Police were seen carrying out several arrests as hundreds of people demonstrated against the ban on Palestine Action in central London.
Protesters congregated in Trafalgar Square on Saturday afternoon, sitting on camping chairs and on the ground as many held up placards that read: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
Around 100 police officers were also present at the base of Trafalgar Square and approached the protest in lines of pairs before arrests were made.
Multiple protesters were carried out of the crowd, with one woman requesting a rest as she was lifted out.
Bystanders shouted “stop harming women” as the police put her on the ground for a few seconds before resuming the arrest.
Several police officers were also seen carrying a woman out from the protest as people chanted “shame on you”.
Police then lifted a man out in handcuffs and walked an elderly protester with a walking stick to the police vans.
One woman shouted: “Yeah she looks like a terrorist, doesn’t she mate?”
A female protester holding a Palestine Action protest sign, told the Press Association: “I’ve been arrested once before, but I wasn’t prepared to do it today for various reasons.
“I have grandchildren to look after. I’m here to support.”
The 69-year-old, who preferred not to be named, was asked if being arrested put her off protesting and she said: “Of course not”.
She added: “It is the most important thing, and I’m old, in my lifetime, it’s huge.
“It’s a real takeover of the world and its resources. And it’s terrifying.
“There is a massive genocide that has gone on for a really long time.
“They have a lust for murder, a lust for hanging. A lust for torture.”
A 53-year old woman, who also preferred to remain anonymous and held a sign reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action” as she sat in London’s Trafalgar Square, said protesters were exercising a “civil right”.
She said: “The Government have been lobbied by the Israeli state, and they want to get rid of an organisation that opposes genocide – is trying to dismantle the tools of genocide, you know, by taking direct action on weapons manufacturing, and that’s like a civil right to be able to protest in that way.
“I think the fact that they’re being let off by jury shows you, how can they possibly be terrorists?” she added.
“When a jury trial that looks at all the details of what they’ve actually done says ‘not guilty’, you know?
“That tells you something, doesn’t it, about what a deliberative process of ordinary people can do, and so the fact that they want to both proscribe this and get rid of jury trials, in some cases, tells me that it’s an attack on our freedom.
“So I’m basically here to uphold the right to protest in non violent, disobedient ways.”
Activist Yael Kahn, who used to care for female political prisoners in Gaza before moving to England, told the Press Association: “I wish, when my family was exterminated in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany, I wish there were people protesting like all of these lovely people here.
“I absolutely adore them.”
Ms Kahn stood at the edge of the protest on Saturday with a ribbon that read “free Palestine hostages”.
She added: “The police are not arresting those people who actually, their hands are full, covered in blood, of children, of women, of entire people in the Middle East or West Asia.
“They are not questioning them.”
