Independent – October 13, 2023
Israel tells 1.1m to evacuate north Gaza
as trapped citizens say ‘there is no place to go’
By Bel Trew, Namita Singh, Tom Watling
Palestinian civilians living in northern Gaza have said they are ignoring the Israeli order to evacuate southward because they have “no place to go”, sparking fears that they could become victims of the anticipated ground offensive.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) issued a 24-hour evacuation notice to Gazans in the northern regions at midnight on Friday, saying areas near Gaza City had been used forHamas’ “military operations”.
They called on all civilians to leave the area and head southward, a task that the United Nations said was “impossible”. Moving through the densely-populated, heavily destroyed region would be too difficult, they said.
They added that it would have “devastating humanitarian consequences” on the entire Strip given hospitals and emergency shelters were already at full capacity in the south.
Hamas responded by urging residents to stay in northern Gaza. The Hamas Authority for Refugee Affairs told residents in the north to “remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm in the face of this disgusting psychological war waged by the occupation”.
Sara, 21, who lives in a town just outside Gaza City in the north, told The Independent many of her neighbours are “staying in their homes” despite the Israeli order because “there is nothing we can do, there is no place to go”.
“Some people said that this is fake news just to terrify us - others said it is critical news and we should take action,” she said, adding that everyone was extremely confused.
She described Thursday night’s bombing campaign on northern Gaza as a “nightmare”.
Putin says Israeli ground offensive in Gaza would be ‘unacceptable’
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said an expected Israel ground offensive in the Gaza would lead to “unacceptable” civilian casualties.
“The use of heavy machinery in residential areas is a complex matter fraught with grave consequences,” said Putin in televised remarks. “Most importantly, the civilian casualties will be absolutely unacceptable.”
“The most important thing now is to stop the bloodshed,” Putin said, adding his country was “ready to coordinate with all constructive partners”.
Earlier this week, Putin used the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza to blame Western involvement in foreign affairs in a transparent sleight to western Ukrainian support.
World Socialist Web Site - October 13, 2023
US, European powers fully implicated in Israeli mass murder
WSWS International Editorial Board
The World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board condemns the war crimes conducted by the Israeli regime’s homicidal rampage in Gaza, which is being carried out with the full support of the United States and all the imperialist powers. We call on workers and youth throughout the world to mobilize protests to demand these war crimes be stopped.
The aim of the Israeli onslaught is to kill as many Palestinians as possible and to render Gaza dysfunctional and uninhabitable. The Netanyahu regime intends to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth, a fact that is confirmed by the announcement late Thursday that Israel is demanding that the 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza evacuate within 24 hours. It is, in effect, sending Gazans on a death march.
This is a genocidal project. There are 2.2 million people in Gaza, which has one of the highest population densities in the world. Half of the population, some one million people, are younger than the age of 18. Trapped from leaving with the closure of border crossings into Israel and Egypt, they face systematic starvation, constant bombardment, and the prospect of an imminent invasion.
Since launching its savage onslaught on Gaza Saturday, the Israeli Defense Forces have dropped 6,000 bombs weighing some 4,000 tons on the enclave. According to Palestinian health authorities, 1,417 people have been killed, half of whom are women and children, but the death toll is undoubtedly far higher. The AP released video of the Jabalia refugee camp, in northern Gaza, with a population of 116,000 packed into 1.4 square kilometers. The AP noted that the camp had been “razed to the ground” by Israeli airstrikes.
The Netanyahu regime has cut all electricity, water, and fuel supplies to Gaza, an act of collective punishment that is itself a war crime. The International Committee of the Red Cross warned Thursday that “hospitals risk turning into morgues” as their fuel-powered generators run out and Israel refuses to open humanitarian corridors to evacuate the seriously ill and injured. Life support for babies in incubators and elderly patients has been turned off.
Chilling remarks from across the Israeli political establishment make clear that these horrendous acts are just the beginning of what can best be described as Operation Mass Murder.
Speaking Wednesday after the confirmation of an emergency government with opposition leader Benny Gantz, Netanyahu stated that “every Hamas man is a dead man.” The militant nationalist group that led Saturday’s assault on Israel won the support of over 400,000 Gazans in the 2006 election, underscoring that Netanyahu would have to order the slaughter of hundreds of thousands to carry out his threat. Gantz was no less bloodthirsty, declaring that it was “time for war” and that Israel intends to “wipe Hamas off the face of the earth.”
