A STEWARD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE LONDON MARCH FOR GAZA ~ Tabitha Troughton ~ The people were marching again for Palestine—in defiance, in horror, in hope, demanding justice and peace, they came to London in their hundreds of thousands on Saturday (11 October). From Cambridge, Sheffield and Abergavenny; from Bristol, Swansea, Chesterfield and Manchester, they flowed through the city, surged down the streets: a great river of united, unifying humanity.. The Jewish Bloc marched along with Friends of Al Aqsa. Jewish Artists for Palestine marched, serious, next to small, excited schoolgirls. Hijabis walked with tall boys in face paint. Parents pushed prams, held the hands of toddlers; there were dog owners and trade unions, Imams and drummers; pensioners, hoodies, Quakers, Muslims, atheists, Christians, students and football fans. The full spectrum of life in this country, and they had all come together, against genocide, for Palestine, again. We were waiting for them; a thin yellow line of stewards in high-viz vests, standing in front of the small pro-Israel counter protest, at the end of Waterloo Bridge. For hours, it seemed, we’d been staring at an eerily empty street, while behind us a horrible voice, a voice filled with loathing, gloating in death and destruction, boomed ear-splittingly through loud-speakers, harming our hearing, stopping our thought.  Nothing made sense. Humanity was a cesspit filled with sorrow and hate. “There ain’t no real Jews who aren’t Zionist!”, the voice behind us threatened and boasted and jeered. This was progress. Get with the programme!  “If you are a real Jew you’re a Zionist through and through. What is so difficult to understand?”, It was shouting at its audience. ” A hundred percent! Who never waver, who never back down! They can try to shut us up, they can try to put intimidating videos on Tik Tok and” (virulently) “Instagram…Shut the fuck up, you prick!” The voice had an Israeli accent. Its largely British audience had gathered under the slogan “Stop the Hate”. There were a couple of hundred of them, enthusiastically waving flags: the Israeli flag, the Union Jack, and the St George’s flag. They’d heard a couple of forgettable speakers, and a moving tribute to the victims of the Manchester synagogue terrorist attack, from someone whose husband had survived it. She’d concluded her speech stating that “the rhetoric coming out of the pro-Palestine movement” was “a call for jihad”—pointing out, as evidence, that the synagogue murderer was actually named “Jihad”. She wanted the marches banned, of course. Oddly, punctuating these serious speeches, there was a party. Random pop songs, some British, some Israeli, blared deafeningly from the speakers. Many participants bounced gleefully, grinning like lunatics. Others swayed soulfully from side to side, singing along. “Zionist queen…Anyone with a penis is not a woman!”… Other songs included Lily Allen’s “Fuck You”; Queen’s “We are the Champions”, Abba’s “The Winner Takes It All”, and a knock-off Oirish number with the lyrics “you can shove your Palestine up your hole”. Occasionally, and unbelievably, recordings of bombs being dropped came through the loudspeakers. The voice, when it came to its turn on the microphone, would sometimes try to sing along with the songs blasted out between its speeches. It did so distressingly badly. Otherwise it ranged through a variety of tones and emotions. Towards the marchers and stewards it would be fair to say it was hostile (“the most vile and rancid this country has to offer”). About the Israelis it was bombastic: what people didn’t realise was that “us Jews don’t go away. We have a thick skull”, it said with pride. When talking to an invisible audience of Palestinians—it seemed to need to talk to Palestinians—it dropped into the most cartoonish of sinister registers. “Look at all your predecessors who tried to kill us”, it gloated, “How did that end up for them?” For a few sentences, there seemed to be some introspection. A dreadful sort of yearning crept in; a yearning for “becoming whole again with our brother and sister back home”. The twisted horrors of war suddenly churned around all sides: the children, the suicides, the torture, the chuckling maniacs behind all this. But: “We’re not going to think about you”, the voice told the invisible Palestinians. “We’re going to focus on ourselves, only on Israel, on the Jewish people, like we’ve always done. We’re going to rebuild better, stronger, taller—unbreakable! Cos we and Israel is not going anywhere…So get on with the programme or begone in the trash heap of history, like your predecessors!” And then, to its audience: “Let the party begin! This the Hamas surrender party! Come on!!” It would be pleasant, and sane, to forget this voice, but it would not be responsible. Because this is the voice of the Israeli state. This is the voice which finds expression in most of our media. It spreads paranoia and division among British Jews, the epitome of all the lies: that the marches are “hate marches”, that the marches chant “Death to Jews”, that the marches cause terrorism. It is encouraging the potential banning of protest and the political jailing of peaceful protestors. It stokes fear, revenge, ruthlessness and hate. It is the voice of the far right. And, despite being in a terribly small and nonsensical minority, it is still winning. Or at least so it seemed, being stuck there with it for hours. The stewards rolled their eyes, looked at their phones, put in ear plugs. One if us seemed to go into a meditative trace. But the voice of Thanatos went on, and on, and on, with its dreadful callous supremacy, its terrible underlying desperation. Darkness was falling. And then, suddenly, on the crest of Waterloo Bridge, like the sun coming out, the march appeared. Now there were banners, and multi-coloured flags, and voices lifted in song, and the powerful, enormous, peaceful presence of the people, coming unstoppably to our rescue. Some briefly stood, staring in horror, when they saw the counter-protest’s Israeli flags. Several girls burst into tears. All kept going. “Free, free Palestine”, they chanted, “There are many, many more of us than you”. There are, and there always will be. This should never be forgotten. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos: Peter Marshall   The post When the voice of hate met the river of humanity appeared first on Freedom News.