A Youth Demand welcome talk and a number of houses were raided last night and this morning. Nine people, including one attending their first meeting and a journalist were arrested.
Over 30 Metropolitan Police officers raided the Youth Demand Welcome Talk at the Quaker Meeting House in Westminster at 7.30p.m. yesterday. Six arrests were made including one attending their first ever welcome talk and a journalist. Three people were released in the early hours of the morning while three remain in custody. Police said that the arrests were for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
In a separate incident at around 8:00a.m. this morning Youth Demand supporter Eddie Whittingham was arrested at his house in Exeter but was released without charge. Two other supporters were arrested at unknown locations. The situation is ongoing.
The Welcome Talk is an opportunity to share information about the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank and about the mass killing that is being imposed on vulnerable people across the globe as a result of the accelerating climate crisis. It is also an opportunity to share plans for non-violent civil resistance actions to take place in April.
One of those arrested last night and released this morning was Ella Grace-Taylor, 20, an actor musician student said:
“At this point, it couldn’t be clearer that we are in a police state. Our politicians will stand by as police engage in mass arrests and imprisonment of anyone who speaks out against the government for being responsible for genocide. By arming Israel and refusing to call what is happening a genocide, they are perpetrating mass slaughter. Hundreds of children were killed in Palestine in the last week. We won’t stop saying it. We won’t be intimidated.”
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
“It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right. There are thousands of young people who are horrified by what the government is doing to facilitate genocide and who know that they have been betrayed as their future is fucked. We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April. Sign up for action at youthdemand.org “
Youth Demand campaign on the climate crisis and Israeli genocide.
Declassified UK Exclusive: New study reveals the scale of British intelligence gathering above Gaza, raising fears of complicity in Israeli war crimes
The Royal Air Force (RAF) has conducted at least 518 surveillance flights around Gaza since December 2023, an investigation by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) for Declassified UK has found.
The flights, carried out by 14 Squadron’s Shadow R1 aircraft from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, have been shrouded in secrecy, raising concerns about whether British intelligence has played a role in Israeli military operations that have resulted in mass civilian casualties in Gaza.
These revelations come as Israel faces allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC), with warrants issued for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
The UK government insists that the flights are purely for hostage recovery, but the lack of transparency has done little to allay suspicions that the intelligence gathered may be facilitating Israeli attacks.
Surveillance sorties continued during and after the ceasefire, despite Israel’s renewed bombing of Gaza killing hundreds of children.
Over 500 missions in 15 months
AOAV’s analysis of flight-tracking data shows that between 3 December 2023 and 27 March 2025, the RAF carried out at least 518 Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) flights over or close to Gaza’s airspace.
Both Labour and Conservative governments have enacted the policy, with at least 215 flights taking place during Keir Starmer’s tenure as prime minister and 303 under Rishi Sunak’s administration.
The frequency of flights remained high throughout 2024, with some months seeing as many as 49 sorties. The missions have typically lasted up to six hours, with the longest flight recorded at seven hours and four minutes.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
The Labour government has been making it increasingly difficult to organise the National Palestine marches, now they are using the draconian Public Order Act in an attempt to intimidate us.
It’s a truism to say governments don’t like protest, and after 18 months of Palestine demonstrations ours is making its distaste for mass mobilisation abundantly clear. It’s using the Met police as its enforcer and the BBC as its propaganda tool.
Smearing protesters as anti-semitic hate marchers failed to have any impact on the size or frequency of the demonstrations, so the government has resorted to the using the Public Order Act against the march organisers and is placing ever more restrictive exclusion orders on the protests.
Negotiations between organisers and the police have become increasingly arduous as time after time conditions are changed at late notice, restrictions are imposed for no justifiable reason other than to deter and confuse protesters and make organising more difficult. And now the police have charged and questioned under caution various members of the movement’s leadership, alongside some of its high profile supporters.
In this Orwellian world, 87 year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor, Stephen Kapos, was called in for questioning by the Met. Refusing to be cowed Kapos made clear that it is vital for us all to continue to protest for Palestine and speak out against our own government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Khalid Abdalla, actor and activist, was also called in by the Met for questioning. In a statement made as he approached Charring Cross police station in central London he said he was both ‘incredibly sad’ but also ‘proud’ to attend his police interview. Sad because of what it says about the British state’s intension to subjugate the movement, proud to be on the right side of history.
Alex Kenny, Chair of StW, Lindsey German, StW Convenor, Andrew Murray, StW Deputy President and Sophie Bolt, General Secretary of CND, were all interviewed under caution this week.
Chris Nineham (StW) and Ben Jamal, Director of PSC have been charged under the Public Order Act and are awaiting trial.
The police hope that through a duel process of intimidating the movement’s leaders and imposing large restriction zones London marches will become confined to ever smaller areas and routes, especially on Saturdays, when it is becoming almost impossible to march through the centre of the city.
Heavily lobbied by Israeli zionists, including the Chief Rabbi, organisers have been told that protesters cannot march in the vicinity of a synagogue on Saturdays, regardless than there has been no reported incidents of intimidation at synagogues or indeed of Jewish people on the marches, and regardless that thousands of marchers themselves are Jewish. When the march organisers requested to also meet with Mark Rowley, the head of the Met Police, they were met with silence.
The police have even suggested we stop marching altogether, saying the marches have been going on too long. No acknowledgement that it’s the war on Gaza that has been going on for too long, or that it’s time for the genocide to stop.
