Home | Friday 4th July 2008 | Issue 638

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ZION TAMING

While Palestinians around the world were commemorating the Nakba - (meaning the catastrophe - the displacement of over 700 000 Palestinian civilians by zionist militias in 1948), on Sunday 29th June, a few thousand zionists held a ‘Salute to Israel’ march through central London. The march was intended as a show of support for the state of Israel, a state whose constitution only give rights to one racial group and that reserves over 90% of land for Jews only. As well as illegally occupying the West Bank, Israel has also maintained a siege on Gaza for the past year preventing Gazans from accessing food or getting proper medical care.

And the British government was all too happy to turn out in support of the apartheid state; Ed ‘talking’ Balls made a speech commemorating Israel’s 60th anniversary while Boris ‘fucking hell, he’s Mayor of London’ Johnson finished his speech by saluting the crowd.

Shockingly, the overarching message of the parade was that British Jews should support Israel. A spokesman for the ‘Board of Deputies’ said, “Let no one ever say again that the British Jewish community is afraid to stand up publicly for what it believes in!” Why should the Jewish community, or anyone else for that matter, support an intrinsically racist state engaged in bloody ethnic cleansing against its non-Jewish inhabitants simply because that state’s political rhetoric claims to speak and act for Jews?

Hundreds of anti-zionist activists, many of them Jewish, showed up to demonstrate that sixty years of apartheid and ethnic cleansing is nothing to celebrate. Both fountains in Trafalgar Square, where the rally was being held, were died red to symbolise the blood of the Palestinians killed in the pogroms of 1948, and activists staged a die-in at the centre of the rally. Three double-decker buses draped with Palestinian flags and black balloons were driven around the square and ‘Boycott Israel’ banners were hung on the steps of the National Portrait Gallery. The zionist hip hop gig was disrupted by Rhythms of Resistance and the video screens had to be turned off after a man climbed on to them.

Counter demos were held by Jews for Justice for Palestinians and Friends of Al Aqsa. The Met’s Forward Intelligence Teams were out in force, while the boys in blue took the opportunity to carry out a number of crap arrests including ones for singing a reworked version of happy birthday and ‘criminal damage’ for getting watered-down red food dye on the pavement. One woman was even given a warning for anti-zionist opera singing.

For more information on the campaign to commemorate the Palestinian Nakba see www.nakba60.org.uk

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