Speeches from London Friends of Standing Together rally, 7 December
Presentations from Palestinian, Israeli, and other speakers at the monthly rally held by London Friends of Standing Together on 7 December, marking Human Rights Day (10 December).
Jasr Kawby
Marcia Gamsu
Yaniv Aknin
Abdalrahman Amer
We gather here in the days leading up to Human Rights Day to reflect on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 77 years ago. Written at a time when humanity was standing in shock at its own capacity for cruelty after two devastating world wars. After the Holocaust, the greatest single crime against humanity, in which two thirds of Europe’s Jewish population were murdered. From this devastation came the recognition that the world needed a shared moral framework — universal and indivisible.
Some people may find the conflict in the Middle East too complicated, and find it hard to decide where their allegiance, sympathy and solidarity should lie, especially when identities, histories and traumas are so deeply intertwined. The Universal Declaration provides the necessary moral compass. It frees us from loyalties dictated by ethnicity, religion or language, treating them as accidents of birth that should not determine our worldviews or convictions.
Our sympathy, solidarity and allegiance belong with those whose rights to life, dignity and freedom have been violated. These include all Israeli civilians killed or threatened by indiscriminate rocket fire or suicide bombings, and the victims of the atrocious 7 October attack. Our sympathy, solidarity and allegiance belong also to the Palestinian victims of the devastating genocide that followed, from which Gaza and Palestine are still reeling. To the victims of long-standing Israeli military occupation, blockade and settler violence. To Palestinian citizens of Israel subjected to apartheid rules. And to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed or expelled during the Nakba to make way for the new state of Israel.
The Universal Declaration enshrined the universal and inalienable rights of all human beings, set out in its thirty articles. Yet Israel — and most notably the current extremist and war-criminal government — has violated nearly every one of those articles. The right of Palestinians to life has been extinguished. The right to dignity has been stripped away. The right to movement has been taken. The rights to shelter, health and education have collapsed, along with the bombed homes, hospitals and schools.
Today, in the wake of the Gaza genocide, humanity stands once more in shock at its own capacity for cruelty. Once more we need to reaffirm universal human rights outlined in the declaration. There is much talk about reconstruction. And reconstruction is essential. But Gaza is screaming for justice.
The United Nations provides a clear framework for societies emerging from mass atrocities, with principles grounded in the Universal Declaration. It rests on four pillars: truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence.
**Truth
**Truth requires independent investigations with full access to archives, testimony and evidence.
**Justice
**Justice cannot be replaced by humanitarian relief alone. It demands that all those who planned, ordered and carried out these war crimes be held to account before the International Criminal Court.
**Reparation
**Reparation requires rebuilding Gaza in ways that restore dignity as well as infrastructure, and supporting and compensating survivors.
**Guarantees of non-recurrence
**These include dismantling the fanatical and dehumanising ideologies that made this genocide thinkable, and weeding them out from politics, education and public discourse.
These principles apply to us Palestinians as well. Our resistance and struggle for freedom and sovereignty must remain rooted in universal human rights. We must reckon with, and confront, the reckless leadership of Hamas and its inhumane and self-destructive way of resistance. We must distance ourselves from the ideologies and rhetoric that justify violence against Israeli civilians.
My appeal to my people is to unequivocally and unconditionally abandon armed resistance as a strategy. It has only triggered catastrophic consequences for us, strengthened the most extreme and fanatical forces in Israel, weakened our Israeli allies who fight for our justice, and undermined international support. I am convinced that sustainable change can only be carried by effective and broad Palestinian, Israeli and Jewish alliances — between those who reject domination and refuse supremacist ideologies.
United by a vision for all who live in this wounded stretch of land between the river and the sea, to live equal in rights, dignity and freedom. Where no ethnicity, no language and no religion takes precedence over another. Where no group claims supremacy, and no group is condemned to subordination. All equal before one law, rooted in the universal principles set out seventy-seven years ago in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we reaffirm today.
