Defend Palestine solidarity — all out on May 16

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, with British arms, diplomatic cover and military cooperation. That is why the state wants to silence the Palestine movement. Far from responding to the overwhelming demand to end Britain’s complicity, Keir Starmer is exploiting real antisemitic attacks to restrict the right to protest, assemble and speak.

We condemn without qualification the recent antisemitic attacks: the Heaton Park killings on Yom Kippur, the arson against Hatzola ambulances, and the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green.

But there is no evidence linking these crimes to the Palestine movement. That link has been manufactured by the state, the press and the pro-Israel establishment. More than 32 national demonstrations have taken place since October 2023. They have been overwhelmingly peaceful, multiracial and anti-racist.

Yet Met Commissioner Mark Rowley has accused organisers of routing marches past synagogues. Police have threatened arrests over the slogan ‘globalise the intifada’, with no act of parliament and no court ruling. Keir Starmer’s ‘anti-terrorism advisor’ Jonathan Hall KC demands a moratorium on Palestine marches. The Chief Rabbi denounces the movement as ‘hate marches’ and Kemi Badenoch calls them ‘a cover for violence and intimidation against Jews’.

The 10 May ‘rally against antisemitism’ in Whitehall showed where this campaign leads. Conservative and Reform politicians were cheered, Labour’s Pat McFadden was booed. Nigel Farage was invited but Zack Polanski, the Jewish leader of the Green Party, was not. A rally called in the name of fighting antisemitism welcomed the hard right and treated Jewish anti-Zionists as a threat.

This is the point of the smear campaign. Britain arms Israel, trades with Israel, shares intelligence with Israel and protects Israel diplomatically. The UK-Israel 2030 Roadmap commits both states to strategic cooperation and opposition to BDS. The Palestine movement exposes that alliance and demands its end. That is why it must be branded antisemitic, criminal, extremist or terrorist.

The repression targets everyone. Palestine Action has been proscribed under terrorism legislation. More than 500 people were arrested in April for protesting that ban. PSC’s Ben Jamal and Stop the War’s Chris Nineham have been convicted over a peaceful demonstration. On Nakba Day the Met has refused the Palestine movement its proposed route and handed central London to Tommy Robinson’s anti-Muslim hate marchers.

‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ demands freedom and equality for Palestinians and Jews in all of historic Palestine. ‘Zionism’ names the ideology of a settler-colonial state, not Jews. ‘Intifada’ means uprising. None of these slogans is antisemitic. The attempt to ban them is political policing.

But the smear does more than silence Palestine solidarity. It erases the thousands of Jewish people who oppose Zionism and reject Israel’s claim to speak for them. It tells Jews that their safety is bound up with Israel, and tells Palestinians that their liberation is a threat to Jews.

That does not fight antisemitism. It feeds the conspiracy politics on which antisemitism grows. When the police, ministers and press insist that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, they make it easier for real antisemites to present Israel’s crimes as the responsibility of Jews collectively. Now senior figures in the state, including Met Commissioner Mark Rowley, are not just enforcing protest restrictions but promoting this dangerous conflation themselves.

Antisemitism is real. Its loudest exponents are on the far right: the same forces now posturing as defenders of Jews while whipping up hatred against Muslims, migrants and the left. The answer is not to ban Palestine marches. The answer is to break the link between British imperialism and Israel, defend Jewish anti-Zionists, and fight antisemitism, anti-Muslim racism and anti-migrant racism together.