Around 5000 march for independence through Glasgow
The march began at Kelvin Way and travelled through some of the city's busiest streets, concluding at Glasgow Green, where rally-goers gathered for speeches and live music.
(Image: Calum Mckenzie)
READ MORE: Can you help? Dog found wandering in Glasgow's West End
A pipe band led the procession, followed by waves of Scottish Saltires, Palestinian flags, Pride banners, and the Lion Rampant, as demonstrators expressed calls for independence, solidarity, and social justice.
(Image: Calum Mckenzie) (Image: Calum Mckenzie) At the tail end of the march, the YesBikers for Scottish Independence rode in from High Street, leading the procession through Saltmarket to the final destination.
READ MORE: 'Horned and dangerous': Driver pulled over for bizarre modification
(Image: Calum Mckenzie) Once at Glasgow Green, attendees relaxed on the grass, some with picnics, as they awaited addresses from pro-independence speakers and performances by Amanda Brown and The Ronains.
The route covered a wide stretch of the city, passing through Gibson Street, Woodlands Road, Sauchiehall Street, Blythswood Street, Blythswood Square, West George Street, Nelson Mandela Place, George Square, George Street, High Street, and Saltmarket.
AUOB continues to organise marches across Scotland, with supporters emphasising peaceful protest and public visibility in the ongoing campaign for independence.
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The National
11 minutes ago
- The National
David Pratt: Israel's expansionism is the clear and present danger
Ever since the founding of the Jewish state, Israel has repeatedly presented to the world that its military actions have been motivated primarily by 'existential' need. That much was evident again during a speech in February when Israeli defence minister Israel Katz told how he had asked the country's military commanders what the main lesson was from the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. 'They said we will no longer allow radical organisations to exist near Israel's borders, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria or near the settlements. And that is now our policy,' Katz's speech went on to recount the military chiefs as saying. But the truth of the matter is that this has always been Israel's policy, and at the heart of such a military doctrine lies the belief that territorial depth offers lasting security. Or, to put this another way, security through expansionism has forever been a core tenet of the Israeli military playbook. That said, rarely though has the country and its government been as determinedly expansionist as it is today. Writing recently in the Financial Times (FT), the Saudi author and commentator Ali Shihabi described Israel's current pursuit of more territory as one 'cloaked in the language of security and religious entitlement'. By 'entitlement', Shihabi is of course referring to the biblical idea of a 'Greater Israel' that many of the religious zealots and right-wingers that comprise Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's coalition government envisage in Gaza, the Occupied West Bank and beyond. Whether Netanyahu himself is fully aligned with his cabinet over ambitions for a 'Greater Israel' remains open to conjecture, but what's in no doubt is that Israel is now pushing back its borders like never before. In Gaza this past week, reports of an intensification in the demolition of buildings underscores what many observers see as Israel's long-term plan to move the Palestinian population out and fully control Gaza's post-war space. In the occupied West Bank, meanwhile, Israel's illegal settlement expansion and annexing of territory goes on apace. Further afield, the past week also saw Israel doubling down militarily on both Syria and Lebanon. In Syria, Israel continues to take territorial advantage of the country's political fragility in the wake of the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad's regime. For months, the Israeli military have been assimilating the Druze residents of the Golan Heights, venturing territorially far beyond the line where their predecessors stopped during the conquest of this mountainous plateau that Israel has occupied since 1967. Since the ousting of Assad last December, Israel has struck Syria hundreds of times and invaded and occupied about 155 square miles of its territory. Last Wednesday, Israel launched air strikes on Syria's capital, Damascus. It also hit Syrian government forces in the south in an operation it says was aimed at protecting the Druze minority group caught up in clashes with Bedouin tribes in Syria's southern province of Sweida close to the Israeli border. But Netanyahu's claim that Israel is simply giving the Druze – one million of whom are spread across the region, including in Israel – a helping hand simply doesn't wash with many Middle East analysts. 