Jasr Kawkby is a doctor and activist, originally from Gaza, now based in London.
Just over four weeks ago, I was harvesting olives in the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan, in the West Bank. An army jeep was watching us and a drone was buzzing overhead. When we gathered for a break, the drone started to circle very low. Then it crashed, cutting the arm of one of an Israeli volunteer as it fell. Moments later, two settlers dressed in army fatigues arrived with guns. They pointed them at us and one of them fired into the air. Then they ran off with their drone.
I was there with Rabbis for Human Rights, Standing Together and other Israeli and international volunteers. There were about 25 of us. We were using our privilege as non-Palestinians to help the harvest go ahead, film abuses, and act as a deterrent to violence. But even with this protective presence, the situation suddenly became dangerous.
When the settler fired his gun I was really frightened. I ran off and dropped to the ground but braver activists faced the settlers and filmed what was happening. Someone phoned the army and a soldier arrived shortly afterwards. One of the settlers came back with him. He claimed that we had beaten them with sticks.
I have two things to say about this. Firstly, I find the settlers’ claim almost laughable and yet these kinds of malicious falsehoods have serious repercussions. In this case the settler who pointed the gun at us was dismissed from his army reserve duty though the other was just given a warning. But what do people like those two say when there are no cameras? I can imagine some version of their story filtering into mainstream Israeli and Jewish opinion. I was brought up with narratives like this and they are pernicious.
Secondly, and of more immediate concern, the mayor of the village told us afterwards that what we experienced that day was a daily experience for Palestinians. He said that had we been Palestinians, the settlers may well not have fired into the air.
This violence, alongside other restrictions on the olive harvest, is getting worse every year. As settler outposts have expanded under the current Israeli government, hundreds of thousands of olive trees have been confiscated. Others have been burnt — we saw blackened and maimed trees. And this is mirrored in violence against Palestinians themselves. Many of the settlement outposts are directly beside the olive groves, so when Palestinians go to harvest, they are immediately exposed to attack. At the start of the harvest in October a thirteen-year-old boy inhaled tear gas in his olive grove. Ambulances were blocked from reaching him and he later died. In one of the groves we visited a seventy-year-old woman was beaten by settlers. When her son-in-law came to give her heart medication, he was arrested. Some of the trees we harvested hadn’t been touched since 2023 because people have been too frightened to go into their groves. But if land isn’t worked for four years, it can be confiscated.
This is not just an issue of settler violence — the army and the police are also complicit. The army often declare orchards closed military zones, purportedly to prevent violence. But all this does is protect the settlers. It’s the Palestinians who are arrested or injured if they enter or remain in these areas. And the soldiers may be settlers themselves, blurring the distinction between settler violence and state power. The police are worse than the army – the Israeli government have sent them clear recommendations not to arrest settlers and not even to come to put a stop to violent events. The result is a system in which Palestinians have almost no protection, and settlers committing violence face almost no consequences.
This really matters. Every part of the harvest — the land, the trees, the farmers, the economy — is under pressure at the same time. Since October 23 Palestinians haven’t been able to get permits to work over the Green Line in Israel and this makes them more reliant on the olives than ever. A good harvest can feed a family for a year. But this year has been dire. As well as the violence, there’s been a drought. A peace activist told me that the people in his village can’t even afford 20 shekels, which is less than £5, for heat and electricity.
One of the Palestinians I met said that the way a child treats an olive demonstrates his character. Is he gentle in the way he pulls it from the tree? Is he careful where he stands when the olives are on the ground? He said the harvest is school and university. What kind of education are the settlers and the army giving children at the moment? Olive trees often live for hundreds of years and so they hold the memories of many generations. When settlers destroy a tree, they are not only destroying livelihoods but they are severing Palestinian history and continuity. They are destroying Palestinian life.
After the biblical flood, a dove returns to the ark carrying an olive leaf. It signals the end of destruction and the return of life. Now it feels as though this symbolism has been inverted, turned into power and violence.
Marcia Gamsu is an activist based in London.
