If you are a liberal, as Londoners should be — this is the second most multicultural city on earth — you can hold two ideas in your head at once. The first is that the so-called “pro-Palestine” marches in London — I doubt their “pro” nature, as some seem keener for a war on Israel than a settlement for Palestine — contain antisemitic elements. The second is that they should go ahead anyway. If you live in a pluralistic democracy, you must learn to fight without rancour, or you won’t live in a pluralistic democracy that long.
I go to watch most weeks. Last Saturday the antisemitic elements included a large, red triangle, made from a scarf, held upside-down, and pointed in the direction of the majority Jewish, pro-Zionist counter-protest. The counter-protest was tiny, and people laughed at it for that, but Jews have always been a minority in Europe, and, if we are tinier than we were before the Second World War, then you know why. The red triangle is the Hamas triangle: it means assembled Jews are a target for murder. They would like to make us tinier.
They must be properly policed
If the marches should go ahead, because Palestine is owed respectable advocates, and Britain is free, they must be properly policed. There are laws governing freedom of expression, which I cherish, and laws governing incitement to hatred, which I cherish too. They can only exist together. What greater threat to democracy is there than anti-democratic elements being allowed to flourish?
British people can afford to play at supporting murderous tyrannies that despise Jews, women, gays, dissidents and minorities — everyone but themselves. The reality, if it ever gets here, and I think it won’t, will horrify them. This tendency needs to be strangled at birth. Those who run the marches should, of course, police themselves. But they are vain fools, and they don’t, and, entirely unconsciously, they embolden the Israeli far-Right, because blood will have blood.
Everything that makes the march a carnival should be banned. There should be zero tolerance for anything glorifying Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran. If you carry their flag or wear their branding you should be arrested and charged. There should be no fireworks or loudspeakers for protest or counter-protest, except for the speeches at the end: one vote, one voice. They intimidate and destroy the peace of the city: the spectacle of Londoners screaming in the face of Left-wing Jews queuing to enter a Jewish community centre last weekend to hear moderates, including Palestinians, speak, was grotesque. There should be no face masks. If you feel strongly about something, give your identity to it too.
There must be zero tolerance for antisemitic slurs. British Jews, the only Jewish community in Europe left intact after the Holocaust, are owed that consideration. If you carry a sign with a blood-soaked Star of David, a sign saying Jews — signified by the Star of David — love murdering babies, you should be arrested. “Go back to where you came from,” they shouted in London. Where is that exactly? They named Zionism a cancer: Jews an infection of a healthy body. Netanyahu was given horns: Jews as demons. And on and on.
The marches disrupt the city, it is true; they make it feel fractious, chaotic and unsafe. Tourists, families and Jews avoid central London on Saturdays, and that is not right. My preference would be for the Government to designate a huge field, perhaps near Slough — it has superb transport links — entirely for protest. We could be bussed in and scream at each other each Saturday, though it does feel like George Orwell’s two-minute hate from 1984. There’s a strong argument for protesting where people can hear you.
Tourists, families and Jews avoid central London on Saturdays, and that is not right
But, as when Rejoin activists played Yakety Sax all through the Conservative Party Conference at Birmingham in 2022, it can go too far: no one could be heard in parts of the conference fringe. It was very funny, and I thought that because no one I personally disagreed with was silenced. It was also awful because, when you silence your opponent, eventually you will silence yourself.
“Pro” Palestine elements enjoy committing criminal damage and theft; they insinuate it is excusable to break laws when they break them. A few days ago, a group called Palestine Action stole two busts of Chaim Weizmann, an early Zionist, from Manchester University, to dress up — they put keffiyehs on him — and post on social media. “Weizmann is now under Palestine Action’s control,” they wrote. Don’t they know he is dead?
Last year they destroyed a painting of Lord Balfour, made by a Jewish artist, at Trinity College Cambridge. Last week they sprayed red paint over two Jewish advocacy organisations in London. (To those who deny the Jewish character of Israel, and say there is, therefore, no anti-Jewishness in their movement, I say: that is a lie). I will paraphrase Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons. It is still the greatest defence of law in print, and I am surprised that Trinity College Cambridge, which still has not replied to my multiple requests for information about the state of the Balfour painting, haven’t heard of it. Would you pull down every law to get the devil? And if you would, where would you hide from the devil then, the laws all being flat?
If this doesn’t sound like fun, it isn’t supposed to be; no serious political movement should feel like entertainment. I still laugh when I think of a sign I saw at an early march: “Israel is like my ex-boyfriend.” No, it isn’t. If you can clear the public square of chaos, it is possible, still, that the call to political extremism the chaos embodies, born of ingratitude, ennui and despair, will ebb, and we find a solution to the crisis in the Middle East, and other things.
Democracy is a serious business, on which all our freedoms rest. If you can’t understand that, scream into the void you have created. Take the field in Slough.
Tanya Gold is a columnist for The London Standard
