The campaign group Led By Donkeys has secured £27,216 in compensation after a giant banner reading "Yes It's A Genocide" was seized by Greater London Authority (GLA) officials and subsequently destroyed by waste firm Veolia.
Banner Seizure and Destruction
The 40-metre by 40-metre banner was unfurled in Parliament Square, London, on 4 December 2024, just over a year after Israel launched its assault on Gaza following the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas. GLA heritage wardens confiscated the banner during the unauthorised protest.
Led By Donkeys said its 19-month campaign to retrieve the banner initially faced refusals. The GLA later informed the group that the banner had been given to Veolia, which destroyed it after its condition deteriorated in storage.
Legal Action and Settlement
After legal letters demanding compensation were sent on behalf of Led By Donkeys, Veolia agreed to pay £27,216. Ben Stewart, a co-founder of Led By Donkeys, said: "The Parliament Square banner was in collaboration with one of the world's leading genocide scholars, but still the authorities threw process out the window and simply seized and destroyed our property. Pursuing compensation was never about the money, it was about defending space to protest Israel's war crimes."
Stewart added: "Palestine protests are treated differently in Britain to all other forms of activism. Direct action is regarded as terrorism and words on a placard are rendered illegal. Over the years we've delivered banners, put up billboards and done guerilla projections across the country, but the only time our equipment has been seized and destroyed was when it related to Palestine."
Context of the Protest
The banner was videoed from the air, and a film featuring a voiceover from Israeli scholar Prof Amos Goldberg, a historian of the Holocaust, was posted on social media. Goldberg stated: "This is exactly what a genocide looks like."
In September 2024, the UN independent international commission of inquiry concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and that Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, incited these acts. Last month, the commission said Israel continued to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza. Israel has persistently denied allegations of genocide, calling the commission's reports "distorted and false" and a "libellous sham."
A significant body of research by legal and rights experts, including UN investigators, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars, has concluded that Israel is committing genocide.
Broader Repression of Palestine Solidarity
In February, the European Legal Support Center and Forensic Architecture launched the "index of repression," recording instances of Palestinian solidarity being silenced in Britain. They reported over 900 such instances in the past six years.
Official Responses
A GLA spokesperson said: "A banner seized by GLA heritage wardens following an unauthorised protest in December was unfortunately damaged during storage and subsequently disposed of by our contractors."
A Veolia spokesperson said: "We were asked by our client to collect the banner and store it temporarily at one of our local depots. Regrettably, after around 12 weeks, the banner's condition deteriorated and became a health and safety hazard for our operations and the depot had to dispose of it. We have reimbursed Led By Donkeys for the full cost of the banner, due to the unintentional damage caused."
