Central London succumbed last night to a mob of protestors celebrating the outrages perpetrated by Hamas on Saturday. That was the verdict of many news outlets. ‘Night of Fury’ ran the Daily Mail’s headline. ‘Police separate warring groups’ said the Daily Express.
The protest outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington lasted more than two hours and although it was boisterous it never, as far as I could see, turned ugly. About three thousand people blocked High Street Kensington and blew whistles, waved flags and handed out ‘Boycott Israeli Apartheid’ stickers. Pranksters attached them to the backs of policemen, for fun.
The embassy itself, tucked away in a private avenue, was protected by locked gates and a cordon of 18 policemen who wore ordinary uniforms. No helmets or body armour. The protestors kept the noise-levels high by thumping drums and repeating angry chants.
‘We are present in our millions/We are all Palestinians.’ A few fireworks were set off – bangers and sky-rockets – but none of them flew beyond the cordon of policemen. The embassy was never threatened. Young families and babies were present, and groups of politicised students and sixth formers roamed around, joining in the chants. Many took photographs of themselves waving their flags in front of the police. Elderly couples arrived to capture the same visual memento. A citizen-journalist with an iPhone climbed a barricade and filmed himself making a speech, using the noisy crowd as a backdrop.
‘I’m outside the Zionist embassy in London,’ he reported breathlessly. ‘The Palestinian people are not scared. They will return one day and take back this embassy and their occupied lands.’
There was a smattering of white supporters among the largely Arabic crowd. A group of Communist grandmothers had set up a nice-looking bookstall whose literature declared that Marxism could pacify the Middle East. ‘Stop Jew Hatred,’ said their placard. ‘End capitalism in Gaza and Tel Aviv.’
A group of Hassidic elders in grey beards and black frock-coats stood by a trestle-table opposite the embassy. Their placards explained the origins of the conflict. ‘Zionism ignited this fire’ said one. ‘Judaism and Zionism are diametrically opposed’ said another. They were mobbed by jubilant protestors who wanted photographs of themselves alongside their orthodox Jewish supporters.
A British Jew pushing a bicycle engaged protestors in debate. His cycle helmet bore a ‘Boycott Israel’ sticker and he set out this position. ‘Gaza is an open prison. When Jews suffer, my heart bleeds. When Palestinians suffer, my heart bleeds. Can I not love two people?’.
A detachment of cops marched over and ordered them to descend. Down they came without a murmur
He got a lot of flak from the angrier, older protestors who called his pro-Palestinian sentiments ‘cheap’. The youngsters were more receptive to him, even after he’d told them that his birthplace was Israel.
‘I’m a Jew. Do you want me dead?’ he asked. ‘No,’ came the reply. ‘I’m a Zionist. Now do you want me dead?’ There was a silence. An uncomfortable silence. But to be fair to the youngsters, they’d probably never met a Zionist who supports the Palestinian cause and envisages a harmonised bi-ethnic state. The man turned his attention to a passing gaggle of schoolboys. ‘How can the conflict be solved?’ he asked. ‘Kill all the Jews,’ said one lad, unashamedly. He looked about 13 years old.
A young student from Haifa offered me a placard. ‘Free Palestine,’ he urged me. He spoke in a heavy accent and gave ‘Palestine’ two syllables, rhyming it with ‘green’ – Plisteen. He described the history of ‘Plisteen’ for my benefit. ‘I take your house. I give you one small room. You’re angry.’ ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘and how do we solve it?’ ‘Free Plisteen!’ he repeated. ‘But where will the Israelis live?’ ‘In free Plisteen, together.’ He told me he has many Israeli friends who reject Zionism and want to share their home with the Arabs. Others supported this view.
‘One state. Equal rights. Israel must make peace now,’ I was told by a protestor. Some placards were more belligerent. ‘We are coming for you, Israel,’ declared a hand-written poster held up by a young Arabic woman. Such sentiments were in the minority.
As the crowd tired, the mood grew tetchy. A group of teenagers mounted the roof of a bus shelter and waved Palestinian and Pakistani flags. After about 15 minutes, their occupation ended as a detachment of cops marched over and ordered them to descend. Down they came without a murmur.
Five of the lads crossed Kensington High Street and scrambled up onto a narrow ledge above a dental practice. The premises were shut but the lights were on. No one appeared to be inside the building. The crowd yelled and whooped as the lads took over the precarious ledge. It felt like a victory. A kind of physical reclamation. The face of the building had a strip of white plasterwork which invited vandalism. Out came a spray-can and one of the lads scrawled a defiant slogan across the plastered wall. ‘FREE PALE’ he wrote. Then he stopped, having run out of space. He reduced the font-size and squeezed in two extra letters. ‘FREE PALEST’.
During this botched effort, two other protestors entertained the crowd with acrobatics. One shinned up a lamppost and ignited a smoke flare. Another scaled an aluminium flagpole outside the Royal Garden Hotel. He had a Palestinian banner dangling between his teeth. As he reached the top of the metal pole, forty feet above the ground and clinging on precariously, he came across an unforeseen problem: how to attach the flag without any strings or elastic bands to help him. He couldn’t do it and after waving his banner a few times, he came back down unharmed.
By 8.30 pm, the bulk of the crowd had peeled away and gone home. Near Queen’s Gate a detachment of police horses trotted out from a side-street and formed up in a line. They were doing what horses do. Scratching the ground. Tossing their manes. Neighing. It looked as if they’d been deployed to stretch their legs, that was all. The street was virtually clear of protestors by now. They didn’t even break into a trot.
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