Dozens of Youth Demand supporters have taken to the streets, demanding that the UK government impose a total trade embargo on Israel, and make the super rich and fossil fuel elite pay damages to communities and countries most harmed by fossil fuel burning. [1]
At around 9:30 this morning, up to 40 Youth Demand supporters in two teams stepped onto pedestrian crossings at Holborn and Southwark Bridge, unfurled banners reading “Stop arming Israel” and “Make the rich pay”. Traffic was disrupted for approximately 20 minutes at each location. The groups reemerged sometime later at Trafalgar Square and Tower Hill before moving on to the Barbican and Waterloo.
At Waterloo, a passerby aggressively pushed Youth Demand supporters off the road. Police subsequently issued a S7 notice and all supporters left the road. Police then arrested four for interference with key national infrastructure.
Taking action today was Toby Ellwood, 19, a student from West Sussex who said:
“I am taking action with Youth Demand today because we are watching our government actively participate in the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian people. I think that we all have a duty to stand on the right side of history and disrupt and show our genocidal government that we will not be silent.
“Our government wants to keep doing business as usual and lining the pockets of their billionaire friends while our climate collapses and we watch children in Palestine be mutilated by genocidal colonisers. We have to take action because we cannot bear to watch the suffering created by the system of the bloodthirsty elites.”
On Saturday, around 50 Youth Demand supporters blocked traffic across London in a series of swarming roadblocks leading to 8 arrests. [2]
Youth Demand supporter Becky , 43, a mother of two from East London said:
“ I have taken part in almost every National demo, local demo and rally since October 2023 and with the scenes we are seeing coming out of the Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, becoming more and more deranged, criminal and heart shattering, the need to escalate to make our leaders act has never been clearer.
“We are tired of the lies, the gaslighting, watching a genocide on live-stream, while being told the real victims are the people committing the atrocities. Asking politely for those who are funding, supporting and complicit in these acts, in the way that they want us to ask them, is not working. We have to disrupt in the only way that makes them listen, to make problems for the system, that puts our bodies on the line, on the levers of power and profit.
“I am a mother of two children and I am terrified of being arrested and put on remand away from them for months on end, but this fear is what the state wants. They want us to feel like it’s easier to be apathetic and just carry on with our lives. And this fear is a tiny, tiny taste of what mothers in Palestine have lived with for 76 years. Knowing your family could be torn apart at the drop of a hat.
“I want my children to see what it looks like to do what’s right, before doing what’s comfortable.. I don’t want them to live in a world where children around the world are burned in their babygrows day after day, for a year and a half, while we all look on and shrug our shoulders. If it were my children, I would want mothers, anyone, across the world to do everything in their power to try and make it stop.”
Today’s actions come against a backdrop of ongoing killing and forcible displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, coupled with the routine denial of access for aid and of medical evacuations. Yesterday, Palm Sunday, Israel destroyed parts of the last remaining functioning hospital in Gaza with an airstrike. Hospitals, which are protected under international humanitarian law, have repeatedly been hit by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on 7 October 2023.[3]
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that Israel’s military had completely surrounded the southern Gaza city of Rafah and established a new security zone as it continues and expands an offensive in the Palestinian territory. According to the UN two-thirds of Gaza has been designated as “no-go” zones or placed under evacuation orders since Israel resumed its offensive against Hamas on 18 March following the collapse of a two-month ceasefire. This has left 390,000 Palestinians — almost a fifth of the 2.1 million population — with no safe place to go.[4]
World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned of more disease and deaths due to Israel’s blockade of aid entering Gaza where more than 10,000 people need medical evacuation abroad and at least 60,000 children are malnourished. He said 75% of UN missions in Gaza in last week were denied or impeded. [5]
Israel has persistently denied that its political leaders or military have committed war crimes during its assault on Gaza, in which it has killed more than 50,000 people, most of them civilians. The UK continues to support genocide by supplying arms, whilst conducting more surveillance flights on behalf of Israel over Gaza than any other country. [6]
Young people will not accept these crimes against humanity and we will not be led by war criminals and arsonists. We cannot allow those in power to get away with facilitating the systematic annihilation of an entire culture. It’s time to take to the streets day after day and to demand better. Only sustained mass resistance can put an end to this genocide. Join us on Tuesday April 15th at 6:30pm outside BBC Broadcasting house, Portland Place.
ENDS
Youth Demand Press contact: 07762 987334
Press email: YouthDemandPress@protonmail.com
High quality images & video here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13vFus2e8TEI_bfhIYHXEIV-IZV86P9v9
Website: https://youthdemand.org
Twitter: https://x.com/youth_demand
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_youthdemand
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@youth.demand
Notes to Editors
[1] Youth Demand is a youth-led resistance campaign fighting for an end to genocide in Palestine and across the globe as a result of the climate crisis.
Our demands:
Stop all trade with Israel:the UK government must impose a total trade embargo on Israel.
Make the rich pay: the UK government must raise £1tn by 2030 from the super rich and fossil fuel elite to pay damages to communities and countries most harmed by fossil fuel burning.
Youth Demand is part of Umbrella and a member of the A22 Network of civil resistance projects.
[4] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/12/middleeast/israel-gaza-offensive-displaced-rafah-intl/index.html
