It is of course only natural that people should be upset when there is loss of civilian life at the hands of an army, especially if they have been led to believe that the victims were peace activists and humanitarian aid workers, rather than the heavily armed militants which they in fact appear to have been. Predictably the hallucinatory media and subsequent public reaction has been out of all proportion compared to what it would have been had these events occurred with just about any country other than Israel. Yet the nature of the demonstrations taking place outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington says important something about a cultural conflict brewing beneath the surface of British Society.
On Monday evening, the day that news of Israel’s interception of the Hamas bound Flotilla broke, as many as a thousand angry protestors swarmed around London’s Israeli embassy. The next evening in heavy rain their numbers dwindled to about 250 still very vocal hardliners. Depressingly this small protest received far more media attention than the pro-Israel demonstration of more than 700 supporters received the following evening, which inevitably was greeted by an even more depleted yet even more enraged anti-Israel demonstration. They furiously howled and shrieked ‘MURDERERS’ at those making their way to the Pro-Israel rally. They even began throwing things at one of the pro-Israel demonstrators who had they looked at more closely they would have seen a wooden crucifix hanging around his neck, for as he explained he was an Arab Christian who had come to voice his support for Israel.
While the pro-Israel supporters waved British and Israeli flags and sung the British National Anthem and Peace Songs a rather different picture has been emerging from the anti-Israel protest. Amidst the Palestinian flags activists were also waving a huge Hezbollah flag, the Iranian satellite terror group that calls for the murder of all Jews, an incitement to terrorism on the streets of London if ever there was one. And while the pro-Israel demonstrators carried placards calling for peace for Israelis and Gazan’s, freedom for Gaza from Hamas and aid to its people rather than arms the other side were chanting for Israel’s destruction and reciting that much loved old classic ‘From the River to the Sea; Palestine will be Free’ a direct call for the Genocidal destruction of the State of Israel.
And before someone helpfully attempts to remind me that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism we needn’t even go there because there was quite enough open anti-Semitism being voiced to keep race hate monitors busy for weeks to come. One Muslim boy (there were many young children brought along to this rally) was given the megaphone and loudly proclaimed ‘there was this five year old boy who was kidnapped by a Jew, can you believe it? Can you believe it?’ No I can’t believe it, it sounds made up to me and a bit like a medieval blood libel. Previously the same boy had declared ‘how can the Jews take this land?’ and how indeed could Quakerly liberals and Left Wing Jews stand along side such people without stopping to wonder if there wasn’t perhaps some conflict between the tolerant progressive views they purport to champion and the ones being voiced by their fellow travelers.
Not to be out done in the joys of Judeophobia by a minor a group of young Muslim men ecstatically bounced around while singing the Islamic battle cry ‘Khyber al-Yahud’ which calls on today’s Jews to remember Muhammad’s slaughter of the Jews at Khyber. But of course I’m sure someone more enlightened than myself will be able to tell me that in the correct Arabic translation this is actually a call to peace.
Remarkably the two demonstrations managed not to descend into violence, although several of the anti-Israel protestors had to be led away by the police, including one who was found to be carrying an offensive weapon. Not that there weren’t those who didn’t attempt to provoke the pro-Israel demonstrators. Perhaps most bizarrely was the incident of a group of heavily hijabed girls hysterically accusing ‘Fake Jews! Fake Jews!’ at a group of black hatted Orthodox men as they made their way from the Israeli rally. There was of course no time for them to stop and produce documents assuring these zealous young women of the validity of their Jewish status.
It is probably too much to ask that British observers be able to take a step back to fully consider the spectacle currently taking place on their streets. But if they did then coming quite clearly into vision they would see two distinct groups and two world views set before them. One side patriotically committed to Britain while also showing their support for the Middle East’s only real democracy, calling for peace for both peoples, an end to terror and a fare hearing for that democratic state in Britain’s media, not much of which bothered to turn up to report on these calls. On the other side onlookers would find an incensed rabble of Islamic fanatics, radical socialists and militant pacifists. All of them deeply opposed to mainstream British culture and many of them as eager to see the British establishment pulled down as quickly as they believe the Jewish State should be wiped from the face of the earth.
But you need not take my word for any of this. The footage below speaks for itself.
