Thousands of people on Saturday joined pro-Palestinian marches in London, Berlin and Dublin calling for an end to Israeli strikes on Gaza, three years after Hamas’s October 7 attack.<\/p>\n
Several thousand marchers in London carried placards reading “End the genocide” and “Free Palestine” as they made their way along the route near the British parliament.<\/p>\n
“We are here today to mark three years of the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Aimee Shalan, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told AFP.<\/p>\n
Western sanctions over settler violence did not go far enough, she said, calling for “full sanctions on Israel”.<\/p>\n
A ceasefire began a year ago and although Israel has reduced its level of attacks it has kept striking Gaza on a near-daily basis.<\/p>\n
Strikes have killed some 1,450 Palestinians since the ceasefire, according to Gaza’s health ministry.<\/p>\n
London police said they had arrested 20 people including a man and a woman with placards supporting the organisation Palestine Action, banned under UK law.<\/p>\n
Recent graduate Hibo Hassan, 23, said she was there to show her solidarity.<\/p>\n
“Although it is happening in the Middle East, it affects us here now,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s extremely dystopian and that is something we should be all scared about,” she added.<\/p>\n
Another protester, a 32-year-old Kosovar immigrant who gave his name as Kobe, said his own experience of war made him want to “stand up today and not let history repeat” itself.<\/p>\n
A small counter-demonstration was organised by Stop The Hate UK, a Jewish-led, pro-Israel campaign group.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the protest, organised by the Palestine Coalition, London’s Metropolitan Police said it would be using powers under public order legislation to require anyone wearing a face covering to hide their identity to remove it.<\/p>\n
“We will take a zero-tolerance approach to hate crime and other offending,” said senior Met officer Carl Galvin.<\/p>\n
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– ‘Really terrible’ – <\/p>\n
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In Berlin, a similar march organised by the group United for Palestine drew around 3,500 people as it set off from a square between the chancellery and parliament, said police.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many denounced Germany’s arms exports to Israel, carrying banners and placards condemning Berlin’s military support.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For decades, Germany has seen resolute support for Israel as a fundamental duty largely because of Nazi Germany’s responsibility for the genocide of millions of European Jews during the Holocaust.<\/p>\n
“I find it really terrible that Germany finds it so difficult to criticise Israel,” a student told AFP, who asked not to be named.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Dublin, protesters took part in a march organised by the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.<\/p>\n
Saturday’s protests came three days after the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attack.<\/p>\n
\n Militants also dragged 251 hostages into Gaza, 44 of them already dead.<\/p>\n In response, Israel launched a military offensive that has left most of Gaza in ruins and killed more than 74,200 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.<\/p>\n mhc\/har\/jj<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of people on Saturday joined pro-Palestinian marches in London, Berlin and Dublin calling for an end to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-642729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n <\/a> The attack was the deadliest in Israel’s history, resulting in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.\n <\/p>\n