With every stop on the Victoria Line, another Palestinian flag appears. Draped over shoulders, painted on faces, stuck between knees – by the time the Tube pulls into Green Park, the carriage has transformed into a sea of red, white and green. Still characteristically silent, but with a tangible sense of something shared.
Perhaps it is defiance – these people, young and old, of different colours and creeds, were last week branded “hate marchers” by the now-former home secretary Suella Braverman, who was today sacked by prime minister Rishi Sunak amid a Cabinet reshuffle.
Before Braverman's sacking, there was intense pressure for this pro-Palestine march, which coincided with Armistice Day, to be banned. There were threats of violence and counter-protests from far-right groups. But the pro-Palestinians still turned out to march in their hundreds of thousands, for the sixth week in a row - and the atmosphere on the ground – or most of it, anyway – certainly feels like the opposite of one of hate.
“Queers for Palestine”, “Armistice means ceasefire” and "Jews say ceasefire now" are among the placards I quickly spot among the dense crowd, a diverse mix of families with pushchairs, people being pushed in wheelchairs and dogs in backpacks.
Some signs strike a more humorous tone, such as: “Bombing for peace is like f***ing for virginity” and “Get in loser, we’re freeing Palestine” - a Mean Girls movie reference. But the majority are more sombre. “I’m here because my parents are both from Palestine and were forced to flee in 1948,” one protester, Omar, tells me, holding a sign reading “#notahatemarch”.
Omar's parents now live in Beirut and Jordan. “We’re here today to show our common humanity," he continues. "I’ve seen so many different people from so many walks of life, Jews, Muslims people from all different cultures coming together for the sake of humanity. It’s beautiful to see.”
Omar is right: humanity feels like the word here. Since the Hamas attacks on October 7, which killed 1,200 Israelis, more than 10,000 people in Gaza have been killed by Israeli bombardment, including more than 4,000 children. "To stop this kind of thing happening – children being killed needlessly. There has to be another way," says Steve, a retiree from Weymouth who is here with his wife Jenny.
I can barely hear Steve and Jenny over the blaring megaphones and drums banging on Park Lane. But they are determined to speak. "My parents fought in the wars for this country... People talk about lest we forget – that’s not just about not forgetting the people who fought in the wars, but what they fought for," says Steve, pointing to the poppy he is proudly sporting on his cap. Jenny nods along. “I'm a mother and a grandmother, I've got four kids and seven grandchildren," she says. "My uncle Charlie died in World War Two, I’ve been to visit his grave – my poppy is for people who die in all wars."
It’s not just British retirees like Steve and Jenny calling for peace here today. “I’m from a very old Jewish family, descended from a number of the chief Rabbis in this country,” film producer Gillian Moseley tells me at a rally in Trafalgar Square rally, holding a sign that reads “British Jews for ceasefire”.
Moseley has been attending pro-Palestine marches for 20 years and says she’s always felt welcome. “The atmosphere is positive, there’s a lot of camaraderie. I keep seeing people talking about rabble-rousing – I haven’t seen any of that. I don’t think anyone who makes a comment like that has any understanding of who’s coming to these marches. I would say they’re exactly the opposite of hate marches. Suella Braverman is fomenting hate with her divisive language. Everybody here is calling for a ceasefire – a ceasefire is not hatred.”
Any hate that does exist here is mostly targeted at Braverman and her fellow politicians. At several moments, chants erupt of “Rishi Sunak’s a wasteman” to the tune of Seven Nation Army. Another placard reads: “Keir Starmer, you have blood on your hands”.
But the most common target is Braverman, the subsequently-sacked home secretary. Holding a "sack Braverman" placard, Steve tells me that he, like many, believes the now-former home secretary only fuelled the violence over the weekend, after branding pro-Palestinian marchers “hate marchers” and “Islamists” who wereintending to use Armistice Day to dominate the streets of London.
Everybody here is calling for a ceasefire – a ceasefire is not hatred.
Scenes of hundreds of far-right “football hooligan” groups, including Tommy Robinson, clashing with police in Whitehall in the hours before the pro-Palestine demonstration has only accelerated the anger towards her here.
The black-clad right-wing mob have largely been kept away from the main demonstration, but breakaway groups form throughout the day. Walking past one group, I hear chants of “Allah, Allah, who the f*** is Allah?”, and one man shouting “There ain’t no black in the Union Jack”. “We want our country back”, goes another refrain. A picture widely circulating on social media showed one protestor lifting up his poppy-emblazoned jacket to show a swastika tattoo. By the end of the day, some 92 counter-protesters have been arrested.
