Holocaust survivor who laid flowers at Gaza protest questioned by police
Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos, 87, was questioned by London's Metropolitan Police following his participation in a pro-Palestine protest in Trafalgar Square on January 18.
Mr Kapos, who laid flowers at the square to commemorate Palestinian lives lost in the Israel - Hamas war, is one of nine people summoned for questioning after the protest, during which 77 arrests were made.
The Met Police allege that protesters violated pre-communicated Public Order Act conditions by moving from Whitehall to Trafalgar Square.
Mr Kapos, along with supporters, criticised the UK government's response to the conflict, urging condemnation of Israeli actions and an end to military contracts.
A group of Holocaust survivors and descendants has penned an open letter condemning the police's questioning of Mr Kapos.
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The National
32 minutes ago
- The National
The UK's silence on Gaza will haunt generations to come
You could be mistaken for thinking I am describing some Second World War scenario, but depressingly, this is the reality in Gaza today. Despite repeated promises of a ceasefire, and a commitment to lift the siege of Gaza and allow aid to enter, Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians. A UN spokesperson recently announced that only five trucks of aid had reached more than two million people trapped in Gaza, and even then, aid workers were not given permission to distribute that tiny amount. READ MORE: How much has your MP claimed in expenses? See the full Scottish list here According to The New York Times, over the past year, Israel has been in talks with private US security contractors, namely former CIA veteran Philip Reilly, to create an Israeli-backed food distribution programme. In February of this year, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was established with the backing of the Trump administration. United Nations aid expert Tom Fletcher said that the GHF makes aid conditional on Israel's political and military aims, and 'makes starvation a bargaining chip'. The former head of GHF resigned last week citing the foundation's inability to uphold the core humanitarian principles of 'neutrality, impartiality and independence'. According to The New York Times, the GHF emerged from 'private meetings of like-minded officials, military officers and businesspeople with close ties to the Israeli government'. It is therefore very convenient that the GHF, supported by Israel, uses biometric screening, including facial recognition, to vet who receives aid. Critics also warn that the GHF's decision to concentrate aid in southern Gaza serves as a further attempt to depopulate northern Gaza, as planned by the Israeli military. The GHF's lack of experience and capacity to deliver aid to more than two million Palestinians was laid bare on its very first day of operation. We saw images of thousands of starving Palestinians rushing to try to reach food, after three months of Israeli-imposed starvation. Those lucky enough to access food went on to discover there was only enough for a couple of days at most. What began as a retaliatory campaign, after Hamas killed around 1200 Israelis and kidnapped 250 more, has since turned to genocide. As it stands, Israel has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians – of which nearly 20,000 were children. Almost all of Gaza's homes have been damaged or destroyed, alongside 80% of facilities, 88% of school buildings and 70% of road networks and cropland. 222 journalists have been killed since the October 7 attack, of which 217 were Palestinian. The disproportionate response from Israel and the continual breaking of international law means it is beyond doubt that Israeli actions are a deliberate military attempt to seize more Palestinian land. Israel places evacuation orders on areas it plans to bomb, only to issue further evacuation orders to the places people have been displaced to. READ MORE: MSP demands answers from Police Scotland over Kneecap 'security concerns' Most people in Gaza have moved repeatedly in attempts to escape Israeli airstrikes, though no part of Gaza has been spared attacks. The Israeli military has issued more than 65 evacuation orders since October 7, 2023, leaving about 80% of the Gaza Strip under active evacuation orders. Following this, Israel has authorised 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank. This is despite the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel's settlement policy is a direct breach of international law. Israel Katz, the country's defence minister, said the decision to expand these illegal settlements 'strengthens our hold on Judea and Samaria', using the biblical term for the West Bank, which is Palestinian territory. Israel's far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said: 'We have not taken foreign land, but rather the inheritance of our forefathers.' Breaking international law in the name of religion is exactly the kind of behaviour we would describe as extremism. Bombing innocent civilians who are sheltering in hospitals and schools, to the point of obliteration, can only be described as terrorism. READ MORE: 'Do something!': Question Time audience member in fiery row with Labour MP on Israel This Labour Government has contorted itself into knots trying to be everything to everyone. One week, the Foreign Secretary David Lammy suspended talks on further trade deals with Israel, only for the British trade envoy, Lord Ian Austin, to visit Israel the next week to 'promote trade'. The UK Government's continual reticence to speak out against this genocide will haunt us for generations to come, especially when compared to how quick off the mark it has been to condemn the Irish band Kneecap. The duplicity of this Labour Government's failure to act efficiently and proportionately in speaking out against this genocide cannot be forgotten. History will certainly never let us forget.
