Twenty arrested in first march since Ed Miliband declared UK’s position was that Israel’s occupation of West Bank was unlawful

Thousands of people have gathered in central London to express their support for Palestinians after three years of “genocide” carried out against them by Israel.

The demonstrators, many wearing keffiyehs and holding Palestine flags, gathered on the Embankment at midday on Saturday. Some carried placards reading “End the genocide” and “Free Palestine” as they marched towards parliament. A bride and groom appeared to be among those in attendance and a two-minute silence was held to reflect on the lives lost in Gaza.

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© Photograph: Alberto Pezzali/AP

© Photograph: Alberto Pezzali/AP

© Photograph: Alberto Pezzali/AP

Are we really living through ‘end times fascism’? The authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor think so.

In a new series from the Guardian, the pair speak to Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty in an extended interview. From Trump 2.0 and the rise of the tech billionaire to Gaza and the ongoing climate emergency, Klein and Taylor argue we are not just lurching from crisis to crisis, but are in a new and dangerous moment in history. However, they haven’t given up hope of a fightback.

Radical Thinking will be published every Saturday in the Politics Weekly feed

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© Photograph: The Guardian

© Photograph: The Guardian

© Photograph: The Guardian

Only ‘very small number’ of people already in Lebanon or Jordan will be referred, says organisation running scheme

The Home Office is facing claims it gave false hope to the people of Gaza after it emerged that a new safe route for Palestinian refugees will only be open to those who have already escaped to Lebanon or Jordan.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, announced the reopening of a resettlement scheme for refugees at Labour’s annual conference last month. A statement from her department said: “Around one in four referrals will be for Afghan women and girls and Palestinian refugees, fleeing war and persecution.”

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© Photograph: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu/Getty Images

It’s easier to blame brutes and sadists for extreme violence. But as we see in the documentary, modern genocides are fueled by people who are uncomfortably recognizable

Werner Best, a senior SS official and jurist who helped organize the Nazi death squads that murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews, is also known for his statement: “We must destroy the enemy without hating him.” He belonged to a younger generation of Nazi technocrats, who despised the foul-mouthed, beer-bellied, brown-shirted “old fighters” of the Nazi party in the 1920s, and believed in organizing genocide neatly and dispassionately. After the fall of the regime, Best escaped justice for the rest of his long life, dying peacefully in Germany in 1989. His chilling statement came to my mind while I was watching the film NAZA.

I grew up in Tel Aviv and have visited there often in recent years. That is why the interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, which make up this documentary, felt strangely familiar. The conversations are conducted at night on rooftops, and the camera scans the cityscape, lingering on apartment windows as their inhabitants watch TV and make dinner. The landscape was intimately recognizable, and I felt a natural affinity with those people living their lives. I also recognized the way the interviewees talked – their speech patterns and choice of words. They reminded me of my son, who served more than a decade ago in the intelligence unit many of them might have belonged to.

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© Photograph: NAZA/The Guardian

© Photograph: NAZA/The Guardian

© Photograph: NAZA/The Guardian

While Israel’s actions against Palestinians intensify public anger, the bloc remains paralysed along familiar fault lines

When the British government announced sweeping sanctions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements and condemned “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank by state-backed “settler terrorists”, some EU diplomats hoped this dramatic shift in UK government policy towards Israel would have a galvanising effect on the rest of Europe. So far, it has not.

Although France and Canada joined the UK in pledging to ban goods from illegal settlements and impose sanctions on “those who facilitate them or profit from them”, there has not yet been a wider ripple effect.

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© Photograph: snapshot-photography/F Boillot/Shutterstock

© Photograph: snapshot-photography/F Boillot/Shutterstock

© Photograph: snapshot-photography/F Boillot/Shutterstock

Embassies post links to hastily produced online film echoing style of real Guardian documentary about mass killings of Gaza civilians

The Israeli government is promoting an online film project that mimics the style of NAZA, the award-winning documentary that details Israel’s mass killings of civilians in Gaza, in an attempt to counter the real film’s findings.

The real documentary, directed by the Oscar-winning film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, and produced by the Guardian, is in cinemas and will be shown in more than 50 countries.

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© Photograph: NAZA/The Guardian

© Photograph: NAZA/The Guardian

© Photograph: NAZA/The Guardian

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© Illustration: Ben Jennings

© Illustration: Ben Jennings

© Illustration: Ben Jennings

People tell of lives changed beyond recognition after the 7 October attacks by Hamas three years ago and the subsequent Israeli offensive

Ahmed Ishtaiwi has six chairs. They are cheap and plastic and battered, but they are among the 43-year-old driver and mechanic’s most valuable possessions.

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© Photograph: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu/Getty Images

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© Illustration: Ella Baron/The Guardian

© Illustration: Ella Baron/The Guardian

© Illustration: Ella Baron/The Guardian

1,200 died in attack that led to launch of devastating war in Gaza

• ‘All I want to do is cry’: trauma of 7 October survivors three years after the attacks

The Israeli military said it launched several security operations across the West Bank overnight, arresting dozens of people suspected of being involved in terrorism, including expressing support for the 7 October attack, the Israeli military said.