These are statements that echo those of the Nazi regime in Germany, whose leaders were hanged at Nuremberg. When the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto rose up in early 1943 against Nazi occupation, followed one year later by the Polish resistance, Hitler’s regime flattened the city in a manner comparable with the destruction of Gaza that is now in its early stages.
The Biden administration and the media, justifying the slaughter, attempt to portray Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians as an inexplicable outrage, expressing nothing else than “pure evil.” But the fact is that the rebellion was provoked by decades of relentless oppression by the Israeli government against the Palestinians.
Just two months ago, nearly three thousand, predominantly Jewish public intellectuals from all over the world signed a letter under the headline, “Elephant in the Room,” which described the conditions that preceded the attack from Hamas. They referred to “the direct link between Israel’s recent attack on the judiciary and its illegal occupation of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Palestinian people lack almost all basic rights, including the right to vote and protest. They face constant violence: this year alone, Israeli forces have killed over 190 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and demolished over 590 structures. Settler vigilantes burn, loot, and kill with impunity.”
The letter continued, “There cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid, as Israeli legal experts have described it. Indeed, the ultimate purpose of the judicial overhaul is to tighten restrictions on Gaza, deprive Palestinians of equal rights both beyond the Green Line and within it, annex more land, and ethnically cleanse all territories under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population.”
All of this is now being deliberately suppressed. A totally false, lying narrative is being concocted, according to which Israel is the victim of Nazi-style attacks from the Palestinians, who in fact have been oppressed and subjected to repeated bombardments and massacres for decades. The Israeli government and its supporters are seeking to exploit the Holocaust to justify their own genocidal crimes.
The Israeli massacre has the full support and encouragement of the imperialist powers in Europe and the United States. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Netanyahu Thursday, as the invasion is being planned, to declare his full support for Israel. Asked in an interview with NBC News whether there were any “red lines” that Israel might cross, Blinken responded that he was “not going to get into any of the operational details, and again, we’re determined to support them.”
In other words, Israel has a blank check for anything it does. In a joint press conference with Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Blinken declared: “I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.” Blinken’s explicit association of his personal religion with his official role as a representative of the US government exposes his indifference to and ignorance of the constitution-based separation of church and state. His statement provides grist for antisemitic propaganda, as it falsely associates all Jewish people with the crimes of the Netanyahu regime.
If he were speaking honestly, Blinken would have said, “I come to Israel not only as US Secretary of State, but also as an accomplice in the destruction of Gaza and the mass murder of Palestinians.”
Blinken’s trip followed US President Joe Biden’s speech Tuesday, denouncing the Palestinian uprising as the expression of “pure unadulterated evil.” Speaking Thursday on the sidelines of the NATO Defense Ministers Summit in Brussels, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed that “no conditions” would be placed on how weapons supplied to Israel by the US are used.
As the imperialist powers wage ever more openly a war against the world, even the remnants of bourgeois democracy are being dispensed with. Protests in support of the Palestinians were banned this week across Europe and North America, with participants demonized by the authorities as supporters of “terrorism.”
On the college campuses, right-wing Zionists are attempting to create an atmosphere of terror and threats. Student groups and individuals who have spoken out against Israeli crimes have had their names and personal information released and publicized. At a rally at Brooklyn College yesterday, a member of the New York City Council, Inna Vernikov, showed up brandishing a firearm to intimidate students.
To those who accuse opponents of Israeli crimes of being antisemitic, we say that the Israeli government consists of a pack of fascists. This includes Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has ordered his ministry to purchase 10,000 assault rifles to arm right-wing settler militias. Ben-Gvir had previously been convicted of racist incitement for chanting “Death to Arabs” and for supporting a terrorist group.
As for the US and European powers, they are aligned with fascists in Ukraine, exemplified in the standing ovation given last month by the Canadian Parliament, along with representatives from all the G7 countries, for Yaroslav Hunka, a veteran of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS, which was responsible for the massacre of Jews under the direction of Nazi Germany.
