“Starvation is deployed as a weapon. Aid is blocked to collectively punish civilians. For months, 2.3 million Palestinians have been denied food and medicine. All the while, Israeli airstrikes rain relentlessly on hospitals, homes, and schools.”
By Apsana Begum MP
The below speech was delivered at the 17th May 2025 Nakba 77 demonstration in central London, called by Palestine Solidarity Campaign and partner organisations.
For years, I’ve stood with you at protests, condemning Israel’s oppression and crimes against humanity inflicted on the Palestinian people.
Today, I stand here again as we also mark the long years of displacement, mass expulsion and dispossession.
Because I, like you, know we must keep speaking truth to power—even as repression against dissent escalates.
Protest empowers communities to confront injustice, and that is exactly why we’re witnessing brutal crackdowns.
History reminds us of protest’s vital role in driving change, which is why undemocratic forces seek to evade accountability.
But no spin can mask the truth: the UK and U.S. continue to pursue foreign policy with callous indifference to Palestinian lives.
Beyond political theatrics, their hypocrisy is laid bare—censorship, complicity, and UK-made arms slaughtering civilians, 70% of them women and children.
This week, the UN heard of Israel’s forced displacement of Gazans into shrinking enclaves—80% of Gaza now militarized or under evacuation orders.
As I speak, starvation is deployed as a weapon. Aid is blocked to collectively punish civilians. For months, 2.3 million Palestinians have been denied food and medicine.
All the while, Israeli airstrikes rain relentlessly on hospitals, homes, and schools.
Shame on those who have stood by and allowed this to happen. Shame on those who have been complicit.
The actions of the British political establishment have been of tremendous damage to democracy at home, the UK’s reputation abroad and indeed the standing of human rights benchmarks around the world.
There is no doubt that everything that the UK Government has done, everything it continues to do and everything it fails to do, will forever haunt its legacy.
Instead, our movement against war and injustice continues to bring people from all over the world – from all faiths, all ethnicities, all backgrounds.
Demanding aid to support the starving, injured and dispossessed.
Calling for justice and accountability.
Reasserting the unalienable truth that Palestinian people have a right to self-determination.
There can be no “ifs” or “buts” or indeed “eventually” or “sometime in the future”.
No more empty promises.
There needs to be an immediate recognition of a Palestinian state. Now.
I look around me today and see how we are bound by our shared humanity and just purpose:
We will keep speaking out.
We will keep fighting for justice.
We will keep standing for what we know to be right.
Because no one is free until all people are free.
- Apsana Begum is the MP for Poplar and Limehouse and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow Apsana on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and Tik Tok.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
Well done comrade