Antiwar, pro-Palestine protest

London

Chanting “Bomber Bush, Bomber Blair,” more than 150,000 Britons staged a noisy peace demonstration in London this week. Protesters from the British left and the Muslim Association of Britain said there was no moral justification for a war that would kill thousands of Iraqi civilians. “Just sticking a U.N. fig leaf on this does not make it any more humane,” said a spokesman for the organizers, the Stop the War coalition. The protest had a dual theme: opposition to a possible war, and “freedom for Palestine.” British Jewish groups expressed dismay that the antiwar movement was identifying itself so closely with the Palestinian cause, but Muslim groups said the two issues were inseparable. “Until we solve the Palestine issue, we are not going to get any peace in the Middle East,” said Ismail Patel, head of the Muslim group Friends of Al-Aqsa. “Why are we going after Iraq when Israel has far more weapons of mass destruction?”