'It's pure opportunism,' Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and consul general in New York, told Al Jazeera. 'Of course, it's nice to pretend that we're helping our friends the Druze, in the same way as we never helped our other friends, the Kurds,' he said, referring to another regional ethnic group. Pinkas is not alone in his assessment that Israel doesn't want to see a unified Syria with a strong central government controlled by Ahmed al-Sharaa's fledgling presidency. Like other observers, Pinkas maintains that Netanyahu would far rather see 'a weak central government dealing with areas controlled by the Kurds (in the north) and the Druze and Bedouin in the south. 'Basically, if Syria remains un-unified, Israel can do what it wants in its south,' he added, underlining yet again the perceived importance of territorial depth offering lasting security. Few doubt that the sectarian violence that has gripped Syria's Sweida province these past days has underscored the country's fragility and presented Shaara with his most significant crisis yet. For his part, Netanyahu reiterated that Israel will continue to use military means to enforce its two red lines in Syria – the demilitarisation of the area south of Damascus, near Israel's border, and the protection of the country's Druze minority there. The most extremist members of Netanyahu's government meanwhile continue to make clear that Israel's intention is to go much further. Only a few months ago, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that Israel would not stop fighting until Syria was partitioned and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been expelled from Gaza into third countries. 'With God's help and the valour of your comrades-in-arms who continue to fight even now, we will end this campaign when Syria is dismantled, Hezbollah is severely beaten, Iran is stripped of its nuclear threat, Gaza is cleansed of Hamas and hundreds of thousands of Gazans are on their way out of it to other countries,' Smotrich declared during a pre-Memorial Day speech in the West Bank. According to the Times of Israel, Smotrich's comment about dividing Syria came just days after US Republican congressman Marlin Stutzman told the newspaper that Sharaa had expressed 'openness' to normalising relations with Jerusalem and cautioned against efforts to divide the country. 'The first (concern) – which I felt was most important to him – was that Israel may have a plan to divide up the nation of Syria into ... multiple parts. That was something that he was very opposed to,' Stutzman recalled. The plan, again according to the Times of Israel, appeared to be a reference to the lobbying Israel has reportedly been doing in Washington for the US to buck Sharaa's fledgling government in favour of establishing a decentralised series of autonomous ethnic regions, with the southern one bordering Israel being demilitarised. Going by last week's flare-up between Israel and Syria, that issue of partitioning Syria and creating a demilitarised southern area appears to be still on the cards as far as Netanyahu is concerned. This weekend, relations took a slightly more positive turn however after hostilities between the two sides were quelled on Friday by the announcement of a ceasefire. Israeli officials confirmed that 'due to the ongoing instability,' they had agreed to allow Syrian forces limited access to the Sweida area over the next few days. But even with this ceasefire in place, the situation remains incredibly volatile, and Shaara could now in effect be forced to either cede ambitions to reassert state control over southern Syria, undermining his attempts to unify the country, or risk an even greater confrontation with Israel. Israel's laying down of territorial markers in Syria is just the latest example of what some analysts say is a policy of pushing a dangerous expansionism in the region. With the Israeli air force bombing Beirut and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, as well as the Syrian capital Damascus from which its infantry troops are now stationed a mere 40 minutes away, never has Israel engaged in such prolonged conflict on so many battlefronts. All this too before taking into consideration its recent onslaught on targets across Iran. With every day that passes, Netanyahu, it seems. raises the stakes even further while increasingly disregarding the occasional overtures from Washington to rein in Israel's military actions as was the case in Syria last week. To get a fuller picture of the scale and intensity of Israel's expansionist strategy right now, it's worth considering recent mapping compiled by the independent non-profit think tank the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). According to a recent analysis of its data, it shows that between October 7, 2023 – the date of the Hamas attack on Israel – and just before Israel attacked Iran on June 13, 2025, Israel carried out nearly 35,000 recorded attacks across five countries: the occupied Palestinian territory, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran. These attacks include air and drone strikes, shelling and missile attacks, remote explosives and property destruction. The majority of attacks have been on Palestinian territory with at least 18,235 recorded incidents, followed by Lebanon (15,520), Syria (616), Iran (58) and Yemen (39). Detailing ACLED's research, the broadcaster Al Jazeera noted that while the bulk of Israel's attacks have concentrated on nearby Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, its military operations have also reached far beyond its immediate borders. Over the past six months, Israeli forces have launched more than 200 air, drone or artillery attacks across Syria, averaging an assault roughly every three to four days, according to ACLED. Meanwhile, reports last week confirmed that Israel has stepped up the demolition of buildings across Gaza with entire towns and suburbs levelled in the past few weeks. Heavy machinery has played a central role in this destruction, operated both by soldiers and civilians, reports indicate. Civilians operating heavy machinery in [[Gaza]] can earn as much as $9000 per month, according to reports in TheMarker, a Hebrew-language daily business newspaper. According to TheMarker, a trained heavy equipment operator can earn approximately 1200 shekels (£270) per day, drawn from the 5000 shekels (£1118) the Israeli Ministry of Defence pays daily to the equipment's owner. 'At first I did it for the money. Then for revenge. The work there is very hard and unpleasant. The army doesn't operate smartly, it just wants to destroy as much as possible and doesn't care about anything,' one heavy equipment operator told TheMarker. Gaza's demolitions – many of them buildings that have already been destroyed or damaged by Israel's military onslaught – are seen by observers as part of a longer post-war plan to control, contain or disperse what remains of Gaza's civilian Palestinian population and prepare the way for the territory's use for settlement expansion and commercial use. In the occupied West Bank, Israel is applying many of the tactics used in its war on Gaza to seize and control territory there. According to an analysis by the British research group Forensic Architecture, Israel has used building demolitions, armoured bulldozers and air strikes to establish a permanent military presence in areas such as Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps. Satellite imagery shows widespread destruction, with entire neighbourhoods flattened and roads reconfigured to facilitate troop movements and surveillance. The United Nations estimates that these operations have displaced at least 40,000 Palestinians. As Israel's expansionist strategy intensifies, many regional observers say it is simply fuelling chaos and stoking up a future widening regional conflict. Martin Gak is an Argentinian Jewish journalist based in Germany who is of the view that Israel's territorial ambitions are 'much bigger than the theological design of greater Israel'. In a recent interview, Gak drew parallels with the way Israel is now operating in the Middle East using tactics similar to those of Russia. He said: 'If you look at Gaza, if you look at what happened in southern Lebanon, the images should be very reminiscent of Grozny in the second Chechen war ... so, I think that what we're seeing is a Russian playbook of complete destruction,' Gak told Turkish media. Other regional observers like Shihabi, in the FT, recently posed the question as to what Israel truly gains from this relentless push to expand its borders. 'The cost is staggering: deepening international isolation, increasing threats to the global Jewish community, psychological trauma within a constantly targeted Israeli society and the further destabilisation of an already volatile region,' Shihabi concluded. Like other Middle East watchers, Shihabi is firmly of the view that more territory is not the answer to Israel's security problems and that 'the future is being held hostage by zealots who value conquest over coexistence'. While it might have been initially framed as an 'incursion' to eradicate Hamas and rescue the nearly 250 hostages seized on October 7, Israel's Gaza 'operation' has since moved into an entirely new and much wider military realm. It's one too for which it has been given virtual carte blanche by the US and Western countries to prosecute. Until that stops, Israel's dangerous expansionist ambitions will almost certainly continue to fuel an escalation in conflict across the Middle East. The days of framing such a military strategy as being driven by 'existential need' have gone. Israel, as many rightfully argue, is the real regional threat now.
