British Palestinians feel unable to speak openly about Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, the director of the British Palestinian Committee has said, amid what campaigners believe is a growing climate of hostility around Palestinian identity and activism in the UK.<\/p>\n
Some were afraid to wear Palestinian symbols at work or display Arabic jewellery and keffiyehs in public, Sara Husseini said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have many documented reports of Palestinians and allies being silenced or punished for wearing Palestinian symbols, watermelon pins, or speaking about the genocide,\u201d she said. \u201cMany colleagues across all kinds of sectors feel they are being gaslit while friends and families are being massacred back home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking before Saturday\u2019s national march<\/a> in London commemorating the 78th anniversary of the Nakba (\u201ccatastrophe\u201d) \u2013 the displacement of at least 700,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948 \u2013 Husseini said many Palestinians felt they were being treated not as victims of mass suffering, but as suspects whose grief had become politicised.<\/p>\n \u201cCruelty is the word I would use, particularly for colleagues who are from Gaza or have family there, knowing these atrocities are being inflicted on their loved ones day in, day out,\u201d Husseini said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then being effectively told: not only are we not going to acknowledge that this is happening to you, we\u2019re going to disbelieve you, interrogate you, stop you from speaking about it, and if you do speak, we\u2019re going to paint you as the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Born to a Palestinian father from Jerusalem, and an English mother from Leicestershire, Husseini has spent decades involved in Palestinian advocacy, including advisory work for the Palestine<\/a> Liberation Organisation during the years of the failed peace process.<\/p>\n \u201cThe past two and a half years have been one of daily horror and fear as Palestinians have watched our families and friends massacred, starved and tortured,\u201d she said, describing this period as the darkest chapter in Palestinian history since 1948.<\/p>\n \u2018We feel a great deal of solidarity from the British public.\u2019 A Together for Palestine march in central London in March. Photograph: Maja Smiejkowska\/PA<\/p>\n Yet despite her fury at successive British governments, she repeatedly returned to the solidarity shown by ordinary Britons, describing the mass pro-Palestine marches as a source of emotional survival for many Palestinians.<\/p>\n \u201cWe feel a great deal of solidarity from the British public,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve seen is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people of conscience from all walks of life and all backgrounds who have marched, signed petitions, written to their MPs and protested our government\u2019s complicity in Israeli war crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n A recent Unrwa dispatch said 111 Palestinians, including at least 18 children and seven women, were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in April alone, bringing the total number of Palestinian deaths since the war began to 72,619. The UN agency said emergency tents for displaced people were now infested with disease-carrying rodents, causing an increase in skin infections.<\/p>\n An estimated 700 Palestinians have managed to flee Gaza for the UK. \u201cPalestinians who came over during this period have had to find specialist nutritional support because they had been starved and couldn\u2019t just take food on normally when they first arrived,\u201d Husseini said. \u201cThat\u2019s not to mention the trauma, the psychological damage, that will seep down through generations.\u201d<\/p>\n The Nakba march comes amid mounting tensions over the future of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Britain, with some Jewish groups and politicians calling on ministers and police to impose tighter restrictions on marches.<\/p>\n Husseini rejected descriptions of the protests as \u201chate marches\u201d, stating: \u201cIt\u2019s actually the complete inverse: it\u2019s a protest against the most hateful acts possible: war and genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n Husseini said she attended the protests with her two young children. \u201cWe walk alongside people of all faiths, all communities, including 13 organised Jewish blocs. These are all Britons of conscience protesting against the killing of children, the bombing of a captive population, the forced starvation of human beings,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the answer to why they\u2019re being very clearly misrepresented as hate marches is to undermine the hundreds and thousands of people who are turning up on the street. It\u2019s to distract from the government\u2019s complicity in these crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n