Democratic governments are expected to facilitate demonstrations, whether they like it or not. Demonstrating is how our rights are won, and in this country we have a long and proud history of demonstrations. The right to protest is a fundamental part of living in a democracy. When opposition to government policy is significant, protest poses a challenge to the ruling elite, and the bigger the protest the bigger that challenge.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Hossam Shabat is seen reporting from northern Gaza. He was killed in an alleged targeted strike by Israel on March 24, 2025. (Photo: Drop Site News)
“His ability to cover one of the most brutal military campaigns in recent history was almost beyond comprehension,” said a colleague of Hossam Shabat.
Colleagues of Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat on Monday posted the Palestinian reporter’s own words on social media after he was killed in what was reportedly a targeted attack by U.S.-backed Israeli forces in northern Gaza.
“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed—most likely targeted—by the Israeli occupation forces,” said Shabat in the statement before his death. “When this all began, I was only 21 years old—a college student with dreams like anyone else. For past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury.”
Shabat had been reporting for Al Jazeera Mubasher on the Israeli assault on Gaza that began in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack, documenting the destruction of northern Gaza and the impact of Israel’s blockade and attacks on the people there.
Witnesses told Al Jazeera that Shabat’s car had been targeted in Beit Lahiya, and his colleague at the network, Tareq Abu Azzoum, reported the Israeli forces carried out the strike without “any prior warning.”
Also on Monday, an Israeli airstrike killed Palestine Today journalist Mohammad Mansour, as well as his wife and son. They were killed in their home in Khan Younis, Abu Azzoum reported.
Mansour and Shabat’s deaths bring the number of journalists who have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza to 208, according toMiddle East Eye.
British journalist Owen Jones said Shabat’s work “was instrumental in understanding the depravity of Israel’s genocide. That’s why Israel killed him.”
The Israeli state just murdered Palestinian journalist @HossamShabat.
One of the finest journalists on earth, his courageous work was instrumental in understanding the depravity of Israel’s genocide.
The Committee to Protect Journalists called for an independent investigation into whether Shabat and Mansour were deliberately targeted.
“The deliberate and targeted killing of a journalist, of a civilian, is a war crime,” Jodie Ginsberg, the group’s chief executive, told Al Jazeera.
Drop Site News, where Shabat was a contributing reporter on the bombardment of Gaza, said it “holds Israel and the U.S. responsible for killing Hossam.”
In October 2024, the Israel Defense Forces included Shabat and five other Palestinian reporters on a hit list, according to Drop Site.
“Hossam regularly received death threats by call and text,” said the outlet. “What we have witnessed for nearly a year and a half is the Israeli military engaging in a systematic campaign to kill Palestinian journalists, as well as members of their families.”
Shabat had filed a story for Drop Site just hours before he was killed about “Israel’s resumption of its scorched-earth bombing of Gaza last week that killed over 400 people, including nearly 200 children in a matter of hours.”
As Drop Sitepublished Shabat’s final dispatch, journalist and editor Sharif Abdel Kouddous wrote that he “was one of a handful of reporters who remained in northern Gaza through Israel’s genocidal war.”
“His ability to cover one of the most brutal military campaigns in recent history was almost beyond comprehension,” wrote Kouddous. “He bore witness to untold death and suffering on an almost daily basis for 17 months. He was displaced over 20 times. He was often hungry. He buried many of his journalist colleagues. In November, he was wounded in an Israeli airstrike. I still can’t believe I am referring to him in the past tense. Israel obliterates the present.”
In his final article, Shabat wrote about the attacks on numerous families in northern Gaza as Israel resumed its assault, abandoning a cease-fire that took effect in January:
Screams filled the air while everyone stood helpless. My tears didn’t stop. The scenes were more than any human being could bear. The ambulances were filled with corpses, their bodies and limbs piled on top and intertwined with one another. We could no longer distinguish between children and men, between the injured and the dead.
At Al-Andalus Hospital the scene was even more painful. The hospital was filled with martyrs. Mothers bid silent farewells to their children. Medical staff worked in horrific conditions, trying to treat the injured with only the most basic means available. It was an impossible situation with massive numbers of dead and wounded being brought in at a terrifying rate.
Israel’s aggression continues. Massacre after massacre, leaving only the screams of mothers in its wake and the dreams of children that have turned to ash. There is no justification for this. Everything is being crushed: the lives of innocent people, their dignity, and their hopes for a better future.
Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site, posted on social media a video of Shabat talking with a Palestinian girl about her goal of becoming a journalist.
Shabat concluded his final message to readers by saying he continued covering the assault on northern Gaza “because I believe in the Palestinian cause.”
“I ask you now: Do not stop speaking about Gaza,” wrote Shabat. “Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free.”
Activists protest against insurance companies underwriting the arms trade, migrant detention facilities and climate destruction, March 25, 2025
INSURANCE firms complicit in climate disaster, human rights abuses and Israel’s genocide in Gaza were stormed by protesters as marches were held across the country today.
Two were arrested for climbing one of the Corinthian columns in front of the Royal Exchange in the City of London, dropping a banner bearing the legend “Boycott.”
Other protesters “crashed” insurers’ offices and occupied foyers as marches took place in city centres as part of the Boycott Bloody Insurance (BBI) campaign.
Activists targeted the offices of Aviva, AIG, Allianz and Axa for investing more £1.3 billion in companies supplying military equipment used by Israel since October 7 2023.
Protests took place in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Lancaster, Guildford, Blackburn and Preston.
Groups involved in the protests include Coal Action Network, Palestine Youth Movement (PYM), Parents 4 Palestine, Energy Embargo for Palestine, Tipping Point UK, Youth Front for Palestine and Axe Drax.
Andrew Taylor of BBI said: “Insurers underwrite weapons, detention centres and fossil fuels, causing environmental destruction, human rights abuses and genocide.
“We are calling on organisations across the UK to boycott deadly insurance companies.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWREOrcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
