How do you stand for Palestine without traducing British Jews — and Palestinians themselves? Righteous people want to know, and they should. You may have seen the video of the woman in Gaza weeping over the body of her son and calling Hamas dogs. She was silenced, though why would she care if she told the truth? What more does she have to lose? The Arab world has betrayed Palestine, and the mirroring between Palestinians and Jews, whom Europe betrayed, is obvious, which is partly why the conflict is so mesmerising: both peoples, as the novelist Amos Oz said, are right. A continent away, a crowd of Londoners stood for Palestine on Saturday. How will they ensure that their rhetoric does not translate into the demonisation of Jewish people in Britain? Do they even want to?
It is usual to call the rallies one thing or the other, depending on bias: peaceful or violent. Rather, they are multiple. I believe that many of the marchers are fair-minded. They know there is a line between calling for justice for Palestine and inciting violence against the Jewish diaspora in Europe, which has suffered enough. I have seen the train tracks to Auschwitz- Birkenau and so have they; they know what is there. Don’t weaponise the Holocaust, people say. Quite so. But don’t forget it either. Most of them want two states in Israel and Palestine, and an end to the occupation in the West Bank, as I do. They do not want to see, as Hamas promises, the butchery of every Jew in Israel and worldwide if they can get there. They would hate that, I am sure. They would be shocked.
