Palestine Solidarity Campaign feedback from Saturday
Posted: 21st January 2025
As you will all know, on Saturday we gathered in our tens of thousands for our latest demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian people. You will all also be aware of the extraordinarily repressive actions of the police. 77 people were arrested on Saturday. Others, including myself, were called into police interview, and now face charges for breaches of the Public Order Act. I will address that, but first, I want to remind you all why we were protesting.
Those of us who have protested peacefully in unprecedented numbers against genocide and for a ceasefire came on Saturday to mark that ceasefire and to share with the Palestinian people: their feelings of relief that it has finally arrived; their trepidation regarding the likelihood of Israel renewing its brutal assault upon them; their grief for the family member slaughtered in the last 15 months; and their celebration, even as they return to their destroyed homes that, as they have done for generations, they have prevailed.
The police intervened in the weeks prior to the demonstration to prevent us marching to the BBC on the spurious grounds that this would disrupt people worshipping at a synagogue that was not even on the route of the march, and where the service would have finished two hours before we arrived at the BBC.
At the end of Saturday’s rally, I announced from the stage that a delegation of individuals from the groups who had organised the protest, including PSC, as well as MPs, Trade Union leaders, members of the Jewish Bloc, and prominent cultural figures including actors Juliet Stevenson and Khalid Abdalla, would walk peacefully towards the BBC. I said that if we were stopped, as we anticipated we would be at the police line, we would stop there and lay the flowers we were carrying at the feet of the police. The full facts of what occurred are laid out in our statement, and you can view the video evidence on our social media.
It seems clear that the political intention was to create scenes of mass disorder which could be used to justify the Home Secretary intervening to ban all future marches. However, there were no scenes of mass disorder. This is a tribute to the extraordinary and determined discipline of those who came to protest in the face of such provocation.
The state wishes to silence our movement. It will not succeed. Nor will we let it distract from the core issue that has brought us to the streets for the past fifteen months: Israel’s decades long oppression of the Palestinian people. Right now, Netanyahu is openly threatening to break the ceasefire as soon as Phase 1 is complete. Right now, Israel is continuing its military invasions in the West Bank. Today, eight Palestinians were killed in yet another major assault on Jenin, using attack helicopters and tanks. More than 800 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 2023.
So, as I prepare to contest the unjust charges laid against me, and send solidarity to all of those unjustly arrested and charged due to the protest on Saturday, my core message is this:
We will not stop protesting and campaigning until every brick in the wall of apartheid that imprisons and oppresses the Palestinian people is torn down, until Palestinians in exile are free to return to their homes, and on every inch of their historic homeland, from the river to the sea, are finally able to live in freedom with justice.
PSC is fighting back against the attempts to suppress us and to continue to ramp up all of our campaigns. Please chip in to help us.
Ben Jamal,
Director of PSC