Demonstrations Growing Worldwide for Mideast Ceasefire, End to Genocide, Freedom for Palestine

Oct. 16, 2023, (EIRNS)—“From Morocco to Türkiye, Australia to Italy, Norway to Scotland, Ireland to London to multiple U.S. cities and beyond, millions all around the world are marching in solidarity with Gaza. Israeli propaganda has failed,” Sarah @sahouraxo, self-described as an independent Lebanese geopolitical commentator wrote on X on Sunday night, Oct. 15. She posted photos showing clearly large crowds in Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid and Pakistan.

The scale and scope of the rallies broke the news of their existence into even some Establishment media. Spain’s Público reported that 30,000 rallied in Madrid. “Tens of thousands” had marched in London, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, London’s The Guardian admitted Oct. 14.

Jeremy Corbyn, former head of Britain’s Labour Party, addressed the London rally:

“It is a day of solidarity and it is a day of hope. There are many who say that nobody should be here today because they’ll be condoning terrible things. None of us are here to condone killing. None of us are here to condone occupation. If you believe in international law, if you believe in human rights, then you must condemn what is happening now in Gaza by the Israeli army.”

Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East followed with a statement on Oct. 15 calling Israel’s air strikes, siege and forcible ejection of people in north Gaza “collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” (British Broadcasting Corp., which over the weekend smeared the demonstrators as supporting Hamas, on Oct. 16 felt it advisable to cover their arse by broadcasting a 20-second “apology” for that reportage as “poorly phrased and a misleading description.”)

Demonstrations were held in cities across the U.S. over the weekend, ranging from hundreds to thousands of people calling for an end to the siege of Gaza and freeing Palestine. ABC News, for example, reported that “a sea of people” came out in Chicago on Sunday (the police estimate of 2,000 seeming low to the reporter) to protest Gaza being turned from “an open air prison into an open air morgue,” and the Los Angeles Times gave a figure of “several thousand” protesters marching in that city, so that at one point the southbound lanes of the nearby 405 Freeway were briefly shut down.

Today, new demonstrations were reported in Texas (Dallas, Houston and San Antonio), and for the second day in a row in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. Today’s demonstration was organized by the Jewish organization, “If Not Now,” whose stated aim is “organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all.” Some 1,500 to 2,000 Jewish non-violent activists from the group blocked the entrances to the White House for hours, with chants, singing, and signs of “No to War,” “No to apartheid,” “Stop Genocide in Gaza,” “Two wrongs do not make a right.” Over 50 were arrested today, they report, but added: “We need you with us tomorrow and all the days after.”