The National
33 minutes ago
- The National
Why the UK media 180 on Gaza is too little, too late
The problem is that there remains an equally deafening sound, one that can't be drowned out, nor easily forgotten: The thunderous silence that the mainstream British press and broadcast ecosystem clung to as Israel systematically slaughtered, besieged, starved and annihilated Gaza. And that was if their coverage wasn't white-washing, diluting and actively deceiving the public about the reality of Israel's 20-month pummelling of two million Palestinians in an open-air prison. A switch has now been collectively flicked: "End the deafening silence", demanded the Independent's editorial, followed by an extensive report a fortnight later by the paper's international correspondent about how exactly we ever got to this point, including, notably, the genocidal intent expressed by Israeli ministers, a context rarely acknowledged in previous coverage. In trying to explain how we got here, the Independent inadvertently showed exactly why we did. READ MORE: Activists read names of 15,000 Gaza children killed by Israel outside Parliament One newspaper this spring outlined the "horror in Gaza", centring the crippling siege Israel imposed and the resulting engineered famine. It was penned by a journalist who repeated IDF claims about a beheaded Israeli baby in October 2023, a claim still live on the same website. The Financial Times and The Economist followed suit: The latter's leader now unambiguously stating the war "must" end. On November 8, 2023, its leader said Israel "must" fight on. Broadcast presenters have rushed to defend their record — eager, perhaps, to prove they offered impartial, thorough coverage and didn't manufacture consent for crimes committed on an industrial scale. When paediatrician Dr Tanya Haj Hassan slammed the BBC for parroting Israeli talking points, the presenter — who had just defended the network's output as fair and balanced — followed up with the usual uncritical amplification of Israeli genocide denial. It's a pattern all too familiar from that very presenter. This is the same BBC that interrupted Palestinian guests listing the names of relatives killed by Israeli bombs — to ask whether they condemn Hamas. The script read complicity and distraction. And the mainstream media seemed to have rehearsed it to perfection. That does not appear to be something the public will forget. Channel 4's Krishnan Guru-Murthy was asked by a social media user why it took so long, in response to his promotion of the network's report on five-year-old Ward in Gaza who survived an Israeli strike but harrowingly witnessed her family burn to death. "You just haven't been watching, clearly," was the retort. Except that thousands had been watching closely. 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It's not courage to write a column, as one Guardian contributor did, that agonises performatively over the plight of Palestinian children in this "terrible conflict", yet fails across more than 1000 words to name the state mercilessly targeting them. READ MORE: Kneecap correct BBC headline after TRNSMT show cancelled Nor is it brave for the paper's editorial to now highlight the reality of the engineered horror, while its reporters resort to business as usual and include Israeli military justifications in their coverage — trawling through press releases, or recycling old ones when none are ready to hand. All to avoid framing the ongoing Palestinian suffering as a deliberate, systematic decimation, and instead present it as part of a tragic, two-sided military strategy – all of which is most certainly unrelated to the secret meetings The Guardian's editor held with a former Israeli general tasked with cultivating support for Israel. None of that is courageous, principled journalism. Nor is it an awakening or an ethical reckoning that must be applauded. It's cynical hand-wringing — the kind that might win nods in the sophisticated newsroom culture of Fleet Street but will collapse under the weight of history. In the all-encompassing court of public memory, this theatre won't hold up. When British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah says that in the future genocide museum, there will be a section reserved for the journalists who enabled the horrors, I can't help but have sympathy for the architects and engineers tasked with the herculean challenge of designing a room vast enough to hold them all. Hamza Yusuf is a British-Palestinian writer and journalist whose work focuses on Palestine
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
How the controversial US-Israeli backed Gaza aid plan turned to chaos
The masked and armed security contractor atop a dirt mound watches thousands of Palestinians who have been kettled into narrow lanes separated by fences makes a heart shape with his hands and the crowd responds - the fence begins to bend as they push against jubilant scene was filmed on Tuesday, the opening day of an aid distribution centre - a vital lifeline for Gazans who haven't seen fresh supplies come into the strip for more than two months due to an Israeli by that afternoon, the scene was one of total chaos. Videos showed the distribution centre overrun by desperate civilians trampling over toppled barriers; people flinched as sounds of gunshots rang was the disorderly start to a controversial new aid distribution scheme operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a newly created body backed the the US and has been tasked with feeding desperately hungry Gazans. The UN said more than two million are at risk of starvation. The foundation, which uses armed American security contractors, aims to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid in Gaza. It has been roundly condemned and boycotted by aid agencies and the UN. But Israel has said an alternative to the existing aid system was needed to stop Hamas stealing aid, which the group denies get a picture of the first few days of this new aid delivery system, BBC Verify has authenticated dozen of