Last night, South West London Action for Palestine camped out on their first night of a non-stop picket outside the US embassy in solidarity with Gaza.
From the 14th to the 21st of April, South West London Action for Palestine is holding a non-stop picket outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms. Throughout the week, they will be joined by fellow pro-Palestine groups and activists from across London and the UK.
The protest forms part of the unprecedented and irreversible global momentum for Palestinian freedom, which has erupted in the face of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which entered its seventh month on 8th April. Organisers of the Wandsworth-based pro-Palestine group say that the protest aims to highlight the extent of US political and military support of the Zionist settler colonial project, both historically and in the current genocide.
US military sales, financial aid and political endorsement, remain unwavering despite the brutal massacre of over 37,600 Gazan civilians, the majority of whom are women and children, the internal displacement of two million people, the use of starvation and famine as a weapon of war and the intentional decimation of infrastructure and services across Gaza, to deprive its inhabitants of the essential conditions for survival. The protestors have the following demands to the US President, in line with the fact that the US has the ability to end Zionist Israel’s genocide in Gaza unilaterally:
- an immediate and permanent ceasefire
- an immediate end to the blockade of humanitarian aid
- an immediate arms embargo
Continuing US political and military support for Zionist Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as well as US failure to prevent it, implicates US leaders as complicit in the genocide and, therefore, susceptible to indictment under international humanitarian law.
The protest is inspired by the non-stop picket held outside the South African Embassy in London from 1986 until Mandela’s release in February 1990. The picket called for the release of Nelson Mandela, leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his activism.
