Last week a Metropolitan Police officer told a Jew that if he walked into the “pro-Palestine” march he would arrest him because his presence would antagonise protesters — he was “openly Jewish”. The officer was right, if gauche. These marches are not safe for Jewish people who are not anti-Zionists (and the vast majority of British Jews are Zionists). The small anti-Zionist Jewish bloc is welcome because they confirm the majority’s prejudices, and protect them from accusations of antisemitism.
I stood at a counter protest a few weeks ago, holding a picture of Carmel Gat, a hostage in Gaza. The crowd moved over, they screamed, they mimed throat slitting. To me, they looked raging or ecstatic, and the ecstasy disturbed me. We needed the double line of police officers that we were granted for protection. I have no doubt that, were they not there, we would have been attacked. That day the police were excellent — when we pointed out antisemitic signs, they arrested those holding them.
I’ve wanted to say this for a while and I will now: if we burn, you will burn with us — not a threat but a truth
There are calls for Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to go. What will this solve? To protect Britain from the fire of antisemitism takes more than one man. We must act together. How do you march for Palestine without being antisemitic? Where is the line? Antisemitism is the shape-shifting conspiracy theory that Europe has embraced, on and off — but mostly on — for 2,000 years. I don’t have space to unpick it here, so I suggest this. Zero tolerance for Hamas or Hezbollah signs or slogans. They are a threat to anyone who wants to live in a pluralistic democracy, and they are no friends to the Palestinians, many of whom despise them. Zero tolerance for the chant “from the river to the sea”. It means Jews Out (of Israel): a call for genocide, and we know it.
Zero tolerance for swastikas, which exist to taunt Jews with the fate of our forebears, and any Zionism equals Nazism imagery, with its insinuation that Jews, being Nazis at heart, brought the Shoah on ourselves.
Zero tolerance for Stars of David smeared with blood, or anything that invokes the myth of Jewish power or the trope of demonic Jew.
The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, which organises the marches, should police attendees. People should say: we will not march with swastikas and images of Jewish babies drinking blood. But it seems they don’t, and so the police must do it. I suspect that if antisemitism is banned, fewer people will attend anyway. The ecstasy will ebb.
It will take more than the police. In the last six months Jew hate has become common on the streets I have walked my whole life. I’ve wanted to say this for a while, and I will now: if we burn, you will burn with us. That is not a threat, but a truth. Antisemitism rises when society collapses, and the last time Jews were treated this way, war came to everyone. Stand up for what is decent — the safety of your neighbours — because your own safety depends on it. To those who call me a hysteric, I remind you that England expelled its Jews in 1290 after a century of murder. Two thirds of the Jews of Europe were murdered in living memory, and this is how it begins.
Capote’s final act
The life of Truman Capote, the almost great American novelist is retold in the series Feud. It shows how Capote, expertly played by Tom Hollander, befriended high society women (“swans”) but published their (boring) secrets in Esquire. Of course, the swans dropped him. These articles were chapters from Capote’s unfinished novel Answered Prayers: he died of alcoholism in 1984, at 59. The usual question is — why did he betray the swans, and why didn’t he finish the book? I reread it: the prose is so drug-drenched it is like reading glue. The narrator is the heartbroken Capote, and the idle “swans” are only substitutes for the mother who abandoned him. Answered Prayers is his suicide note, and so the better question is — how could he finish it?
Tanya Gold is an Evening Standard columnist
