Jonathan Gornall
As any tourist to London who has stumbled upon the quintessentially British piece of street theater in Hyde Park known as Speakers’ Corner will attest, the UK has long had an enviable reputation as a bastion of free speech. In the northeast corner of the capital’s great royal park, the precious right of freedom of speech is exercised daily, as it has been ever since 1872, when the area was designated by an act of Parliament as a place where anyone can stand up and freely speak their mind. Those who have done so include Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and the writer George Orwell.
Audiences for speeches on subjects from the eccentric to the epoch-making can range from one man and his dog to vast crowds. In June 1908, for example, a quarter of a million people gathered to hear suffragettes demand votes for women. And in February 2003, as many as 2 million people rallied at the spot to condemn the imminent invasion of Iraq.
Likewise, over the decades, London has played host to countless marches in the capital, mass protests against everything from wars and nuclear weapons to climate change and unpopular taxes. All, including the march staged in November by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, have been officially tolerated. Now, however, in an extraordinary betrayal of a freedom most Britons take for granted, the government is taking unprecedented steps to criminalize peaceful protest on behalf of the beleaguered population of Gaza.
Tens of thousands of people appalled by Israel’s disproportionate military response to the Hamas attack in October last year have marched repeatedly in cities across Europe, including Paris, Geneva, Berlin, Lisbon and, of course, London. Germany, a country burdened with the moral guilt of the Holocaust and always quick to virtue-signal its unconditional support for Israel, was the first to restrict pro-Palestine marches. Other nations, including Austria and Switzerland, have followed suit.
But Britain is now going even further. In a bid to stamp out pro-Palestinian protests, the government has announced plans to broaden the definition of “extremism” to include groups that “undermine British values.” Quite what those values are has yet to be spelled out – but, clearly, freedom of speech is no longer one of them. To suggest that Israel wields disproportionate influence in the Western world is, of course, to be accused of peddling an antisemitic trope – the by-now standard dismissal by Israel and its supporters around the world of any criticism of Israel’s behavior.
But how else to explain the extraordinary events unfolding in Britain? For example, a member of Parliament was suspended by his party for merely referring to the phrase “from the river to the sea” in a call for “peaceful liberty” for Israelis and Palestinians alike; the former chairman of the Conservative Party accused London Mayor Sadiq Khan of being controlled by Islamists; and the prime minister described mass pro-Palestinian protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as “intimidatory” and “unacceptable,” while backing the police to take firmer action. Last week, the BBC’s flagship radio news program, “Today,” covered that story but, instead of interviewing someone from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, it chose instead to give a platform only to a spokesman of the Community Security Trust, the UK Jewish community’s own private, uniformed security force.
One of the greatest achievements of the state of Israel has been to bully Western governments and societies into accepting the patent falsehood that any criticism of Israel is tantamount to antisemitism. Of course, this is nonsense, but such is the febrile fear of the charge that none in public life in the UK now dares say so. Britain has, it seems, not only conveniently forgotten its role as the architect of the suffering of the Palestinian people, but is also doubling down on its support for the colonialist state of Israel, which, 76 years after its creation against the wishes of the majority Muslim population, continues to perpetuate that suffering.
In exchange for the support of Arab forces during the First World War, Britain promised post-Ottoman independence to the region. Unfortunately, in a successful bid to win influential Jewish support in America for its war aims (yes, another of those pesky tropes), it had already promised the Zionist movement that it would support “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” All five of the “Class A” mandates entrusted to Britain and France after the war by the League of Nations – Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq – were supposed to culminate in the creation of independent states. Four did. Only Palestine, given away instead to Zionist colonists, did not.
It was the infamous Balfour Declaration – the draft text of which was submitted for the approval of 10 leading Jewish figures in Britain in 1917, including Chaim Weizmann, leader of the Zionist movement and the future first president of Israel – that sealed the fate of the Palestinians. The second half of the document, in which the British government added that its support for “Zionist aspirations” was offered on condition that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” was quickly forgotten – and apparently remains so.
Britain, once considered a bastion of free speech, is now in the throes of delegitimizing peaceful pro-Palestinian protest, silencing the voices of tens of thousands of people for whom the spectacle of carnage and destruction in Gaza is a visceral affront to human decency. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as “anti-Palestinianism.” If there were, the current British government would be guilty of it.
