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6,000 take Bristol's streets to back Israel boycott

THOUSANDS across Britain rallied over the weekend to back an international boycott aimed at breaking the Israel’s government’s death-grip on Gaza.

In Bristol 6,000 people joined a “peace march for Palestine,” winding from the Shah Jalal Jame mosque through the city centre to a rally on College Green.

Labour councillor Hibaq Jama who took part in protest said the demonstration was possibly the city’s biggest show of strength since the 2003 nationwide protests against the invasion of Iraq.

“The amount of people that took part in the demonstration shows the strength of feeling about what is happening in Gaza,” she said.

The public dissent has also given rise to a protest camp pitched outside the BBC’s Bristol headquarters, with locals invited to rally outside the building this week and symbolically burn their TV licences in protests against the broadcaster’s coverage of the attacks.

Campaigner Ed Hill of the Bristol Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “Bristol has a long history of links with Palestine.

“From peace campaigners to faith groups, from football teams to circus performers and Banksy, many Bristolians have visited Palestine — they know the truth about what’s really happening.”

Meanwhile protests in London continued, with activists in Whitechapel occupying a Tesco Metro to demand an end to its stocking of Israeli exports.

Footage uploaded to Youtube yesterday showed a police officer threatening to arrest the group, which had removed Israeli products from the supermarket’s shelves.

“If any of these goods are chilled and they become unsellable you’re going to be arrested for criminal damage,” he said.

“It’s criminal damage to be selling these products anyway,” a protester retorted.

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