The Israeli onslaught on Gaza must be seen in the context of the escalating US-NATO war against Russia, the initial stage of world war. The imperialist redivision of the world will assume the form not just of conflicts between countries, but an ever more direct and violent war against masses of people. The ruling elites in all the capitalist countries, moreover, face an intersecting series of economic, social and political crises which they are seeking to divert through an explosion of military violence.
The ruling class believes that the media is presenting public opinion, but support for the Palestinians is widespread among the population throughout the world, and strikes and protests by workers are on the rise in every country. Within Israel, the Netanyahu regime has confronted sustained opposition from the working class over the past year to its drive to gut democratic rights and establish an authoritarian regime.
The working class must intervene to stop the massacre by demanding an immediate halt to the supply of weapons to Israel. Mass protests and demonstrations should be organized in every city and college campus to demand an end to the murderous onslaught.
These demands are inseparable from the broader struggle to put an end to the intolerable conditions faced by the Palestinians and all forms of oppression around the world, which requires the development of a mass movement in the international working class for socialism.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/10/13/taak-o13.html?pk_kwd=wsws
World Socialist Web Site - October 13, 2023
Spontaneous protests in solidarity with Palestinians in German cities
A number of spontaneous pro-Palestinian demonstrations have taken place in Germany this week, despite efforts by the government, police and courts to ban all protests against the Israeli army’s brutal crackdown on Gaza.
On Saturday evening, about 50 people demonstrated in solidarity with Palestinians in the Neukölln district of Berlin. Police broke up the protest by force stating that, according to a police spokesperson, public safety was threatened by “anti-Israel and violence-glorifying chants” and the wearing of masks.
On Monday evening, more than 100 demonstrators expressed their support for Palestinians in Duisburg. The mostly young participants waved Palestine flags and held up homemade placards. The demonstration, which began at Brückenplatz, Hockfeld, near the city centre, was accompanied by a huge contingent of press and television media as well as police. A hundred police officers, dog handlers, motorbike police and numerous plainclothes officers were deployed.
Formerly an industrial area, Hochfeld is now one of the poorest and most heavily migrant districts in the city. More than one in four adults receives basic social security and among under-15s this figure rises to over 50 percent.
The association “Palästina Solidarität Duisburg” had registered the demonstration at short notice. The police in Duisburg also moved against the participants, although according to their own statement the protest was trouble-free. They took two people into custody and the public prosecutor’s office is investigating some participants, alleging they disturbed the public peace with their statements, which were made in a foreign language.
In fact, the demonstration was characterised above all by expressions of solidarity with Palestinians suffering under occupation. “I condemn violence in any form. But the Palestinians are in the process of liberating themselves. Palestine is occupied and Israel is the occupying power,” said Jamal, who came to Germany from Palestine with his parents 44 years ago. “I have more in common with Germany than with Palestine. But I feel for the people from whom my parents came and the land from which they were expelled several times.”
Jamal addressed the vile hypocrisy of the German and American governments. “It has always been brushed aside, nobody cared when the Israelis expelled the Palestinians. UN resolutions have been passed against Israel. But nothing has happened. Now the Palestinians are reacting, they want to liberate themselves. And all hell is breaking loose all over the world. Everyone is turning against the oppressed. And that’s not fair. It’s one-sided, it’s not okay, it’s inhuman. For my part everyone is a human being, no matter where they come from or where they live. When the Israelis are terrorised, everyone shouts out loud, and justifiably. But when Palestinians or Afghans are terrorised, it doesn’t matter. That’s not OK. That’s why I’m here.”
Asked about the Israeli government and its terrorisation of Palestinians, Jamal replied, “You’ve seen the demonstrations by Israelis against their right-wing government. How strong is the rule of law or democracy in Israel? The nation-state law, according to which the state of Israel is reserved for the Jewish population, excludes all non-Jews. That’s democracy for Europe and the US, but for me it’s not democratic.”
Jamal referred to interviews he has seen with far-right Israelis: “They say Palestine is their land and that Arabs should clear off. But excuse me, I can’t do anything with that. That’s what Muslim fanatics also say.”
