The danger posed by the diversity of this and other marches for Palestine is that those who participate will see themselves as legitimated for everything else they do too. Conversely, one could also point to the strong presence of one’s own type of activists as proof that they provide the inner meaning of the march: the strong turnout from leftwing activists (Jeremy Corbyn was one of the speakers) could allow supporters to see the wider cause as intrinsically part of the left.Īll we can say with certainty about the march is that outrage bound it together, without any kind of unanimity of what the vision for Palestine (or Israel) should be. This diversity allows both supporters and detractors to derive their own meanings for the march: the presence of neo-Nazis, supporters of authoritarian regimes and Islamists can be seen as proof of the irredeemable corruption of the whole enterprise. The demonstration itself was organised by groups in which leftwing activists play an outsized role, such as the Stop the War coalition, as well as Muslim organisations such as Friends of al-Aqsa. Muslims played a prominent part in the march and there was also a Jewish contingent, but just pointing to the presence of Jews and Muslims does not do justice to the diversity present within both broad categories.
Some protesters wielded Turkish flags, others held banners printed by the Socialist Workers party. Social media quickly identified some of the most outrageous attendees – the far-right antisemite Michèle Renouf and two young men in Saddam Hussein T-shirts – but there was much more to the demonstration than that. It was prompted by outrage at Palestinian suffering in Gaza, Sheikh Jarrah and elsewhere. Take the large demonstration held in London last Saturday. And it is that diversity that leads not just to bitter conflicts over the place of antisemites within this disparate movement, but also to much wider – and rarely addressed – challenges in defining what international support for the Palestinians means. When I talk about the popularity of the Palestinian cause then, I am referring not to the sum total of its impact, but to the diversity of supporters it attracts. The current situation of the Palestinian people is proof enough that sympathy towards their plight is not universal enough to have actually led to a change in their circumstances. In “western” countries, support for Israel is deeply embedded on the right, as well as in the centre and centre-left (albeit the latter is often combined with support for a Palestinian state within the framework of a two-state solution). It’s not that “everybody” supports the Palestinians, or pays lip service to doing so.
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One way to break out of this impasse is to see the antisemitism issue as the most visible manifestation of a much wider challenge: how to manage the consequences of the popularity of the Palestinian cause. There is also some evidence to suggest that anti-Israel views are correlated to an extent with antisemitic views. It is certainly hard to deny (although some do) that antisemitic discourse and violence has been propagated by some pro-Palestinian activists.
But regardless of whether activists condemn it, such incidents will only deepen the suspicion many British Jews have that pro-Palestinian activism is irredeemably antisemitic.ĭisagreements over whether the Palestinian cause disproportionately attracts antisemites, or even if it is intrinsically antisemitic, tend to be fractious and bitter. Many activists responded quickly in condemning the convoy and pointing out that such actions don’t help the Palestinians themselves (although some dismissed it as trivial or even as a “false flag” operation).