Shamed vicar Stephen Sizer speaks at annual Al Quds Day protest

The annual Al Quds Day march has again taken place in central London with dwindling numbers of pro-Iranian regime activists backing calls for Israel to be “dismantled” and speeches in support of “armed resistance” by the Palestinians.

Sunday’s march, organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), began outside the home office building in Westminster, and saw just over 1000 people march to Downing Street, to hear speakers including disgraced former MP Chris Williamson and banned “antisemitic” vicar Stephen Sizer.

As usual a small band of ultra-Orthodox Neturei Karta members came out to support the march, joining in with a now pantomime-like ritual burning of the Israeli flag at one stage in the day.

Metropolitan Police officers were out in force at the protest, keeping a small band of around 30 “pro-Israel” activists and the main demo apart from one another throughout the afternoon.

Sizer, who has been banned by the Church of England over views that “provoked and offended the Jewish community” after sharing “virulently antisemitic” material, told protesters that an Israeli military occupation is “based on segregation, on supremacism, on apartheid”.

He added this is “a colonisation that involves a systematic, premeditated, ethnic cleansing in breach of international law, Geneva conventions, and UN resolutions.”

In January Sizer, 69, was found by a church tribunal to have engaged in conduct “unbecoming to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders”, and was banned from ministry for 12 years after the Board of Deputies lodged complaints about his conduct.

Meanwhile in his speech, the disgraced ex-Labour MP Williamson said: “The Palestinians have the absolute right to resist and the absolute right to armed resistance.”

Berating Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer he added:”We should support the resistance of the Palestinian people in all its forms.”

In another speech Farrah Koutteineh, head of public and legal relations at the London-based Palestinian Return Centre, claimed:”No-one has the right to tell Palestinians how to resist.”

She said resisting “brutal settler colonialism, military occupation, apartheid is not terrorism, it is not extremism, it is resistance.”

Amongst the banners on display at the demo were some featuring Star of David symbols next to Nazi swastikas, and another reading :”Where Did All the Nazis Go After WW2? Israel.”

But there were none of the Hezbollah flags that came to once dominate the protests on display, following the government’s proscription of the Iranian- backed terror group.

International Quds Day was designated by the late founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Imam Khomeini, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Every year during Ramadan, worldwide rallies are held against Israel.