Bani adam a’zaye yekdigarand [Human beings are members of a whole.]
Keh dar aafarinesh ze yek goharand [In creation of one essence and soul.]
Cho ozvi be dard avarad ruzgar [If one member is afflicted with pain,]
Degar ozvaha ra namanad qarar [this will not let other to stay at ease.]
The British-Iranian activist Gazal, representing the newly-formed ‘Iranians against the imperialist war’, began her eloquent brief speech at the London demonstration on Saturday 21 March with this quotation from Saadi, also to be found on the wall of the United Nations headquarters in New York – words of significance to the compassionate, but not heartless warmongers. Gazal called on the British government “to have nothing to do” with the war being waged by the US, which was “seeking to make Iran a failed and collapsed state to satisfy Israel.”
This was a view taken up by many other speakers addressing an assembly of several thousand within earshot of Downing Street, that had marched from Russell Square on a warm Spring day.
The march and demonstration was organised by a coalition comprising the Palestine Forum in Britain, Palestine Solidarity Committee, Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al Aqsa, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Stop the War.
The veteran socialist anti-war activist and author Tariq Ali (a student leader in the 1960s, image below) also called it “a war without reason, a wretched and vile war”, raising a laugh by renaming businessman Jared Kushner as Jared Cash-ner, because President Trump’s son-in-law, so instrumental in US foreign policy decisions, has cash flows foremost in mind.
On a more serious note, the journalist Peter Oborne, made “the conservative case against this illegal war”, citing Article II of the UN Charter as the legal foundation for prohibiting wars of aggression. In his view “the two elderly men” [Trump and Netanyahu] should be indicted for war crimes.
The trade unionist Maryam Elamdoust, general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staff’s Association (TSSA, image below) noted that “everyone will be poorer because of this illegal war”. For CND’s general secretary Sophie Bolt, “Starmer had bottled to US pressure to allow use of UK bases”, even though British public opinion was overwhelmingly against the war: “it is the people who are on the right side of history, not the British government.”
Holocaust survivor Stephen Kappos spoke as a “non-Zionist Jew” for whom “Israel’s unlimited impunity [was] sickening”, an abuse of the memory of Holocaust victims. Diane Abbott MP described the US-Israeli bombing of Iran as “a war about oil, who controls it and regime change”. Other speakers included Andrew Feinstein, who stood against Keir Starmer in the Holborn & St Pancras constituency in the last General Election. He declared, “we want to get him out of Camden, and to the Hague”.