The Herald Scotland
5 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Israel's dangerous expansionism is now the clear and present danger
That much was evident again during a speech in February when Israeli defence minister Israel Katz told how he had asked the country's military commanders what the main lesson was from the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. 'They said we will no longer allow radical organisations to exist near [[Israel]]'s borders, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, or near the settlements. And that is now our policy,' Katz's speech went on to recount the military chiefs as saying. But the truth of the matter is that this has always been Israel's policy, and at the heart of such a military doctrine lies the belief that territorial depth offers lasting security. Or, to put this another way, security through expansionism has forever been a core tenet of the Israeli military playbook. That said, rarely has the country and its government been as determinedly expansionist as it is today. Writing recently in the Financial Times (FT), the Saudi author and commentator Ali Shihabi described Israel's current pursuit of more territory as one 'cloaked in the language of security and religious entitlement'. By 'entitlement' Shihabi is, of course, referring to the biblical idea of a 'Greater Israel' that many of the religious zealots and right-wingers that comprise prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu's coalition government envisage in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and beyond. Whether Netanyahu himself is fully aligned with his cabinet over ambitions for a 'Greater Israel' remains open to conjecture, but what's in no doubt is that Israel is now pushing back its borders like never before. In Gaza this past week, reports of an intensification in the demolition of buildings underscores what many observers see as Israel's long-term plan to move the Palestinian population out and fully control Gaza's post-war space. In the occupied West Bank, meanwhile, Israel's illegal settlement expansion and annexing of territory goes on apace. Further afield, the past week also saw Israel doubling down militarily on both Syria and Lebanon. In Syria, Israel continues to take territorial advantage of the country's political fragility in the wake of the overthrow of Bashar al- Assad's regime. (Image: The Washington Post via Getty Images) FAR BEYOND THE LINE FOR months, the Israeli military have been assimilating the Druze residents of the Golan Heights, venturing territorially far beyond the line where their predecessors stopped during the conquest of this mountainous plateau Israel has occupied since 1967. Since the ousting of Assad last December, Israel has struck Syria hundreds of times, and invaded and occupied about 155 square miles of its territory. Last Wednesday, Israel launched air strikes on Syria's capital, Damascus. It also hit Syrian government forces in the south in an operation it says was aimed at protecting the Druze minority group caught up in clashes with Bedouin tribes in Syria's southern province of Sweida close to the Israeli border. But Netanyahu's claim that Israel is simply giving the Druze – one million of whom are are spread across the region including in Israel – a helping hand simply doesn't wash with many Middle East analysts.'It's pure opportunism,' Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and consul general in New York, told Al Jazeera. 'Of course, it's nice to pretend that we're helping our friends the Druze in the same way as we never helped our other friends, the Kurds,' he said, referring to another regional ethnic group. Pinkas is not alone in his assessment that Israel doesn't want to see a unified Syria with a strong central government controlled by Ahmed al-Sharaa's fledgling presidency. Like other observers, Pinkas maintains that Netanyahu would far rather see 'a weak central government dealing with areas controlled by the Kurds (in the north) and the Druze and Bedouin in the south.' 'Basically, if Syria remains un-unified, Israel can do what it wants in its south,' he added, underlining yet again the perceived importance of territorial depth offering lasting security. Few doubt the sectarian violence that has gripped Syria's Sweida province these past days has underscored the country's fragility and presented al-Shaara with his most significant crisis yet. For his part, Netanyahu reiterated that Israel will continue to use military means to enforce its two red lines in Syria – the demilitarisation of the area south of Damascus, near Israel's border, and the protection of the country's Druze minority there. The most extremist members of Netanyahu's government, meanwhile, continue to make clear that Israel's intention is to go much further. Only a few months ago, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that Israel would not stop fighting until Syria was partitioned and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been expelled from Gaza into third countries. 'With God's help and the valour of your comrades-in-arms who continue to fight even now, we will end this campaign when Syria is dismantled, Hezbollah is severely beaten, Iran is stripped of its nuclear threat, Gaza is cleansed of Hamas and hundreds of thousands of Gazans are on their way out of it to other countries,' Smotrich declared during a pre-Memorial Day speech in the West the country? DIVIDE THE COUNTRY ACCORDING to the Times of [[Israel]], Smotrich's comment about dividing Syria came just days after a US Republican congressman Marlin Stutzman told the newspaper that al-Sharaa had expressed 'openness' to normalising relations with Jerusalem and cautioned against efforts to divide the country. 