BBC pretence that nothing had occurred before October 2023 is an egregious lie.

The Great Return March of 2018 was completely peaceful but Israeli snipers fired from earth banks thousands of rounds which killed about 300 people and injured thousands (they had been told to fire at knee caps in order to deliberately disable as many as possible). This was symbolised by the deliberate murder of the unarmed Razan al-Najar, a 20 year old medic.

Likewise there was no mention of the Apache helicopters which Israel used throughout the day to fire on any vehicle returning to Gaza or thought likely to do so. There is abundant evidence that their pilots shot at everything that moved and killed the occupants of the cars, Israelis included.

Drone footage from the scene of the music festival shows the damaged cars before they were rearranged by the IDF. pic.twitter.com/qs6F9SZh3S

— Syrian Girl (@Partisangirl) November 9, 2023

 The Israeli military released drone footage showing hundreds of scorched and damaged cars moved from the Nova music festival, providing further evidence that Israeli forces likely killed many of their own on 7 October, as RT reported on 6 November.  Hamas fighers were carrying light weapons which could not possibly have caused such damage.

Perhaps you can explain why the Australian Broadcasting Service can run a story ‘Israeli forces accused of killing their own citizens under the 'Hannibal Directive' during October 7 chaos’ but the BBC is incapable of doing so? Don’t worry I know the answer Tim which is that you were put into the BBC in order to ensure that you continued to function as the Voice of Israel.

I hesitate to ask why the figures of dead and injured from Gaza’s Health Ministry are always accompanied by a reference to Hamas-run, whereas the BBC never refers to Israeli propaganda as Likud-run. After all it is Israel which has consistently lied throughout the genocide, to the extent of barring reporters from entering Gaza and doing its best to kill those who are already there.

Israel murdered 15 Medics on 23 March whilst claiming that they had approached Israeli troops in unlit vehicles. When this was proved to be a lie, as video footage had been collected from one of the dead bodies, Israel claimed that it was all a ‘mistake’, an explanation that the BBC carried faithfully.

Under your genocide cleansing leadership the BBC pulled from ‘i’ player Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, a film starring a 13 year old Palestinian narrator Abdullah because his father was deputy Agriculture Minister in Gaza’s government, as if the sins of the father are those of the children.  No evidence has ever been produced that the father was a member of Hamas, not that that should have made any difference. At least he wasn’t a member of Religious Zionism.

And if one act of cowardice was not enough, you pulled Gaza: Doctors Under Attack because of concerns over impartiality.  Presumably it is BBC policy not to differentiate between Good and Evil. I can only assume that future BBC programmes on the Holocaust will include neo-Nazis and holocaust deniers being allowed equal time for the sake of ‘balance’.

Gaza’s genocide is a holocaust and the BBC has been an accomplice to that genocide.

Tony Greenstein

We Have the Power to Destroy The Ban on Palestine Action and the State’s Conflation of Protest With Terrorism

 Stop the War Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign Have Refused to Mobilise Behind the Defend Our Juries campaign. Why?

October 4 Defend Our Juries Demonstration Against the Proscription of Palestine Action

Both Stop the War Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign are doing their utmost to build the 31^st (?) national demonstration this Saturday against Genocide in Gaza. These demonstrations are important morale boosters for activists yet in terms of their impact on the British Government they have been a failure. They also attract very little media attention.

Defend Our Juries protests by way of contrast have attracted massive media publicity and have put the Establishment on the backfoot. People like former Supreme Court Judge Jonathan Sumption have come out and said in the Independent of 12 August 2025:

The Terrorism Act creates an offence of supporting a proscribed organisation. It precisely defines what acts amount to support. One of them is wearing, carrying or displaying an article giving rise to a reasonable suspicion that the person supports the proscribed organisation. This is far too wide.

Merely indicating your support for a terrorist organisation without doing anything to assist or further its acts should not be a criminal offence and is consistent with basic rights to free speech. It looks as if Palestine Action has deliberately courted trouble by encouraging people to carry placards with messages specially designed to commit the offence. Martyrdom sometimes has a political value.

Even Murdoch’s Times opposed the proscription of Palestine Action in a leading article. Not from any sympathy for PA's 'squalid agenda' but because it might create the impression that pro-Palestinian sentiment was being censored, perish the thought!

