Lizzie Greenwood at a Palestine protest. Photo: Lizzie Greenwood
Manchester, November 14 (RHC)-- A British peace activist has entered the third week of a hunger strike to protest the UK government’s complicity in the genocide taking place on Palestinians and the incursion into Lebanon.
Lizzie Greenwood, who stood as a candidate in the last general elections, says the complicit politics of Prime Minister Keir Starmer is pushing Brits into taking ever more desperate action to stop the genocide. In a video posted to her social media, the activist said: “This is a cause that I feel willing and obligated to die for.”
Previously a youth ambassador for the Holocaust Education Trust, the activist said she wants “to make sure that nothing as unspeakably evil as those events would ever be allowed to happen again.” Therefore, Greenwood has pledged to strike “until the UK government ceases any and all arms sales and exports to Israel, and insists on all aid being allowed – unhindered – into Gaza and the West Bank.”
The activist has allowed herself a maximum of 250 calories per day if necessary, “in solidarity with the people of Gaza who are expected to live on this” after Israel blocked aid moving across the border. The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) has warned that the situation in Gaza “could soon escalate into famine” thus “leading to catastrophic consequences.”
Lizzie Greenwood, who started her strike on October 27th, said in a statement to Mancunian Matters: “Today will be my 10th day on hunger strike against the UK funding and arming of Israel, against the will and at cost to the welfare of British people.
“After a year of protests, direct action, petitions, and opinion polls, our Prime Minister stood on national television and said, ‘the UK stands unequivocally with Israel.’
“He lied. If everything so far has fallen on deaf ears, then I am forced to use the last form of resistance available to me, to make my disgust and objection known. “I will not be made complicit. I object with every fibre of my being. And if it takes my health and my life to make that known then so be it. “I accept my moral and human duty to resist.”
The activist previously sent the Government a letter arguing that they fund Israel whilst “British people suffer through cost of living crises, mental health increases, food bank shortages, and housing crises”.
Greenwood shared that the Government has not responded after she accused them of caring “as little for its own people as it does for Palestinian lives”. Greenwood said her MP for Manchester Rusholme, Afzal Khan, has not commented on her hunger strike except to send a policeman to her house over concerns for the activist’s welfare.
