As the streets fill with ever-increasing numbers of pro-Palestine supporters – and with a large protest planned in central London next weekend – British politicians and commentators are coming up with new ways of describing what is happening: from “hate marches”, in the words of home secretary Suella Braverman, to empty displays of “virtue signalling”. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has already called next weekend’s march, which coincides with Armistice Day, “provocative and disrespectful”. But each attempt to cast this movement as menacing is really a refusal to try to understand what is going on. The truth is that a large number of people in Britain can feel strongly about the situation in Gaza while not being “obsessed” with Palestine or motivated by terrorist sympathies.
Some will be wary of these marches in good faith, and understandably so. Reported antisemitic hate incidents in Britain are rising, and Hamas’s 7 October atrocities have shaken a Jewish diaspora, which saw its mourning immediately eclipsed by sympathy for Gaza. Support for Palestine might seem suspect from a public that does not turn out for many other similar causes. Why does this one issue bring so many out on to the streets, when so many other injustices around the world are met with silence?