My name is Yaniv. I was born and raised in Tel Aviv, where I lived a typical Israeli life, including seven years in the IDF. In 2013 I left the country I loved for fear of where it’s heading, and moved to Clapham, where my very Israeli wife and I try to raise two very English boys.
After 7 October, many Israelis realised there’s no hope for peace. I understood the opposite. No hope but peace. No hope unless Israelis and Palestinians realise they must work together to end the conflict.
On 10 December, the UN will mark Human Rights Day and the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I’m shocked and alarmed at Israel’s disrespect for human rights. We keep deteriorating, in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and also internally towards Israel’s citizens, primarily but not only non-Jews.
I don’t usually like talking about human rights in the context of Israel–Palestine, because I found that the ethical angle often doesn’t land with Israelis, who feel they must choose between Palestinian human rights versus their own lives. Oftentimes I’m challenged with questions about disrespect for human rights by Hamas, or the PLO, or within Palestinian society, or in the broader Arab and Muslim world. Other times I’m asked why I would “air the dirty laundry” and weaken Israeli armed forces.
By my upbringing, such questions by Israelis represent a complete misunderstanding of our country. Of course I’m aware of human rights violations in other societies, but I see far more urgency to fix violations in my society. Not because I want to be more ethical than everyone else, but because I believe protecting human rights makes a society stronger.
I don’t accept that Palestinians must be seen as enemies, but suppose I did. Suppose we were destined to fight forever. If an enemy breaks their sword, must I? If an enemy throws their shield, must I? I thought all Israelis were taught these lessons, over and over again.
● In primary school, when rows of pupils in white t-shirts declared “Never again!”, I understood it as a universal pledge, not a shield reserved for Jews alone.
● In high school, we were taught about Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” — how good people enable horrors by substituting their conscience with bureaucracy. “I was just obeying orders” is a disdainful idiom in modern Hebrew.
● In the IDF’s officers’ course, we were taught the myth of Convoy 35, where 35 Hebrew militants were killed because they spared the life of an old Palestinian farmer. It was taught with pride, as an example of strength.
“You don’t understand,” some of my Israeli friends tell me. “You weren’t here. You don’t know what it’s like. We are not in the 1990s anymore.” Indeed, we are not. I see world order crumbling around us, and I’m not sure whose hand will come on top. I don’t see many good intentions for this land nor for its people in either Washington or Riyadh. In a fast-changing world, Israel best understands the limits of power, or risks losing all.
Perhaps Israelis and Palestinians who live here in London have a small advantage. Indeed we aren’t there, by choice or by force. Perhaps we have a modicum of extra space in our hearts and minds. Perhaps we can support a different future. I still believe peace and justice are possible. And I’m still confident we must respect life even in war and injustice. Casting human rights aside makes you weaker, not stronger.
No hope but peace. No hope unless Israelis and Palestinians realise they must work together to end the conflict. Or the conflict will end us all.
Yaniv Aknin is from Tel Aviv, and has lived in London since 2013.
We know that they announced ceasefire. That's okay. So what's after a ceasefire?
It's not as we expected. People are still suffering there, my family is still suffering. It's still hard to provide their basic needs, and everything is still very expensive.
We have a message to all human rights organisations as they are celebrating Human Rights Day on 10 December: where are they? Can't they see what's happening there? All people have the right to live with dignity. Isn't this the first principle of human rights?
If they consider us as human beings, then they should fulfil their responsibilities. We just want to live in peace and provide our basic needs to survive.
As there is no school in Gaza, they made teaching and exams electronic and online, but unfortunately my boys could not make the test as they didn't have a smartphone and didn't know about that exams. So this another principle to stop at, the right to receive education.
In my opinion, if human rights organisations don't do their job as expected then they should close their offices.
We're all equal and we all have the same rights to live in peace with dignity. We still have hope. Together ,we're stronger. Thank you everyone. Be well and safe.
Abdalrahman Amer moved to London from Gaza in 2025.