Asked about the prospect of Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Muslim workers uniting, Jamal replied, “That would be brilliant. Honestly, this is an issue that makes my life hard because I think as long as there are religious fanatics on both sides, there will be no peace. I wish that, after the Israelis have suffered as much as the Palestinians, people on both sides would get fed up with violence. We have to work together—all religions living in peace.”
Events in Israel and the Occupied Territories were also the subject of discussion at the joint meeting of action committees of German rail, postal and public service workers, which is mobilising workers to unite independently of the trade unions to assert their rights and prepare strikes.
There was unanimous solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people at the meeting, with many workers sharing links to families in the Middle East, the Arab and Muslim world.
M.M. who comes from Iraq and is a shunting attendant and member of the Rail Action Committee, said he found it remarkable that the reporting on the conflict was as one-sided as it was. One only heard what one was supposed to hear. In the runup to the meeting, he had already told the WSWS: “Anyone who doesn’t just read the BILD tabloid newspaper naturally knows what’s going on: the Palestine-Israel conflict goes back 75 years.”
“War is never a pretty thing,” M.M. stressed, “but a snake that drives you into a corner will eventually bite. The world is slowly beginning to understand what the conflict is about: so many Palestinians have already lost their own children and had to bury them.” He referred to the children and young people who have been snatched from Gaza and disappeared in Israeli prisons over the years, or who have been killed in Israeli bombing raids.
He said: “These people had to bury their own children. I’m sure that’s true of many of those who have taken hostages in Israel now.” M.M. raised the social situation of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, with its just over 2 million inhabitants, “That’s several million Palestinians, and you have to realise that only a fraction of them have certificates to work inside Israel, because everything in Gaza has been destroyed. And when there is such high unemployment, you can imagine that at some point a father or mother of a family, no longer able to feed their family, will side with those who are trying to change things.”
He adds: “One thing that I personally find really bad here in Germany is that, as a worker, you don’t even have the right to do anything anymore, to work and contribute anything, to feed your family.” M.M. reported that his family originally came from Iraq, where more than a million civilians were killed in the US invasion and occupation. Other workers came from Syria and have their own experiences in Germany, i.e., of subsisting for five years without a work permit and not being allowed to leave the city.
M.M. emphasised that the new Middle East conflict did not come out of the blue. “The same applies to the conflict with Russia, by the way,” he concluded. “Since 2015, tens of thousands of Russians have been under siege in eastern Ukraine, but nobody talks about that here. Now, regarding Israel and Palestine, journalists only say what benefits the government. It’s the same in the world of work: we are only shown in public what helps the political elite, while we are left in the lurch.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/10/12/a68e-o12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
World Socialist Web Site - October 13, 2023
French police assault banned pro-Gaza demonstration in Paris
Samuel Tissot
On Thursday evening, thousands gathered at the Place de la République in Paris in opposition to the Israeli onslaught against the Gazan population and the French government’s support for these horrific crimes. Protesters gathered despite a ban and the systematic intimidation of perceived protesters by heavily armed police in the surrounding area.
An initial notice banning the planned protest was received by the Solidarity for Palestinians in France on Wednesday. On Thursday a judge ruled against an appeal lodged by the association absurdly stating, “the prefect of police, by prohibiting the demonstration in dispute, did not cause a serious and manifestly illegal attack on the freedoms of expression, assembly and demonstration.”
At Thursday evening’s protest, Paris police kettled protesters before dispersing them with tear gas, water cannon and charges. Ten people were arrested, and 24 received 135-euro fines.
BRAV-M units, which played a central role in the violent repression of the protests against Macron’s pension cuts, were also deployed in Paris on Thursday evening. As throughout the repression of protests following the police murder of Nahel Merzouk and during mass strikes against Macron’s pension cuts, BRAV-M officers charged protesters and obstructed journalists reporting on the clashes.
In a memo to French police chiefs, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin declared, “Pro-Palestinian demonstrations, as they are likely to generate disturbances to public order, must be prohibited,” adding that “the organization of these prohibited demonstrations must give rise to arrests.” However, local prefectures had already taken the initiative to outlaw protests earlier in the week.
