by matttbastard
The Beeb reports on Today’s pro-Israel PR stunt “peace rally” in London:
Organisers said they wanted people in Gaza and Israel to live in peace, but argued that Palestinians must accept some responsibility for the conflict.
Demonstrators told the BBC they felt the rocket hits and losses Israel had suffered had been downplayed.
Chief Rabbi Dr Sir Jonathan Sacks said he wanted Hamas to “say yes to peace”.
[…]
Rabbi Sacks told the crowd: “All it took to avoid this suffering was for Hamas to stop firing rockets on Israeli citizens.
[…]
Henry Grunwald, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, addressed the crowd saying: “We are here because we believe in peace, because we believe in life, and because we want peace in life.
“The events of the past two weeks have not been a war on the people of Gaza but war on the people using them as human shields.”
Shorter Sacks and Grunwald:
“Hey, Gazans — stop hitting yourselves!”
Christ on a cockney wideboy. Orwell himself couldn’t have envisioned a more warped event in his wildest dreams. Maybe up really is down.
bastard.logic 
This doesn’t pertain to this blog, but I find Blogging Tories spinning the two sides of the conflict between the Israelis and Hamas. Anyone who is not a support of Israel is a supporter of Hamas. Let’s turn the table and declare all supporters of Israeli aggression “supporters of the extemist groups, Kach and Kahane Chai.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kach_and_Kahane_Chai
LikeLike
A short report can be found here. It would seem that not many people attended … compared to the one in support of Gaza, which apparently is being downplayed by the BBC.
LikeLike
A nice round-up of yesterday’s worldwide demonstrations here:
http://onewatchman.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/more-gaza-solidarity-protests-against-israel-in-canada-and-worldwide-jan-10-2009/
Gene, I had heard that there were some 200,000 protesters in London and went to the BBC news feed to catch the details. The only related story they had was of some small community protest with only a couple of hundred in attendance.
Here it is:
Gaza protest march through city
Deomnstrators in Southampton
Demonstrators called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hampshire/7822056.stm
How ridiculous is that! Nothing about the hundreds of thousands in London?
On a more positive note, here is what I would call a hard hitting interview:
http://www.exciteddelirium.ca/2009/01/11/israeli-spokesman-gets-shut-up-by-alex-thomson/
Bravo Mark Thompson!
LikeLike
It seems that there is quite the social solidarity movement building in support of the people of Gaza, a kind of mobilization on a scale that I haven’t seen before (or at least in recent memory) re: Palestine.
I hope that this sets the stage for a larger worldwide campaign focused on ending the Israeli occupation/blockade/settlements etc., and not just a one-off affair. After the street protests, we need to turn our attention to challenging the power structures and prevailing ideologies that currently inhabit Washington, Ottawa, and Tel Aviv.
That, unfortunately, is a much longer and more rigorously complicated action.
LikeLike
Things like this are why I have the BBC’s feed bookmarked under the name “Bully-Boy Channel”…
LikeLike