WorthyNews: Britain Reeling From Massive Anti-Israel Protests and Attacks (Worthy News Focus)

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By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

LONDON (Worthy News) – Britain was reeling Monday from a weekend of massive anti-Israel protests tainted by violence and expressed support for terrorism, prompting British Jews to say they “feel no longer safe” in the nation they called home.

Pro-Palestinian protesters launched anti-Israel vandalism attacks on buildings around Britain to mark the 107th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which was a step toward the creation of the modern state of Israel.

In the declaration, the British Government committed itself to “establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine,” which was then governed by the Ottoman Empire.

Arthur Balfour, then the foreign secretary after which the declaration was named, outlined plans to form “a national home for the Jewish people” in a letter to politician Walter Rothschild, a Zionist leader.

The government endorsed and published the recommendations on November 2, 1917.

Fast forward, the Palestine Action group protesters seized two busts of Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president, from a glass cabinet at the University of Manchester on Saturday, the 107th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

The group claimed Weizmann had “lobbied Balfour into assisting the Zionist colonization of Palestine” when they both lived in Manchester at the start of the 20th century.

PUBLISHED VIDEO

In a video it published, a pair of masked and hooded individuals attacked the glass cabinet housing the busts with mallets before loading the sculptures into their bags.

A caption accuses Weizmann of securing the Balfour Declaration, which the group called a “British pledge” that set in motion the “ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

In a statement, the group said: “From the Balfour Declaration to today” Britain “ “remains an active participant in the colonization, genocide, and occupation of Palestine.”

They recalled, “On behalf of Britain, [statesman] Balfour promised away the land of Palestine – which he never had the right to do. After the declaration until the “Nakba” (or “catastrophe” in English) in 1948, British soldiers killed, arrested and raped Palestinians,” the activists added.

“During their colonial mandate, the British introduced home demolitions as collective punishment to repress Palestinian resistance and burnt down many indigenous villages. During this time, Weizmann was president of the World Zionist Organisation.”

Police said they were treating at least one of the attacks as a hate crime.

In London, Palestine Action sprayed the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre on Hampstead High Street with red paint. They claimed it was “funded by wealth made from manufacturing Israeli weapons” and therefore fitted the group’s broader ambition to “dismantle Zionism.”

BRITISH FRIENDS

Israeli sources said the building is also home to The British Friends of the Jaffa Institute, a registered charity working to advance education and alleviate poverty and sickness in Jaffa, Israel.

Additionally, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign group organized a “die-in” at Downing Street, where demonstrators lay on the ground to commemorate Palestinians killed in the war with Israel. They then marched before the U.S. embassy to demand an immediate arms embargo.

Palestine Action also took responsibility for targeting a Jewish charity’s office in Hendon, north-west London, spraying the Jewish National Fund building with red paint overnight.

The UK’s Charity Commission describes the Jewish National Fund as “raising funds for environmental and humanitarian causes in Israel.” Last year, it spent millions on charitable activities.

Elsewhere in Britain, in Cambridge, Palestine Action collaborated with students to spray the Cambridge University’s Institute of Manufacturing and Senate House with red paint.

“Cambridge University students, in collaboration with the international group ‘Palestine Action,’ have sprayed one of the university’s centers of complicity: the institute for manufacturing. Today, the 2nd of November, marks 107 years since the Balfour Declaration was signed. Cambridge educated Balfour and, until direct action destroyed it, his portrait was hung in Trinity College,” the group added in a statement seen by Worthy News.

“Our university’s complicity in the genocide of the Palestinians runs deep. The criminology department at Cambridge University helps train ‘Israeli’ police and military; the Department of Material Science partners with ‘Israeli’ arms companies to produce armored vehicles; Rolls-Royce operates out of the Institute for Manufacturing (IFM).”

CHALLENGE COMPLICITY

That stressed that “We must challenge complicity wherever we see it, so today we showed the world the true colors of these institutes of death – blood on the institution’s walls, blood on the institution’s hands.”

The “Pride” they take in Lperpetrating genocide, boasting about their links to manufacturers of death, cannot continue. Shame on the IFM, shame on the Department of Material Science, shame on Cambridge University,” the group said.

On Saturday, the group called on its followers to “smash, paint and occupy” Rolls-Royce buildings.

The protesters did not speak about the October 7, 2023, massacre of some 1,200 people in Israel by Hamas, including babies and women raped by the group, that sparked the war.

Labour Against Anti-Semitism, a group of predominantly Jewish party members, wrote to recently elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer to voice concerns that Labour policies “ushered anti-Semitism” onto British streets, making Jews feel “unsafe and unwelcome”.

The group criticized Starmer for “setting the tone” by permitting regular “hateful marches” and the “anti-Semitic hate-filled demonstration” outside a Jewish community center in Finchley, north London, on October 27.”

Starmer has condemned antisemitism. However, “Once again, you need to put actions to your words and reassure the Jewish community that contemporary anti-Semitism, under the guise of humanitarian anti-Zionism, will not be tolerated,” the Jewish group stressed.

TEACHING SCHOOL CHILDREN

They added, “It is not good enough to promise that schoolchildren will learn about the Holocaust” or Shoah, “when you are allowing Jewish children to be bullied on our streets.”

That became clear over the weekend as tens of thousands of anti-Israel protesters marched through the streets of London towards the U.S. embassy, demanding that Washington stop arming Jerusalem amid its war on Iran-backed groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

London police said a man was arrested at the protest after he was observed carrying a placard suspected of expressing support for a terror organization.

The sign reportedly read, “Resistance is not terrorism,” a reference to the October 7, 2023, massacre.

Far-left lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn addressed the protest, which the Palestine Solidarity Campaign organized.

Fearful of attacks, only a tiny pro-Israel counter-protest gathered near the march, waving British and Israeli flags.

They also held signs calling for the release of the remaining roughly 101 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza, though dozens are believed to have been killed.

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