Tourists and shoppers in Tsim Sha Tsui were greeted by an unusual sight on October 7, the second anniversary of the Israeli war on Gaza.
Five protesters walked through the bustling shopping district, waving Palestinian flags and shouting slogans. The four men and one woman carried placards saying “Free Palestine” and “Abolish the Zionist state,” while chanting: “Stop the genocide,” “Free, free Palestine,” and “From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime.”
Anti-war protesters (from second left to right) YY, Yu Wai-pan, and Lam Chi-leung protest outside the Kowloon Mosque on October 7, 2025. Photo: James Lee/HKFP.
The protesters began in front of the Kowloon Mosque in Tsim Sha Tsui and marched along Nathan Road, eventually arriving at the waterfront. The procession lasted no more than half an hour. They were allowed to go after being briefly questioned by about a dozen police officers who followed them back to the MTR station.
The protesters were part of HK Anti-war Mobilization, which consists of no more than a half dozen members.
The group’s first march was small yet significant in part because it could proceed – a rarity in the city where street rallies had been cancelled in recent years, often with little explanation.
It was not the first time the anti-war collective had staged an action in solidarity with Palestinians, and it was not the last.
The following month, on November 8, three activists crashed the opening night of the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival at a theatre in Causeway Bay. The flash mob-style protest called for a boycott of the Israeli consulate-backed festival that the group said promoted state-sponsored propaganda.
HK Anti-war Mobilization was formed in 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February that year. Its “anti-imperialist” ethos also led the group to oppose Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of people.
YY at a protest against the wars in Ukraine and Gaza on February 24, 2024, in Causeway Bay. Photo: HK Anti-war Mobilisation.
The group also held a silent protest calling for ceasefires in the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars in Causeway Bay; demonstrated in front of the US consulate, demanding that Washington release Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil; held seminars and a poster exhibit.
Amid a social climate where political action has become muted in the city, the activists have made a personal choice to oppose wars and align with oppressed people in Ukraine and Gaza.
“With so much happening globally, Hong Kong is indeed a very privileged place. Materially, you are allowed to remain untouched by the world’s conflicts,” said a member of HK Anti-war Mobilization, who prefers to be identified only with his nickname, YY, for privacy reasons.
“But if no one in Hong Kong takes action or spreads awareness, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”
‘No justice, no peace’
YY, now in his 20s, first became involved in the anti-war movement in 2018, during his final year as a university student overseas.
That year, student activists at King’s College London uncovered the UK school’s investments in Elbit Systems, an Israeli military technology company and defence contractor, allegedly using students’ tuition fees.
Anti-war protesters hold up placards opposing Israel’s war in Gaza on October 7, 2025. Photo: James Lee/HKFP.
YY was among those who protested against university management, calling on the institution to divest.
“Your school talks this big game about freedom, but you’re actually making missiles… that’s how I was implicated within that system,” he said.
Since joining HK Anti-war Mobilization in 2022, merely months after the group was established, YY has taken part in several protests against the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, including the ones in October and November.
See also: Pro-Palestinian rally in Hong Kong calls for ceasefire, condemns Israel’s war on Gaza
YY believes that Hong Kong is not exempt from complicity in Israel’s war. He pointed out local universities’ exchange programmes with Israel and satellite campuses, as well as the city’s ties to entities targeted by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
YY, as well as other activists in the group, believes that to be truly “anti-war,” one must reject the imperialist agendas behind those conflicts.
A Ukrainian serviceman stands among the rubble in the courtyard of a destroyed residential building in Kostyantynivka, Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on November 15, 2025. Photo: Oleg Petrasiuk/24th Mechanized Brigade of Ukrainian Armed Forces/AFP.
Palestinians drive down a muddy road after the first winter rainfall in a displacement camp in Gaza City on November 14, 2025. Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP.
“Our statements accompanying each action consistently emphasise one principle: no justice, no peace,” he said.
