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In Grosvenor Square before the start of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's march to Parliament Square on 4th November 2017. Ken Loach was one of the key speakers. See photographs below the following article on Jeremy Hardy and MAP. Further articles on Palestine may be found at the main 'Beyond - Politics' page here Palestine articles and at the 'Beyond - Politics', 'MAP' page here MAP.

28th September 2025 - deja vu all over again...

On the evening of 10th March 1948, orders were dispatched to Jewish military units to prepare for the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from vast areas of the country. It took over six months to complete the project and when it was over, more than half of Palestine's native population , close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed and eleven urban neighbourhoods emptied of their inhabitants. The systematic implementation of this plan was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity. Twenty-four cases of massacres and other crimes have been found in Israeli archives including:

arbitrary executions of groups ranging from four or five people to others of seventy, eighty or one hundred. Two old men are spotted walking in a field... they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot, In the village of Dawayima, a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed everything that moved. The worst cases were Saliha (seventy to eighty killed), Dayr Yassin (one-hundred-and-ten killed), Lod (two-hundred-and-fifty killed) and Dawayima (hundreds killed)... and so on. The destruction of Arab villages continued for years after the war was over.

The 'rebirth' of ancient Israel in its biblical landscape and the acquisition of land and property inside the state... and then the newly captured territories of the West Bank and Golan, Gaza and Sinai after the 1967 war - was all part of the Zionist project.

Extensive Palestinian libraries were looted from Arab homes by the Israelis in 1948... But in 1982, I watched as Israeli troops loaded tons of archive documents from the Institute of Palestinian Studies in the Hamra district of the Lebanese capital onto military trucks. The Palestinian story, it seemed, was too dangerous for the archive proof of Palestinian suffering to survive.

Selected from Night of Power - The Betrayal of the Middle East 4th Estate edition by Robert Fisk published in 2024 (Robert died in 2020)

22nd September 2025 - Israeli attacks on Gaza City https://www.aljazeera.com/#flips-6379882689112

17th September 2025 - deja vu all over again...

The devastation had been astounding. Israel subsequently claimed that great care had been taken to avoid civilian casualties, but it was hardly a claim that could be taken seriously by Western television audiences. You only had to look at news bulletins and see the debris of shattered Sidon to realise the extent of Israeli 'care'. Most of Tyre had similarly been razed, as well as the large refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh. A fortnight after the invasion had started, the International Red Cross estimated that 14,000 people had been killed and 20,000 wounded, the great majority of them Lebanese and Palestinian civilians who had been the victims of Israeli air attacks. 'Operation Peace for Galilee' had become simply a massacre although Israel and its apologists in the West continued to deny it. The Israeli embassy in London made the incredible claim that throughout the whole operation 'the Israeli defence forces took maximum precautions to ensure that the civilian population would not be harmed'. It is difficult to think of any other country calling itself liberal and democratic which has invaded its neighbour, massacred the civilian population at a ratio of sixty to one (about 60 dead Arabs for every dead Israeli soldier) and has then had the effrontery to claim that it has been doing its utmost not to hurt civilians.

The bombardment of Beirut was one of the most horrific events of recent history. Day after day Israeli gunners sat outside the city lobbing thousands of shells into the densely packed apartment blocks. From the sea the Israeli navy pounded the coastal districts while F-16 aeroplanes screeched overhead terrorising the population and levelling whole buildings. According to the Sunday Times: '...among the targets hit by the Israelis in the two months (of the attacks) were five UN buildings, many embassies or diplomatic residences, six hospitals or clinics, one mental institute, the Central Bank, five hotels, the Red Cross, Lebanese and foreign media outlets and innumerable private homes'. Many people were burned to death by phosphorous bombs. The Canadian ambassador, Theodore Arcand, said that the destruction was so comprehensive it 'would make Berlin of 1944 look like a tea party'. The Observer said in a leading article: 'Mr Begin and General Sharon had planned a massacre... an attempt to break the political aspirations and will of the Palestinians as a nation or people'. Dr Nahum Goldman, one of the pioneers of Zionism said: '... the apparent aim is to liquidate the Palestinian people. They have bombed their pitiful refugee camps on countless occasions presumably because they believe that if they go on killing Palestinians then one day Palestinian nationalism will disappear. But of course the opposite happens and the brutality of repression merely drives more people into open resistance'.

