15 January 2025

London police under fire for banning pro-Palestine march outside BBC

The UK’s pro-Palestinian groups have condemned London’s Metropolitan police for preventing a pro-Palestine rally outside the BBC headquarters from going ahead as scheduled on January 18. Six pro-Palestinian groups organizing the national Palestine marches, and supported by at least 150 high-profile individuals and organizations, including Liberty, Amnesty International UK, and Greenpeace, took the Metropolitan to task. In a joint statement issued on Friday, they said the agency is misusing public order powers to shield the BBC from public scrutiny over fake news published about the ongoing Israeli genocidal war against the Gaza Strip. The BBC’s coverage of Gaza has failed to portray Palestinian suffering adequately, according to the protest organizers who view the marches as an important opportunity to hold the British broadcasters accountable for their pro-Israeli bias. “The route for the march was confirmed with the police nearly two months ago and as agreed with them, was publicly announced on November 30 … With just over a week to go, the Metropolitan Police is reneging on the agreement and has stated its intention to prevent the protest from going ahead as planned. “The BBC is a major institution – it is a publicly-funded state broadcaster and is rightly accountable to the public. The police should not be misusing public order powers to shield the BBC from democratic scrutiny,” the statement said. The statement was signed by dozens of British parliamentarians, and cultural figures, including actors, academics and trade union activists. Labour, Independent, Green, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fein and SNP lawmakers signed the statement. Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, musician Brian Eno, and actors Mark Rylance and Maxine Peake were among the signatories of the statement, in addition to PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote, RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch, the NEU’s Daniel Kebede, FBU leader Matt Wrack, and trade union leader Dave Ward. The statement condemned attempts to link the pro-Palestinian protests to anti-Jewish sentiment as “false and dangerous”. Right-wing news channels and right-wing British publications have been making efforts to portray pro-Palestinian protesters as anti-Semitic, according to a study finding significant distortions in the Western coverage of the Gaza war. The study reports pro-Palestinian voices facing misrepresentation and vilification by UK media outlets, with allegations of anti-Semitism and terrorism applied to discredit legitimate advocacy efforts. “Muslim opposition to Israel has been framed as anti-Semitic by some publications and commentators,” the study has said. Since October 2023, the Israeli regime forces have cut off water, food, medicine, and electricity to Gaza while pounding the blockaded Palestinians from the air, ground, and sea, relentlessly targeting homes, tents and hospitals. According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 46,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023.

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Israeli historian Ilan Pappe: ‘This is the last phase of Zionism’

Copenhagen, Denmark – On a freezing Saturday morning in Copenhagen, Ilan Pappe warmed up in a cinema hall, chatting and joking in fluent Arabic with one of the organisers of a conference he was soon to address between sips of black coffee from a paper cup. Unlike other Israelis, Pappe said, he learned the language “of the colonised” by spending time in Palestine, surrounding himself with Palestinian friends, and taking formal Arabic lessons. Hundreds of academics, officials, international rights activists and everyday Danes aghast at Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza attended the event in the Danish capital, hosted by the European Palestinian Network. The group was founded recently, and its members include Danes of Palestinian heritage. Pappe later told the audience that since the outbreak of Israel’s latest war on Gaza, he has been shocked by Europe’s response. “I share with a lot of people a surprise at the European position,” he said on stage. “Europe, that claims to be a model of civilisation, ignored the most televised genocide of modern times.” On the sidelines, Al Jazeera interviewed 70-year-old Pappe, a leading Israeli historian, author and professor who has spent much of his life fighting for Palestinian rights. We asked him about Zionism, solidarity, and what he thinks a shifting American political landscape means for Gaza. Al Jazeera: You have long said that the tools of Zionism, the nationalist, political ideology that called for the creation of a Jewish state, included capturing land and evictions. For the past 15 months, Gaza has endured daily mass killings. What stage of Zionism are we witnessing? Ilan Pappe: We are in a state that one can define as neo-Zionist. The old values of Zionism are now more extreme, [in] far more aggressive form than they were before, trying to achieve in a short time what the previous generation of Zionists were trying to achieve in [a] much longer, more, incremental, gradual way. This is an attempt by a new leadership of Zionism to complete the work that they started in 1948, namely of taking over officially the whole of historical Palestine and getting rid of as many Palestinians as possible and in the same process, and [this is] something new, creating a new Israeli empire that is either feared or respected by its neighbours – and therefore can even expand territorially beyond the borders of mandatory or historical Palestine. Historically, I’m willing to say with some caution that this is the last phase of Zionism. Historically, such developments in ideological movements, whether they are colonials or empires, it’s usually the final chapter [that is] the ruthless one, the most ambitious one. And then it’s too much and then they fall and collapse. Al Jazeera: We are days away from a new political landscape as Donald Trump heads to the White House for a second time. He has an even louder voice on social media with the tech billionaire and X owner Elon Musk, who lauds Israeli policies and its military, among the senior figures of his administration. How do you see the presidency influencing Israel? Will the war on Gaza continue? Pappe: It’s very difficult to see anything positive during the second Trump term in office and with his associations with Elon Musk. Advertisement The future of Israel and Zionism is connected to the future of America. I don’t think all the Americans are supporters of Trump. I don’t think all the Americans are supporters of Elon Musk. [But] I’m afraid there is not much that can be done in the next two or three years. The only good news is that populist leaders like [US President-elect Donald] Trump and nutcases like Elon Musk are not very capable. They are going to bring down with them the American economy and the American international standing, so it will end badly for America if these kind of personalities are going to lead it. In the long run, I think it can lead to less involvement by the United States in the Middle East. And for me, a scenario in which you have minimal American involvement is a positive scenario. We need international intervention not only in Palestine but for the whole Arab world, but it has to come from the Global South and not from the Global North. The Global North has left such a legacy that very few people would regard anyone from the Global North as an honest broker. I’m very worried about the short term, I don’t want to be misunderstood. I cannot see any forces stopping the short-term disasters that are awaiting us. When I see a wider perspective, I think we are at the end of a very bad chapter in humanity, not the beginning of a bad chapter. Al Jazeera: Currently, there are ceasefire negotiations. When do you expect Palestine will enjoy peace? Pappe: I don’t know, but I do think that even a ceasefire in Gaza is not the end unfortunately, because of the genocide. Hopefully, there will be enough power to if not stop it, at least tame it or limit it. Advertisement In the long term, I can see a process that is long. I’m talking about 20 years, but I do think we are at the beginning of this process. It’s a process of the decolonisation of a settler-colonial project. It can go either way. We know it from history. Decolonisation can be very violent and not necessarily produce a better regime or it can be an opportunity to build something much better, a win-win for everyone concerned and the area as a whole. Al Jazeera: To Palestinians and many observers, it feels as though the world is just standing by while Israel is expanding into its neighbours and carrying out the genocide with impunity. Pappe: Well, a last stage from a historical point of view is a long process. It’s not an immediate process. It’s not a question of will it happen, but it is a question of when. And definitely that could take time. There are

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