This is the first time in a while that I have spoken but I wanted to share my speech. I will create a record of our original protests when I can.
"We gather here six months into Israel’s vicious bombardment of Gaza which has seen the massacre of almost 33,000 civilians – over 14,000 of them children – with many more missing under rubble
Any excuse that Israel has put forward for their slaughter
of civilians has long since been debunked by anyone with an ounce of humanity
The International Court of Justice has found plausible evidence of genocide and an interim report by the UN special rapporteur has confirmed that
These are important steps but anyone watching the horror
unfold in Gaza over the past six months can be in no doubt that Israel is
engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide
Not just the massacres of entire families through their
bombing campaigns which have left so many bereaved, so many with life changing
injuries, so many traumatised, so many displaced
A bombing campaign which has targeted so called safe areas
– bombing residential areas and even the tents and makeshift shelters that the
displaced have been forced into
Not just the destruction of most of the hospitals in Gaza,
the targeting and murders of so many health care staff, that our colleagues in
Health Care Workers for Gaza, some of whom are here today, remember every Friday evening
Not just the killing of journalists to try and prevent the
world from seeing Israel’s terrible war crimes – now a threat to close down
media offices in Israel if they are deemed a “Threat to national security”
But the most heinous of war crimes – using starvation as a
weapon
Deliberately starving an entire population – something that
Israel has been doing from the start of this conflict – now resulting in the
deaths from starvation of children and the most vulnerable – a horrific form of
collective punishment
Condemned by most countries across the world
Yet still the UK and the US continues to provide Israel
with weapons
They make all the right noises but still they don’t take
the one step that could end this massacre once and for all – ending the
transfer of arms to Israel
But you never hear that explored on the BBC
Last week was perhaps a watershed
The deaths of seven international aid workers from the
World Central Kitchen – three of them British
Workers clearly targeted by Israel with missiles we now
know were partly made in Britain – though again we don’t hear much of that on the BBC
Israel has apologised – it was a big mistake that they
didn’t spot the very prominent logo on the top of the three cars that they targeted
with Elbit made missiles
When they didn’t get them the first time round they went
for the second then the third vehicle – till all seven people were murdered.
Despite the careful co-ordination with forces in the area.
But hey it was a mistake – it could happen to anyone.
And it has. The BBC is at last asking – now that British
aid workers have been killed - how many other such mistakes have been made
That is a very good question
Were the 14,000 children murdered by Israeli missiles in
their homes, schools, hospitals, just an error – did the IDF mistake them for
terrorists?
Was that their excuse when 140 journalists were murdered…
or 500 health care workers – or almost 10,000 women, some of them pregnant?
We mourn the loss of these seven aid workers – they were
incredibly brave – working to provide aid to a population suffering hunger and
malnutrition in the most dangerous “war zone” in the world
They were heroes and we condemn Israel for their deaths
But so are all the other aid workers, over 200 of whom have
already been killed by Israel in similar circumstances
But of course they were mainly indigenous Palestinians or
from Middle Eastern countries.
That we don’t hear about their deaths with the same level
of outrage is a feature of the inherent
racism of our Western media – writ large in the BBC
From the start of the invasion of Gaza by Israel BBC bias
and double standards has been there for all to see
They have controlled the narrative in often quite subtle
ways – presenting the Israeli narrative as fact whilst prefacing the
Palestinian side with “alleged” or “according to the Hamas health ministry”
They have promoted a false equivalence between the Hamas
attack and the subsequent mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza – as if one
justified the other
They have continually made Palestinian spokespeople comment
on the Hamas attack without making Israeli spokespeople accountable for the murders
and destruction in Gaza
They reference the Israeli hostages without any mention of
the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli administrative detention without access to
legal advice or family and with more and more evidence coming through of
torture and deaths in Israeli custody
And they have stopped reporting on the West Bank, which has
been under Israeli military occupation for many years and where, since Oct 7th
over 450 Palestinians have been murdered by IDF and settler violence
The BBC has given cover to Israel in its war crimes and its
genocide
Along with other Western media outlets they have been
complicit with the UK government and the Labour opposition in the genocide
perpetrated by Israel
The publication of the open letter from 600 prominent
lawyers warning that the UK government will be guilty of supporting war crimes and
possibly genocide if they continue to provide arms to Israel – alongside their
own (leaked) legal advice saying the same – has to be a wake up call
The murders of British aid workers with British weapons
shows the UK’s complicity in war crimes without a shadow of a doubt.
It is time for the BBC to stand with the incredibly brave journalists
in Gaza and do their job – reporting without fear or favour on the facts and
speaking truth to power.
It’s time for them to stop muzzling journalists like Jeremy
Bowen and let him do his job properly
It’s time for them to stop swallowing wholesale the
increasingly slender justifications of Israeli spokespeople for their violence
and war crimes.
Until they do, that will be our job. All of us here
Standing in solidarity with the people of Gaza and the West
Bank, telling their stories, mourning their losses, demanding a ceasefire,
demanding an end to the genocide, demanding that the UK end its arms trade with
Israel and demanding that Israel is held to account as part of a lasting peace.
Thank you all for being here today. And listen up BBC!"
Before the BBC event we held a small protest outside Barclays to keep up our BDS action against the bank and gave out leaflets to passers-by.
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