Provocation must not be allowed to interfere with Gaza protests
UPDATE 6pm April 26: The provocation planned by the CAA to coincide with Saturday’s ceasefire demonstration in London has been called off. Nonetheless the march organisers’ guidance for participants is to maintain discipline and ignore any counter demonstrators who may seek an altercation.
Provocation must not be allowed to interfere with Gaza protests
JVL is a member of the extensive Jewish Bloc that has been visible on demonstrations calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza since it began in October 2023.
We understand that Gideon Falter, CEO of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), was trying to provoke both marchers and Metropolitan Police officers on the demonstration in London on April 13. Photographs, video and witness evidence undermine Falter’s story of being prevented to cross a city centre street because he looked Jewish. He was accompanied by an entourage of security men and a camera crew. Eye-witnesses including police officers saw him crossing the march and walking “against” it. He staged a lengthy and unreasonable argument with police who acted for the most part with commendable restraint. A report by NovaraMedia gives a detailed account of what occurred.
Film footage shows how one of the officers at the scene was goaded, after some time, into referring to Falter’s appearance as ‘openly Jewish’ and implying that the marchers would therefore be hostile to him. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley apologised for the “clumsy and offensive” language used. It was in our view insulting to Jews, whether pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian, reflected racist stereotypes about Islam (given the presence of many Muslims on the march), and gave the impression that being pro-Palestinian means being anti-Jewish.
It also gave Mr Falter and the CAA the ‘hook’ for the publicity he was seeking in his campaign to paint the marches as antisemitic and to condemn what he alleges is their ‘soft’ policing. We find ourselves in unusual agreement with Lord Mann, the government’s “antisemitism Czar”. He has pointed out that Falter’s assertion that “he was just going for a walk” cannot be substantiated by his provocative behaviour, but instead forms part of the CAA’s wider agenda. The CAA has openly demanded a ban on the pro-Palestinian demonstrations right from the time they began more than six months ago. It is – as Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal said in an interview on Sky News – an organisation which has been widely criticised for Islamophobic comments and racist, anti-Palestinian rhetoric.
The Board of Deputies, Community Security Trust and other mainstream Jewish organisations that met commissioner Rowley on Monday refrained from supporting Falter but took advantage of his stunt to reiterate their claims that pro-Palestinian demonstrations represent “intimidation of the Jewish community”. They called for protests to be moved to “less disruptive locations” and to be reduced in number – a coded demand for some demonstrations to be banned.
JVL rejects the demonisation of the pro-Palestinian marchers who have consistently given the Jewish Bloc a warm welcome. A group of Holocaust survivors and descendants who were standing close to the site of Falter’s altercation contradicted his claims about police enforcing a “Jew-free zone”.
There must be no concession regarding similar provocations planned by the CAA for the next London demonstration on Saturday April 27, and no restriction on the freedom to demonstrate against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
The act, or even better, the art of provocation as an effective weapon in advocating and forwarding the Zionist course is more than hundred years old now and fully alive and kicking these days as does prove the deliberate action of Falter, who wanted to provoke martyrdom through either a fight with the pro-Palestine protesters or being arrested by the police.
I first stumbled upon this menace, when I read the essay written in 1929 of the then famous USA writer and journalist Vincent Sheean during and just after the so-called Hebron massacre.
https://www.wrmea.org/from-our-archives/seeing-the-light-holy-land-august-1929.html
He told his public, that he shortly before had been approached by the editor of a USA Jewish
Chronicle, to make a sightseeing trip to Jerusalem and other places in “‘The Holy Land”, in order to just create some atmospheric impressions in then UK mandate Palestine.
Once having installed himself in a local hotel, he then seemingly accidentally acquainted a female Jewish journalist, who in the course of a conversation did – apparently casually – mention the occurrence of some grave upheaval in the upcoming days.
So she seemed to be in the possession of some insider information about something grave to happen in the near future, without mentioning any specifics, although she seemed to be completely informed about the exact background and nature of these occurrences during the moment she uttered them.
Small time later, Sheean does become aware of the presence of a bunch of loudly shouting “The wall is ours” and violently flag-waving behaving agent provocateurs from the ultra-Zionist and Mussolini inspired, Eretz-Israel youth movement the Betar, being founded by Zeev – the Iron Wall / the Iron Fist ideologue – Jabotinsky walking up – and along the sacred Al Aqsa Mosk over there – to the Wailing Wall.
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Thank you very much for providing this informative and factual article, JVL.
The incident and particularly the highly biased manner in which it was treated by our vile establishment politicians and media left me miserable.
The CAA is obviously a primarily pro-Israel and Zionist political organisation. If it is still a charity, it indicates disturbing bias in the Charity Commission.
Everyone is entitled to publicly demonstrate. I believe that the pro-Palestine demonstrations, such as opposing the mass killings and destruction in Gaza, have been particularly well conducted. Some political Zionists claiming otherwise are to be expected. I deplore unfair tactics. I am very upset by the shallow but deeply biased presentation by the mainstream mass media.
Maybe we should all put in complaints to the Charity Commission re the CAA’s charitable status….Gideon Falter’s deliberately provocative actions and clearly bad faith deceptive video release and subsequent spin……..undermines their supposed purpose….. (and in fact does the opposite to campaigning against antisemitism)
It is this kind of Zionism that causes Antisemitism as Zionists abuse the Jewish people grouping them into the “victim” when in fact the majority of Jewish folk are intelligent enough to see through the likes of these provocative & aggressive people.
Gideon Falter is a disgrace to Judaism & seems to live in a past where he learnt provocation from Zionists who made deals to escape Nazi Germany & but now claim to be victims of antisemitism in our more enlighten time & we don’t want any kind of hatred against anyone!
Genocide by any country is an atrocity & worldwide wonderful people from all walks of life are protesting, being beaten & arrested for protesting! American University students & professors are being attacked & arrested now for ProPalestinian protests. Shameful police!