For the second week protests took place across Britain, banging empty pots and pans, demanding “Stop Starving Gaza”. On Friday 120 protestors lined the seafront on Weymouth esplanade and on Thursday a protest was held in Bridport.
Earlier this week two renowned Israeli human rights organisations published reports identifying Israel’s attacks on Gaza as genocide. In 2024, UN experts asserted that “”Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people.”
In their report, Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, note that “Since Israel broke the ceasefire in March 2025, the starvation of Gaza’s population has become official and openly declared policy” and expert projections estimate that by September, 470,000 people, 22 percent of Gaza’s population will experience catastrophic hunger.
Weymouth protest organiser Sam, condemned Keir Starmer’s announcement that the government would recognise a Palestinian state if Israel’s blockade of food and continued:
“The right of self-determination is not a bargaining chip. It is a right. How appalling that our prime minister, our head of government, declares that Britain will withhold recognition of Palestinians’ right to self-determination if Israel stops the genocide after 22 months”.
Suzanne, a member of the trade union UNISON, spoke of the support for Palestine in Ireland, the resonance of famine and her own Irish history and how “Famine is ingrained in my soul”.
Rob Ferguson, secretary of Dorset Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told protestors:
“Across Britain, protests are increasing in face of the horror of forced starvation and genocide. Our government is complicit, Keir Starmer and David Lammy are complicit in genocide.
“But they are under massive pressure. The images of forced starvation are now on the front pages of the press. The daily shooting down of desperate people at food distribution centres is in plain sight. And this week, in a massive blow to Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, the High Court granted a judicial review to the founders of the direct-action group, Palestine Action.
“We need to increase the pressure on our own government, we need to build the mass protests, including at the arms plants supplying Israel. And we have to build mass protests in defence of the right to protest, against the proscription of Palestine Action to drop the charges against the organisers of the London protests. Protest is not terrorism. Arming Israel’s genocide is”.
