[Malcolm Armsteen]

Lee Harpin on Sky, providing considerable evidence that he is a shit.

"I'm not calling for these demos to be banned, but..."

[kreuzberger]

16:00 GMT and BBC News are reporting that "most arrests have been of counter-protesters". No other outlet that I can see is suggesting that there have been any arrests at the march.

Are they just making shit up again?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Would that surprise you?

[Rosvanian]

Just been talking to my eldest daughter who was at the march. Took 4 hours to walk from Hyde Park Corner to Marble Arch where she bailed and was back home in Stoke Newington by 5pm. No sign of bother, she was surprised by the number of older people there.

[Andy McDandy]

I recall that in the protests against the Vietnam War, while the kids got the attention, it was mostly middle aged and older Americans at the demos. Ditto the civil rights marches. They'd lived through the depression and the war, and knew the score.

[Oboogie]

16:00 GMT and BBC News are reporting that "most arrests have been of counter-protesters". No other outlet that I can see is suggesting that there have been any arrests at the march.

Are they just making shit up again?

The BBC were quoting MET assistant commissioner Matt Twist who reported that 126 people have been arrested in total (but he may have been making that up).
Separately, the BBC reported about 100 of those arrested were far-right (but they may have been making that up).
Matt Twist also said 150 people were detained after a breakaway group let off fireworks at the end of the march and "arrests were made" after some officers were struck in the face with fireworks (but he may have been making that up).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-67390343

[Malcolm Armsteen]

But none of the arrests were on the main event march, which I believe was K's point. They were all counter-protesters.

Though to be fair, a group of pro-Palestine protesters were kettled, detained and told off, but were not arrested.

[The Weeping Angel]

[Oboogie]

They were all counter-protesters.

Not according to MET assistant commissioner Matt Twist.

It seems around a dozen pro-Palestine marchers have also been arrested for anti-Semitic chants or showing support for Hamas and the police are looking to identify a few more. https://twitter.com/MattTwistMPS

But, unsurprisingly, the majority of arrests were of the far-right and when you consider their demo was relatively small, it's clear who were the better behaved.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Yes, they were announced late.
But I still maintain there is a material difference between an offensive placard and a knuckleduster or knife.

[Oboogie]

Yes, they were announced late.
But I still maintain there is a material difference between an offensive placard and a knuckleduster or knife.

There have not yet been any arrests made for offensive placards, the police are still trying to identify those people.
The arrests of marchers, so far, have been for firing fireworks at the police.

From Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist's statement:
"Officers intercepted a group of 150 who were wearing face coverings and firing fireworks. Arrests were made after some of the fireworks struck officers in the face."

[kreuzberger]

16:00 GMT and BBC News are reporting that "most arrests have been of counter-protesters". No other outlet that I can see is suggesting that there have been any arrests at the march.

Are they just making shit up again?

I deliberately time-stamped this post because, at that point and despite being fully connected to the rolling news, I had seen no hint of trouble on the main Hate March - nothing on Sky News, nothing on TwiXter, no statements from the Met.

Any desperate bothsidesery didn't start until mid-evening and until Sunak released his communiqué doing just that.

Now that the dust has settled, it is still a challenge to find any clearly untoward behaviour on the Hate March; a coconut placard, a slick but clumsy graphic drawing comparisons between Netanyahu's actions with those of the Nazi Germany, and a couple of headbands with questionable Arabic content which, as far as I can see, is no better or worse than having excerpts from the Lord's Prayer. Instances of rampant ant-Semitism on OurStreets® are curiously nowhere to be seen.

It could be that BBC News has Investigative Clairvoyants on the payroll now. Aye, that'll be it.

[Oboogie]

Jon Lansman's article in the Guardian is worth a read.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... are_btn_tw

[Bones McCoy]

A city is being levelled, but Pete's the real victim here.

Can't be long before he's awarded a column on Spiked!

[Rosvanian]

Ah man, Spiked. Where do you start? The sheer volume of poison spewed out by Spiked is a sight to behold. I mean come on, Julie Birchill. Julie fucking Birchill.

[The Weeping Angel]

A city is being levelled, but Pete's the real victim here.

Can't be long before he's awarded a column on Spiked!

Tatchell isn't saying he's the real victim, just pointing out that the organisers of the march wouldn't let him hold his sign because he felt that his support for Ukraine made him a troublemaker. Meanwhile signs like this were allowed

[Youngian]

signs like this were allowed

Remember signs like that on demos against Reagan as I recall assuming the Zionists were some imaginary Illuminati type organisation. In the minds of these loons they are.

[Oboogie]

Remember signs like that on demos against Reagan as I recall assuming the Zionists were some imaginary Illuminati type organisation. In the minds of these loons they are.

More recently amongst the MAGA crowd.

[Philip Marlow]

It feel like I have been reading Adam Shatz’s Israel-Palestine essays in the LRB for half my life, and I’ve yet to encounter one which gives much cause for optimism:

The situation in Gaza has reached unspeakable extremes in recent days, but it is not new. In his 1956 story ‘Letter from Gaza’, Ghassan Kanafani describes it as ‘more cramped than the mind of a sleeper in the throes of a fearful nightmare, with its narrow streets that had their peculiar smell, the smell of defeat and poverty’. The story’s protagonist, a teacher who has worked for years in Kuwait, has returned home after an Israeli bombing. As his niece comes to embrace him, he sees that her leg has been amputated: she was wounded while trying to shield her siblings from the bombs.

And the cheer just keeps on coming.

Determined to overcome its humiliation by Hamas, the IDF has been no different from – and no more intelligent than – the French in Algeria, the British in Kenya, or the Americans after 9/11. Israel’s disregard for Palestinian life has never been more callous or more flagrant, and it’s being fuelled by a discourse for which the adjective ‘genocidal’ no longer seems like hyperbole. In just the first six days of air strikes, Israel dropped more than six thousand bombs, and more than twice as many civilians have already died under bombardment as were killed on 7 October. These atrocities are not excesses or ‘collateral damage’: they occur by design. As Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, puts it, ‘we are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.’

That ‘by design’ feels important in the context of a few articles I’ve read (including the Simon Sebag-Montefiore piece linked a little earlier in the thread) arguing that the IDF will be doing its best to minimise civilian casualties, which - honestly - seems to be stretching credulity beyond what it will bear.

Anyway, there’s a lot of it, but it’s well worth a look.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n21 ... athologies

EDIT: In light of some of the more…outre…signage on the recent demos, this last (promise) bit feels decidedly apposite:

The ethno-tribalist fantasies of the decolonial left, with their Fanon recitations and posters of paragliders, are indeed perverse. As the Palestinian writer Karim Kattan wrote in a moving essay for Le Monde, it seems to have become impossible for some of Palestine’s self-styled friends to ‘say: massacres like those that took place at the Tribe of Nova festival are an outrageous horror, and Israel is a ferocious colonial power.’ In an age of defeat and demobilisation, in which the most extreme voices have been amplified by social media, a cult of force appears to have overtaken parts of the left, and short-circuited any empathy for Israeli civilians.

It feels like I’ve been reading people who get Fanon wrong for almost as long as I’ve been reading Shatz’s LRB articles. It’s not about the uncomplicated endorsement of violence you utter freaks!

[Abernathy]

This, from Mushon Zer-Aviv, is rather good. Recommended.

https://medium.com/@mushon/your-empathy ... 50a4fc0488