UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, International Criminal Court Prosecutor, International Court of Justice President: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Indigenous Palestinian People.
— Sex Workers’ Union (formerly USW) (@swunion_uk) October 26, 2023
“We, the Sex Workers’ Union, stand in explicit and unequivocal solidarity with the people of Palestine. There are no words that can adequately convey the depth of our horror, and the strength of our condemnation, at the dehumanization and genocidal violence enacted upon the Palestinian people by the settler colony of Israel.”
The sentence came after Judge Rowlands refused to allow evidence of Israel’s war crimes to be heard at court, and would not allow the defence to make the argument that their actions ‘prevented a greater crime’ or ‘acted to save lives’… Following the sentencing, Palestine Action said: “The four activists are the longest serving prisoners for taking action with Palestine Action to disrupt the war machine. Their incarceration demonstrates Britain prioritising the interests of an arms industry which facilitates the genocide of the Palestinian people, over the freedom of its own citizens.
Israeli ministers can go around making genocidal remarks about Palestinians, and the UK government won't even condemn them, let alone impose sanctions for the illegal outposts in the West Bank.
PALESTINIAN rights activists crashed an engineering awards ceremony in London to protest the event’s role at “celebrating the worst of Britain’s military-industrial-colonial complex.”
Members of the Palestine Action group snuck into the event, hosted by engineering body Make UK at the opulent East Wintergarden in Canary Wharf, London, on Thursday night.
The action came after Israel launched its deadliest raid on the West Bank in years, killing 10 Palestinians.
One stormed onto the stage and grabbed the mic, telling attendees: “This morning, 10 Palestinians were murdered by the occupation forces, the zionist forces, using Elbit’s weapons.
“The engineering industry is guilty of genocide.
“Arms companies are responsible for millions dead around the world — are you happy to profit from murder?”
The firm has abandoned its office at 77 Kingsway, leaving Elbit’s London Headquarters permanently closed. Since 2020, activists have taken action 15 times at the site, disrupting business by blockading, occupying and defacing the property. The campaign culminated in 60 arrests for which activists continue to face trial. Elbit’s exit in London comes just 5 months after it was forced to shut Elbit Ferranti in Oldham. …In August 2020, a sister campaign against Elbit’s London landlord, Jones Lang Lasalle (JLL), was also launched. JLL’s sites have been routinely defaced, smashed and doused in the Palestine Action iconic red paint, as activists continued to demand that the landlords “Evict Elbit” and cease profiting from the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Dozens of protesters gathered this afternoon outside the Oxford Union’s event hosting Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli Ambassador to the UK. Chants of ‘Genocide in slow motion,’ and ‘Oxford Union shame on you’ could be heard throughout the event, even from inside the Union Chamber.
“Those weapons are used to kill innocent people in the apartheid, in the genocide, in the military invasion, happening in Palestine and in occupied Palestinian land.”
A first-year student was accused of being anti-Semitic for the mere reason of holding a placard that said, “End the Palestinian Holocaust.” “I wasn’t part of the event”, Shahd stated, “and I said in a Twitter thread that I wouldn’t myself use this language because I understand the Instrumentalization and weaponization of terms like that.” Despite her clarification, people rushed to attack her based on the Twitter post. Shahd felt that it would be “ridiculous that something like that would amount to accusing a Palestine student of anti-Semitism when she was using this term while thinking of the longstanding genocide that has been committed against the Palestinian people by Israel.”
Wheeler notes that the invisible cordon between Israeli apartheid and other political causes is wearing thin, a trend he attributes in part to social media. “As […] previous editorial controls have been lifted,” he says, “celebrities have become more confident that they can engage in the Israel–Palestine dispute.” Wheeler wrote this in 2014, shortly after the last but one Israeli war on Gaza. It was a period when many celebrities stood with Palestine – including, importantly, a coalition of the world’s sexiest Spaniards. Yet this outpouring of solidarity was followed by an equal deluge of apologies, as Israel’s supporters successfully framed the celebrities’ use of the term “genocide” as antisemitic (rather than, as scholars of international human rights law have frequently argued, accurate). These celebrities learned the hard way why their peers had been silent.