The group’s decision to call itself an “anti-war” collective could be seen as a strategic choice, said YY. The concept of being anti-war, at face value, casts a wide enough net that could engage like-minded people who might oppose wars on humanitarian grounds.
However, they are not merely pacifists seeking an end to fighting by any means, said Lam Chi-leung, a member of the anti-war collective in his 50s. “The question is, how can reconciliations and treaties be truly founded upon justice?”
Lam was a member of Left 21, a pro-democracy leftist group that was active in the 2010s, taking part in Occupy Central in 2011 and the dock strike in 2013.
However, his activism predated Left 21. He was involved in global solidarity movements dating as far back as the 1990s, and notably in 2003, when the US-led Iraq War broke out.
The protests against the US invasion of Iraq more than two decades ago were mostly led by the pro-Beijing camp, Lam said, though he recalled taking part in a march to the American consulate with hundreds of other non-establishment protesters.
He also recalled similar protests on local university campuses.
Lam Chi-leung (centre) and Yu Wai-pan (right) march in Tsim Sha Tsui on October 7, 2025, to protest Israel’s war in Gaza. Photo: James Lee/HKFP.
A recognisable face in the recent protests is Yu Wai-pan, previously affiliated with the League of Social Democrats (LSD), a leftist pro-democracy party, which was dissolved in June this year.
Dismantling narratives
HK Anti-war Mobilization’s anti-imperialist principle means that it rejects campist stances, which tend, for example, to side with the West and support the US and EU-backed Ukraine and Israel, but not Palestine, said Lam.
Over the years, he has come to understand the Hong Kong public’s indifference towards Palestine as stemming from the city’s status as a nexus for global capital and its colonial history.
His fellow activist concurs. “Anti-war groups in different countries will always be informed by other political elements,” said Yu, in his 30s.
“What we really need to do is remove ourselves from the Hong Kong perspective and look at the imperialist logics of these wars through an independent lens.”
Left to right: Yu Wai-pan, YY, and Lam Chi-leung of the Hong Kong Anti-war Mobilisation on November 16, 2025. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
Earlier this month, on the day HK Anti-war Mobilization protested at the film festival, the death toll in Gaza topped 69,000. The vast majority of those killed were civilians.
The latest flare-up in the decades-long Middle East conflict was sparked when militant group Hamas crossed the border into Israel on October 7, 2023, taking around 250 hostages and killing over 1,200 people.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, as of Thursday, Israeli forces have killed more than 300 Palestinians since a US-brokered ceasefire came into effect on October 10 this year.
An independent United Nations inquiry concluded for the first time in September that “Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Israel denies the charge.
Palestinians are dehumanised to such an extreme extent that the “normalisation” of narratives justifying Israel’s war must be resisted, YY told HKFP.
“I cannot block those airstrikes, but I can at least try, when an airstrike hits, to make the world see it for the atrocity that it is, and not punishment for people who deserve to be blown to smithereens. That is our objective.”
I cannot block those airstrikes, but I can at least try, when an airstrike hits, to make the world see it for the atrocity that it is
YY, member of hK anti-war mobilization
Narratives justifying the killings of Palestinians sometimes appear in comments on the anti-war group’s Instagram posts and in response to news coverage of their protests, ranging from Islamophobic remarks to accusations of antisemitism. Some netizens told the activists to “go to Gaza” or said that Hong Kong had nothing to do with Palestine.
“If I can help dismantle the narratives that allow them to wage war with impunity, then I would be doing my part,” he said.
HK Anti-war Mobilization activists Yu Wai-pan (left) and YY (centre) protest the Israeli consulate-backed Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival at Emperor Cinemas in Causeway Bay on November 8, 2025. Photo: HKFP.
“Like basking in a spring breeze!” YY quoted another member of the group as saying, referring to his fellow activist’s sarcastic use of a Chinese proverb, which means being educated by a great teacher, as they encountered the Islamophobes and Zionists online.
