British Jews’ powerful protest against Israel’s death penalty law goes viral

Jews in Hastings, Sussex, took to the streets on Saturday, 21 March, to protest the planned execution law currently going through the Israeli parliament, which targets Palestinians only.

Hastings sees a powerful protest

A video showing the silent, powerful action has now gone viral, viewed tens of thousands of times on social media:

 

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A post shared by Hastings & District PSC (@hastingsryepsc)

Veteran British artist Annie Lennox, who shared the video, praised the action as a ‘moving example of how local activism can be incredibly powerful’.

She wrote:

Speaking up about what the Israeli government is doing is not antisemitic! It never was and it never will be. When your government is carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity it is a moral right and obligation to speak up and challenge it.

Dressed all in black with T-shirts that read ‘Not in our Name’, five members of the group Hastings Jews for Justice wore a noose each around their necks and blindfolds to denote the ‘condemned’ while others held placards that read:

As Jews, we condemn Israel’s planned racist ‘death penalty’ law that targets Palestinians.

Palestinians in Israeli prisons are already tortured, abused, starved and raped.

They will be hanged. There is no appeal.

This is state-sanctioned murder say human rights groups.

As Jews we call on all MPs to condemn this vile law.

They handed out leaflets explaining that the bill had passed its first reading in November with Amnesty International stating that this amounted to the Israeli government ‘brazenly granting itself carte blanche to impose death sentences on Palestinians.

‘Any death sentences imposed under these amendments would constitute a violation of the right to life and, when imposed by a military court, may also amount to war crimes.’

‘Shamefully silent’

A spokesperson for Hastings Jews for Justice said:

Our representatives have so far remained shamefully silent about this law.

But this new death penalty law fits right into the existing brutalization of Palestinians – it is a racist, apartheid law as it applies only to Palestinians.

Israel is an apartheid state, according to most human rights groups and the International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion of 2024. Israel is also committing genocide in Gaza and has now launched an illegal and unprovoked war on Iran.

With policies such as these, we cannot continue to pretend that Israel operates as a democracy. We cannot continue to sell arms to Israel that are being used to kill Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

It is worth remembering that in 1969 our government finally abolished capital punishment in the UK, arguing such punishment was a ‘barbarous penalty’. How much more barbarous then to enact this policy in a discriminatory system that targets just one group of people?

We call on the British government condemn this appalling apartheid law, to end all arms sales and other military cooperation and to impose sanctions now.

Featured image and additional images supplied