The anti-Israel Demonstration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc6IsmXUu7M&feature=player_embedded
The Pro-Israel Demonstration:
On Monday evening, the day that news of Israel’s interception of the Hamas bound Flotilla broke, as many as a thousand angry protestors swarmed around London’s Israeli embassy. The next evening in heavy rain their numbers dwindled to about 250 still very vocal hardliners. Depressingly this small protest received far more media attention than the pro-Israel demonstration of more than 700 supporters received the following evening, which inevitably was greeted by an even more depleted yet even more enraged anti-Israel demonstration. They furiously howled and shrieked ‘MURDERERS’ at those making their way to the Pro-Israel rally. They even began throwing things at one of the pro-Israel demonstrators who had they looked at more closely they would have seen a wooden crucifix hanging around his neck, for as he explained he was an Arab Christian who had come to voice his support for Israel.
While the pro-Israel supporters waved British and Israeli flags and sung the British National Anthem and Peace Songs a rather different picture has been emerging from the anti-Israel protest. Amidst the Palestinian flags activists were also waving a huge Hezbollah flag, the Iranian satellite terror group that calls for the murder of all Jews, an incitement to terrorism on the streets of London if ever there was one. And while the pro-Israel demonstrators carried placards calling for peace for Israelis and Gazan’s, freedom for Gaza from Hamas and aid to its people rather than arms the other side were chanting for Israel’s destruction and reciting that much loved old classic ‘From the River to the Sea; Palestine will be Free’ a direct call for the Genocidal destruction of the State of Israel.
And before someone helpfully attempts to remind me that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism we needn’t even go there because there was quite enough open anti-Semitism being voiced to keep race hate monitors busy for weeks to come. One Muslim boy (there were many young children brought along to this rally) was given the megaphone and loudly proclaimed ‘there was this five year old boy who was kidnapped by a Jew, can you believe it? Can you believe it?’ No I can’t believe it, it sounds made up to me and a bit like a medieval blood libel. Previously the same boy had declared ‘how can the Jews take this land?’ and how indeed could Quakerly liberals and Left Wing Jews stand along side such people without stopping to wonder if there wasn’t perhaps some conflict between the tolerant progressive views they purport to champion and the ones being voiced by their fellow travelers.
Not to be out done in the joys of Judeophobia by a minor a group of young Muslim men ecstatically bounced around while singing the Islamic battle cry ‘Khyber al-Yahud’ which calls on today’s Jews to remember Muhammad’s slaughter of the Jews at Khyber. But of course I’m sure someone more enlightened than myself will be able to tell me that in the correct Arabic translation this is actually a call to peace.
Remarkably the two demonstrations managed not to descend into violence, although several of the anti-Israel protestors had to be led away by the police, including one who was found to be carrying an offensive weapon. Not that there weren’t those who didn’t attempt to provoke the pro-Israel demonstrators. Perhaps most bizarrely was the incident of a group of heavily hijabed girls hysterically accusing ‘Fake Jews! Fake Jews!’ at a group of black hatted Orthodox men as they made their way from the Israeli rally. There was of course no time for them to stop and produce documents assuring these zealous young women of the validity of their Jewish status.
It is probably too much to ask that British observers be able to take a step back to fully consider the spectacle currently taking place on their streets. But if they did then coming quite clearly into vision they would see two distinct groups and two world views set before them. One side patriotically committed to Britain while also showing their support for the Middle East’s only real democracy, calling for peace for both peoples, an end to terror and a fare hearing for that democratic state in Britain’s media, not much of which bothered to turn up to report on these calls. On the other side onlookers would find an incensed rabble of Islamic fanatics, radical socialists and militant pacifists. All of them deeply opposed to mainstream British culture and many of them as eager to see the British establishment pulled down as quickly as they believe the Jewish State should be wiped from the face of the earth.
But you need not take my word for any of this. The footage below speaks for itself.
The anti-Israel Demonstration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc6IsmXUu7M&feature=player_embedded
The Pro-Israel Demonstration:
thank you for bringing some common sense to this conflict
ReplyDeleteI'm the arab christian with the wooden cross! This is awesome!!
ReplyDeleteMr. Friedman, Great article. Will this be one of your columns on the editorial page of the New York Times? If so it would allow a larger distribution to an audience that needs to read this perspective.
ReplyDeleteLol, different Tom Freidman I’m afraid, Thomas Freedman would never write something quite as pro-Israel as this.
ReplyDeleteTom, that was my point. Why doesn't Mr Friedman walk the talk. Is it because he might go against the view of the rest of the editorial page of the NYT? I read the newspaper because I have to know what they say, but I am always dismayed how the editorial page spills on to the news pages. And they wonder what happened to the print press.
ReplyDelete