“But I think it’s also our responsibility to find ways to move people to think that they should care about these things, that they morally have to do something. The fact that they haven’t done anything isn’t just their fault,” he said.
Hong Kong and beyond
The group has also been looking outwards.
HK Anti-war Mobilization helped organise an exhibition titled “Visit Palestine Project” in May, borrowing dozens of vintage posters from a Japanese collector, who was introduced by an Indonesian activist and migrant worker based in Tokyo.
The “Visit Palestine Project” poster exhibition is held in Hong Kong on May 28, 2025. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
Zines accompanying the “Visit Palestine Project” exhibition on May 28, 2025. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
YY at the “Visit Palestine Project” exhibition on May 28, 2025. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
“The way these links and networks behind the project came together was so amazing,” said YY. “The fact that they worked so hard to host the exhibitions in different countries, whether to fundraise or to raise awareness, really earned my respect.”
“These real-life interactions carry so much more weight than the people calling us ‘leftards’ on Instagram,” he added, referring to a pejorative term for someone who holds left-wing beliefs.
In the years before the enactment of the national security law in 2020, pro-Palestinian protests in Hong Kong attracted between tens and hundreds of people, far smaller than pro-democracy rallies that easily drew thousands to the streets.
In mid-May 2018, a dozen people marched from the US consulate in Central to the Israeli consulate in Admiralty. They condemned the Israeli killings of at least 60 Palestinians on Gaza’s border during mass protests against the official opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem.
More protesters joined at the final destination. Around 50 people – comprising members of pro-democracy groups like the LSD, the Labour Party, and Socialist Action, as well as migrant workers’ organisations – eventually gathered on the ground floor of the Admiralty Centre, which houses the Israeli consulate.
Leftist groups and migrant workers’ organisations hold a protest in Admiralty in May 2018 to oppose the Israeli killings of Palestinian protesters in Gaza. Photo: League of Social Democrats, via Facebook.
Among those protesting that day were “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, the LSD co-founder; Lee Cheuk-yan, then chairperson of the now-inactive Labour Party; and Kwok Ka-ki, member of the Civic Party, which was dissolved last year.
Both Leung and Kwok were convicted of subversion under the Beijing-enacted national security law. Lee, meanwhile, is facing a subversion charge in a separate national security case involving a Tiananmen crackdown vigil organiser.
Kwok was released from prison earlier this year, but Leung and Lee are still behind bars.
Former convenor of the Civil Rights Human Front and LSD member Figo Chan was also at the 2018 rally. He was released from jail in October 2022 after serving two sentences for unauthorised assemblies.
Testing the waters
Some seven years later, on the second anniversary of the war in Gaza, the five members of the anti-war collective held their first march, calling for an end to what they called Israel’s “genocide.” It was also one of the few marches seen in the city after the 2019 anti-extradition protests and unrest.
The group has been testing the waters over the past three years, learning how to operate within a social climate under which much of civil society has been silenced.
“If we’re still able to say these things, we cannot waste this opportunity,” said Lam.
The group has concluded that it can, and should, push the envelope, not least because of Beijing’s official position: supporting the two-state solution and an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.
“When considering the global Palestinian solidarity movement, it’s clear that Hong Kong has an advantage, compared to places in Europe and America with deep-rooted ties to Israel, where suppression is far more prevalent,” said YY. “Hong Kong should not be absent, but should actually do more.”
Anti-war activists march to protest Israel’s war in Gaza, on October 7, 2025. Photo: James Lee/HKFP.
He recalled that after the October march, “one of our comrades said half-jokingly: ‘Wow, marches are still allowed in Hong Kong.’ But of course, we know that it was allowed because Palestine isn’t a local political topic.”
Said the young activist: “After having held so many silent protests… the only logical conclusion is that silent protest is permissible, so we tried marching. This overarching trend of oppression won’t cover everything.”
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