The scenes surrounding this weekend’s Al Quds Day gathering were a disgrace to London and to Britain as a whole.
While the Metropolitan Police say they are investigating chants led by Bob Vylan calling for the death of the IDF, the fact that such rhetoric was allowed to echo through the streets of our capital makes a mockery of the force’s pledge, made in the wake of the Bondi Beach shooting, to take a firmer approach to extremist slogans.
Calling for the death of the IDF is, in effect, calling for the death of Israel’s sons and daughters, most of them Jewish Israelis only eighteen years old when they are conscripted into national service, though increasing numbers of Christian, Muslim and Druze citizens also serve.
We welcome the intervention of the Met’s Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, which prevented the planned march from taking place. However, the decision to allow even a static protest linked to Al Quds Day to proceed was, at best, deeply short sighted given the long and troubling history of these events, which have repeatedly brought antisemitic rhetoric onto the streets while promoting the ideological agenda of the Iranian regime.
As we noted in our recent correspondence to the Commissioner, Al Quds Day has for many years caused deep concern within the Jewish community. Rooted in the ideological agenda of the Iranian regime, the event has repeatedly provided a platform for rhetoric that crosses from political criticism into open antisemitism. In previous years it has also seen the display of Hezbollah flags before the organisation was fully proscribed in the United Kingdom.
The result this weekend was therefore entirely predictable. Crowds were permitted to gather in central London where chants calling for the killing of young Israelis were broadcast openly, while the same platform was used to praise or defend the regime in Tehran. Notably absent was any condemnation of the Iranian authorities’ brutal repression and the massacre of more than 30,000 Iranians in recent months.
That silence in the face of Iranian victims, while openly calling for the deaths of Israelis, is a stark hypocrisy and a revealing symptom of the antisemitism that so often underpins these demonstrations.
The We Believe Alliance now hopes the Metropolitan Police will demonstrate the resolve required to ensure that Bob Vylan is held fully accountable under the law for leading these vile chants, and that the event’s organisers, the Islamic Human Rights Commission, are likewise scrutinised for providing and supporting the platform from which such incitement was delivered.
No individual or organisation should be able to stand in London, or anywhere else in Britain, and lead chants calling for the death of others without facing the legal consequences that such conduct demands.