images at distribution sites, interviewed humanitarian and logistics experts, analysed Israeli aid transport data and official statements released by the GHF, and spoken with Gazans searching for supplies. Chaotic scenes at distribution centres GHF said it aimed to feed one million Gazans in its first week of operations through four secure distribution sites.A foundation spokesperson said on Friday, its fourth day of operations, that it had distributed two million meals. The BBC has not been able to verify this figure, which would be less than one meal per Gazan over the course of four did not respond to our inquiries about how it was tracking who had been receiving a video filmed at GHF's northern site near Nuseirat on Thursday, Palestinians can be seen being running away from a perimeter fence after GHF contractors threw a projectile that exploded with a loud bang, a flash and smoke. GHF in a statement said its personnel "encountered a tense and potentially dangerous crowd that refused to disperse"."To prevent escalation and ensure the safety of civilians and staff, non-lethal deterrents were deployed—including smoke and warning shots into the ground," it said."These measures were effective", it added, "and no injuries occurred." BBC Verify cannot independently confirm that evening, GHF warned Gazans via Facebook that it would shut down any site where looting GHF is not the only aid organisation facing serious challenges. The night before the GHF warning, a World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse was looted, resulting in several deaths which are still being response to the incident, the WFP said humanitarian challenges "have spiralled out of control" and called for "safe, unimpeded humanitarian access" to Gaza WFP did not respond to BBC questions about how it would implement further security measures at its warehouses. Disorganised GHF communication Palestinians seeking aid have characterised the GHF-led operation as disorganised, saying a lack of communication has contributed to the chaotic scenes seen this have been further muddied by misinformation. BBC Verify has seen at least two Facebook profiles purporting to be official GHF accounts, sharing inaccurate information about the status of the aid distribution page with more than 4,000 followers posted inaccurate information, sometimes alongside AI-generated images, that aid had been suspended or that looting at GHF centres had been rampant.A GHF spokesman confirmed to BBC Verify that both these Facebook accounts were fake. He also said that the foundation had launched an official Facebook information online showed the page was first created on Wednesday, the day after distribution operations organisation Oxfam and local Gazan residents have told the BBC that residents are instead relying on word of mouth to circulate information when aid was available."All of the people are hungry. Everyone fights to get what they want, how are we supposed to get anything?" said Um Mohammad Abu Hajar, who was unable to secure an aid box on Thursday. Aid agency concerns Oxfam criticised the location of the GHF distribution sites, telling BBC Verify that it imposed "military control over aid operations".It's policy adviser, Bushra Khalidi, also questioned how vulnerable people, such as the elderly, would be able to reach these sites, which are located some distance away from some population centres. When the UN had been delivering aid before Israel's humanitarian blockade, there were 400 distribution points spread across Gaza. Under the present GHF distribution system there currently are four known sites."By and large, its designed to dramatically increase the concentration of the population by having the only sources of food remaining in a very small number of places," said Chris Newton, a senior analyst at the brussels-based think tank Crisis Group."You either follow all their rules and probably survive in a small radius around these sites or you are very unlikely to survive."The presence of armed security and Israeli soldiers at or near the distribution sites has also alarmed experts, who said it undermined faith in aid operations."Distributing assistance in this kind of environment is extremely difficult. [It's] much more effectively done when you are trying to work with, and through, the people there… rather than at the point of a mercenary's gun," said Prof Stuart Gordon at the London School of Economics.A GHF spokesperson said: "Our ability - and willingness - to act under pressure is exactly why GHF remains one of the only organisations still capable of delivering critical food aid to Gaza today." Images and videos taken by eyewitnesses and the Israeli military showed the GHF boxes appeared limited to canned food, pasta, rice, cooking oil and some biscuits and lentils."Humanitarian aid is not just a food box that you slap humanitarian on and you call it humanitarian aid," Ms Khalidi supplies being given to families should be accompanied by medical support, hygiene and water purification kits, said Prof Gordon.A 14-page document from GHF, seen by the BBC, promised to hand out water and hygiene kits at the sites. On Friday, only one of the four GHF sites was distributing aid. It opened for less than an hour after which GHF announced on Facebook that it had closed because all its supplies had been "fully distributed".When asked by BBC Verify why only a single site was operational and why its boxes ran out so quickly, a GHF spokesperson said supply "will vary day by day"."Good news is we have provided two million meals in four days and will be ramping up in the coming days and weeks," the spokesman many are still returning from distribution sites without boxes for their families."I am empty-handed like God created me," said Hani Abed outside the centre near Netzarim on Thursday."I came empty-handed and I left empty-handed."Additional reporting and verification by Emma Pengelly, Rudabah Abbass, Alex Murray, Thomas Spencer, Benedict Garman and Richard Irvine-Brown. What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?
