Move the march

The news this week that the Metropolitan Police are trying to move the next pro-Palestine march away from a central London synagogue made me think of a comment made by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to the New York Times recently about the protests over the war in Gaza:

“one of the things that I found a little astounding throughout is that for all of the understandable criticism of the way Israel has conducted itself in Gaza, you hear virtually nothing from anyone since Oct. 7 about Hamas. Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender — I don’t know what the answer is to that. Israel, on various occasions has offered safe passage to Hamas’s leadership and fighters out of Gaza. Where is the world? Where is the world, saying, Yeah, do that! End this! Stop the suffering of people that you brought on! Now, again, that doesn’t absolve Israel of its actions in conducting the war. But I do have to question how it is that we haven’t seen a greater sustained condemnation and pressure on Hamas to stop what it started and to end the suffering of people that it initiated.”

It’s a question that gets to the heart of what the purpose really is of all those marches that wind through central London - much less frequently now than a year ago - with their calls for a ceasefire, but never for peace; their calls for Israel to pull out of Gaza, but never for the hostages to be returned; their chants of “From the River to the Sea”, and their silence about the Islamist extremism of Hamas.

These demonstrations began immediately after news of the October 7 attack spread, weeks before the Israeli military entered Gaza: the first demonstration outside the Israeli embassy was advertised on the afternoon of 7 October 2023 and took place two days later. They were organised, not to call for peace, but to express support and solidarity with the Palestinians - a big difference. The main organiser is called the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, after all, and that is their purpose: not to help find peace for all in the region, or to advocate for the rights of all, but to show solidarity for the Palestinian resistance - whatever that resistance looks like, it seems.

This is why the organisers of these marches have never, for example, said that supporters of Hamas are not welcome on their demonstrations. That shouldn’t be a controversial expectation: Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation after all, so it is illegal to support them, and on October 7 they committed undeniable atrocities (although staggeringly, many do still deny that those atrocities occurred). PSC and the other march organisers could have made a stand at that point, but chose not to.

Nor do they take any meaningful steps to prevent the repeated antisemitism that occurs on their protests. Almost every time a march takes place, people are arrested for antisemitic hate crimes and for support for terrorism. It is a pattern that repeats so reliably that it says something about the nature of these protests and the kind of people who join them. It shouldn’t need great insight to predict that a protest movement against the world’s only Jewish state would attract antisemites, and if the organisers don’t want those antisemites in their movement, they have done very little to show it.

The fact that it is only a small number of people arrested each time is beside the point. If a nightclub was the site of regular drug dealing, the owners would be expected to take steps to prevent it or risk losing their licence - even if it was only a handful of drug dealers each week.

This all provides context for the arguments over whether PSC and their colleagues should be allowed to hold a pro-Palestine march within yards of a major central London synagogue on Saturday 18 January. These marches have been ongoing for 15 months now and they always form up at lunchtime on a Saturday. Sometimes they even march directly past the front door of a synagogue, with an understandable impact on congregants’ willingness to go to Shabbat morning services. As a result, when a march takes place near to a synagogue those services are often curtailed, and planned post-service events get cancelled. This is not a one-off, and after 15 months of it and with no end in sight, the impact on the life of those synagogues is intolerable. It has been pointed out, quite reasonably, that there are many options for demonstration routes in central London that do not go near to synagogues, and there are other days of the week when the marches could take place.

This has come to a head because the Metropolitan Police have asked PSC to move their march on 18 January away from the nearby synagogue, and have threatened to impose legal restrictions to ensure this is the case if PSC will not compromise - which PSC have refused to do.

PSC Director Ben Jamal told the Guardian that the march has to be on a Saturday because “On Sunday, the transport situation is terrible”; and it has to be at that location because otherwise, “The police are effectively stopping us from staging pro-Palestine protests outside the BBC.” This is obviously nonsense: there are six other days of the week when protests could occur outside the BBC without disrupting Shabbat morning services at the nearby synagogue. Nor does the excuse about poor transport options hold water. The following day, Sunday 19 January, there will be four Premier League football games taking place which will see far more people travelling up and down the country to watch their teams than would travel for the PSC protest. Recent PSC marches in London have struggled to get 10,000 people in total, most of whom are probably Londoners, and the idea that the UK’s transport network, however rickety it feels at times, could not cope with the relatively small number of people who would travel from elsewhere is laughable.

Again, you have to ask what PSC is trying to achieve. They know that these demonstrations cause an enormous amount of upset in the Jewish community and have a direct impact on the life of nearby synagogues. It would be relatively easy to move the march in a way that still satisfies PSC’s right to protest, while also respecting the synagogue’s right to hold religious services without disruption. If their movement is truly aiming for peace and reconciliation then you would expect a spirit of compromise to prevail. Instead, the fact that they have angrily dismissed the Jewish community’s concerns comes across as deliberately provocative.

This row is going to rumble on until 18 January, possibly with a court hearing to decide it, with all the attendant costs and unnecessary damage to community tensions. It is welcome that the Met Police have taken this stand, and it is long past time that PSC and their friends start to behave more responsibly.