Gaza Flotilla Atrocity Protest

20,000 marched from a rally at Downing St to another outside the Israeli embassy to protest against the murder of peace protesters on the Gaza flotilla by Israeli forces and to call for international action against Israel and an end to the illegal Israeli blockade. London, UK. 05/06/2008

Called by Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, British Muslim Initiative, CND, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Viva Palestina and Palestinian Forum of Britain, this was the first demonstration on Palestine to get the whole-hearted official support of the trade union movement.

The rally filled Whitehall and the crush around the platform was so intense that I had to make my way out before the speakers had finished. Among the speakers there were Caroline Lucas MP, Lindsey German, and Tarik Ali and several flotilla survivors. Later at the Israeli embassy there were more speakers including flotilla survivors Sarah Colborne, Kevin Ovenden and Ismail Patel. Other speakers at the event included Kate Hudson, Salma Yaqoob, Daud Abdullah, Jeremy Corbyn MP, John Rose, Yvonne Ridley, Mohammed Kosbar, Lauren Booth, Keith Sonnett and Sally Hunt. Tony Benn spoke both before and after the march, as well as walking the full distance. The final speaker was George Galloway, who received an ecstatic reception, particularly from many of the Muslims in the crowd.

There was too an enormous response to Lauren Booth, who complained of the BBC coverage which had again and again broadcast the same lies from the same Israeli apologist. As a story in the morning's Guardian by Robert Booth had made clear the post-mortem findings are simply not consistent with the Israeli account but the multiple shootings in the head at close range back up the reports we heard from several of those who were there of more or less random executions by some of the boarding troops.

I was not surprised but highly disappointed to hear on the news later in the day the BBC report that 2,000 people took part in the event; my own estimate was at least 10,000 and probably rather more. This is not an isolated error - there is a consistent policy by the BBC to play down the scale of protest. Occasionally they get caught out, as in the photographers demonstration in Trafalgar Square where it was possible to actually count people in the photographs, and the BBC figure was clearly shown to be less than a fifth of the actual number present. But just why does the BBC continue to lie like this?

There were calls for international action against Israel over these and other crimes against the Palestinian people, including the closing of the Israeli embassy and the ending of their preferential trade agreement with the EU.

Several speakers compared the incident in international waters in which one US citizen, Furkan Dogan, and nine Turkish citizens - Ibrahim Bilgen, Ali HaydarBengi, Cevdet Kiliçlar, Çetin Topçuoglu, Necdet Yildirim, Fahri Yaldiz, Cengiz Songür and Cengiz Akyüz - were murdered with the massacre at Sharpeville which was a turning point in the South African freedom struggle. And many of them noted that although it was a great advance that a UK prime minister was calling for the lifting of the blockade it was only a first step.

George Galloway, speaking just before the rally due to a close with a period of silence to honour the dead announced that there would be a concerted breach of the blockade on a large scale after Ramadan ends in early September, with both a land-based convoy and a further flotilla. After the killings on the Mavi Marmara it seems to be a movement that is unstoppable.