Join the Jewish Bloc on Saturday’s Gaza demo, 11th November – update
Join us on the Jewish Bloc
We will be meeting at the Simon Bolivar statue in Belgrave Square, SW1X 8DZ at 11.30am. We will have Jewish Bloc posters and leaflets as well as banners and posters individuals bring from their organisations or on their own behalf.
The organisers have announced:
“The march assembles in Park Lane at 12 noon and will set off around 12.45pm. We urge people to use Bond Street, Lancaster Gate and Hyde Park Corner stations as well as Marble Arch station to avoid congestion.
We will march past Victoria, over Vauxhall Bridge and past the US embassy to a stage further down Nine Elm’s Lane.
This is not a usual end point but we felt it was important to protest at the US embassy and to respect the Armistice commemorations, by ensuring we were not marching anywhere near Whitehall.”
The march will be coming down Park Lane and we intend to join it at Hyde Park Corner.
Here is the text of the leaflet we will be handing out:
What is the Jewish Bloc?
A coalition of Jewish groups joining together as a collective voice in opposition to the State of Israel’s war on Palestinians, the ensuing genocide in Gaza, and the UK Government’s complicity in war crimes.
Why are we here?
• To join the hundreds of thousands mobilising for the freedom of the Palestinian people, and for a better future for everyone living in Palestine and Israel.
• Because the Jewish experience of racism and our liberatory traditions impel us always to fight against oppression, and always to act in solidarity with the oppressed.
• Because the people who define themselves as our community “leaders” are not here, andare lining up in support of an enormous historic injustice. They prioritise defence of the Israeli government and the criminal actions of its military in Gaza and the West Bank, instead of bringing communities here together against racism.
• Because we are anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and anti-apartheid. We support those in Israel who oppose Netanyahu’s government with its self-declared fascists, misogynists and homophobes.
• To challenge the lie that solidarity marches make our cities unsafe for Jews. We have been welcomed here with friendship and warmth. We do not look to Israel to make us safe, we look instead to solidarity. We reject attempts to divide us from others who are fighting oppression.
As a Jewish Bloc we say loudly to those who stand in the way of freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians and Jews everywhere: “Not In Our Name!”
Please note severe tube disruptions on the day – see below.
Disruptions to the tube: correct at date of publication 9 November 2023
The Circle, District, Hammersmith & City, Jubilee and Metropolitan (Harrow-on-the-Hill to Aldgate) lines will not be running until 15:00
Please check Transport for London for any updates.
I’m not Jewish but I’m full of admiration for you and all the Jewish people in the UK and around the world who are standing up and saying “Not in our Name” at this moment in time. You have great moral courage and I wish you all the best. I will join your bloc in solidarity on the march this Saturday.
One democratic state from the River to the Sea. Equal votes for all. End apartheid measures that suppress Palestinian voices and rights.
My marching days are over (probably), anno domini you know … But I’m with you in spirit and in solidarity. I was sort of heartened in a weird kind of way recently when I heard Norman Finkelstein saying he’d given up on the Israel/Palestine issue and stopped researching and writing on it in 2020. My only justification to mention myself in the same paragraph as Dr F is that I too had given up and, to my discredit I now say, abandoned the Palestinians. I had other things to do with my time because I simply thought the whole thing was a lost cause: the world had forsaken and all but forgotten the Palestinians, it seemed, as it had once left the European Jews to their fate in the Holocaust.
And then came Israel’s horrific, draconian response to the Hamas breakout from that concentration camp (currently being turned with necrophiliac zeal into a death camp) and it begins to look as if everything’s been thrown up in the air and, wretched as their plight now is, for the Palestinians perhaps something has opened up by way of restitution, merely a tincture of a dose of hope so far, but hope nonetheless and so the world has a chance to start all over, and get it right this time.
And to get it right not only for the Palestinians but perhaps (although surely it will take a long time to forgive, if ever) for Israelis too, and even more importantly to rescue the good name of Jews everywhere sadly so besmirched by the state that tries to claim it acts in the name and on behalf of all Jews everywhere. I hope that doesn’t sound too grandiloquent. Or naively utopian.
Excellent, far too far for me to come but I am so proud that our true Jewish voice will be seen. It is time to fully implement the 1947 UN resolution that called for the creation of a Palestinian State alongside Israel; though I would hope it time (not in my lifetime) that they will see the value of re-unification.
I admire your strength and courage and just wish that you and other groups who support Palestinians where given the coverage in the msm that you deserve.
I agree with what you say and am relieved to learn about you as a Jew living in Bideford in North Devon. I would like to join in with future protests as I am abhorrent about the actions of Israel in this war. It is dreadful!