Hundreds of pro-Palestinian British citizens demonstrated on Saturday in London calling for "the liberation of Palestine."
Among the protestors was Ahed Tamimi, the 17-year-old Palestinian Arab teenager who served eight months in an Israeli prison after she was filmed slapping an Israeli soldier during a protest of leftists and Palestinian Arabs in her town of Nabi Saleh.
British supporters of Israel participated in a counter-demonstration, waving blue and white flags.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn wrote on his Facebook page ahead of the demonstration, “We cannot stand by or stay silent at the continuing denial of rights and justice to the Palestinian people. The Labour Party is united in condemning the ongoing human rights abuses by Israeli forces, including the shooting of hundreds of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza - most of them refugees or families of refugees - demanding their rights.”
“If President Trump’s Middle East plan is, as expected, an attempt to bury the Palestinians’ right to a viable state alongside Israel, we will call on our government and the international community to reject it decisively. No peace plan can succeed at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people,” Corbyn added.
“That’s why a Labour government will recognize a Palestinian state and press for an immediate return to meaningful negotiations, aimed at achieving a lasting settlement based on UN resolutions, international law and justice that has been too long denied,” he stated.
Corbyn’s Labour party has been embroiled in a series of controversies related to anti-Semitism in recent years. Dozens of Labour members have been suspended over their anti-Semitic statements.
Corbyn himself has been accused of holding anti-Semitic views by senior UK Jewish leaders. Corbyn has also been criticized for calling Hamas and Hezbollah his "friends" and for outright refusing to condemn those two terrorist organizations despite being urged to do so by local Jewish groups.