It’s open season on Palestine protests. I watched in astonishment as Tory leader Kemi Badenoch claimed on the BBC flagship Laura Kuenssberg show both that our marches deliberately target synagogues, and that while they should be banned, the Tommy Robinson demo should not be because he is not targeting a specific group. Unfortunately she is not alone. The British establishment has decided to launch a major onslaught on the mass movement for Palestine solidarity in Britain. One of the biggest and most sustained movements in British history is being calumnied as racist and antisemitic, as causing fear to the whole Jewish population, and as incubating violence and terrorism.
The ostensible reason is in response to the knife attack in Golders Green which left two visibly Jewish men hospitalised, branded by police an antisemitic, but not a terrorist, attack. The orchestrated chorus of voices now demanding the banning of slogans and marches as a result of this are weaponising an undoubtedly real fear of attack among many Jews to achieve their political end, which is the marginalisation and potential silencing of any criticism of Israel’s genocidal policy towards the Palestinians.
The aim now is to ban the Palestine marches – 34 of which have taken place peacefully in London in the past two and a half years – on the pretext that they lead to violence and antisemitism. The response has been remarkably uniform. The government’s ‘terrorism Tsar’ has called for a moratorium on marches (doing so even before the attack on Wednesday). Keir Starmer has said some marches should be banned and has singled out ‘globalise the intifada’ as a slogan to be outlawed (actually since last December both the Manchester and Metropolitan police have declared use of this slogan an arrestable offence). Metropolitan police commissioner Mark Rowley publicly attacked Green Party leader Zack Polanski for criticising policing of the suspect’s arrest – astonishing for an unelected police officer only days before major elections. Rowley has also said – quite erroneously – that marchers deliberately go to synagogues, something being strongly challenged by the Palestine coalition.
It is useful here to look at the facts. These latest antisemitic attacks in Golders Green are part of a series in recent months, following one on a Manchester synagogue last year. They are all serious racist attacks and should be seen as such. But dealing with them is not helped by a false equation between the Palestine protests and antisemitism. Those who make this connection are the ones who conflate criticism of the state of Israel with criticism of Jews in general. Nor should this be seen as the greatest emergency in Britain for many years and such over blown comparisons help no one.
This attack and previous ones simply had no connection with the marches. More generally, there is no evidence of any antisemitic act connected with any of the demonstrations. They are attended by large numbers of Jewish people, who are warmly welcomed by those on the marches. It is true that some Jewish people feel scared, but this is not matched by the reality of the protests. Indeed, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that some of those who support Netanyahu, including representatives of the British government, which has been complicit in Israel’s genocide, are deliberately using this fear to try to suppress the movement.
Some of these people demand that much more must be done to protect Jews from the sorts of attack seen last week. Already the most heavily populated Jewish areas have greater policing, including by the Jewish security force, the Shomrim. There are other measures to make Jewish people feel safer, for example there is a new bus route directly between the two most visibly Jewish London areas of Stamford Hill and Golders Green. But to demand curtailment of marches which go nowhere near these areas and have never set out to target these areas is a political demand against the rights of those protesting.
The demand to do more is highly selective. Nowhere else do politicians anguish like this over other terrible attacks. A man was recently convicted of raping a Sikh woman mistaken for a Muslim in what was clearly a racial crime as well as a monstrous sexual assault. There were no calls to crack down on racists and the far right more widely as a result. There has been a huge spike in anti-Muslim attacks in recent years, including on mosques, yet these attract far less condemnation and are not regarded as an emergency. Just two weeks ago the stabbing of an Iranian protester by an Iranian monarchist outside Downing Street received virtually no publicity.
The rise in far-right extremism is treated with much less concern than the solidarity protests. Yet even on our marches there are small but extremely unpleasant counter demos comprising right wing Zionists, Iranian monarchists and some fascists, where they spit and abuse women in hijabs. On his ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march Tommy Robinson tore up the Palestine flag. He targets Muslims as rapists and abusers. The fascists who go on those marches actually support Hitler, yet they are given special treatment by the Metropolitan police to rampage through central London while we are threatened with bans.
The increasingly repressive and political role of police is acting to protect the right while clamping down on the left. We have seen the much greater criminalisation of protest across the board both through policing and changes in the law. The police have set themselves up as arbiters of concern over antisemitism but have been found by reports to be institutionally or systemically racist time and again going right back to the Macpherson report into the death of Stephen Lawrence. The political furore is being used by people who want to stop protest over Palestine. The demonstrations are criticisms of Israeli, British and US government policy and of support for genocide. The police would be better deployed helping Jewish people than arresting pensioners who call for an end to the ban on Palestine Action – but their priorities are all too clear.
The only solution to the Middle East crisis has to be a political solution – justice for Palestine, an end to impunity whether for Netanyahu, Trump or Blair, an end to the wars in Lebanon and Iran, which Trump is fuelling dangerously.
The head of steam building to ban or curtail marches must be resisted. Like most of my generation I was brought up by people who lived through the Second World War, and one of the strongest sentiments they expressed was not just to stop fascism but to protect freedom of speech and democratic rights. These are now under attack. The ruling class is stoking fear to protect its own position. This in turn enables the far right. We face election results on Friday which look disastrous for the two main parties and which will see Reform gain, but also the Greens and the left. We also face further repression over our protest on May 16th. We are in for a stormy couple of weeks.
Source: Counterfire