BRITAIN is “not just complicit, but an active participant” in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, activists said today during a rally by British Jews against the crackdown on Palestine solidarity protests.
 
Dozens of activists, Holocaust descendants and campaigners gathered outside Downing Street to condemn the government’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation and the restrictions on protests imposed under the guise of protecting the rights of Jewish people.

Speeches were delivered, songs sung and poems read out — including some written by Palestinian children.

A letter addressed to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was handed in, signed by 300 leading Jewish figures. 

Speaking at the rally, former South African MP and anti-arms campaigner Andrew Feinstein called his constituent MP, the Prime Minister’s actions “shameful.”

“The reality is that Britain, under Keir Starmer’s government, is not just complicit in a genocide — it is an active participant in that genocide,” he said. 

“The RAF now, through an American leasing company, is flying more spy flights over Gaza than the Israeli Air Force itself. 

“That is not complicity, that is active participation, and this is being done in our names, using our tax pounds.”

Mr Feinstein drew parallels to the South African apartheid struggle, adding: “While Margaret Thatcher despicably described my former boss, Nelson Mandela, as a terrorist, no organisation struggling against the apartheid system was ever prescribed [or] legally identified as a terrorist organisation. But Keir Starmer has done that.

“Those of us who’ve lived under him as our MP for over 10 years know that he is instinctively undemocratic and authoritarian. 

“He is now limiting our rights across Britain to freedom of action, freedom of political thought, freedom of speech.”

Direct action is “an absolutely crucial peaceful, non-violent tool” in struggles throughout history, he added, saying: “It is despicable that this form of protest has effectively been banned in this country.

“And it is for this reason that we as Jews — Holocaust survivors among us, [and] many of us, descendants of Holocaust survivors — are standing opposite Keir Starmer’s office today and saying: ‘This is unacceptable, not in our name’.”

He highlighted growing support for Palestine in Britain and mounting opposition to Israel’s actions and said that last week’s judicial review decision allowing Palestine Action to challenge its proscription was “a big blow” to Ms Cooper and the government. 

“Their purpose in proscribing Palestine Action was to intimidate all protest and to delegitimise any direct action or protest against the military supply chain,” he told the rally.

“I don’t believe we should let the police and politicians attempt to suppress the right to protest unchallenged.”

He called on the public to join the 30th national demonstration for Palestine in London on Saturday August 9.