A young man was shot and wounded by Israeli soldiers during one of the campaigns in Jenin, according to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency.

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© Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

© Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

© Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

Britain cannot call itself a diverse democracy when communities are living with such fear. A line must be drawn. Let it be now

On another anniversary of the 7 October attacks, the lasting impact on Britain’s Jews is found in the essential daily decisions we now have to make. Beyond the simple fear that you or your children might get killed the next time you go to synagogue or visit your local kosher shop, Jews are hiding the fact they are Jewish.

This has gone beyond the choice of whether to wear your Star of David necklace inside or outside your shirt. It is found in the job applicants who remove their Jewish community volunteering from their CV; the people who use false names when ordering an Uber; the parents who move their children from mainstream schools to Jewish ones.

Dave Rich is director of policy at the Community Security Trust. His new book, From Be’eri to Bondi: Global Antisemitism After October 7, is published by Routledge

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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© Photograph: PA Images/Alamy

© Photograph: PA Images/Alamy

© Photograph: PA Images/Alamy

Israeli communities shattered by Hamas massacres are torn between rebuilding their lives and remembering lost friends and relatives

Keith Siegel spent many of his long hours in Hamas captivity in Gaza etching everything that happened after 7 October 2023 into his memory. For 484 days, he recited to himself every place he was held, the dates he was moved and every attack or humiliation he endured or witnessed.

He aimed to store intelligence that could help Israeli forces free other hostages if he was released, to keep track of time as the days slid by and be able to tell his family what happened to him. Now his body is free, but he cannot loosen those memories.

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© Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

© Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

© Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

According to Liberal Current's poll conducted together with the Center for Strategic Politics the question "Should the next Democratic administration pursue criminal prosecution of [M]embers of the Trump and Biden administrations for actions taken related to Israel's genocide in Gaza" has a 57% support among Democrats. (data source) That's good news, as we have some new stuff in the accountability department.

The Officials:

Drop the Genocide 20

These are the top 20 officials most responsible for promoting, lying about, and covering up the Gaza genocide in the Biden White House. The purpose of the #DroptheGenocide20 pledge is to demand these officials be removed from future Democratic administrations, think tanks, and academic and liberal spaces.

Statement on Genocidal Incitement by Israel's Minister of National Security (Lemkin Institute)

The Lemkin Institute strongly condemns the recent inhumane statements of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, in which he called for the deliberate killing of "30 to 40" Palestinians every night in Gaza, even if they pose no immediate danger, because, according to him, "[t]here are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn't live. They're not even people." We will be very clear: This statement, which has garnered some outrage in Europe, is an unambiguous declaration of genocidal intent and incitement to genocide.

Israel will 'finish the job' in Gaza and seek Palestinians' migration — defense minister (Jerusalem Post)

Defense Minister Israel Katz says it is only a matter of time before the country resumes full-scale war in Gaza and moves to encourage the emigration of its two million Palestinians.

UK Lawyers for Israel calls to proscribe Doctors Without Borders as terror group

UKLFI appears 128 times in the European Legal Support Centre's Britain Index of Repression database, which documents what it describes as the systematic repression of Palestine solidarity activism across Britain. The centre argued that UKLFI has helped to create a "chilling environment" in which individuals and organisations withdraw or modify lawful Palestine-related activity due to fears of legal escalation.

The Media

Adam H. Johnson: How to Sell a Genocide - The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza (Pluto Press)

How to Sell a Genocide is a thorough indictment of US corporate media's role in enabling—and, at times, directly inciting—one of the most devastating campaigns of mass killing in modern memory. Johnson unpacks how major news outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC systematically sanitized Israel's war crimes, hid the US's central role, and dehumanized the Palestinian people.

Radio War Nerd EP 621 — US Media Complicity in the Gaza Genocide, feat. Adam Johnson + Guest co-host Aamer

The passage of another death penalty law shows the one issue Israelis can unite behind: death for Palestinians

After passing two death penalty laws in six weeks, Israel is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to try to execute Palestinians on live TV. Unanimous support for the laws shows that Israeli society can unite around "death to Palestinians."

The Sources

Gaza is Too Graphic For Community Standards

On January 30, 2025, I uploaded a video to Instagram I filmed in Gaza showing a mother sitting beside the bodies of her children after an airstrike. She was not screaming. She was silent in a way that felt heavier than any sound. Within minutes, the post disappeared from both Instagram and Facebook. The notification read: "This content violates Community Standards on graphic violence." There was no context in the message, no acknowledgment of where the video came from, and no distinction between documentation and harm. Only erasure. And then, silence.

Archive Genocide — War Crimes Archive

We archive what others erase. Permanently. We are a group of researchers dedicated to archiving war crimes footage from Gaza and the West Bank. Our team submits all evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Hind Rajab Foundation, and the South African legal team at the ICJ. If you'd like to contribute or join the effort, connect with us on Twitter or Telegram. (Warning - Graphic footage! - the same data is available as a graph for exploring connections.)