From:  Islamic Human Rights Commission

4 June 2018

PRESS RELEASE – UK/Palestine: Al-Quds Day to go ahead despite huge far-right/Zionist demonisation campaign

This year’s Al-Quds Day demonstration in support of the beleaguered Palestinians in the holy land will go ahead in London this weekend despite an unprecedented demonisation campaign by far right and pro-Zionist groups determined to undermine and disrupt the event.

Numbers are expected to be larger this year in a gesture of defiance to the demonisation campaign and the ongoing murders by Israeli troops of innocent Palestinian protestors in the Gaza Strip commemorating 70 years since Israel was formed on expropriated Palestinian land.

Last year a similar demonisation campaign radicalised Darren Osborne into driving a truck into Muslim worshippers in London’s Finsbury Park killing a Muslim man. However his intended target had been the Al-Quds Day rally which he was only prevented from reaching by police security measures.

Zionist and far right extremists have again called a rival rally on the same day in order to seek to disrupt the Al-Quds Day demonstration. Among them are the notorious football hooligans, Chelsea Headhunters, who have put out a call on social media for people to attend the counter demo and call to “Ban Islam”.

Al-Quds Day has been a fixture in the capital for over 30 years the annual event is a general show of solidarity drawing in people of all faiths and political persuasions. This year’s London event will again feature people of all political and religious persuasions including Jews, Christians and Muslims.

This year the rally will feature a record-breaking Palestinian flag being paraded through the streets. At 70 metres long the flag is the largest ever Palestinian flag ever to be made with its length signifying the duration of the crippling Israeli occupation.

The event will take place on Sunday 10 June, with demonstrators assembling outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Charles Street in preparation for a march through the busy streets of central London. The Saudi Arabian embassy has been selected as a rallying point because of Riyadh’s growing support for the Zionist regime which has had the effect of isolating the Palestinians and giving Israel the green light to accelerate its injustices.

With much of the world’s attention deflected by other conflicts in the Middle East, the Zionist regime has continued its relentless policy of settlement building, confiscating and isolating Palestinian lands and restricting Palestinians’ movement and access to the necessities of daily life such as water and medical care. Resistance to the occupation has been met with bullets – hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in the last year.

The Gaza Strip remains effectively blockaded by Israel on one side and the Egyptian military regime on the other. The siege has crippled the economy with 41% of people out of work, higher than any other economy in the world, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Youth unemployment is believed to be 60%. Some 80% of inhabitants are dependent on external aid to survive.

For more information please call +447958607475 or +447958522196

Notes to editors:

When: 10 June 2018, 3pm

Where: Gathering outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Charles St, London, W1J 5DZ

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IHRC is an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

Islamic Human Rights Commission
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