As Paul Harris SC, the founding Chair of the Bar’s Human Rights Committee wrote:

there can be no doubt that a decision to proscribe a non-violent organisation articulating widely shared concerns is a dangerous attack on free speech and freedom to protest, which is likely to cause sustained injustice to peaceful supporters of that organisation or its aims, who will as a consequence be designated terrorist supporters. 

Different police forces have reacted differently. Some like Devon and Cornwall have not arrested people with placards supporting Palestine Action.  There has been widespread consternation, reaching into the higher echelons of the State about the overreach of the Terrorism Act and its effect on the right to protest. The intelligence document on which the government based its decision concluded that 99% of PA’s actions were not terrorist.

Professor Robert Barrington of Sussex University’s Centre for the Study of Corruption argued that what was happening was a clear example of government abuse of power:

What we are seeing on display is the extent of government power and the ways in which it can be deployed against protestors.  If PA are terrorists in any conventional sense, then evidence should be put in the public domain.  If the problem is trespass or criminal damage, other laws are available to prosecute them.  If they continue to be branded as terrorists, what is PA today may tomorrow be any other civil society group that irritates the government of the day and can be labelled a threat to national security.

The campaign against PA’s proscription has rocked the Metropolitan Police in a way that nothing that PSC or StWC has done.

Paula Dodds, chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, was quoted as saying that officers were “physically exhausted” but continue to be called on “to facilitate these relentless protests” and that “we are coming under attack for doing so. How can this be right?”

 “There aren’t enough of us. Hard-working police officers are continually having days off cancelled, working longer shifts and being moved from other areas to facilitate these protests.

“Our concentration should be on keeping people safe at a time when the country is on heightened alert from a terrorist attack. We are emotionally and physically exhausted.”

A Met Police officer told Novara Media that enforcing the ban on Palestine Action made them feel “sick” and “ashamed”, while a Police Federation spokesperson highlighted the risk of burnout for officers, saying that the demand is “relentless” and unsustainable.

Middle East Eye quoted one arrestee who overheard police officers complaining about having to work long hours, their leave being cancelled, not being allowed to go home, and having to do mandatory overtime in order to process the hundreds of arrests at various police stations in and around London.

"I knew that my arresting officer was very unhappy about having to go to Bromley to process my arrest," Ceinwen Hilton, another protester who was arrested at 6.20pm in Westminster, then waited till 8pm to be processed. Hilton was not released until after 1am.

Over 2,000 people have been arrested on the demonstrations and probably another thousand at least have defied the law. I am proud to say that my friend Elizabeth Morley, an 80 year old Jewish daughter of a holocaust survivor, is amongst them having been arrested on Saturday. Her local Cambrian News asked whether she was the new face of terrorism!

You might think that in this situation PSC and StWC would put their resources behind the Defend Our Juries campaign. DOJ is a relatively small, pacifistic liberal organisation. StWC is by contrast a much larger and long established organisation. It is run by self-proclaimed Marxists of the Counterfire persuasion. People like Chris Nineham, Lindsey German and John Rees together with ex-Stalinists like Andrew Murray. It is an unashamedly left-wing organisation.

Rees, who was heavily involved in the Free Julian Assange campaign, has spoken eloquently about the traditions of direct action and protest in Britain. It would seem that to some on the left, direct action is more of a theoretical concept than something to actually be carried out. StWC has done nothing to support the DOJ campaign. 

We face a government which is proposing to continue what the Tories started by granting even more powers to the police to harass and control demonstrations to prevent that wicked phenomenon of repeat demonstrations.

Stop the War Coalition March, February 2003

The reality is that StWC which began with the largest ever demonstration in Britain on 15 February 2003 against the Iraq War, believed to be between one and two million strong, failed to capitalise on the demonstration and prevent Britain’s participation in the war. That would have involved mass civil disobedience and bringing Britain to a halt. StWC was not prepared to do so.

Today we have a liberal organisation taking the lead against government protest laws, whilst the ex-SWP Marxists of Counterfire prefer a demonstration through the streets of London that will achieve nothing rather than throwing their weight behind a campaign of defiance that stands every chance of success.

It is possible to prevent Starmer, Britain’s most unpopular Prime Minister ever, from taking the axe to our remaining democratic rights. Yet StWC is more interested in respectability and confining protest to established channels than defying a tyrannical law. 

Even MI5 is said to harbour considerable doubts over the proscription of Palestine Action yet StWC has done nothing.

