This is why we MUST march today - Palestine Solidarity Campaign

For the past few weeks, we have been organising weekly demonstrations to call for a ceasefire to end the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, which, so far, has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians.

That includes over 4,000 children, with another 2,300, including 1,300 children, missing presumed dead under the rubble of their homes.

Our framework to respond to the escalation of violence since October 7 is international law, which we believe must be respected and applied universally.

Violations of it, including the targeting and killing of civilians and hostage-taking, must be condemned no matter who perpetrates them.

The urgent need is for a ceasefire, but our demonstrations also call for action to be taken to address the root causes of this violence, which lie in Israel’s enduring military occupation which has lasted decades and led to huge loss of Palestinian civilian lives.

We agree with the judgment of human rights monitoring bodies, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli Jewish B’Tselem, that the military occupation forms part of a wider system of oppression that denies all Palestinians rights and meets the legal definition of a system of apartheid.

Violence will not end until apartheid is ended.

Our role in trying to achieve this is to take action to end the complicity of our Government, companies and corporations that provide diplomatic, military and economic support to this system of oppression.

In this way, we seek to follow the model of the campaigns that helped bring an end to South Africa’s system of apartheid.

According to reliable opinion polls, the call we are making for a ceasefire is supported, by over 75 per cent of the British public. Our marches have drawn huge crowds of many hundreds of thousands.

As always when planning demonstrations which are bringing such numbers to the streets, we regularly liaise with the police to ensure public safety.

Several weeks ago we made clear that, as on every Saturday, we would march on November 11, but so as not to disrupt preparations for the Remembrance Sunday commemorations we would march away from central London and long after the marking of silence at 11 o’clock.

Given that the police agreed with this plan, we were alarmed by the Home Secretary and Prime Minister issuing statements that in their view the protests were a direct threat to Remembrance Sunday and risked desecrating the Cenotaph.

The statements were clearly designed to whip up public anger and demonise those protesting for a ceasefire.

They have, predictably, led to calls by far-Right groups, including Britain First, for action to stop the march.

The truth is that the marches have been overwhelmingly peaceful with very low levels of arrest and attended by a huge cross-section of British society, reflecting the wide support for the ceasefire call.

More than 800 scholars of international law have warned of the possibility of a genocide unfolding in Gaza.

There is something deeply concerning on a moral level when a Government will not call for a ceasefire to stop mass slaughter but wants to take action against those marching for peace.

There is also something deeply askew in a mindset that says the one activity in a democratic society that is deemed unacceptable to take place on Armistice Day is a protest calling for a ceasefire to end widespread killing happening right now.

We are all being set a fundamental moral test. We invite all people of conscience, no matter their background, to join us in calling for a ceasefire and for the rights of the Palestinian people to be respected.

Ben Jamal is the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign