October 10, 2023 - 8:00am
It’s a balmy October evening on Kensington High Street and a little old Italian lady is standing up for Hamas’s right to attack civilians. Elisa, her face increasingly close to mine, insists the terror group is “defending Palestine and the rights of the resistance”.
“We need sanctions on Israel,” she adds. “These people in Israel don’t respect human life.”
On Monday evening, thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the Jewish state’s London embassy to demonstrate in support of Palestine, two days after hundreds of Israelis were killed, civilians shot in their homes, and women and children kidnapped.
When I reached the demonstration just before the start of speeches at 6pm, the crowd was already filling one lane of traffic; by the time they had begun, the road was totally blocked. Thousands filled the street, placards in hand: men in balaclavas, pensioners in Corbyn-esque knitwear, and throngs of young people.
They were there, organisers had said beforehand, to demand Israel “end its violent imposition of a system of occupation, apartheid and colonisation”. Speeches, greeted by applause and cheers, referred to the Mediterranean nation as a “terror state”. One man received a resounding chorus of boos as he referenced the British Government’s decision to display the Israeli flag on buildings across the country in a gesture of solidarity.
I came to pay my respects to the Israeli Embassy. I was unable to get very far. Terrifying. pic.twitter.com/frYogDLOty
— Bella Wallersteiner 🇺🇦 (@BellaWallerstei) October 9, 2023
When the speeches had ended, I set out around the crowd, asking people why they had come to protest against Israel as it grieved. Zaid, an impassioned young man with a scraggly beard, told me he thought the Jewish state had always been a tool of the imperialist powers.
“Palestinians have been terrorised,” he said. “The IDF is a terror force: it has spent decades terrorising Palestinians. Whatever is happening now is a counterattack.” But what about the killing of civilians? The slaughter of nearly 300 young people at a rave? “I can’t condone the killing of noncombatants,” he said, but “the people killed are not the same status as civilians. Those people were dancing on the border of a prison. They were dancing on graves.”
It seems like you don’t have any sympathy for the teenagers who were killed, I told him. “They were complicit in the jubilation of the terrorist state,” he hit back. “I cannot condone Hamas but there will be a fightback — they can’t wait till there are no people dancing or on the border.”
Nearby, underneath a banner proclaiming “Zionism is racism”, a woman in a keffiyeh spoke into a megaphone to insist “the mainstream media is stereotyping Hamas as terrorists”.
At the same spot, later on, I found a middle-aged woman handing out fliers hailing the “audacious and unprecedented” military action carried out by Hamas. “I give my unconditional support to the resistance,” Cat told me. “It’s about the right of Palestinians to resist in any way they choose to.”
I said to her that yesterday Tablet magazine published revelations that Israeli women were raped alongside the dead bodies of their friends. Do you support that? “I don’t think rape is acceptable,” she replied. “There are a lot of allegations swirling around. Israeli propaganda is very well-oiled.”
But, I pushed back, what if it turns out they did? Is your support unconditional? “It’s not up to me, here, to judge,” she responded, shouting over the din.
Towards the back of the protest, I stood next to a group of young people holding an International Marxist Tendency banner and a megaphone and chanting about the need for another intifada. Tom, a young man clutching a stack of socialist newspapers, told me he wanted a revolution in Israel and Palestine, and that while he did not support Hamas’s tactics, “the Palestinian people are forced into this reaction.”
Standing outside TK Maxx later I asked Ahmed, a young man smoking a joint, what he made of the Hamas assault. “I’m for Palestinian rights,” he said, before putting his case bluntly. “I support the attack 100%. They’ve been killing Palestinians for 80 years. I don’t want anybody getting killed, but it’s a war. They’re defending their land. We love Jewish people; our problem is with Zionists. It is what it is”.
All around us, by 7pm, the protest was in full swing. Despite repeated references to the suffering that awaits Gaza, the mood was celebratory, almost jubilant. Arabic pop music was blasting, people were linking arms and dancing, while fireworks went off overhead. Moving towards the edge of the protest, I asked three young men what they made of the ecstatic feeling. All agreed Hamas were justified in killing civilians. “I think there’s a degree of realisation that things will change,” one told me. The attack is, he said, is “a blow to the Zionist regime”.
The Israeli government, meanwhile, is counting its dead and preparing to unleash hell on Gaza. If there is any hope for mutual sympathy, it wasn’t to be found on the streets of London.
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SubscribeIs anyone really surprised by this? It was only a matter of time before some seismic event would expose the shaky foundations of multiculturalism.
Indeed, the only real surprise is that it didn’t happen sooner. That said, as with the backlash against woke, we might hope that “peak Palestine” has been reached?
This is typical of modern leftist behavior, despite their purported humanitarianism, deep down they don’t really care about the causes they fight for. The causes are mere outlets for their frustrations born from personal resentments, born from a belief that that society has not been fare to them and has not given respect and what they are due. They would rather support regimes or terrorist groups that fight the west just to see it knocked down a few pegs, regardless of how awful they are or that they wants things that go against supposed principals. They like to think of themselves rebels, but they are far from that, they are often servants of the establishment that they rail against, that probably why they act that way they do, they are overcompensating by lashing out at proxies that cant hit back unlike the Corporate bosses and Government bureaucrats they work for and aspire to be, yet envy and despise. They always punch down.
They won’t be happy until every Jew in Israel is dead. That is what they want, and what they are celebrating. And the relentless drip drip of their propaganda, though academia and the media, has gradually shifted western public opinion towards normalisation of that attitude.
“When you point a finger, three fingers are pointing back at yourself.”
Maybe it’s Israelis who won’t be happy until every Arab in Palestine is dead. It seems that with all the massacres of Arabs–from Deir Yassin to Sabra and Shatila to Gaza 2009–that idea makes more sense.
And the Israelis son’t be happy until every Palestinian is dead! Who started this in 1948? It wasnt the Palestinians!
According to Wikipedia, and I don’t know enough to disagree, the UN proposed 2 separate states to the West of the River Jordan in 1947, one Arab and one Jewish. The Jews agreed and the Arabs didn’t. The plan was adopted by the UN and Civil War broke out. The day after the Israeli declaration of Independence in May 1948 the Arab states invaded.
It seems this is still about the very existence of a Jewish state and acceptance of the original UN plan, 75 years later.
I wouldn’t rely on Wikipedia as a source of objective information. It is dominated by Left Wing, Woke activists who ensure that most articles, especially political topics, are heavily slanted.
In 1948, the Palestinians were those resident in the Palestine mandate – Muslims, Jews, Christians et al.
Prior to the Allies liberating the Arabs from the boot of the Turks after WW1 (did we ever get an official ‘thank you’, is there a holiday? I do t think so), there was no call by the Arabs for a demarcated region called Palestine for ‘Palestinians’.
Those Arabs living in modern day Israel are Egyptians/Jordanians/Saudi Arabians, or … Arabs. Palestinians to Egyptians are like Manitobans to Ontarioans. There is no discernible difference between the two…unless you want there to be a difference.
Yes, actually it was.
Does it matter though? If you beat and rape women, kidnap the elderly, behead babies, engage in an orgy of murder, what does it matter “who started it”? YOU have done that. YOU are responsible (or perhaps you think agency can’t be expected from little brown people).
Absolutely true, Hamas and Hizbollah were effectively created by Israel’s 75 year repression and hatred of the Arabs who are characterised as animals, serpents, crocodiles, ants etc. The US shares the blame for it’s uncritical support and for bankrolling and arming successive intransigant Israeli governments as they trashed the rights of Palestinians.
I’d be very happy for transport to be arranged to send these people on a one way permanent trip to Gaza.
I’ll assume you’d think the same of those who are suggesting flattening Gaza as a kind of collective punishment for Hamas’ actions then?
That’s a rather wild assumption! However, if Hamas terrorists shelter in civilian areas while targeting and killing civilians (or threatening to kill human-shield women and children) then they are bringing it upon the Gaza civilians who will suffer. Of course the Gaza population could fight back against their terrorist masters.
I just prefer Islamic extremists and their ideological allies to not be in England. They would be happier after all in Gaza, Afghanistan, Iran, some place like that where they don’t have to put up with ‘infidels’ like me.
The point being that in time they won’t have to put up with infidels like you because they will be in control. They already control councils in London….and, one could argue, London itself …..
Hence why we need to ‘decolonise’ London and liberate it from these recent ‘colonists’ 😉
I’ve noticed that the ‘decolonisers’ on twitter are finally saying the quiet part out loud – that ‘decolonising’ means just that, and Hamas are showing the way forward.
The Hamas leadership actually lives in five-star resorts in Qatar.
Actually, I don’t think that’s the plan. That’s too easy. You don’t need a full-scale mobilization, including of all reserve infantry, to flatten Gaza. No Siree Bob. They’re going house to house. Far more dangerous for the IDF but also far more effective.
There’s no point in Israel hoping for a good press whatever their response. May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
Why would those people want to go to Gaza? They don’t support Hamas. Surely it makes sense that those who support Hamas be given the opportunity to live under Hamas’ rule.
Bunch of them in the street near my work today. Have also overheard the usual woolly equivocating that accompanies your average leftist blob-worker worldview.
They came to shoot and rape people like you and your kids – young lefty liberals at a music festival. You’re the type of westerner they most despise: decadent soft targets.
Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel. That’s their stated objective. If that includes the intimidation and murder of Palestinians who have a different agenda, well, they’re just collateral damage.
This group make ISIS look like liberals, and yet look at the support they get from the west.
Recall a similar atmosphere on a very hard Left London campus where I studied many years ago. I was on the verge of being physically attacked for daring to question those consistently supporting violent extremism in Palestine against Israel or in my part of the world.
The problem with these reductionist sloganeers is that none of them care to read historical facts objectively. If they did they would know that unfortunate conflagrations are often a result of years of wrong policy decisions, the ” longue duree” of historical cycles and a series of events, accidents and circumstances..
A great advantage of free speech is that we get to see plainly what these jackasses are all about.
Labour tries to draw a distinction between supporting “Palestine” and supporting Hamas, but there is no bright line here. Corbyn, and the Labour Friends of “Palestine”, are on a continuum which leads from calling Israel an occupier and apartheid state, to terrorists killing Israelis at music festivals and bus stops.
I find it hard to understand how the left promotes Palestine – with its totalitarian regime based on hatred of all who disagree with them – and who wish to destroy Israel, and ultimately the West. The utter failure of Islam to allow compassion or tolerance into its wretched belief system is probably the answer; and the left has never understood the tradition of humanitarian debate. The left has a messy unity with the Nazis, with Soviet totalitarianism, and with Islamic fundamentalism. And the BBC should be defunded. From anti Tory bigotry, anti Brexit, pro wokery and anti semitic Left support, it shows its true colours.
How anyone can support mass killing and abduction of civilians, for any reason, is beyond me.
Islamic State may have gone away during the Trump years but Islamofascism has returned, always bubbling under the surface as the neo-Marxist expression of multiculturalism.
Young impressionable minds are easily influenced by highly exaggerated narratives of Israeli atrocities towards Palestinians. The creators of this narrative know this and they play it well by organising rallies and demonstrations at any hint of muslim grievance, real or imaginary, anywhere in the world. The “Palestinian Cause” is a global money making machine. Remember, when Yasser Arafat died, he left behind a personal fortune of close to $500 million; and at the time his wife was permanently residing in a 5-star hotel suite in Paris?
It takes maturity to see through the façade created by Islamists.
All I can say is Oh my god…..
After reading Aayan Hirsi Ali’s article I come to the conclusion that we just need to ignore these people. Stay silent about them. Do not be distracted by them and focus focus focus on what the majority of us know is right humane and moral. We need to be ready for whatever comes next- which may be a world war- and we cannot keep being distracted.
It is by staying silent that we have come to this. Recognition of what we have allowed to happen to the country and do something about reversing it is imperative. Burying your head in the sand is not a strategy …
You are right Sam. I did not mean to bury our heads in the sand. I guess I just have no answer to the thinking of these people that applaud Hamas and I thought fighting against them does not change their mind. Neither does rational conversation. We must speak up against Hamas and all terror but to give these “protestors” air time does not seem to solve anything and might perpetuate their delusions. Think?
This mob appear to display a worrying naivety about Iran’s role: that Palestinians are merely unwitting pawns in the Iranian leadership’s aim of Israel’s destruction. It is in Iran’s interests that Palestinian’s remain in an appalling situation as it helps in fomenting anti-Israel sentiment… as witnessed by this demonstration.
At some point Iran will have to be ‘dealt with’.
Shameful behaviour from islamic sympathisers; and they beautifully illustrate their prejudices against western democracies by behaving as they do.
I find it hard to understand how the left promotes Palestine – with its totalitarian regime based on hatred of all who disagree with them – and who wish to destroy Israel and ultimately the West. The left has never understood the tradition of humanitarian debate; it has a messy unity with the Nazis, with Soviet totalitarianism, and with Islamic fundamentalism.
So, I have this question for those who say that butchers like Hamas are “resisting” and that they therefore support butchery because it is part of the “resistance”: What precisely are you and the butchers resisting? Reasonable peace offers, rejected one after the other by Palestinian leaders and their terrorist arms? Are you resisting the freedom to go to work by the thousands everyday in the successful economy of Israel?
“Resistance” is a weasel word. Like most totalitarian movements, Palestinians must re-define ordinary words to mean something opposite to their given and generally accepted meaning.
As Inigo Montoya said in the popular film, “Princess Bride”, “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
Let me state clearly what you are resisting: Israel’s right to exist, and for many of you, the right of Jews as an ethnic group to exist. Therefore, your “resistance” (recalcitrance) can be accurately defined as genocide. That’s what you really really mean by your use of the word resistance.
Your motives are clear: envy and religious hatred.
Palestinian leaders are incandescently not interested in peace. That is an observable fact, validated repeatedly by history. As my brother would say, they won’t take “Yes” for an answer, even in peace negotiations. They are interested in only one thing: eradicating the Jewish state and exterminating the Jews.
We can’t condone this horror but, evil as it is, it didn’t come out of nowhere. Sooner or later there will have to be a settlement that gives the Palestinians something, even if its not a generous settlement: or the killing will go on and on, and on.
It’s not enough to offer a settlement. Hamas has to accept it, which they have repeatedly refused to do. Because a settlement would condemn them to irrelevance.
Thats a very fair point, but Hamas didn’t come out of nowhere either. The way Israel is going, it will drive all the Palestinians into the arms of Hamas, and then where will peace come from?
No, Hamas didn’t come out of nowhere. Actually, Hamas was started by ISRAEL to counter the PLO.
Can you flesh that out?
That is why the “two states solution” will never be accepted. The Islamists’ stated goal is nothing short of wiping Israel off the map of the world.
Hamas is officially opposed to a settlement. It does everything it can to make sure that it doesn’t happen.
So does Israel, but in ways that are deniable.
The Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and forced out the Jewish settlers in a gesture to allow self rule there. There was an open election run by Israel. The Palestinian Authority won the election soon to be taken over by Hamas. There haven’t any elections since. It has been downhill into Islamic radicalism since then. The Palestinians have been abused puppets of geopolitical players forever. This time it is Iran’s turn to use their blood and misery for the Mullah’s purposes: Attack the Jews.
People without hope can become nihilistic in their despair. People without power end up being used by cynical third parties. Bomb Hamas by all means but give Palestinians in the West Bank some real autonomy and dignity and then offer that to the Gazans if they reject Hamas. The Palestinians need some hope of a decent future or this stuff will go on forever.
Palestinians are human beings with needs and aspirations just like people in Europe and the US. They have the right under international law to resist the occupation of their lands with any means, including armed force.
Palestinians have tried negotiations with Israel for decades, but Israel ignores terms of treaties like the Oslo Accords, and even refuses to meet with them. And in the West, Israel works to frustrate nonviolent movements supporting Palestinians, like BDS, so, with no hope of a peace resolution to the conflict, Palestinians do what people everywhere do, the fight for their freedom.
What makes the land belong to the Palestinians? They’ve repeatedly been offered a state (starting in 1948) and their response has always been to attack Israel, and demand its destruction. The land they lost was lost fair-and-square in wars the Arabs started. It doesn’t belong to them anymore.
By raping and murdering young women, defiling dead bodies, kidnapping, and now threatening to execute hostages live on TV. If that’s fighting for freedom, they don’t deserve it.
If ‘peaceful Palesitinians’ want to be taken seriously, there is a simple task for them… join with the IDF is killing Hamas terrorists in Gaza. That will show the world that Palestinians seek peace not terror.
I used to think that, too. But the reason Palestinians are living in such miserable conditions is that they refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist. Surely you can understand how this is more than rhetoric to a people who recently had half their numbers decimated in a genocide? It’s Hamas and the surrounding Arab nations who created the prison Palestinians are living in today. Only by proving themselves capable of living in peace beside Israel will the Palestinians be free. I’m not holding my breath.
I’m not holding my breath either, and the Palestinians aren’t using the sense they were born with. If they did, they would accept Israel’s right to exist, and keep away from Iran, thus depriving right wing Israel of their alibi for what they’re doing to the Palestinians. The Palestinians aren’t a threat to the existence of the Israeli state so its all empty rhetoric anyway. I don’t believe Netanyahu etc. will give the Palestinians their freedom, whatever happens. If they revolt he’ll say we can’t live in peace with them, if they accept their fate quietly then it happens anyway. Hence the nihilism. Iran is a threat to Israel, so why push the Palestinians into the arms of Iran?
The proposed deal to normalise diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia contained concessions to the Palestinians.
Precious few concessions, and if Israel thinks its relations with Arab states will remain normalised for long if it goes to war with the Palestinians, they’re in for a shock.
What I don’t understand is the idea of taking a side on a conflict halfway around the world with which you have absolutely no connection. I don’t care about the Middle East more than any other of the many conflicts going on in the world and I have no compunction in being sickened by the slaughter of civilians at the weekend. It can also be understood at the same time that Israel has behaved badly.
This is a centuries old conflict with many complexities that I cannot begin to understand and it won’t be solved unless people in that region learn to live together. Which doesn’t look likely to happen.
Unless of course, it’s good old fashioned anti-semitism, or racism as it’s better known.
You are fair-minded to think that the conflict is complicated and to think that maybe Israel has behaved in ways that provoke the level of anger that Hamas demonstrated. We in the West don’t hear about all the reasons for Palestinian anger on the MSM, but as someone who has lived and traveled in the Middle East, I can assure you they are deep and go back decades… centuries even.
So, every time you fill up your car at the gas pump, you are involved in the Middle East, no matter where that gasoline may actually have been pumped out of the ground. We are in a connected world, and there is no way to avoid it.
Disgusting beyond belief.
In the UK the rule is don’t upset the muslims. The authorities, police included, are scared stiff of the consequences.
Whilst a decent percentage of the Palestinian people will not have supported Hamas and their actions the significant proportion who do and who would continue to want the full extermination of the state of Israel means a two state solution absolutely dead. You cannot live easily next to a neighbour who wants to kill you. Quite where this leaves a solution difficult to know, but Israel has lived in a perpetual siege for almost 80 years.
The ignorant campaigners here embarrass themselves. There is always a minority who cannot grasp that supporting premeditated violence is wrong and also inevitably self-defeating. There is usually a degree of narcissism lurking too, an attempt to be different and to stand out, to have some form of prestige within a Sect. To have a ’cause’ is intoxicating. Both Left and Right extremes fall prey to this pathetic and frightening narcissism.
The IS generation whom I personally think are very dangerous because they have a whole new generation of student-age kids to recruit now.
Wow.
Compare the jubilant scenes in the streets of London in 1945 celebrating the defeat of the fascist Nazi regime, effectively an absolute monarchy, a regime that systematically murdered people in an industrial manner … with the scenes in London joyously celebrating Arab Muslims slaughtering Israeli Jews indiscriminately; where Israel is a democracy with Muslims elected members in the parliament.
It seems London has been colonized.
Ah, vox pop is so useful. “Look, I went to a demonstration and found some idiots!” This article would have been different if only you’d have spoken to me. But then that that’s the point, isn’t it?
Killing civilians is not OK, rape (if confirmed) is not OK. You can’t say the merciless slaughter and other crimes carried out by the Israelis are not OK and then say “Well, …” when Hamas fighters do it.
Still, I’m sure the author of this piece is emotionally condemning the deaths of what will soon be hundreds of children in Gaza. Right?
https://www.msf.org/hospitals-are-overwhelmed-catastrophic-situation-gaza
Léo Cans, MSF head of mission for Palestine: “As for MSF, we are very concerned to see that medical facilities have not been spared. One of the hospitals we support was hit by an airstrike and damaged. Another airstrike destroyed an ambulance carrying the wounded, right in front of the hospital where we work. The MSF team, who were operating on a patient, had to leave the hospital in a hurry. We repeat: medical facilities must be respected. This is not something that should have to be negotiated.”
Hamas have been planning this for a long time. Why not stockpile medical supplies? Why not establish medical centres in the tunnels that they’ve dug? Why not protect civilians in the predictable event of Israeli retaliation? Why use residential areas as shields from which to fire rockets? If you don’t understand the answers to those questions, it’s because you misguidedly believe that Hamas give a sh*t about their civilian population.
Has Hamas signed up to the Geneva Convention? Do they respect the difference between civilians and soldiers?
Pray tell how you expect the Israelis to stop Hamas from attacking Israeli civilians, when Hamas runs back into its own civilian populations to hide? It seems you prioritize the lives of Palestinian children over the lives of Israeli children.
Ultimately children are going to be protected or put at risk by the choices of their parents. If the Palestinians want to keep their children safe, they should be killing the Hamas terrorists in their midst, rather than allowing them to camouflage there.
Hamas sees this as a civilization conflict, and hence views civilian casualties – including their own – as justified means-to-an-end. If that is what Hamas thinks about their own people, I do not see how Israel has any choice in the matter.
Is there a place to put the juice. The pose in the Russians don’t welcome in the German certainly have shown that they don’t Well fam