"She’s just trying to divide people and cause problems, she incites violence wherever she goes – that’s what extremist politicians do," he says of Braverman. "Rishi Sunak should have the strength to get rid of her.”
Steve and his fellow protesters will no doubt feel vindicated by Sunak's subsequent decision to sack Braverman, less than 48 hours later. But not all Londoners are aligned. The couple and their fellow protesters have been slowly marching for an hour or so when a scream pierces through the rhythmic chants of “Free, free, Palestine!”.
Heads whip round, fearing that there has been an altercation, perhaps with one of counter-protest groups who have threatened their presence. “I am from Gaza. All my family are dead. They killed my whole family,” a young woman with a pram screams, weaving, directionless, through the crowd. She is frantic, wailing – the crowd parts for her like the Red Sea. “Do I look like a terrorist to you? Do I?” she asks.
A silence descends, a few people move tentatively to comfort her, but she doesn’t seem to notice, pushing her pram on through the hordes of protestors and out of sight. The crowd marches on, the chanting resumes. She is a physical reminder of the proximity of this tragedy to many people, even here in London.
Jewish commentators say this lack of public condemnation of Hamas among protesters leaves many Jews frightened. Last month, Labour MP Andy McDonald was suspended by the party after the saying “between the river and the sea” during a speech at a pro-Palestine rally - a phrase that has occasionally been co-opted by fringe or extreme elements and is seen as offensive by many Jewish people.
A chorus of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” erupts early on into Saturday's march and it is repeated by the crowd with fervour. But "the phrase doesn’t say anything about who is going to live in Palestine when it’s free, from the river to the sea,” Moseley tells me.
“I think we need to remember that the occupants are left open in that phrase, before people rush to judgment. For its entire historic existence, going back 5000 years, Holy Land, then called Canaan, was a melting pot. What some people in Israel seem to be trying to do is turn it from a melting pot into a single ethnicity state.”
David Lee, a volunteer with Na’amod, a progressive Jewish group, agrees that the phrase is complex but not necessarily offensive. “To me, it’s a call for a state in which Palestinians can live in their homeland neither dominated by others or dominating others,” he says. “Obviously context is important, sometimes it has been co-opted by fringe or extreme elements. Sometimes antisemitism can crop up in that context. But it’s not tantamount to genocide of Jews or erasure of Israel."
“Criticism of Israel is not necessarily antisemitic,” he continues. “The media target those fringe minorities and amplify their messages at the expense of messages like calling for a ceasefire. Politicians are exploiting these kind of sensitive political issues for their own agendas and political gain.”
Can Jewish people really feel safe at these marches, then? While it is clear that the vast majority of the demonstrators are here in good faith, some placards are less so, such as one bearing a Star of David intertwined with a swastika and another comparing Gaza to Auschwitz, which have drawn widespread criticism for being antisemitic. The Met is currently seeking more than a dozen individuals who appear to have carried antisemitic signs or led antisemitic chants during the march, including individuals wearing what was described as "Hamas-style" headbands.
To me, it’s a call for a state in which Palestinians can live in their homeland neither dominated by others or dominating others
“Jewish people are really worried about what the future holds because this conflict looks like it is going on for a while,” says Dave Rich, the director of policy at the Community Security Trust, a charity which provides security for British Jews.
“This all started with the Hamas terrorist attack that utterly shattered and traumatised the community. To then fear the response to that – 100,000 people marching through the streets with no condemnation of Hamas or the release of hostages – leaves many really quite frightened. We see this every time Israel is at war, a massive spike in antisemitism. Some of it is people who are antisemitic anyway. Others are really angry at what they see Israel is doing and they take that out at Jewishpeople.”
Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), a key organiser of the mass protests, says some level of unrest is always inevitable. Islamophobia, too, has also seen a ten-fold increase since October 7.
“You’re always going to get in a very large crowd people who are not abiding by the principles of those of us leading the march,” he says. “But they are really only a handful.”
He blames politicians like Braverman for exaggerating this hate-filled rhetoric.“ Unfortunately, what we see is an absolute focus and attention by those whose desire is to smear the entire march as ‘hatred’ and I put Suella Braverman in that category,” he says.
It is perhaps fitting, then, that Braverman’s inflammatory rhetoric has only served to facilitate her own downfall. The marches will, no doubt, go on – in defiance of hate.
