Violence on the streets on Jerusalem Day – again

JVL Introduction

There are so many red flags in this article highlighting so much that is wrong with the annual, “state funded” march to “celebrate” the capture of East Jerusalem in 1967. There is the fact that the violence, the presence of government ministers, the horrendous chants “Without a Nakba, there is no victory”, “Death to Arabs” and “Jerusalem 1967, Gaza 2025″are not new. The article notes that, if anything, policing was lighter than usual.

In 2017, an opinion piece written by someone avowedly pro Israel, entitled “Chief Rabbi and Lord Sacks should not back this march”was published in Jewish News and The Times of Israel. It seemed staggering to many of us that the former and current UK Chief Rabbis would actually participate in this march but they did. While Rabbi Mirvis stayed away this year, the atmosphere and the chants were very similar to earlier ones.

This year’s march went ahead in the context of a genocidal pulverisation of the people in Gaza and ethnic cleansing there and in the northern West Bank and much of Area C as well. This year, as well as Ben Gvir, Yulia Malinovsky, one of the legislators behind an Israeli law that banned UNRWA, forcefully entered the UNRWA compound, climbing its main gate in view of Israeli police. (reported by France 24 )

How can this be allowed to happen, facilitated and funded by the State that claims to be a democracy?

LL

This article was originally published by The Guardian on Mon 26 May 2025. Read the original here.