March for Palestine in Portsmouth on Sunday 21st January 2024
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:14 Well, we're here to try to show our solidarity in a small way
00:18 with the people in Palestine, and particularly in Gaza
00:21 at the moment.
00:27 I guess there's a huge lack of action from our government
00:31 and from the international community.
00:33 And I think one of the small things we can do
00:37 is to keep showing up every week, every other week,
00:40 to try to let people in Portsmouth
00:44 know about what's going on.
00:46 And to hopefully, the pictures of what
00:50 goes on around the world gets back to people in Palestine.
00:52 And it gives them some hope, at least, that--
00:55 They know they're not alone.
00:56 That they're not alone, yeah.
00:58 I'd start with I'm not here to show solidarity in the sense
01:02 because I'm of Palestinian origin myself.
01:05 And I've lived through a few of Israel's wars
01:08 when living in Lebanon.
01:10 Part of you is the way you understand
01:11 the world at that moment.
01:13 You realize that there is somebody in an airplane who
01:17 is willing to bomb a shell on a place that has kids.
01:20 Puts you politically in a certain place
01:22 where you do not accept the concept,
01:25 regardless of whether you're Palestinian, Israeli,
01:27 or whatever, that you don't accept
01:29 the principle of this kind of decision
01:35 to bomb a place where there are kids, where you know you would
01:39 be harming kids, and you don't care about it.
01:41 Palestine is free!
01:42 Palestine!
01:43 How can we not try to escape?
01:46 Palestine will be free!
01:48 Yes, I'm George.
01:49 I'm 30.
01:51 I'm actually from Chichester, not from Portsmouth.
01:53 But I've joined this march today to call
01:55 for an immediate ceasefire.
01:57 What we're seeing in Palestine is absolutely horrific,
02:01 and it has to stop immediately.
02:02 So what we're saying is we can't wait for the Americans.
02:05 We can't wait for the Labour Party.
02:06 We can't wait for the Tories.
02:07 We have to call for a ceasefire immediately.
02:09 And every other week, people are marching in London
02:12 in their hundreds of thousands.
02:13 But it's really important in between those two weeks
02:16 that people come out in their numbers in their local areas.
02:19 So yesterday, we saw 10,000 people in Birmingham,
02:22 3,000 people in Bristol, and we've got a couple of hundred
02:25 here today.
02:26 So it's really important that we show up in our local areas
02:28 to put pressure on our MPs, put pressure on the institutions
02:32 that we stopped outside today.
02:33 So we stopped outside Barclays Bank,
02:35 who are directly funding the IDF and arming them,
02:38 and outside Starbucks, just outside the Guildhall here,
02:41 who are also funding the IDF.
02:43 And we'd encourage anyone to get involved with our marches
02:46 and look us up on social media, Portsmouth PSC,
02:50 or go to Palestine Solidarity Campaign website.
02:52 What would I say to people on the fence?
02:54 What are you doing on the fence?
02:55 This is very clearly a genocide.
02:56 We don't need to wait for the International Court of Justice
03:01 to call this a genocide.
03:02 It's very clear.
03:03 Multiple charities have come out and said,
03:05 this is very clearly a genocide.
03:06 The UN has said that this is an apartheid regime in Israel.
03:10 They are occupying Gaza.
03:12 There are illegal settlements in the West Bank.
03:15 This is very clear what is going on.
03:17 We need to stop waiting for our institutions, our media,
03:19 and our politicians to point out what everyone knows
03:22 and what the people in Palestine know.
03:24 And if you're on the fence, what I say is,
03:25 get off the fence and get on the side of Palestine.
03:27 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:31 [Music]