Pro-Palestinian protesters poured into a Westfield shopping centre in east London today and targeted stores including Zara, H&M and Starbucks as they thronged with shoppers during the Boxing Day sales.
Footage shows outside a branch of H&M chanting ‘while you’re shopping, bombs are dropping’ as police officers stopped them from getting in. Others managed to get inside and were seen waving Palestinian flags.
A branch of Spanish fashion chain Zara was also swamped with chanting protesters, with witnesses describing the scene as ‘carnage’.
The demonstrators have since been escorted out of the shopping centre in Stratford, with dozens of officers guarding the entrance.
In a separate protest in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital’s flagship a branch of Starbucks had the words ‘Gaza bleeds’ painted on it. Various multinational chains have been targeted over disputed claims they support Israel.
Footage from Westfield today showed crowds gathered outside another branch of Starbucks, which was reportedly forced to close.
This morning, the Newham and Tower Hamlets branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign tweeted they would attempt to ‘shut down’ a Zara store at Westfield Stratford City.
Earlier this month, Zara pulled an promotional campaign following complaints that it contained pictures resembling images from the Israel-Hamas war.
In September, Starbucks sued its union, Starbucks Workers United, after the labour organization posted a since-deleted message on X expressing solidarity with Palestinians.
The union group shared a message reading ‘Solidarity with Palestine’ above an image of a bulldozer operated by Hamas tearing down a fence on the Gaza strip. Starbucks sued for trademark infringement because the union uses a logo based on its own.
H&M is one of many retailers that has stores in Israel.
On Saturday, pro-Palestinian protesters targeted a Zara store on Oxford Street.
Footage shared on X, previously known as Twitter, showed a sea of red, white, green and black as protesters waved flags and balloons while calling for a ceasefire in one of the busiest parts of London.
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 20,000, according to Palestinian health officials, as Israel continues its devastating bombardment of the Gaza Strip in an effort to snuff out Hamas’ base of operations.
Some 85 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3m population has been displaced by the conflict, following evacuations in the north and south of the 25-mile-long Strip.
The UN has warned that Gaza now faces the ‘highest ever recorded’ levels of food insecurity.
Action Against Hunger classified hunger levels as ‘catastrophic’, signifying a very high risk of famine.
A quarter of households in Gaza now face acute food insecurity conditions, they noted, meaning ‘lack of food is so extreme that they may suffer from starvation, alarmingly high rates of acute malnutrition among the youngest children and high mortality rates.’
‘Everything we are doing is insufficient to meet the needs of two million people. It is difficult to find flour and rice, and people have to wait hours to access latrines and wash themselves,’ said Noelia Monge, Head of Emergencies for Action Against Hunger, who recently returned from the region.
‘We are experiencing an emergency like I have never seen before.’
Calls for a ceasefire have mounted on all sides as casualties in Gaza mount with no clear way to ensure the safe return of the remaining Israeli hostages trapped in the Palestinian enclave.
Last Saturday, Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside the home of the Israeli ambassador to the UK, chanting ‘From the river to the sea’ and ‘shame on you!’
The phrase ‘From the river to the sea’ refers to the Jordan River – in Jordan, east of Israel – and the Mediterranean Sea, bordering the Gaza Strip.
Hundreds gathered outside the Camden home of Tzipi Hotovely and called ‘de-decolonise’ and ‘ceasefire now’, with passing cars honking their horns in support.
Hotovely faced wide criticism for rejecting a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine in a video interview with Sky News.
Last week in Tel Aviv, the families of Israeli hostages also called on Israel to stop fighting and make a deal to secure their release after the army admitted ‘mistakenly’ killing three captives in the Palestinian territory.
‘We only receive dead bodies. We want you to stop the fight and start negotiations,’ Noam Perry, daughter of hostage Haim Perry, said at an event in Tel Aviv organised by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
The army’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, admitted Israeli troops found the hostages and erroneously identified them as a threat.
He said it was not clear if they had escaped their captors or been abandoned.
The hostages were found waving a makeshift white flag and crying ‘help’ in Hebrew.
Some Palestinian protesters have also targeted Spanish fashion giant Zara in their global marches.
Zara published a promotional campaign earlier this month that protesters objected to, saying a photoshoot appeared to make light of the situation in Gaza.
The photoshoot features a model stood in a dusty workshop with a mannequin wrapped in white. Protesters online said the visuals resembled Gaza’s debris and the tragic scenes of white body bags shown in media.
Zara said the shoot was ‘conceived in July and photographed in September’ – before the conflict erupted in October – showing models against unfinished sculptures in a workshop to ‘showcase craftmade garments in an artistic context’.
‘Unfortunately, some customers felt offended by these images, which have now been removed, and saw in them something far from what was intended when they were created,’ a statement read earlier this month. ‘Zara regrets that misunderstanding and we reaffirm our deep respect towards everyone.’
Stores worldwide have nonetheless been targeted by some protesters, who have graffitied outlets as far reaching as Tunisia, Canada and Germany.
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