Pro-Palestinian activists were planning London march as Oct 7 massacre unfolded

From the Telegraph

Pro-Palestinian activists were planning a demonstration through London as the Oct 7 massacre was taking place, it has emerged.

At 12.50pm on the day of the 2023 terror attack, while it was still ongoing, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) notified the Metropolitan Police that they intended to hold a protest.

A PSC organiser told police over the phone that the group planned to march through London on the following Saturday, Oct 14, a freedom of information request revealed.

By the time the PSC spoke to the police, Hamas had taken hostages and killed hundreds of people across towns and villages next to the Gaza Strip. Videos had also circulated on social media, showing terrorists taking Israeli hostages to Gaza on motorbikes.

Responding to the Met’s report, Dave Rich, the head of policy at the Community Security Trust, said: “It’s hard to comprehend that while Jews around the world watched with horror as a pogrom took place in Israel on Oct 7, the ghouls at PSC saw the exact same images and thought ‘let’s have an anti-Israel demo’.”

Russell Langer, the director of public affairs at the Jewish Leadership Council, said: “12.55pm on Oct 7 was when I finally found out my family had been rescued from the house set on fire hours earlier by Hamas. Many others were still being killed and kidnapped. Five minutes earlier, those who hate Israel were making their plans to march against the victims.”

The PSC has defended the timing of its decision to plan the march, citing Israel’s retaliation to the terror attack, which was also under way at the time.

At 9.35am that day, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, declared that the country was at war in a post on Twitter.

A PSC spokesman told The Telegraph: “[By that morning] it was already clear that the Israeli attacks on Gaza would be of an indiscriminate violence we had not witnessed before, and that 2.3 million people in Gaza – more than 50 per cent of them children – were at severe risk.

“It is entirely appropriate, therefore, that PSC would call for a protest that would seek an immediate ceasefire and call for the root causes of Israeli occupation and apartheid to be addressed.

“Those who seek to demonise the organisers of and participants in protests for justice for Palestinians do so to deflect attention from the crimes against humanity that Israel has committed. We shall not be deflected by their apologism for genocide.”

Other, pro-Palestinian rallies also took place in Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Cambridge, Norwich, Coventry, Edinburgh and Swansea.