A general election must be approaching.
Political demands are getting more and more eccentric as politicians appeal to those religious minorities who can return them to power and it’s not just the Lib Dems who are expertly adept at this.
George Galloway and Jeremy Corbyn made Nick Clegg seem positively liberal when they spoke at the recent “Public meeting on jailing of Gaza protesters“.
After the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six now comes the “Free the Gaza 22” campaign.
At the meet we were informed that there were 119 arrests at the protests that took place in London last January against Israel’s Operation Cast Lead against Hamas.
“Almost all were Muslim,” we were told. 22 had already been jailed with many more to follow. Sentences ranged from eight months to two and a half years.
“The majority were 16 to 19 years old, many were just 15 and 16 and one was as young as 12.”
Most of the meet was spent accusing the police of making political arrests and the judiciary of handing out political sentences both in order to discourage Muslims from taking to the streets to protest in the future. Allegations of Islamaphobia were rife throughout the meet.
Jeremy Corbyn closed the meeting with the following eccentric demands:
1. The 22 in prison should be immediately released.
2. No one standing trial should go to prison.
3. All complaints against the police should be investigated.
4. There should be an independent review of the police operation.
5. There should be a broader campaign against the criminalisation of the Muslim community.
I am as much against Islamaphobia as anyone but whoever remembers seeing the violence perpetrated by thugs at the London demonstration will not be surprised in the slightest by the prison sentences, even for first time offenders.
But Joanne Gilmore, the chief researcher, suggested that these were “relatively minor disturbances”.
Well if you call knocking a policeman unconscious and smashing up Starbucks “relatively minor” one can start to understand why certain people don’t take seriously the thousands of Kassam rockets that have pounded Israeli towns over the years and which caused Israel to go into Gaza to stop them.
And when the Stop the War Coalition repeatedly refers to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine as attacks on Muslims then what do they expect when thousands of British Muslims come out on to the streets of London to violently protest.
The lies feeds the anger that creates the violence that causes the arrests and the imprisonment.
Full piece at:
http://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/free-the-gaza-22-now/