(Narrative from Dispossessed - The Ordeal of the Palestinians, 1984 edition by David Gilmour. The invasion described started on 6th June 1982)

7th September 2025 - two events in support of Palestine took place in London on Saturday, 6th September. The first was the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's National March for Palestine from Russell Square to Whitehall and the second was Palestine Action's Lift the Ban rally in Parliament Square. In the first gallery below, photos of the journey to Russell Square may be found; images of the march from Russell Square to Whitehall are in the second gallery and Lift the Ban photos in the third.

At Chippenham Station, unexpectedly (for me) the Saphos Trains English Riviera Express from High Wycombe to Kingswear arrived whilst I was making my way over the footbridge where, incidentally, I bumped into Debbie Turner who told me that mum and dad, Pat and Bill, had just boarded the train. A diesel engine (a type 47 no. 47 711 for the nerds) took the train as far as Taunton where it was replaced for the run to Kingswear by GWR Castle no. 5029, Nunney Castle.

As stated above, this next gallery relates the story of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign's march from Russell Square to Whitehall. Many such marches were held throughout the UK and Ireland (for example, in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Carlow and Navan). Estimates of the number marching in London appear to agree on a figure of around 20,000.

Now we come to Palestine Action's Lift the Ban rally in Parliament Square. I wandered down to Parliament Square from the winding up of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's march to Whitehall. A spokesperson for the Defend Our Juries organisation which promoted the rally said: “Fifteen hundred people entirely peacefully defying the ban, holding cardboard signs in quiet dignity, sends a clear and powerful message to the new home secretary as she takes up her position...". Contrast this with the melodramatic reports from the Metropolitan Police and the tabloids... 

"There were frantic scenes in the area throughout the afternoon, as officers forced their way through crowds". The Metropolitan Police said officers had been "subjected to an exceptional level of abuse" at the rally in Westminster. “The violence we encountered during the operation was coordinated and carried out by a group of people, many wearing masks to conceal their identity, intent on creating as much disorder as possible".

Whilst there was, apparently, some disorder which the Met, possibly deliberately, provoked, I criss-crossed Parliament Square for an hour taking pictures and found the event to be, as the Defend Our Juries spokesman said, entirely peaceful. Also, a friend (see one of the pictures) who was present for the whole rally said "It's been an experience watching the police arrest 100s of people mostly elderly and female. What a pantomime and at what cost?"

24th August 2025 - security threat from olive trees. Israel bulldozes olive trees in the West Bank to deny Palestinians their livelihoods: https://www.aljazeera.com/#flips-6377314775112

15th August 2025 - email from Sarah Gibson MP on the Palestine situation in the .pdf file below:

10th August 2025 - ironic BBC headlines

Scores of people simultaneously unveiled handwritten signs with the message "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action" at the protest. Hundreds of officers from the Met and other forces had been assembled (why aren't these officers deployed to deal with 'real' crime?). Footage from the square showed officers moving among the protesters, who were mainly seated on the ground, and speaking to them before leading them away. The Met Police said the number of arrests was the largest made by the force on a single day in the last 10 years. Shows where 'our' priorities lie.

20th July 2025 - our Government's perverted view of the genocide in Gaza perpetrated by rogue state Israel emboldened by Trump has led to the tail wagging the dog and the state of affairs reflected in the following headlines:

Israeli forces kill 67 Palestinians seeking aid in northern Gaza (BBC, 20th July 2025)

At least 73 Palestinians killed while seeking aid in Gaza (ITV, 20th July 2025)

Dozens killed by Israeli gunfire near aid sites in south Gaza (BBC, 19th July 2025)

Israel levelling thousands of Gaza civilian buildings in controlled demolitions (BBC, 18th July 2025)

Gaza father's outrage after Israeli strike kills son 'searching for sip' at water point (BBC, 15th July 2025)

Gaza officials say children killed in strike as Israeli military admits error (BBC, 13th July 2025)

Newborn babies dying in Gaza as Israeli blockade causes dire shortage of formula (ITV, 25th June 2025)

And our Government's response:

More than 100 people protesting against the proscription of Palestine Action have been arrested at demonstrations across the UK.