PSC & Ben Jamal run a mile from anything that would bring them into conflict with the law and the British state

Palestine Solidarity Campaign is even worse. On the eve of the ban coming into their effect the leadership of PSC under Ben Jamal took fright that PSC might be caught out being seen to defy the ban on PA.  At the end of June it sent out an instruction to its membership that:

"It is very important that members of the PSC and supporters of our branch do not take any protest action in the name of the PSC, as this could seriously jeopardise PSC's work and the movement – thank you."

In other words PSC should be allowed to go its own sweet way, building an NGO on the backs of the Palestinians without taking any risks itself. PSC’s whole strategy over the past decade and more has been to ‘mainstream’ the Palestinian cause.  It has been a demonstrable failure.

What PSC has failed to get into its head is the fact that the British Government is hostile to the Palestinians because an alliance with Israel lies at the heart of British, American and European imperialism's strategy for the Middle East. Human rights and international law count for nothing which is why Starmer refuses to accept that Israel's actions amount to genocide when every human rights organisation has long since classified it as genocide.

The British State is the enemy of the Palestinians and should be treated as such. It has no interest in opposing Zionism. A Palestinian solidarity organisation worth its salt would recognise that simple fact. Instead PSC is committed to 'mainstreaming' the Palestinian cause.

PSC failed to confront the false anti-Semitism smear in the Labour Party or support Jeremy Corbyn and ended up with Keir Starmer, the Zionist without qualification. It platformed open Zionists like Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry in the hope that they could be won over.

It refused to criticise the two state solution and at no stage has it ever said it is opposed to a Jewish settler colonial state in Palestine. In 2022 it even removed opposition to Zionism from its Constitution prompting my own resignation from the organisation I helped found.  Although Ben Jamal now claims that PSC is anti-Zionist they are mere words.  It is difficult to understand how PSC can claim to be anti-Zionist when it refuses to oppose the existence of the Israeli state as a Jewish Supremacist State.

PSC nationally has made timidity into an art form. When Manchester PSC supported October 7 as a legitimate act of resistance their officers were suspended, resulting in the whole group disaffiliating from PSC. PSC has refused to criticise the Palestinian Authority even though it cooperates with the Israeli occupation authority, arresting and torturing militants on Israel’s behalf. Its ‘President’ Mahmoud Abbas describes its cooperation with the IDF as ‘sacred’.

PSC has reduced the struggle of the Palestinians to a human rights question. It has completely depoliticised that struggle. The one thing that PSC has done is to accumulate a large amount of money, well over a million pounds, since October 7 enabling it to employ yet more staff to no good effect.  Politically its impact has been minimal. It is more of an NGO than a campaigning organisation.

PSC has consistently failed to take up the use of anti-terrorism legislation to proscribe Palestinian organisations and deter protest. It is not necessary to support Hamas politically in order to oppose its proscription. The proscription of Hamas’ political wing in November 2021 by Priti Patel, a corrupt and racist politician, went unopposed by PSC. There was no campaign and I cannot even recall them mentioning it.

It is no surprise that PSC’s opposition to the proscription of Palestine Action ended on July 5.  If PSC had thrown its weight behind the campaign of DOJ then the Police would have been unable to enforce the law and it would be as good as dead. The same goes for StWC.

That is what lay behind the appeal of the Met’s Assistant Commissioner, Ade Adelekan, to DoJ to postpone the protests using the pathetically transparent lie that opposing genocide was being disrespectful to the victims of the attack on the synagogue last week. This appeal also demonstrated the weakness of the Police position.

Can you remember the last time the Police appealed to the organisers of a criminal activity to postpone their activities to the following week! Perhaps we will now have letters to budding bank robbers or burglars appealing to them not to go ahead with their activities because police resources are stretched. Adelekan’s letter is itself an admission that DOJ’s activities are political not criminal.

If PSC had any strategy or political nous it would recognise that the British state is not going to stop supporting Israel unless it is forced to do so. Appealing to its better nature is pointless because it doesn’t have one.

It is noteworthy that the Police offered to ‘meet virtually or otherwise’ with DOJ to discuss their letter. When the Met banned PSC from marching on January 18 near the BBC, because there was a synagogue nearby, which meant accepting the canard that support for Palestine was anti-Semitic and threatening to Jews, they refused to meet with PSC.

It is to be hoped that PSC and its members will begin to realise that only by confronting the British state’s support for genocide and Zionism will it be forced to change its support for Zionism. That means being prepared to defy laws which are anti-democratic.

Tony Greenstein