That’s the number of people who marched through London yesterday.
They shouted “Death to all Muslims”, “Drive Gaza into the sea” and “Palestine for Jews”. They also carried placards showing the Star of David superimposed on the whole Middle East, Mohammed as the Devil, Islamic crescents intertwined with swastikas and wild beasts painted the colours of the Palestinian flag devouring the world.
The police did nothing to stop the Zionist rally. Moreover, some officers were seen cheering on and pumping fists with the demonstrators. When a few hundred irate Muslims tried to disrupt the march, it was only then that the police sprang into action, arresting a few thugs.
The next day, the BBC and Channel 4 ignored the xenophobic march of 300,000, focusing instead on the arrests made. One could get the impression that our TV channels were grateful to the thugs for providing a welcome diversion and giving them a free hand to pass the Zionist march for an innocent frolic. Then again, our liberal media are known for their Zionist leanings…
Got you going there for a second, didn’t I? Actually, the picture above is a bit of a spoiler. For the situation was exactly the opposite. Muslims reinforced by assorted lefties staged what Stephen Pollard correctly described as the biggest anti-Semitic rally in British history.
A thunderous chorus of “From the river to the sea” and “Death to all Jews” shook the stones of Westminster. The stage set featured placards saying “Gaza a real Holocaust” and showing a snake in the colours of Israel strangling the world. Smoke bombs thrown at Jews as they emerged from the synagogue provided the background music.
Everything else I described in my imaginary scenario did happen – exactly the other way around.
Some 300,000 pro-Hamas demonstrators wreaked havoc on London. The police did nothing to stop the anti-Semitic outrage, and some officers were indeed openly sympathetic. And our TV channels indeed concentrated on the couple of hundred thugs, Tommy Robinson types, rather than on the hundreds of thousands spewing hatred not only for Israel but for Jews in general.
A Telegraph reporter asked two young demonstrators what they thought of the massacre of Israeli civilians perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October. One of the interviewees honestly said she hadn’t heard about that event and promised to read up on it. The other said it had never happened.
The 1936 Battle of Cable Street only featured 3,000 fascists at most. Now it has been bettered, if this is the right word, by two orders of magnitude. And it doesn’t matter that some came along for the ride simply out of ignorance. If they didn’t know, it was because they didn’t want to know.
Yet there is a major difference between 1936 and 2023. Back then we didn’t have loosely worded laws against hate speech. Now we do. In 2023, one can get arrested for shouting “All you bastards are the same” at a group of whatever putative bastards cause one’s racial ire.
Regular readers know what I think about that law and especially its broad interpretation. But it does exist – though evidently not to protect Jews from the worst outbursts of anti-Semitic hatred in British history.
Now imagine the media coverage had things happened just as I described above. I can’t: my imagination isn’t vivid enough. Suffice it to say that I doubt the coverage would be generally sympathetic to that bit of innocent fun, a nice family occasion to promote peace.
Yet there was BBC reporter Frances Reid telling viewers that, “there have just been people peacefully protesting… it has been more of a family feel throughout the day”. Quite. Just a family outing calling for the murder of millions of people.
It never occurred to her to put herself in the shoes of British Jews, scared of going anywhere near the city centre and feeling unsafe even in their own neighbourhoods. They are British subjects, Frances, supposedly under the protection of the Crown.
It’s France that’s generally believed to be the most anti-Semitic country in Europe (Western Europe, that is – the Eastern part is sans pareil). Britain is supposed to be the paragon of tolerance and multi-culti virtue, her social scene reflecting the moderate British character always seeking accommodation rather than confrontation.
Sure enough, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Paris as well. But they were protesting against anti-Semitism, not in favour of it. And when in the past weeks the ‘from the river to the sea’ crowd tried to cause mayhem, the French police responded with water cannon and tear gas.
This though the Muslim population of France is twice as large as in Britain, and the Muslims there carry a much heavier political weight. Now that’s what I call a real tale of two cities. Mind you, I don’t think Parisians are any less anti-Semitic than Londoners. They just may be a bit more civilised.
