The role of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police sounds like something from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. In similar vein, we learned yesterday that it includes a secondary but important function – that of Jewsplainer In Chief.
Asked by the BBC if he agreed with Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s description of the “Free Palestine” marches seen across Britain over the past four Saturdays as hate marches, Sir Mark Rowley said that, “I wouldn’t use one phrase to characterise 100,000 people.”
In other words, no. As he put it: “There’s a diverse range of people there. Many people are pacifists and perfectly behaved discharging their public right to protest.”
Of all the labels a police chief might use to describe participants on a march in which almost everyone lustily screams as loudly as they can, "From the river to the sea", a chant which calls for the elimination of Israel and its 9.7 million Jews, “pacifists” is perhaps the most bizarre.
But before we consider just how bizarre that is, let us deal with the blatant hypocrisy at the heart of Sir Mark’s words.
According to the Macpherson report, set up to investigate the Met’s handling of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the police – along with every public body – adopted as part of a new definition of a “racist incident” the key criteria that it includes "any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person". It would be impossible to itemise the impact and reach of this definition, since it is now universally used to consider if an incident is indeed racist.
Well, not universally. Ironically it is plainly not used as such by the commissioner of the Met. Not when it comes to Jews. For Sir Mark, the fact that so many Jews consider the marches to be hate marches – not merely driven by hatred of Jews but clearly and unambiguously demonstrating such hatred – is irrelevant. Hate marches, you say? Oh, I see – you are Jews. Let me explain Jew hate to you – or rather what it isn’t. The marches are what it isn’t. You find them full of hate? As if that matters! I am Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and I get to tell you what is Jew hate.
You are doubtless as sick as I am of reading about what has been on display at these marches. Calls on the streets, on the tube and in stations for jihad – dismissed by the Met as being no more than an exercise in theological struggle, rather than a call for terrorism as interpreted by almost every other sentient observer. Demands at a parallel demo by members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Islamist organisation banned in Germany, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for Muslim armies to rise up. Chants on trains and on the marches of, ‘There is only one solution, intifada revolution’. A speaker telling a crowd about the October 7 massacre that, "We saw what the resistance can do when they take the fight and their self determination in their own hands. This has been the biggest blow to Zionism that we've seen in our lifetimes...You know what the so called labour progressives think about it? They condemned it as terrorism!" A crowd on the tube chanting, "Resistance is justified when Palestine is occupied". Placards demanding that Jews are placed in the bucket of history. A 78-year-old poppy seller punched and kicked as he hurriedly tried to pack up his stall at Waverley Station in Edinburgh in fear after the station had been occupied. Rochdale Cenotaph having “Free Palestine” daubed on it in red. The list goes on.
But no, they’re not hate marches.
Ah – but according to Sir Mark, that’s because, “There’s a diverse range of people there. Many people are pacifists and perfectly behaved discharging their public right to protest.” Sir Mark has had a distinguished career and is a fine public servant. But one has to wonder how he has managed this when there is clearly a huge lacuna in his competencies – the ability to spot nonsense. The idea that these are not hate marches because not everyone present is motivated by hate is so self-evidently idiotic that it is scarcely believable the point has to be made. When, for example, the EDL staged its marches, nobody suggested that because there were some people present who were not far right thugs then it was wrong to call them hate marches. The overwhelming consensus was that the people behind the marches, the atmosphere on the marches and the impact of the marches meant they were clearly, obviously hate marches. That is even truer for the Free Palestine marches. And it is true for the march planned for Armistice Day on Saturday.
But no, they’re not hate marches.
The police have spent the past four Saturdays standing and watching as carnivals of hate have taken over the streets. Central London is now a no go area for many Jews on Saturdays. Instead of acting to enforce the law, the police have pathetically pleaded with marchers to behave – just as this week they pleaded with the organisers of the planned Armistice Day protest march to postpone it. And just as such groups have laughed in all our faces for decades, so too they laughed at the police’s request. Now the Met’s bluff has been called, the commissioner has retreated into the default mode of his force these past four weeks – appeasement.
Of course they spread hate. Of course they are intended to strike fear into Jews. Of course they are driven by hate.
But no, they are not hate marches.
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