Opinion
Saturday’s march shows that it’s really about Jews, not Palestinians
The march is going ahead despite the ceasefire deal – and I would bet my mortgage that the hate will be more vitriolic than ever
January 16, 2025 12:23
2 min read
The march is going ahead despite the ceasefire deal – and I would bet my mortgage that the hate will be more vitriolic than ever
January 16, 2025 12:23If you’re looking for evidence that it’s Jews who are the real target of the hate marches, you might have thought it would be difficult for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to top its demand this week that the police let it remain free to intimidate Jews on their way to and from synagogue when it marches on Saturday. (The Met have, after over a year, developed the beginnings of a backbone and ordered the marchers to change their route.)
Well, you’d be wrong.
The very fact the march is still happening, now that there is a ceasefire deal in place, shows what’s really behind the demos. Since the very first demo on October 13 2023, just six days after Hamas butchered 1200 Israelis and before a single IDF soldier had set foot in Gaza, the PSC has been screaming for a ceasefire. (An unconditional ceasefire, that is – with no mention of the need for the hostages to be released. They’re only Jews, after all.) The marches, they have insisted, have been all about humanitarian concern with Gaza and stopping ‘genocide’.
Well, there is now an agreement for a ceasefire. Assuming Hamas sticks to its word, it’s happening. Cue relief? Cue a solemn sense of hope that there may be a path now to something better? Cue scrapping a march which was arranged to call for the very thing that has now been agreed?
Of course not. Saturday’s march goes ahead – and I would bet my mortgage that the hate will be more vitriolic than ever. Because the marches have never really had anything to do with a ceasefire. They’ve never had anything to do with genuine humanitarianism or hope for the future of the Middle East. The PSC’s membership is suffused with antisemitism of the most unambiguous and blatant kind. So of course the PSC’s marches are about Jews. Of course they are marches built on hate rather than humanitarianism.
And as we have seen throughout history, when Jews are the target, anything goes. Hence the deranged accusation of genocide, which has been front and centre of the marches, when in reality it was Jews – Israelis – who were massacred by a terrorist organisation committed by charter to genocide - it to the eradication of Jews from the face of the earth.
Look at the reaction to the ceasefire to see this being demonstrated in real time. It's been only a few hours since the deal was agreed but already you can see the narrative changing. In a jarring handbrake turn, the Jew haters are now saying that the ceasefire is in fact a huge triumph for Hamas, which has survived all that Israel has thrown at it and is now triumphant. That’s quite a definition of genocide.
We are presumably meant not to notice that the people claiming to have secured a great win in the war they started on October 7 were claiming until yesterday that they had suffered a genocide.
I’ve no doubt that some of the people on the hate marches don’t think they have any issue with Jews. But put it this way: if you were on a demonstration and saw that standing next to you were people carrying ‘Blacks out of Britain’ banners, and chanting for the elimination of all Muslims, you’d probably do a double take and scarper. You wouldn’t go back the next time, and the next, and the next and march happily alongside them. Unless, that is, you agreed.