‘OUR Community Camp 4 Palestine (cc4pal), opposite the United States Embassy in London, is marking one year of non-stop peaceful protest on 31st August.
Our camp is inspired directly by the non-stop picket that was held outside the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square, London, from 1986-1990, demanding the release of Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for 27 years by the apartheid regime.
Mandela famously said: “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
The last two years have shown the world that, in fact, our freedom is impossible without the freedom of the Palestinians, such is the corrupt, amoral and illegal manoeuvring of global political, media and corporate elites, in an effort to repress the irrepressible worldwide support for Palestinian resistance and liberation, which has flourished since October 2023.
We set up Community Camp 4 Palestine a year ago, to condemn and demand an end to the apartheid Zionist entity’s genocide and war crimes in Gaza.
We must keep the focus on Palestine, and the facts induce mass existential vertigo. Nearly 63,000 people in Gaza are confirmed to have been killed by Israel, over 80% of them are civilians, mostly women and children.
However, the actual number of Gazans killed by Israel is estimated to be far higher, with a June report citing 377,000 Gazans “disappeared”, believed to be displaced, missing or dead under the rubble and ruins of Gaza.
Nobody is immune from Zionist Israeli aggression, with the highest number of murdered journalists and medical workers ever recorded.
Over two thousand starving Gazans have been shot dead at US-Israeli-run so-called “aid points”, more accurately referred to by the UN as “death traps” and, as I write, Israel is ethnically-cleansing Gaza City.
All of this, in plain sight. All of this, in plain sight for nearly two years. All of this, openly stated from 7th October 2023 onwards, by Israeli leaders across all sectors of that inevitably imploding society.
Equally, and necessarily, all of this is matched only by the unprecedented awakening and unshakeable commitment of millions of us, in every corner of the world and every aspect of life, to ensure that Palestinians are guaranteed the justice, liberation and self-determination that is theirs, historically, legally and morally.
It is their resistance, their steadfastness, their courage and their beauty that is liberating us all.
At our Community Camp 4 Palestine, a diverse community of dedicated activists will maintain our presence opposite the US Embassy, where our banners serve to both demand an end to US-UK-EU-backed Israel’s genocide and war crimes in Gaza and to counter the genocide-complicit narratives, criminally pedalled by our political and media class.
We have been honoured to have an incredible array of pro-Palestinian, anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist experts visit and speak at our camp, who have affirmed the significance of camp’s constant presence for the movement.
They include activists Shawan Jabarin from Al Haq, Jodie Evans from Code Pink, holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos, Yael Kahn, author Susan Abulhawa, Gaza Freedom Flotilla members, Ann Wright, Thiago Ávila, Nicole Jenes, medics Dr Swee Ang, Dr James Smith, Dr Jonathan Fluxman, journalists Matt Kennard, Asa Winstanley and Aaron Maté, musicians Bob Vylan and Tagdh Hickey, and many political activists.
In July, we installed an exhibition at camp, called ‘335’.
It is an artist’s reconstruction of the decimated car in which six-year old Hind Rajab and six other members of her family were massacred by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) as they tried to leave Gaza City in January 2024.
Thousands passed by the installation, stopping to read the panels and learn more about it, many moved to tears.
Our weekly film evenings and other events will continue to raise awareness about Palestine and key initiatives in the movement. and our community and solidarity with each other and the people of Palestine goes from strength to strength.
We will be marking one year at camp from 4.00pm onwards on Sunday 31st August. All welcome.
- Last Tuesday evening the Community Camp held a question and answer session with two lawyers, Franck Magennis and Fahad Ansari from Riverway to the Sea, who are are bringing the “mother of all court cases” to the High Court, in their Deconscription Application to the Home Secretary for the deconscription of Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Asked, how Zionism could be defeated in the courts Ansari replied: “Your tears will dry up eventually, if you are surviving for decades under occupation, in living in a concentration camp, but your spirit will not.
“The Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against extermination.” ’
His legal partner, in the case, Franck Magennis insisted: ‘ Zionism will be defeated on the battlefield, and not in the courts!
‘We need a revolution in our way of living and Palestine is leading the way in showing the reality of the existing capitalist order, the extent to which it was always promised on the most horrific and violent colonial racism.
‘We are witnessing colonlism streamed on smart phones This is what colonlism has always been and for once we finally get this proper insight. This is Western civilizations’ racist violence against other portions of the human family, he said. Capitalism requires a racialist other to construct.
‘Magennis then referred to the reality of how Nazi Germany was defeated at Stalingrad, by tens of millions of mostly Soviet soldiers many sent into battle without guns, told ‘pick up the guns of fallen comrades’. That is the reality of the historical sacrifices needed to defeat a fascist regime. The Zionists have to be defeated and are already being defeated on the Palestinian battlefield.
‘Keep escalating, keep standing up. Go to your trade unions, to your mosques and your organisations to escalate’.
