As the Met try to STOP yet another Palestine march in London, Jewish people push back

12 Holocaust survivors/descendants have signed a joint letter protesting against Met Police plans to prevent this Saturday 15 March’s Palestine march from gathering in Park Lane.

Met Police: buying into pro-Israel smear tactics again

As descendants of survivors of the Jewish genocide, the 12 say they are “in despair” at the UK government’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing Palestinian genocide. Naturally, the government and other supporters of Israeli crimes want to discredit and suppress any protests against this genocide.

Having run out of other arguments, they can only resort to claims that the demonstrations are somehow antisemitic.

As descendants of survivors, the 12 say they take antisemitism extremely seriously. Consequently they “would always make sure” of their “facts before accusing anyone of antisemitism”. Unfortunately, many supporters of Israel are rarely so careful and they routinely accuse anyone who criticises Israel of antisemitism without any evidence.

So, with zero evidence the Met Police has once again disrupted the Palestine march. As the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) wrote:

As we stated last week, we first contacted the police three weeks ago to inform them of our intention to march and our proposed route. Since then, the police have been threatening to impose conditions on the march but refusing until now to tell us what those conditions might be. Had we announced an assembly point in these circumstances, it could have placed protestors in danger of arrest by a police force engaged in increasing repression.

The police have now agreed to our route but have said that they will impose conditions to prevent us from assembling on Park Lane as originally planned. They have also stated that this decision was made following consultation with pro-Israel groups, who again raised concerns about synagogues which were not on the route of the march and more than 12 minutes away from the point of assembly. We will continue to fight these restrictions through every means available, it is clear that supporters of Israeli apartheid are aiming to prevent any marches for Palestine at all.

The march will go ahead, but instead it will assemble at 12 noon on Piccadilly (Green Park) to march to Whitehall.

The letter from the 12 Holocaust survivor/descendants reads as follows:

“The Met Police have banned the 15 March Palestine protest from assembling in Park Lane. Their excuse is that Jewish attendees at a synagogue that is well away from the march route will suffer disruption of their religious worship.

“We are writing as descendants of Jewish Holocaust survivors to protest against this clear attempt to dissuade people from opposing the Gaza genocide. Along with thousands of other openly Jewish protesters, we have attended numerous Palestine demos in London and have received nothing but support and warmth from our fellow demonstrators. To suggest that the 15 March protest is a threat to Jews, or is in any way antisemitic, is simply a fabrication in order to restrict everyone’s right to protest.

“Yours Sincerely,

Agnes Kory (survivor of the Holocaust in Hungary)

Haim Bresheeth (son of two survivors of Auschwitz)

Anne Karpf (daughter of a survivor of Auschwitz)

Mark Etkind (son of a survivor of the Lodz ghetto and Buchenwald)

Peter Kapos (son of a survivor of the Holocaust in Hungary)

Yosefa Loshitzky (daughter of survivors of the Holocaust in Poland)

Carolyn Gelenter (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Poland)

Charlotte Monro (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia)

Miranda Pinch (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia)

Peter Hall (son of a survivor of the Holocaust in Austria)

Chris Romberg (son of a survivor of the Holocaust in Austria)

Beatrice Hoffman (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Austria)”

Featured image via the Canary