You stop killing, we stop marching

Last Thursday it was reported that a man had stabbed two people to death outside a synagogue in Manchester. Today the man’s name was revealed to be Jihad al-Shamie, a name widely ridiculed by people who have never heard of Jihad being used as a first name (I have, many times), but it was also revealed that he in fact stabbed not two but one person before he was shot dead by police as he appeared to be wearing a bomb around his waist; the second fatality and a third injury were in fact caused by police gunfire. There is also a pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide demonstration also planned for tomorrow, as there has been most weekends since the genocide began in October 2023; a number of politicians have demanded it be called off. Starmer also made some ludicrous remarks in a speech on Thursday, claiming that “antisemitism is a hatred that is rising once again, and we must defeat it once again”, and that Britain not only provides refuge, but a home.

That last claim comes as the Labour government, in an attempt to outflank the Deform UK party, has proposed to double the length of time it takes to secure Indefinite Leave to Remain (Deform have talked about abolishing it altogether, which will mean no means for foreign nationals to live in the UK permanently other than by taking British citizenship) from five years to ten. The first claim will be news to anyone who has witnessed the rising tide of hatred towards both Muslims and asylum seekers in the UK over the past year; hotels housing asylum seekers, including children, have been subject to ‘protests’ by racist goons that often turn violent, while racist tropes increasingly dominate the public space, especially on social media and the Deformist new media, finding ways to blame Muslims in general for grooming gangs in particular. I’ll believe antisemitism is the hate that is rising when I hear a harsh word about Jews or Israel from Nigel Farage, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (who is expected to visit Israel as a guest of the minister of diaspora affairs Amichai Chikli later this month, barring another run-in with the law) or Matthew Goodwin, or when a synagogue is actually besieged by a mob because of a crime someone presumed to be Jewish committed.

Both politicians and media have been demanding that anti-genocide protests planned for this weekend be called off so as to “respect the grief of the Jewish community” (they legally can’t force them to be for that reason). “This is a moment of mourning. It is not a time to stoke tension and cause further pain. It is a time to stand together” tweeted Starmer; Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, called the protests “un-British and wrong” and told us to “take a step back and allow [the Jewish community] to grieve”. The protests are not aimed at the Jewish community; they are invariably routed away from synagogues and when people wanted to demonstrate near the BBC’s Broadcasting House one Saturday, it was banned because there is a synagogue a few streets away. They are aimed at the state of Israel and its backers in the British government, which include Starmer. It’s interesting how a demonstration in London against a genocide being perpetrated against Palestinians by the state of Israel is deemed to be hurtful to British Jews, or to interfere with their grief at a single Jew being killed by a low-life (who was not even Palestinian) in Manchester. We have a Palestinian community here too; many of them are grieving relatives lost in the genocide — to say nothing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims who have seen their brothers and sisters slaughtered in huge numbers, while not being chased from place to place while starving, for the sake of Israel’s final solution. Yet the establishment still demand that the precious feelings of British Jews govern what we can and cannot say about Israel and Palestine, and how Israel treats Palestinians.

The media have also repeated some of the slurs: that pro-Palestinian demonstrations are full of antisemitism, or that they make Jews feel threatened, or that they are fronts for Hamas or at least riddled with Hamas supporters, or supporters of other ‘terrorist’ groups such as Palestine Action. These days ‘terrorist’ means whatever the government says it means; as with PA, they do not have to do anything that resembles actual terrorism, which means targeting the general public with violence to force political change, but the limit of “support for Hamas” at some demonstrations consists of things like pictures of gliders on people’s clothing, or one or two incidents of “reckless speech”; there has been no large-scale demonstration of support for Hamas itself. As for antisemitism, the Palestine solidarity movement has always bent over backwards to avoid language that implicates Jews in general, or even mentions them; it mentions Israel and Zionism, and specific atrocities. The propaganda is long on accusations and short on evidence, and is aimed at people who have never been on one, and do not know anyone involved.

So, you’re grieving. Boo hoo, so are we. There’s a genocide going on. People are dying in huge numbers. There’s still an occupation going on in the West Bank, Palestinian natives being forced off their land because Israeli settlers covet it, or some other reason, and still being threatened by settlers and soldiers as they go about their daily lives. Mainstream Jewish organisations in the UK, including the Chabad Lubavitch organisation that runs the synagogue targeted last week, loudly support much of this (if not explicitly, then through genocide denial, victim blaming and repeating other Israeli propaganda) and use ‘antisemitism’ smears against those who expose and oppose it. Unlike when terrorist acts are committed by Muslim organisations or when violent acts are committed by individual Muslims, there is no pressure on the Jewish community to condemn or distance itself from the perpetrators; any attempt at such pressure is met with antisemitism smears. So, excuse us for not minding your feelings while we march against the genocide you support. You stop killing, we stop marching.