Burak Bir
07 January 2025•Update: 07 January 2025
LONDON
An emergency protest was held in London on Monday against Israel’s attacks on Gaza's health care services, demanding the British government act to protect Palestinian health workers.
It was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and coalition partners including the Palestinian Forum in Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, the Stop the War Coalition, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Gathering near parliament, the protesters shouted slogans including "Keir Starmer, you can't hide, we charge with you genocide," referring to the prime minister, while criticizing the government in the face of the ongoing situation in the Gaza Strip.
They also urged the government to end all arms shipments to Israel and called for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
On Sept. 2, the British government announced that it was suspending 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel after a review and warned that there is a clear risk that certain UK arms exports to Israel might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law.
The 30 licenses cover components for military aircraft, helicopters, drones and items that facilitate ground targeting, excluding UK components for the F-35 fighter jet program.
The protest came following recent Israeli attacks that destroyed Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, including its neonatal unit, while also targeting Palestinian health care workers – killing scores and imprisoning hundreds, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the hospital’s director.
Speaking to Anadolu, Mark Etkind, a protester who is the son of a Holocaust survivor, said what is happening in Gaza is "completely appalling," adding the systematic destruction of almost all health care infrastructure is "absolutely shocking."
"One thing I recall from what my father said is that medical conditions in the Lodz ghetto, in the situation he was pushed into at the beginning of the Second World War in Poland, where he was, were of course minimal and appalling," he noted.
He said there was also no clean water, very little food, and people died in the Holocaust in the early years and were dying of disease as much as anything else due to a lack of food and medical care.
"This is, of course, how genocide starts. They're not done in one day. They're processes. And what seems to be happening in Gaza at the moment is the process of a genocide of the people of Gaza," he said.
"It's absolutely shocking and dismaying and terrifying."
Israel has launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip that has killed nearly 46,000 people, mostly women and children, since an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
In November last year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.
