British Protesters gather outside the Israeli embassy in London to support Sheikh Jarrah
British Protesters gather outside the Israeli embassy in London to support Sheikh Jarrah
Friday saw hundreds of protestors gathered outside the Israeli embassy in London, chanting for Palestine’s freedom and calling for an end to Israel’s ethnic cleansing acts in the Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
Protesters demanded their voices be heard by the British government and the whole world, as they called for forcing Israel to comply with international law and stop its crimes against the Palestinian people in Sheikh Jarrah, and elsewhere within Palestine.
Salhiyeh family in Sheikh Jarrah
The Pro-Palestine demonstration was organized by the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB), in collaboration with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA), Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), Stop the War Coalition, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
Demonstrators stood outside the Israeli embassy to protest the recent Israeli raid on the Salhiyeh’s family house in Sheikh Jarrah; a brutal attack which resulted in many injuries and arrests among the family members.
Even though the family courageously persisted the threat of expropriation for years, Israeli soldiers eventually stormed the house at 3 AM, Wednesday January 19, and had it completely demolished by dawn.
Heartbreaking scenes of Israeli forces demolishing the Salhiye family’s home in Sheikh Jarrah.
I visited this area when I went to Palestine and saw the daily brutality of the Israeli occupation.
This is why we must keep demanding justice for Palestine.pic.twitter.com/rm9XOMfLyJ
— Richard Burgon MP (@RichardBurgon) January 19, 2022
The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) has since brought the Salhiyeh case to the International Criminal Court, in hopes of bringing justice to the family.
“The extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly,’ amounts to a grave breach of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and is considered a war crime according to the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” the centre’s lawsuit states.
Loud voices and Loud Hearts
Alongside the heartfelt chanting, the protest saw a number of fervent and impassioned speeches regarding the Palestinian cause and the terror of the Israeli state.
British Protesters gather outside the Israeli embassy in London to support Sheikh Jarrah (Salem Nusseibah)Many stressed the importance of the continuous action against the Israeli efforts to erase the true identity of Palestine and its villages. “What we are seeing today is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in East Jerusalem,” says PFB spokesman Salem Nusseibah. “Jerusalem will always remain Arab, despite the ploys and the plots.”
The chair of the PSC Kamel Hawwash was able to bring the crowd even closer to the scene in Sheikh Jarrah. “One of the homes threatened in Sheikh Jarrah is my cousin’s, so it is a very personal issue to me,” he addressed the protestors. “My cousin’s son Mourad Aqiyah has also been detained in prison without charge.”
Activist Mustafa Al-Dabbagh also took up the microphone to explain that Israel wanted protests to commence in the beginning in order to let the anger die down quickly. But then, “when the cameras left, and the coverage slowed down, they could return to the ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jarrah,” as he put it. (Ambien)
The neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah garnered international attention in May 2021, resulting in some of the biggest Palestinian protests all around the world. The wildly unreported Palestinian cause was finally making its way into headlines and Twitter trends.
#SaveSheikhJarrah pic.twitter.com/kLIHBkzXPq
— Palestinian Forum in Britain (@PalForumUk) January 21, 2022
Some parts of the world may have felt contented with their one-and-done protests, as the British Consul General felt regarding his solidarity visit to Sheikh Jarrah.
Nonetheless, The London protest on Friday shows that many individuals will never let the flame die down. Not until Palestine is free once more.
# British Protesters gather outside the Israeli embassy in London to support Sheikh Jarrah
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