Demonstrations were held in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol and Truro on Saturday as part of a campaign coordinated by Defend Our Juries.

Protesters wrote the message “I oppose genocide I support Palestine Action” on placards before being surrounded by police officers at the Mahatma Gandhi statue in Parliament Square, London.

Officers confiscated the placards and searched the bags of those arrested, with some protesters being carried away by police while others were led away in handcuffs.

21st June 2025 - what better way to spend Midsummer's Day than taking part in the National March for Palestine in London. Wall-to-wall sunshine, 30 degrees +, step out with genial, like-minded people...

24th May 2025 - another outrage in Gaza. A BBC report says:

An Israeli air strike on Gaza hit the home of a doctor and killed nine of her ten children, the hospital where she works in the city of Khan Younis says. Nasser hospital said one of Dr Alaa al-Najjar's children and her husband were injured, but survived. Graeme Groom, a British surgeon working in the hospital, said he had operated on her surviving 11-year-old boy. A video shared by the director of the Hamas-run health ministry and verified by the BBC showed small burned bodies being lifted from the rubble of a strike in Khan Younis on Friday.

21st May 2025 - Trump's position on Gaza is empowering Israel's genocide. The Stop Trump Coalition relates its perspective as follows:
 

Statement on Gaza starvation and genocide

20 May 2025

Stop Trump joins millions of people across the UK devastated and enraged by Israel’s live-streamed genocide and enforced starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza. Over the past 19 months, Israel has killed over 50,000 Palestinians.

Global human rights organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide and the International Criminal Court has put out an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Netanyahu for war crimes.

UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Tom Fletcher has warned that 14,000 babies could die in the next 48 hours if Israel does not allow aid to reach them.

Donald Trump gave the green light for mass expulsions from Gaza with his “Middle East Riviera” plan. The UK and Europe are now making noises to recognise an independent Palestinian state. Under international law Palestine, historic and present day exists, and must be recognised – but, we cannot and must not allow the government to only focus on this symbolic action while Israel’s genocide enters its final stages. 

Shifting to a rhetorically more critical position is meaningless if the UK government still will not name the genocide and take real action to end its active participation. Stop Trump demands that the UK government clearly state that Israel is committing genocide and immediately: 

• Uphold the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu.
• Implement full sanctions on the state of Israel. 
• End all arms sales to Israel. 
• Back UK humanitarian aid agencies alongside the UN to deliver life-saving food, clean and safe drinking water, medicine and shelter to Gaza, independently and according to the principles of international humanitarian law. 
• Back and implement a family reunification programme for Palestinians in Gaza with family in the UK, allowing family members with dependents to be saved from the genocide. 
• Allow injured Palestinian children into the UK to receive urgent and life-saving medical care. 

The UK government continues to sell arms, conduct RAF surveillance flights over Gaza and provide diplomatic and economic cover to Israel, over the past 19 months of the genocide. The UK government has failed to uphold its obligations under international law to hold Israel to account, leading to the inevitable devastating consequences.

The overt and insidious violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank has been happening for years - it is reported and recorded by the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem and the Al Jazeera media organisation. Just some of many videos follow, the first 'set' (just a selection of many) records Israeli soldiers and settlers physically and verbally abusing Palestinians (many have been killed) in the West Bank (note the dates) and the second set records the aftermath of the bombing and shelling of Gaza, its people and infrastructure.

The B'Tselem website: https://www.btselem.org/ documents the atrocities being carried out by Israel - a recent example of the shooting of a child may be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1d5sanf-TI

And now, a 21st May 2025 email from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF):

Dr Javid Abdelmoneim MSF medical team leader

5th February 2019 - Jeremy Hardy, comedian and ardent supporter of Palestine and the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) has died from cancer. He was just 57. The following video follows Jeremy and fellow comedian Imran Yusuf on their visit to Palestine and Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

The Palestine Solidarity march on 4th November 2017