Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in central London on Saturday 11 November, calling for a ceasefire in Israel's war against Hamas. Expected to be the biggest demonstration in a single day over the Israel-Palestine conflict to date, the march began at midday, shortly after an Armistice Da...
Well…over a million marched in London to put a stop to Brexit and it didn’t do anything. Considering this conflict is even less so under the control of the British government I’m not sure what this march will do a damn thing.
Even if nothing comes of it, even if no policy is changed, it's still important for people to (peacefully) express their opposition to something they disagree with, rather than meekly accept whatever their government does.
This applies to any such protest, not just today's.
It's also important that they get out and vote for change when they have a chance.
The point of protest is to (peacefully) coerce the government by means of disruption. I'm making a huge boiling down of MLKs philosophy, but he was very clear: if you don't use methods of coercion, the government has no reason to pay attention.
So tired of "protests are useless" posting. There are good ways to make a critique of a movements but this is not it.
The past decade around the globe protest movements exploded into radical restructuring of various countries' way of governing. This particular protest doesn't seem like it will evolve into that, but no one ever predicted the outcome of past eruptions.
A protest isn't a reliable or advisable way to create a revolution, but they are still great organizing opportunities and solidarity building events.
Writing something like this, what has a huge potential to be misunderstood... Something that extremists and normal people can interpret differently... Why exactly is this necessary?
Because it is not enough to simply stop carpet bombing of civilians. If you want to truly stop the violence, that involves eventually giving Palestinians full citizenship and civil rights on the same level as Jews instead of forcing them to live in ghettoes. That's how a free society works. Until Israel does that there can be no true peace. A separate Palestinian state is not an option because of all the illegal (under international law) Jewish settlements in the west bank making a border impossible to maintain.
Once again, apartheid is itself violence. That's what the slogan is rallying against