The Interior Minister justified his crackdown order on France Inter on Thursday, citing “100 antisemitic acts” and adding that “24 people have been arrested.” Without providing further details, it is not clear how many of the acts are racially motivated attacks against French Jews and how many are political opposition to the crimes of the Zionist state mischaracterized as antisemitic to justify Macron’s crackdown.
Justice Minister Eric Dupont Moretti warned on Wednesday that “statements hailing the attacks, presenting them as legitimate resistance to Israel” constitute “antisemitic crimes.”
It is now illegal in France for organizations or individuals who oppose the Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip, which has already claimed 1,500 lives including those of 500 children, to gather and publicly express so. As the police assaulted protesters in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated his total support for Israel’s right to defend itself in a televised national address.
The French police state’s repression of the Paris protest on Thursday night took place amid an anti-democratic crackdown on opposition to the Israeli onslaught in France and throughout Europe.
Earlier in the week a protest organized for Wednesday by the Palestine Action Comittee was banned by the Gironde prefecture. A protest planned for Monday evening was banned in Lyon. In Marseille, 200 people gathered at the city’s old port on Tuesday despite a ban imposed by the prefecture. Protests in defence of Palestinians have also been banned in Britain and Germany.
Like its counterparts across Europe, the Macron government is deeply hated by French society for its attacks on living standards, its construction of an ultra-violent police state and its racist attacks against the democratic rights of France’s eight-million strong Muslim population.
Without a majority in parliament and widely despised, Macron governs against the will of the French people. In April, 62 percent of the population wanted a prolonged general strike to defeat Macron after the president forced through his unpopular pension cut with the anti-democratic 49.3 provision of the French constitution. Whilst in August 40,000 police officers were deployed throughout the country to put down youth riots following the police murder of Nahel.
The banning and suppression of pro-Palestinian protests is a continuation of Macron’s brutal repression of opposition protests in France throughout the year. Before this week’s arrests, over 8,000 people had been arrested in the repression of mass protests that followed his pension cuts and anti-police violence protests following the police murder of the 17-year-old Nahel in July. Dozens have been gravely injured by police assaults and the use of flash grenades.
Its crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters reflects the Macron government’s fear that domestic opposition to its support for the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians could reignite the massive social struggles that took place in France in spring and summer. Workers and youth must oppose Macron’s anti-democratic attempt to strangle opposition to the Israeli regime’s oppression of the Palestinians.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/10/13/bpyq-o13.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
World Socialist Web Site - October 13, 2023
UK government demands intensified clampdown on protests in defense of Palestinians
By Robert Stevens
The British government is demanding stepped-up repression against those demonstrating in defence of the Palestinians being massacred by Israel’s armed forces.
Three were arrested in London during protests at the Israel Embassy on Monday where a massive police presence was mobilised. On Wednesday, a further four people were arrested outside Manchester Central Library in St. Peter’s Square, in a protest against a vigil by supporters of the Israeli state. The protests in support of the Palestinian people, who are being subjected to collective punishment and other war crimes, are among several in towns and cities across Britain since last Saturday.
A state crackdown is being imposed amid hysterical and unprecedented calls by the ruling Conservatives that anyone opposing Israel’s genocidal war is treated as a supporter of terrorism. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has called on police to criminalise protest, declaring it is “not just explicit pro-Hamas symbols and chants that are cause for concern. I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.”
In the same letter to police she declared, “Behaviours that are considered legitimate in some circumstances, for example, the waving of a Palestinian flag, may not be legitimate such as when intended to glorify acts of terrorism.” Hamas was proscribed in Britain in 2021 as a “terrorist” organisation.
While Greater Manchester Police said four people were arrested on suspicion of breaching the peace, video footage on social media shows one young man—with a Palestinian flag draped around his shoulders—being frogmarched towards a police van by a swarm of officers, with protesters demanding to know why he was being arrested. Just before he was bundled into the police van, a police officer is seen confiscating his Palestinian flag.
The police statement read, “They were not arrested for supporting Palestine—GMP understands that members of Greater Manchester’s communities are devastated by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and that people have a right to express their support for both Israel and Palestine. The force draws a clear distinction between support for Palestine and support for the proscribed terrorist organisation ‘Hamas’”. They claimed the suspects were arrested “following an assessment that their actions had the potential to cause disorder at an otherwise peaceful event”, but police provided no evidence to support this.
