London protests against the war in the Lebanon

Go here for all the pictures.

It was far more organised and emotionally charged than the protest a couple of weeks before, which tailed off as the soggy crowd dispersed under their umbrellas. Outside Tony Blair’s heavily guarded residence at number 10 Downing Street protestors threw children’s shoes symbolic of the several hundred children that have died during Israel’s bombing campaign. At the end of the protest several small children placed these shoes around the cenograph, where Britian’s official war rememberance ceremony is typically held. Although this was a little staged, the message is justified; its clear that most of the victims of Israel’s bombing campaign have been civilians and a third of these children under 12.

I thought that there was a lot of mixed emotion in the crowd. Some angry, some thoughtful, some hurt. All were united against the current policy of the British government, and roared approval to the ex-British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray who suggested that Tony Blair be tried for war crimes. Murray is an interesting case in himself. While British ambassador to Uzbekistan he exposed that the US and UK were recieving intelligence from the Uzbek government that had been obtained under torture. You can read the documents here. He was forced out of the Foreign Office of course, and subsequently ran for parliament in Jack Straw’s constituency, losing spectacularly. (Although he had a catchy slogan - Hit the Road Jack…)

Several other seasoned speakers took the podium, including the MP for Respect George Galloway, left-wing labour MP Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Benn, veteren former labour MP and stalwart of the rights movement in the UK. Jeremey Corbyn (who happens to be my MP) was rightly introduced as the most active MP in the UK Parliament on human rights. Disgusted by the fact that Parliament hasnt been called to comment on the conflict, he made the point that the longer this war goes on the worse it becomes.

Many of the speakers directly placed the responsibility of the war directly on the US, and to a lesser extent UK. Its increasingly obvious in my view that this is a proxy war, or as one Arab ambassador in the US put it a ‘war through surrogates — Israel for the U.S. and Hezbollah and Syria for Iran.’ There was also strong support in the crowd for Hizbollah. Photographers and tv cameramen (including me of course) swooped on the burning of these plackards. However, it ended up with everyone standing around a looking a bit sheepish.

In an act of solidarity, several orthodox Jews from the Neturei Karta movement of Jews United Against Zionism, walked from Standford Hill on the protest. Although unable to speak, as it was the sabbeth, they recieved the loudest cheers of the day when they took the podium to acknowledge the crowd. Tony Benn made the excellent point that this was not a war about religion, despite the fact that some in the US media are portraying this as World War III. To paraphrase Benn: There is no reason why Jews, Muslims, Christians, (and non-believers!), can’t live together.

This is a war about land and power.