How can anyone now deny these are ‘hate marches’?

The hostilities in Gaza may have ceased, but Britain’s anti-Israel protests are now roaring back to life. On Saturday, while most Israelis and Palestinians were celebrating the end of a devastating two-year war, 2,200 miles away in London, hundreds of thousands took to the streets to express their anger and dismay at the terms of the peace. The Trump-brokered deal cannot stand, they cried, because it leaves Israel intact.

The return of the ‘hate marches’ should surprise no one. Peace has never been the aim of the ‘pro-Palestine’ movement. The slogan, ‘Ceasefire now’, had long been retired before last weekend’s protest. As the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), one of the main organisers of the marches, helpfully spelled out, the demos will not stop until ‘Palestine is free, from the river to sea’ – that is, until the State of Israel, from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, is wiped off the map.

PSC’s message was reinforced by the attendees. ‘We don’t want no two-state’, one group chanted, ‘We want ’48’ – referencing a time before the modern Israeli state was officially recognised. These are demands not for peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Israelis, but for the destruction of the Jewish State – for the eviction of Jews from the Middle East.

There were other clues on Saturday that these marchers are no peaceniks. Less than two weeks after British Jews were slaughtered in a terror attack in a Manchester synagogue, protesters were out in London chanting for ‘intifada’. In the context of the Israel-Palestine debate, it is hard to interpret this as anything other than a demand for terrorist violence. When counter-protesters unveiled a banner stating that ‘Globalise the intifada is a call to murder Jews’, they were immediately assaulted by the pro-Gaza mob.

Apologism and even support for Hamas – the anti-Semitic terror army that started the war in Gaza with its pogrom on 7 October 2023 – was also in abundance. Marching side by side with Jeremy Corbyn, Green Party deputy leader Mothin Ali and Gaza independent MP Iqbal Mohamed was Adnan Hmidan, who has previously said he ‘loved’ Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin, described the 7 October massacre as ‘legitimate self-defence’ and even defended Hamas’s attacks on Jews in synagogues. Your Party, the upstart party led by Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, promoted the march using an emoji of a red triangle – a symbol used in Hamas propaganda videos to indicate its military targets, which has been widely adopted by Western Palestine activists. One protester brandished a placard urging the UK government to remove Hamas and Hezbollah (an equally anti-Semitic and terroristic outfit based in Lebanon) from its list of proscribed terror groups.

The Palestine marchers reflexively reject the accusation that they are bigoted, hateful or violent. Yet how else can you describe the chant calling for Gazans to ‘put Zios in the ground’? According to the student leading the call-and-response, this cry for the death of Zionists – most Jews are Zionists, don’t forget – was ‘workshopped at Oxford’ before it was unveiled to the public. This was not a slip of the tongue, then, but a calculated demand.

Then, as ever, there was the more overt, classical anti-Semitism. Placards showed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu puppeteering Keir Starmer, in an echo of the Nazi propaganda portraying Jews as the puppet masters of global affairs. One placard said ‘the world has a right to defend itself against Israel’, essentially accusing the Jewish State of being a threat to all nations. Holocaust inversion was also on display, with Israelis branded as the ‘new Nazis’, equating the defensive war against the Islamofascists of Hamas with the worst crimes in history.

Every time the keffiyeh-clad mob takes to the streets, you will hear chants for the destruction of Israel. You will see placards comparing Jews to Nazis. You will see Hamas apologists and fan boys leading the pack. So why can’t our leaders bring themselves to call out this obvious bigotry?

Saturday’s demo confirms that they are not protesting against a war – they are protesting against a people’s right to exist and to self-determination. To call them anything other than ‘hate marches’ would be to indulge a dangerous lie.

Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.