Pro-Palestinian and socialist activists gathered in London over the weekend to condemn what they called the “apartheid state” of Israel, as well as a host of other supposed ills of the West, including capitalism, colonialism, homophobia, racism and sexism.
Marking the 74th anniversary of the “Nakba,” the phrase used by Palestinians and other Muslims to refer to the “catastrophe” of the creation of the Jewish state of Israel, thousands of activists marched from the BBC’s headquarters in Central London to Downing Street on Saturday, chanting slogans such as “Israel is a terrorist state” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a call to arms for the Palestinian people to eradicate the state of Israel and its people from their ancestral homeland.
In a speech delivered outside Number 10 Downing Street, socialist Labour Party MP Zarah Sultana said Israel “is an apartheid state and we should not be afraid to say it.”
Sultana, a Pakistani-heritage acolyte of far-left former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn — who himself has been accused of allowing anti-Semitism to fester within the left-wing party under his leadership — cited a widely criticised report from Amnesty International accusing the Jewish state of enacting a system of an apartheid system of oppression against Palestinians.
This is despite — as a collection of U.S. Jewish groups noted in response to the report — that Palestinians are equal under the law in Israel and the Jewish state’s coalition government, including an Arab Muslim nations party.
The far-left MP went on to liken Israel to the apartheid regime in South Africa in which black people were denied equal rights that spanned from the 1940s to the 1990s, saying: “Let’s remember, there was a time when South African apartheid seemed immovable and that the day of its end seemed implausible. When it too had apologists for apartheid in Downing Street. It had military might and powerful allies but those chains were broken and apartheid was broken.”
“South Africa can see apartheid end, so can Palestine and it will be defeated in Palestine.”
Kurt Zindulka / Breitbart NewsAnother speaker, Farah Koutteineh, of the London-based Palestinian Return Centre, argued that all supposedly oppressed groups should “stand up” and unite around the cause of Palestine against the Jewish state.
“The Palestinian struggle is against settler-colonialism, against racism, against sexism, against homophobia, against capitalism, and against classism,” she said.
Koutteineh went on to liken the Palestinian cause to Communist Cuba, Native Americans, a “united Ireland”, and the “climate catastrophe”.
“Our oppressors are united, so why aren’t we? We need to stand up for all oppressed or we might as well be standing with our oppressors,” the activist said.
Another major theme of the protest was the shooting and killing of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who died in a firefight between Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Islamist terrorists in the city of Jenin in the Israeli controlled West Bank.
Sultana, and others, accused the Israeli forces of killing the Palestinian-American journalist. However, it is currently unknown who fired the shot that killed Abu Akleh. Israel has requested access to the bullet to determine if it was fired by an IDF gun, yet, so far Palestinian authorities have refused to hand over the bullet.
Speakers at the London rally also condemned Israel over an incident that occurred at the funeral for the slain Al Jazeera reporter, which saw widely publicised clashes occur between IDF soldiers and some carrying the coffin of Abu Akleh.
Israel has claimed that those carrying the coffin in the footage had actually removed it from the hearse, against the wishes of the bereaved family, and had assaulted IDF officers with glass bottles and other objects when they tried to return the coffin to the hearse.
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