On Saturday, hundreds of thousands took part in a history-making march for Gaza, while the hate mobs imagined by the now former home secretary Suella Braverman turned out to be the far right, who clashed with police. It’s true that the Palestine solidarity march did contain a fringe of hateful messages, but to portray these as characteristic of the whole is absurd. Protesters called for a halt to the death, catastrophe and terror being inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza. Demands for a ceasefire are accelerating globally, as about 11,000 people have been killed in the sealed Gaza Strip, including over 4,000 children – and with thousands more injured or orphaned. The Palestinian cause is close to the hearts of leftists, but polling shows it goes wider than that: most of the British public support a ceasefire.
Saturday’s demonstration contained a sizeable Jewish bloc, who marched despite alarmist warnings across our politics and media that the protests were hotbeds of antisemitism. Jewish people (me included) attend Gaza solidarity marches for many reasons. But I would bet that none include giving free passes on antisemitism to leftists – and neither should a Jewish presence be used to discount the existence of any such prejudice at these protests. More likely, we understand that while this ancient hatred can appear anywhere, it is not the fault of Palestinians that Christian Europe has a long, lingering and largely unacknowledged problem with antisemitism.
