PRESSURE is mounting on the Metropolitan Police to lift its ban on Saturday’s Palestine protest.

Anger continued to grow at the police decision to stop demonstrators going anywhere near BBC headquarters for their protest against the broadcasters’ pro-Israel bias throughout the Gaza genocide.

“We will march,” the coalition organising the demonstration reaffirms today, their position backed by a wave of support from public figures and Jewish representatives.

The police have decreed that Saturday’s march can neither begin nor conclude at the corporation’s headquarters because of the proximity of a synagogue.

“Hundreds of political, social and cultural figures have voiced their support for the right to demonstrate in support of Palestine after substantial evidence emerged that the BBC is failing to uphold its own editorial guidelines in the reporting of Israel’s actions,” the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) said.

PSC is part of the coalition which has organised more than two dozen national protests since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October 2023. 

It includes Stop the War, CND, Friends of al-Aqsa, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Palestinian Forum in Britain.

They point out that the synagogue is not on the route of the march and that there have been no instances of any attempt to disrupt or harass either synagogues or worshippers at any previous protest.

A letter organised by the Jewish bloc, part of every demonstration, has attracted more than 700 signatures from members of the Jewish community, calling on the Met to drop its ban.

A group of Holocaust survivors and their descendants have also written a public letter in support of the march.

PSC director Ben Jamal said: “Hundreds of thousands of people wish to continue to protest at our government’s ongoing complicity with Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.

“They also wish to protest at the complicity of the BBC, which has failed to report the facts of this genocide, as revealed in recent investigations.

“There are no legitimate grounds for the police to impede our proposal to march from Whitehall to the BBC, finishing with a rally outside its HQ.

“We call upon the Met Police to make clear they will drop any conditions which will deny the right to protest as planned.”

The BBC failed to respond to requests for comment on its coverage, including its complete failure to report on the row over the protest planned against it.