People take part in a Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration in Glasgow. Picture date: Saturday November 25, 2023.
HUNDREDS of thousands of protesters again took to the streets of London and major cities across Britain on Saturday as public anger over Israel’s slaughter in Gaza showed no signs of abating.
Demands for a ceasefire echoed in and other centres on the second day of the four-day “pause” in Israel’s attack for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
In London, police arrested 18 protesters and police were accused of using catch-all Section 12 regulations to make arrests in response to political pressure.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) director Ben Jamal said: “There has been a major political effort by pro-Israel voices, including in government, to defame the protests as hate marches.
“In response the police today imposed a ludicrous Section 12 that gave them power to arrest anyone arriving early or leaving late no matter what they were doing.”
Stop the War Coalition national officer John Rees said: “This is political policing and it’s pretty certain none of this will be applied to tomorrow’s march for Israel,” referring to today’s demonstration called by the Campaign Against Anti-semitism.
Medical consultant members of the British Medical Association (BMA) on the picket line outside University College London (UCL) hospital as consultants took industrial action for the first time in more than a decade. Picture date: Thursday July 20, 2023.
NURSES were left infuriated today after the government made an improved pay offer for hospital consultants in England.
The Department of Health and Social Care said that it had reached an agreement with the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) after a month of talks and more than six months of strikes.
Union members will now vote on the deal which offers the majority of consultants an additional uplift of up to 12.8 per cent from next January — more than double the minimum of 6 per cent in 2023/24 as a result of the previously implemented pay award — although it won’t be paid until April.
BMA consultants committee chair Dr Vishal Sharma said: “It is a huge shame that it has needed consultants to take industrial action to get the government to this point when we called for talks many months ago.”
Acorn activists outside the entrance of aerospace and defence manufacturer Meggitt in Birmingham
THREE British arms firms supplying Israel with weapons were blockaded today when activists, local community members and tenants’ union Acorn went into action in defence of Gaza.
Acorn is active in towns and cities across Britain fighting on issues such as tenants’ rights, public transport and the cost-of-profits crisis.
Activists targeted weapons manufacturers in Birmingham, Bristol and Leeds today.
In Birmingham, the entrances to aerospace and defence manufacturer Meggitt were blocked; in Bristol, protesters turned away workers at defence and security manufacturer Leonardo; and in Leeds, the offices of BAE System were blockaded.
All three firms manufacture or provide components and systems for military aircraft being used in the bombardment of Gaza.
Acorn chairwoman Chelsea Phillips said: “Acorn will not stand by while entire communities are obliterated while ordinary people just like us are murdered in their tens of thousands by the Israeli government with the support of our government and using horrific weapons of war built by British companies.
Palestinians walk by a damaged building following an Israeli army attack on Jenin refugee camp, West Bank, Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023
AT LEAST eight Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank on Saturday, Palestine’s Health Ministry said yesterday.
Five people were killed in the Jenin refugee camp and three more in other parts of the occupied territory even as Israel and Hamas observed a truce in Gaza for ongoing prisoner-hostage swaps.
An Israeli Defence Forces statement said troops entered Jenin to make arrests connected to the killing of an Israeli father and son at a car wash earlier in the year, and that the slain were “militants.” It also claimed to be using engineering equipment to uncover buried explosive devices in response to Palestinian accusations that military bulldozers were destroying infrastructure.
Since Hamas’s attack from Gaza on October 7, Israel has launched a wave of repressive violence in the West Bank alongside its war on Gaza, which has killed over 14,000 people.
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed by soldiers and scores by settler violence, with Israeli settlers leafleting Palestinian villages warning of a “second Nakba” (the Arab term for the forcible expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes when Israel was established in 1948). Thousands of Palestinians have also been arrested, doubling the number held in Israeli jails in a few weeks.
Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr
The request would remove most conditions on Israel’s use of a U.S. weapons stash, including a requirement that it only use surplus or obsolete weapons and a cap on how much the U.S. can spend resupplying the stash.
President Joe Biden has requested that Congress to lift most of the restrictions on Israel’s access to a U.S. stockpile of weapons in the country, The Intercept reported Saturday.
The request came in the administration’s supplemental budget request to the U.S. Senate, sent October 20. It concerns the War Reserve Stockpile Allies-Israel (WRSA-I) that the U.S. has stored in Israel since the 1980s for its own use in a potential conflict in the region. The U.S. allows Israel to access the stockpile under certain conditions, but Biden’s request would remove most of these conditions, including a requirement that Israel only use surplus or obsolete weapons and a cap on how much the U.S. can spend resupplying the stash.
“The President’s emergency supplemental funding request would essentially create a free-flowing pipeline to provide any defense articles to Israel by the simple act of placing them in the WRSA-I stockpile, or other stockpiles intended for Israel,” Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned over U.S. arm transfers to Israel in the midst of its bombardment of Gaza, told The Intercept.
“The Biden administration’s supplemental budget request would further undermine oversight and accountability even as U.S. support enables an Israeli campaign that has killed thousands of children.”
The news comes in the midst of a four-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which has given journalists and humanitarian organizations a moment to assess the extent of the death and destruction unleashed by Israel in Gaza since October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking around 240 hostages. In retaliation, the Israeli military has killed more than 14,800 people in Gaza, around 10,000 of them women and children. That means the number of women and children killed in Gaza in less than two months is more than double the number confirmed killed in Ukraine in two years of fighting with Russia, The New York Times concluded Saturday. One of the reasons for the high civilian toll, the Times said, is Israel’s use of 2,000-pound, U.S.-made bombs in a densely populated Gaza Strip.
Despite this, Biden’s request would allow Israel to access all weapons from the WRSA-I, not just excess or obsolete ones, something that could hurt U.S. preparedness, Paul told The Intercept. The request would also remove a requirement that Israel provide concessions to the U.S. in exchange for accessing the weapons, lift the $200 million per year restocking cap, and shorten a requirement that the government inform Congress 30 days ahead of a weapons transfer under “extraordinary” circumstances.
“The Biden administration’s supplemental budget request would further undermine oversight and accountability even as U.S. support enables an Israeli campaign that has killed thousands of children,” John Ramming Chappell, a legal fellow with the Center for Civilians in Conflict, told The Intercept.
The U.S. typically provides Israel with $3.8 billion in military aid every year, more than it sends to any other nation, according to Al Jazeera. The House has already approved additional aid this year to the tune of $14.3 billion.
The Intercept story came the day after Biden seemed open to the idea of putting conditions on military aid to Israel while answering questions from reporters in Nantucket.
“I think that’s a worthwhile thought, but I don’t think if I started off with that we would have gotten where we are today,” Biden said, as HuffPost reported. “We have to take this a piece at a time.”
A reporter asked Biden his thoughts on calls to condition U.S. aid to Israel as a way to halt Israel's invasion of Gaza.
"I think that's a worthwhile thought, but I don't think if I started off with that we would have gotten where we are today." pic.twitter.com/Ur8pwN0qjX
On the campaign trail in 2020, Biden said the idea of putting conditions on aid to Israel was “absolutely outrageous.” But the administration’s seemingly unconditional support for Israel as it carried out its siege, bombardment, and invasion of Gaza has led to backlash among progressives, who have marched for a cease-fire and carried out direct actions in several major cities. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on November 15 found that 68% of the U.S. public backed a cease-fire.
In an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan did not rule out the idea that Biden would sign legislation putting conditions on military aid to Israel, though he said currently what was proving effective was behind-doors diplomacy with Israel and Arab nations.
“He is going to continue to focus on what is going to generate results,” Sullivan said.