'The first (concern) – which I felt was most important to him – was that Israel may have a plan to divide up the nation of Syria into… multiple parts. That was something that he was very opposed to,' Stutzman recalled. The plan again, according to the Times of Israel, appeared to be a reference to the lobbying Israel has reportedly been doing in Washington for the US to buck al-Sharaa's fledgling government in favour of establishing a decentralised series of autonomous ethnic regions, with the southern one bordering Israel being by last week's flare-up between Israel and Syria, that issue of partitioning Syria and creating a demilitarised southern area appears to be still on the cards as far as Netanyahu is concerned. This weekend, relations took a slightly more positive turn, however, after hostilities between the two sides were quelled on Friday by the announcement of a ceasefire. Israeli officials confirmed that 'due to the ongoing instability' they had agreed to allow Syrian forces limited access to the Sweida area over the next few days. But even with this ceasefire in place the situation remains incredibly volatile, and al-Sharaa could now in effect be forced to either cede ambitions to reassert state control over southern Syria, undermining his attempts to unify the country, or risk an even greater confrontation with Israel. Israel's laying down of territorial markers in Syria is just the latest example of what some analysts says is a policy of pushing a dangerous expansionism in the region. With the Israeli air force bombing Beirut and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, as well as the Syrian capital Damascus from which its infantry troops are now stationed a mere 40 minutes away, never has Israel engaged in such prolonged conflict on so many battlefronts. All this, too, before taking into consideration its recent onslaught on targets across Iran. With every day that passes Netanyahu, it seems, raises the stakes even further while increasingly disregarding the occasional overtures from Washington to rein in Israel's military actions as was the case in Syria last week. Read more Tears and trauma: David Pratt in Ukraine DAVID PRATT ON THE WORLD: Whatever happens in Brazil's resentful and rancorous election, the result will have major repercussions for us all David Pratt in Ukraine: It's hard to comprehend this level of destruction David Pratt: Kremlin's protestations have a hollow ring as atrocities mount up EXPANSION STRATEGY TO get a fuller picture of the scale and intensity of Israel's expansionist strategy at the moment it's worth considering recent mapping compiled by the independent non-profit think tank the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). According to a recent analysis of its data, it shows that between October 7, 2023 – the date of the Hamas attack on Israel – and just before Israel attacked Iran on June 13, Israel has carried out nearly 35,000 recorded attacks across five countries: the occupied Palestinian territory, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and attacks include air and drone strikes, shelling and missile attacks, remote explosives, and property destruction. The majority of attacks have been on Palestinian territory with at least 18,235 recorded incidents, followed by Lebanon (15,520), Syria (616), Iran (58) and Yemen (39). Detailing ACLED's research, the broadcaster Al Jazeera noted that while the bulk of Israel's attacks have concentrated on nearby Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, its military operations have also reached far beyond its immediate the past six months, Israeli forces have launched more than 200 air, drone or artillery attacks across Syria, averaging an assault roughly every three to four days, according to ACLED. In Gaza, meanwhile, reports last week confirmed that Israel has stepped up the demolition of buildings across Gaza with entire towns and suburbs levelled in the past few weeks. Heavy machinery has played a central role in this destruction operated both by soldiers and civilians, reports operating heavy machinery in Gaza can earn as much as $9,000 per month, according to reports in the TheMarker, a Hebrew-language daily business newspaper. According to newspaper, a trained heavy equipment operator can earn approximately 1,200 shekels (£270) per day, drawn from the 5,000 shekels (£1,118) the Israeli ministry of defence pays daily to the equipment's owner.'At first I did it for the money. Then for revenge. The work there is very hard and unpleasant,' one heavy equipment operator told TheMarker. 