The Manchester Evening News (MEN) reported Wednesday evening, “One person was later de-arrested following further investigations, with the remaining three still in custody.” The MEN’s report indicates the extent of the police build-up underway, “The vigil was heavily policed on Wednesday night, with roads closed through the centre of Manchester and a sea of high visibility jackets marking out the groups of GMP officers surrounding the crowds.” According to a local journalist posting on X (formerly Twitter), after the young man was arrested by police, “They then put a section 35 on Manchester City Centre, threatening bystanders with arrest.”
Under Section 35 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, a police constable and/or police community support officer in uniform have the power to exclude a person or people from an area for a period of up to 48 hours with a police Inspector’s authority.
Other events underscore the outlawing of protests as Israel’s jets pound Gaza and 100,000 Israeli troops and hundreds of tanks and warplanes mass at the border ready to unleash an unprecedented blood bath against the besieged population.
On Wednesday, the Student Union at University College London (UCL) suspended the UCL Marxist Society, a naked attack on free speech and the righty of assembly. The Marxist Society is the student organisation of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT).
A statement by the Marxist Society revealed it had “received e-mails from UCL SU demanding we take down posters and social media posts for our meeting tonight as they could be construed as ‘inciting violence’. By refusing to comply they have now told us that our society has been suspended pending investigation”. The statement added, “Our posters show a Palestinian flag with the slogan ‘Intifada until victory! The fight for a free Palestine’. Intifadas are mass uprisings against the Israeli state by the Palestinians.”
UCL’s Student Union is affiliated with the National Union of Students, which is dominated by the Labour Party.
The move against the IMT’s student society coincided with a letter by Tory Education Secretary and Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education Robert Halfon to university vice-chancellors demanding they act “swiftly and decisively” to stamp out support for the Palestinian cause. Their letter—issued under the cynical guise of opposing “implicit or explicit” threats to Jewish students—dishonestly conflates protests against the atrocities of the far-right Israeli government with anti-Semitism. The ministers demanded that university vice chancellors “act quickly and appropriately if you become aware of any antisemitic abuse, harassment or discrimination.”
The letter made clear that Student Societies are being targeted for political censorship: “We have seen evidence of a number of student societies that support Palestinians sending out inflammatory messages that show support for Hamas, which is, as you know, a proscribed terrorist organisation.”
The ministers also attacked what they described as a “grossly insensitive and unhelpful statement” issued by the University and College Union (UCU), complaining the union represents “some of the very lecturers that Jewish students would be looking to for support”.
The UCU statement called for an “immediate ceasefire and de-escalation”, that “must include an end to the blockade of Gaza by the Israeli military and a halt to further violence against civilians by Hamas, before any more lives are lost”. It concluded, “the events of recent days are part of a continuing cycle of violence that has been the result of decades of brutal occupation. Achieving a lasting peace in the region must start with an end to the occupation and a recognition of the rights of all people.”
This is anathema to a government that has fully endorsed Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians, by a war machine armed to the teeth by the US and Britain.
The Tory government has introduced a raft of authoritarian legislation in recent months in preparation for the banning outright of protests and strikes. However, sections of the ruling class are wary of the backlash threatened by Braverman’s inflammatory calls to ban flags and chants which have been a prominent feature of pro-Palestinian demonstrations for years. On Thursday, ahead of a Stop the War Coalition protest taking place this Saturday in London, “March for Palestine, End the Violence, End Apartheid”, the Metropolitan Police—who cover the capital—have claimed they will not treat the holding of a Palestinian flag as a criminal offence.
Met deputy commissioner Dame Lynne Owens said, “What we cannot do is interpret support for the Palestinian cause more broadly as automatically being support for Hamas or any other proscribed group, even when it follows so soon after an attack carried out by that group and when to many the link seems indisputable.”
Yet demands across the media and political establishment for criminalising protestors on precisely this basis are growing by the hour.
The events of the last days in Britain must serve as an urgent warning to the working class. The ruling elite is determined to eviscerate democratic rights to enforce its agenda of war and austerity.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/10/12/ucbz-o12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
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