Text: Juliet Stevenson at Saturday's national peace march

Screenshot ICN/JS

Actor Juliet Stevens gave the following short speech in Downing Street on Saturday, 30 November, after the latest National March For Palestine in London.

I'm here today as an actor. The tools of my job are words. Words are all I have and I need to use them to speak out. I've always wanted to make work to the times that we live in. And in all my life the times have never been as terrifyingly Dystopian as they are now.

The Palestinian people are being relentlessly and brutally assaulted while the world looks away or tries to rationalise it.

I don't need to list the horrors of the assault. We watch them daily on our screens.

But alongside the rockets and the bombs we have also witnessed an assault on the truth. On the story being told to justify the unjustifiable. The Palestinian people are dehumanised. Images of human suffering in Gaza that in any other part of the world would induce sympathy and would see governments rushing to deliver aid and mediation is somehow portrayed as inevitable. A catastrophe they have brought upon themselves. And the children dead, wounded, sick, orphaned or starving are collateral damage.

Shame. As artists we cannot remain silent in the face of such gross violations. Violations of human rights and of international law. Violations of the truth and of every human instinct.

The propaganda campaign that has been imposed on all of us has spread everywhere and been skilfully managed and has become very effective in its threats to punish and disempower those who speak out.

In my own sector the silence of many arts and cultural institutions has been deafening. Those arts organisations that rightly hung Ukrainian flags over their doors have closed those same doors to the Palestinian voice. Cancelling film festivals. Music gifs. Book events . Shutting down galleries and theatre performances if they in any way speak to the Palestinian cause. The very arts organisations that would fight for the right for freedom of expression. A freedom on which we crucially depend are sitting back and watching that freedom be eroded.

So I want to call on those cultural institutions and on all our public spaces to uphold that freedom of expression . To defend the right to speak and to protest. I urge them to reject politically motivated attempts to silence and to censor.

What is the point of art if not to address the great moral issues of our time?

What is the value of art if it is not to invite us all to recognise our shared humanity and and to licence us to feel beyond the narrow boundaries of our own individual lives?

So to my community I say: now is the time to speak out. If you have a platform, use it, If you have a profile . Use it. Because to stay neutral is situations of injustice is to endorse that injustice and to enable it. To say nothing is to support s Status Quo that is complicit in the massacre of the Palestinian people. There are many individuals in the grassroots and the mainstream who are doing incredible and urgent protest work. This last year in the face of the failure of moral leadership from governments across the world we've seen that moral leadership rise up from the grassroots.

I want to pay tribute to to those people and those and organisations. The movement is powerful, and it connects across geography and borders in its commitment to justice for the Palestinians. We need this movement to grow.

I want to call to our arts communities across the country. Come and join us. Let's work together to dissolve the divisions. To reject the lethal rhetoric of political and arms traders . Let's use the tools that we have too speak truth to power.

It can be frightening as an individual to speak up. We are told it is dangerous to do so. But let's never be afraid to raise our voices for compassion. There is safety and support in numbers and huge support if we come together There is strength and comfort win community so let us not be bullied into silence or shut down. Lets not rest until a ceasefire is achieved . Let's not rest until international humanitarian law is reinstate. Let's not rest until the world recognises that a Palestinian life is as miraculous and precious as every other human life on this planet.

(transcribed by Jo Siedlecka)

Watch a video of the speech here from the Crispin Flintoff show: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLkrBmV1mgs