'The army doesn't operate smartly, it just wants to destroy as much as possible and doesn't care about anything.' Gaza's demolitions, many of them buildings that have already been destroyed or damaged by Israel's military onslaught, is seen by observers as part of a longer post-war plan to control, contain, or disperse what remains of Gaza's civilian Palestinian population and prepare the way for the territory's use for settlement expansion and commercial use. In the occupied West Bank, meanwhile, Israel is applying many of the tactics used in its war on Gaza to seize and control territory there. According to an analysis by the British research group Forensic Architecture, Israel has used building demolitions, armoured bulldozers, and air strikes to establish a permanent military presence in areas such as Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps. Satellite imagery shows widespread destruction, with entire neighbourhoods flattened and roads reconfigured to facilitate troop movements and surveillance. The United Nations estimates that these operations have displaced at least 40,000 Palestinians. As Israel's expansionist strategy intensifies, many regional observers say it is simply fuelling chaos and stoking up a future widening regional conflict. Martin Gak is an Argentinian Jewish journalist based in Germany who is of the view that Israel's territorial ambitions are 'much bigger than the theological design of greater Israel'. In a recent interview, Gak drew parallels with the way Israel is now operating in the Middle East using tactics similar to those of Russia. He said: 'If you look at Gaza, if you look at what happened in southern Lebanon, the images should be very reminiscent of Grozny in the second Chechen war… so I think that what we're seeing is a Russian playbook of complete destruction,' Gak told Turkish media. ISRAEL'S GAIN? OTHER regional observers like the Saudi commentator Shihabi recently posed the question in the FT as to what does Israel truly gain from this relentless push to expand its borders? 'The cost is staggering: deepening international isolation, increasing threats to the global Jewish community, psychological trauma within a constantly targeted Israeli society, and the further destabilisation of an already volatile region,' Shihabi concluded. Like other Middle East watchers, Shihabi is firmly of the view that more territory is not the answer to Israel's security problems and that 'the future is being held hostage by zealots who value conquest over co-existence'. While it might have been initially framed as an 'incursion' to eradicate Hamas and rescue the nearly 250 hostages seized on October 7, Israel's Gaza 'operation' has since moved into an entirely new and much wider military realm. It's one, too, for which it has been given virtual carte blanche by the US and Western countries to prosecute. Until that stops, Israel's dangerous expansionist ambitions will almost certainly continue to fuel an escalation in conflict across the Middle East. The days of framing such a military strategy as being driven by 'existential need' have gone. Israel, as many rightfully argue, is the real regional threat now.
Daily Record
15 hours ago
- Daily Record
Pro-Palestine marchers brave rain in Edinburgh after Palestine Action ban
Marches also took place in London, Manchester, Bristol and Truro today. Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators braved rain to march through Edinburgh on Saturday, as part of a national campaign. One veteran activist said the recent move to proscribe Palestine Action under anti-terror laws had not deterred people from showing their support to the wider movement. A large group gathered outside St Giles' Cathedral in the early afternoon before marching down the Royal Mile, chanting while waving flags and banners. The march stopped in front of the UK Government headquarters at Queen Elizabeth House, where speeches were given outside the building, before heading on to Bute House - the First Minister's official residence. Other demonstrations took place in Manchester, Bristol, Truro and London - calling for the ban on Palestine Action to be reversed. While there were dozens of arrests at the other events, Police Scotland said no arrests had been made in relation to the march in Edinburgh. Mick Napier, founding member of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, said there was a large turnout in the Scottish capital because of outrage over Israel's plan for a "humanitarian city" in Rafah. Speaking as the march set off down the Royal Mile, he told the PA news agency: "It's large, it's bigger than we've had for a very long time and it's entirely due to the building of the Israeli concentration camp in Rafah. "They've called it a humanitarian city but people are utterly horrified, cumulatively, by what's happened during 22 months of genocide." Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. He said the ban on Palestine Action was "absurd" and police had been on a hair trigger, arresting people for placards and banners which contain the words Palestine and action. Mr Napier said the ban had not deterred people from supporting the wider pro-Palestinian movement, saying: "I think people are enraged. "I look back to previous campaigns against the war in Vietnam, when that issue became fused with the issue of free speech it rose to a higher level." Earlier this week, three women were arrested under the Terrorism Act after a van was driven into the external fence of the Leonardo UK factory in Edinburgh. The group Shut Down Leonardo claimed it was making components for F-35 fighter jets but the defence company says it does not directly supply equipment to Israel. Asked if such actions worked against the pro-Palestinian movement, Mr Napier said: "I think in the past it may have put some people off, not any more." Other activists at the march condemned the move to ban Palestine Action. Jane Ferrell, who travelled from Fife, said: "It's Palestine Action one day, what's it going to be in the end? Trade unionism, the Labour Party activists, who knows?" Former MP Tommy Sheppard spoke to the crowd outside Queen Elizabeth house, saying: "Today in the Middle East a genocide is being prosecuted in real time and we are watching it on television play by play."
