Lindsey German on a global pro-Palestinian movement that isn’t receding

That was the chant on the latest Gaza protest. The marchers still have every need to demonstrate. A devastating report in the Financial Times describes the famine in northern Gaza, the refusal of the Israelis to allow food convoys through, the accounts of children dying of starvation, of their parents desperately trying to provide food from boiled weeds, pigeon feed and stock cubes.

In response to this the western governments are carrying out a handful of airdrops, and the US is constructing a pier to deliver food aid (which will take two months). None of this will remotely be sufficient to deal with the problems of starvation and illness which now stalk Gaza and which bring shame on those governments that continue to support Israel.

Foremost of these is Joe Biden’s US administration which refuses to stop arming Israel and which has provided over 100 separate arms shipments (mostly without oversight from Congress) since October 7th.  Biden’s increasingly pathetic calls for restraint from Netanyahu are matched with assertions that Israel has a ‘right to defend itself’ and that his government will continue to arm the world’s number 1 terror state.

This is why the call to stop arming Israel is so central to the movement in support of Gaza and why the opprobrium directed at Biden is so apposite: he could stop the genocide and collective punishment of civilians right now but he won’t. In the US this is causing him considerable political problems as the primaries for the presidential election show. He is seeing substantial minorities register as ‘uncommitted’ in the uncontested Democratic primaries not just in Michigan, where there are quite large numbers of Arab Americans, but in states like Minnesota and Hawaii.

Here too the question of Gaza continues to impact on British politics. Labour is well ahead in the polls but can expect to lose a lot of votes to independent candidates who will stand on the issue of Gaza in the general election. But the Tories are also facing political problems. The Rochdale by election was not only a victory for George Galloway against Labour, it also showed a massive discontent with both main parties as their candidates could only come 3rd and 4th.

The Tories know this is about a range of domestic issues but also that the majority of people in Britain favour an immediate ceasefire. Their craven support for Israel, following the US, is unpopular and opposition to their policies growing. So their answer is to demonise, scapegoat and scaremonger.

We are hearing a lot about extremism from a government and Tory party packed full of extremists. While Suella Braverman, Lee Anderson and Liz Truss are treated as serious politicians against all available evidence, those protesting and demonstrating for peace in Gaza are subject to abuse and attempts at repression.

The accusation that those on the left are extremists is not new. It is regularly utilised by those who want to destroy movements, trade unions and any challenge to the status quo which might also threaten the ruling class. They are ‘the enemy within’ as Thatcher branded the miners. McCarthyism in the US was based on rooting out ‘un-American activities’. Today we have Michael Gove and his fellow Tories talking about those who don’t accept ‘British values’.

So there’s usually a racist or xenophobic tone to these attacks: McCarthyism targeted many Jews who were left wing; here in Britain the not-so-subtle message is to target the Muslim community. This racist message extends to the demonstrations which have been referred to as ‘the mob’, ‘hate marches’ and ‘supporting terrorists’.

And we’ve now had Robin Simcox – the ludicrously named ‘extremism Tsar’ whose own background is in the right-wing Henry Jackson Society – telling us that the Palestine marches are creating ‘a no go zone’ for Jews in central London. This is false scaremongering, which even the Jewish Board of Deputies has questioned. There are many Jewish people on the marches, challenging what the Israeli government is doing. There are also many Jewish people travelling on public transport, visiting shops, museums, family, and synagogues.

Gove is being confounded by the actual nature of the marches and the movement, which is very diverse, peaceful and well organised. So now he accuses us of ‘rubbing shoulders with’ extremists who want to subvert democracy. Given the Tories’ own record of voter suppression through photo ID, cracking down on the right to protest, and making trade union organising ever more difficult, it’s hard to take seriously their concern for democracy.

In fact the movement is standing up for democracy and the right to challenge the tiny number of people who control us. As I said at the demo, ‘if an extremist is someone who cares about children dying, who cares about genocide, who wants a more equal world, who’s fed up with the money spent on weapons of war, then I am proud to be an extremist’.

Despite all the attempts to crack down on the marches, they have failed. There were to the best of my knowledge three arrests on a demo over 400,000 strong. Mainstream media commentators had to acknowledge the size, diversity and lack of ‘hate speech’ on the protest.

I was very proud to speak as part of an all-women platform at the march, to celebrate International Women’s Day. The women who did so defy many of the stereotypes about women generally and Muslim women in particular. We all rejected the attempts to stop us marching; the growing Islamophobia which the Tories and their allies are fuelling; and the failure of Labour to say or do anything different from the Tories over Gaza.

Above all we reasserted our right to protest, and to defy the scapegoating which has increasingly accompanied the marches. The support for genocide in Gaza has gone alongside attacks on civil liberties and on the Muslim community. This is deliberately designed to divide and rule and to distract from the real issues.

The horrors of Gaza continue and, as Ramadan begins, we will likely see more repression around the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. That means the movement will continue. And we have to insist that the extreme measures here are not protests of whatever sort: they are the deliberate bombing, shooting and starving of a people, aided and abetted by some of the most powerful governments in the world.

This week: I will be going to the Stop the War meeting on civil liberties this Tuesday and speaking at the Stand up to Racism demo next Saturday in London. I’m also reading one of my Xmas presents, The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho, by Paterson Joseph, a novel based on a real-life character born on a slave ship in the Atlantic, who made his home in Georgian London.