Demonstration 16th March, 12pm Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester
The Israeli regime has managed to escalate from decades of brutal siege and yearly deadly military assaults into what is now 5 months of genocide, torture and annihilation in Gaza.
People in Gaza are receiving Ramadan under starvation and bombing. This year, the streets are not full of decorations and celebrations, but flooding with blood and tears.
Over 13000 children have now been murdered.
The barbarity we have seen is part and parcel of Israel’s ideology and practice, manifesting itself in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians going on for over 100 years.
This could not have happened without the British establishment, starting with the Balfour declaration when Britain’s then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, in charge of Britain’s occupation of Palestine in 1917, promised Palestine to the Zionists.
In another disaster for the locals from the British Empire, they tried to give away a land that wasn’t theirs to give, despite the population being overwhelmingly Palestinian.
This decision continued to shape Palestinians’ lives until this day, lives full of loss, subjugation and colonial violence.
Yet neither the impact of the declaration nor the complicity of Britain ended at that point.
Britain maintained direct financial and military ties to Israel, allowing the flow of money and weapons into Israel’s murder machinery, supporting directly Israel’s project to destroy Palestine and erase the Palestinians.
Justice for Palestinians begins on our high streets, with Banks and investors like Barclays, BNY Mellon and AXA Insurance making huge amounts of money from the deaths of so many Palestinians.
This must end now! People here cannot detach themselves from what happens in Gaza when this country’s hands are covered in Palestinian blood.
Being here means we have a duty to stand with Palestinians and join their fight for liberation and justice. We have a duty to stop this natural order where corporations on our streets are fueling Israeli crimes.
The Palestinian struggle extends everywhere there is complicity in settler-colonialism and genocide, and we must all join the struggle