Remembering October 7th, Marching on October 10th.
As the anniversary of 7th October 2023 approaches, many will focus on the loss of life in Israel and ignore what has happened to the Palestinian people before and since. We cannot do that. For us every life and every death is of equal value. So, we mourn all lives taken on that day, recognise the terror and anguish experienced by Israeli families and communities and also the war crimes by Palestinian militants against civilians. But remembering 7th October requires us to understand the horrors within decades of dispossession of Palestinians, settler-colonial rule, military occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure, blockade, bombardment, collective punishment and starvation. The roots of 7th October stretch back at least as far as the British Mandate period of the 1920s and the political decisions that reshaped Palestine then and at the formation of the Israeli state.
We also mourn every single one of the more than 73,000 recorded Palestinian deaths in Gaza, the untold number dying as a result of the destruction and collective privation, the thousands in Lebanon and those killed in the West Bank since October 7th. We insist that the grief of families in Israel and their extended families and supporters in the diaspora, must not be used to erase context, silence Palestinians, or diminish the grief of the families of those killed by Israel. Nor must Israeli grief be used to hide the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.
This genocide in Gaza has been confirmed in numerous commissions and reports by the vast majority of genocide scholars and human rights organisations, both inside Israel and around the world as well as the United Nations. We abhor the UK government’s complicity in the genocide and its failure to name it. Denial of genocide obscures its reality and enables its continuation.
Jewish Voice for Liberation asks our members to march with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in London on October 10th for the International Day for Palestine to mark three years of genocide, and call for a complete cessation of arms to Israel and comprehensive sanctions. It is because we fiercely oppose racism and inhumanity, that we feel obliged to march against oppression and genocide of Palestinians. We will march for Palestinian rights, and for a future in which all people between the river and the sea can live with equality, dignity, safety and freedom.
Here is the route for the march:
The Jewish Bloc will be assembling
by the William Tyndale statue in Victoria Embankment Gardens SW1A 2ET
from 12 noon
William Tyndale statue – Google Maps
Join us, bring your flags and banners and your loud loud voices
I feel a good turnout for the 10th Oct march matters not only for the reasons given (which I share).
Showing the massive UK public support for an end to Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians and its unlawful occupation of their land supports Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband in the brave efforts they’re making to switch the new government’s policies. These two might also be largely responsible for creating the agreement between 12 states (France, Canada, etc) to co-operate in stopping Israel’s E1 settlement plans.
The Miliband / Burnham changes are long overdue and not on the scale necessary but as a first step they’re very welcome and will be hard fought for, in cabinet and elsewhere.
Have any of the other states/countries actually done anything yet and, if so, did they also get lots of flak etc from Israel and the likes of Huckabee?