Please take another look at the photo above and ponder the depth of depravity it took to produce that placard. Give a thought to the 60 million people murdered by the Soviets. About the same number murdered in China. The millions of Muslims killed or displaced by other Muslims in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan and Afghanistan. Then think of Israel, the sole oasis of Western civility in the Middle East.
Done? Now please tell me what the hell is happening to the world. Because what is happening is indeed hell.
Bravo, Mr Boot. A voice of reason!
My French friends told me that there were actually two demonstrations in Paris – one was pro-Israel and another one was pro-Palestine. The number of people in both camps were about equal. I believe Hamas anticipated this very response across Europe because they expected IDF to crack down on Gaza and Europeans reacting wildly. Theirs was a preplanned and thoroughly thought-out action aimed to provoke Israel and then to spark anti-semitic attitudes in Europe.
Around Sydney Opera House we had the crowd chanting, “Gas the Jews” and the police did nothing… there was a photo of a Jew with his flag being led away by police.
Your cops must have learned from their British colleagues. It’s good to see we maintain close cultural links with the Commonwealth.
AND… to add to the horror, the ‘preacher’ of the largest Mosque in Australia cheered on the Hamas violence in a confronting show of support for the terror group.
‘I’m smiling and I’m happy. I’m elated,’ Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun told the crowd.
‘It’s a day of courage. It’s a day of pride. It’s a day of victory. This is the day we’ve been waiting for!’ he shouted as the mob who chanted ‘Allahu Akbar’ or God is great in Arabic.
I wish I had an answer for you. I cannot understand support for Hamas. If I had been required to go to the office today, I would have been greeted by such supporters. All gates controlling access to the facility were barred by these morons. In fact, access was completely shut down for about five hours. (Well, to be honest I would have been in my office hours before they gathered. As Jordan Peterson has stated, he avoids protestors by giving his talks early in the morning. Protestors have a hard time getting organized before 9 am.)
I know that many commentators blame it on young people who do not understand what they are supporting, but I think that is naive. College students may have their heads filled with rubbish by their professors, but even that doesn’t explain the vast number of supporters. We didn’t receive much indoctrination in my day. My grandmother gave me a pamphlet on the Trilateral Commission before I started college. I read some of it but just laughed and put it aside. I didn’t think I would run into such viewpoints and I would not have supported it if I had. I am sure it is quite different today, especially for students in the humanities. But hearing it and believing or supporting it are two vastly different things. If I had been told Jews were responsible for the Holocaust and for WWWII I would not have believed it. I have no idea why so many people believe the current line of garbage.
It has been stated here more than once: When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything. Sad. And confounding.
HAMAS supporters:
-Garden variety anti-Semites
-Communists
-The Alt-right
-Muslims
-‘liberals’
Israel supporters:
-American Evangelicals
-What would seem to be 50% of diaspora Jews
-Hindus
-Neocons
-‘Tory boys’
Look, I don’t know where I’m going with this, but if I absolutely had to pick a side it would be Israel.
If you were to ask these ‘woke’ Islamic supporters, “what do you think of an organisation that throws gays off buildings, punches and whips women who uncover their faces or wear comfortable cool clothing, or invade a youth music concert to abduct and shoot those who attend?”
It absolutely astounds me how they can join in to support such a barbaric mindset. Increasingly I’m seeing Islam not as a religion but a political force. It’s similar to Naziism except worse! The Germans appeared shocked when they saw the concentration camps whereas the Palestinians and Moslems in general, cheered at the carnage and when the victims were dragged through the streets.
I had to look this Cable Street thing up.
Seems that Oswald and his boys outnumbered about 100:1.
Tommy [was he there?] and his boys outnumbered about 2,000:1.
That marching and demonstrating from my perspective never does any good. Only exacerbates existing tensions. Maybe that is what it is supposed to do.