Sunday’s Demo is a March Against Peace and Against the Hostages
The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, with the support other Jewish communal bodies and various spurious ‘advocacy’ groups, have called a march for Sunday 10th August. One set of slides presented it as a ‘National March for the Hostages’, with the tag line ‘Let them all go’ and the hashtag #UntilTheLastHostage. Another proclaimed ‘No Recognition without Hostage Release’ with the hashtag #StopAppeasing Terrorists. A third slide spelled this demand out in more detail:
‘Prime Minister, we are demanding the immediate release of the hostages and stating unequivocally that any recognition of Palestine must be conditioned on their return. To do otherwise risks legitimising extremism and undermining any hope for a just and lasting peace. The government must be unequivocal: no recognition until all the hostages are returned home.’
This last messaging has recently been omitted from social media posts, but it is still the primary way the march has been covered by the UK Jewish Press, and tallies with a range of recent statements from the Chief Rabbi and the President of the Board of Deputies condemning the UK government for recognising Palestinian statehood. The non-recognition aspect may have been downplayed to keep the Progressives on side, but it is clearly still present. ‘This is not a political issue it is a human one. It transcends, party lines, ideologies and national borders’ proclaims the new messaging (no doubt thinking about their charitable status) while taking a stance that is hugely political, pro-Likud and explicitly nationalist.
Who is the Target?
The first and most obvious question to ask of the event is – who are the demands aimed at? If they seek to free the hostages, why does it appear to be directed at the Prime Minister, as if Keir Starmer has been personally holding them captive in Downing Street? If it is targeting Hamas, who I assume the organisers hold responsible for their ongoing captivity, why is it not targeting the Qatari embassy, the nearest thing Hamas has to a state sponsor? And if it really prioritises the freeing of the hostages why is it not targeting the Israeli embassy? Israel clearly has the power to make a ceasefire deal that would liberate them, the key demand of the hostage families since the beginning of the war. The fact that the target is the UK government (with Downing Street as the end point) shows that this is at heart a demo opposing the UK’s recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Even with the changed messaging what is most obvious is what is missing – there is no mention of the people of Gaza and no call to end the war. The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council are implying that the causes of freeing the hostages and wanting the killing and starving of Gazans to stop are in opposition to one another. In fact they are one. There is a very clear route to freeing the hostages. It is through a deal with Hamas that ends the war and sees the IDF leave Gaza. This deal has been on the table for more than a year. The idea that Israel will free the hostages through force has been repeatedly disproved – it only rescued a handful and killed far more through ‘friendly fire’ incidents, or through them being killed by their captors when the IDF was close. The vast majority were released in the two ceasefire periods, i.e. through negotiated ceasefires which the Israeli government shamefully collapsed on both occasions. Hasbaraists like to imply that it is Hamas’ obstinacy which is preventing a deal. It is rather Israel’s refusal to make a deal that would mean a complete end to the war, a demand on which Hamas rightly insists, that is to blame. The war continues for the sake of continuing the war. The hostages are still in captivity because Netanyahu has consistently refused to make the deal that would free them. The planned conquest of the entirety of Gaza will almost inevitably lead to the death of the remaining living hostages, a point conceded by Israeli government sources, with the Times of Israel recently reporting that
‘the government is aware that the military campaign to gain full control over Gaza will likely endanger the remaining hostages…the IDF and the defence establishments remain opposed to the plan, in part because it puts the hostages in danger of being executed should troops approach where they are being held.’
The Israel/Disapora Difference
As is common knowledge in Israel, the Netanyahu government doesn’t care about the fate of the hostages. In their support of that government and its agenda, neither do the organisers and supporters of this march. When the hostage organisations in Israel say ‘Bring Them Home’ – it is abundantly clear who they are targeting – the Israeli government. It is calling on them to make a deal to bring the hostages home, doing whatever it takes in terms of ending the war and releasing Palestinian prisoners. When the same slogan is transposed into a diaspora context, without specifying that it means a ceasefire/release deal, it loses this clear meaning and becomes a call for the war to continue indefinitely. So a call which in its original context seeks to save the hostages becomes one that would condemn them to death.
I’m sure the organisers of the march would say that it is Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad who are holding the hostages and thus it is on them to free them. At the level of pure morality this is true – Hamas and other groups should unilaterally free the hostages and the IDF should unilaterally end its genocide in Gaza. But in the real world the issues are utterly intertwined. The hostages were captured and held to be used as a bargaining chip – to free as many Palestinian prisoners as could be negotiated, following the model of the Shalit deal. Hamas were thus never going to release the hostages without some quid pro quo. Now perhaps things have become so horrific that an agreement could be made without mass prisoner releases – just from a pledge to end the war and for the IDF to withdraw. If Israel said that the release of all the hostages would lead to an immediate end to the war and a military withdrawal that might well work. But it has never said that – it has always said that in addition Hamas needs to surrender and give up its weapons. Hamas is willing to hand over governance of Gaza to the PA or to non-factional Palestinian technocrats. But it is not going to simply surrender. Consequently, demands for Hamas and PIJ to unilaterally free the hostages are doomed to failure because they know that such a move would not end the genocide, and arguably might allow Israel to intensify it, since there would be no more hostages to worry about harming in the crossfire. It is not credible to demand the release of the hostages if it would not result in an end to the war. #UntilTheLastHostage surely means that the war should continue until then. But as we’ve seen, there is no guarantee that the freeing of the last hostage would end the war. The Board’s demand is thus disingenuous – it is a call for war to continue indefinitely, hidden behind a façade of concern for the hostages.
On Recognising Palestine
On the question of recognition of Palestinian statehood, this issue has been around some time. The state was declared by the PLO in 1988, encompassing the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since then it has been recognised by 147 out of 193 UN member states, and the UK is one of several countries to do so in the coming months, alongside, France, Portugal and Canada. While recognition is largely symbolic, given that Israel continues to occupy those territories, Palestinian embryonic statehood has legal meaning, leading to rulings such as those of the ICJ, that Israel is illegally occupying those territories since they should rightly belong to the State of Palestine. Moreover it is an attempt to level the playing field, so that if there are any future negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians over some kind of permanent agreement, they would be more like those between two sovereign states, rather than a situation where Israel holds all the cards and the Palestinians are supposed to be grateful for whatever largesse it dolls out. The idea that Palestine should become a state is intrinsic to the notion of the two-state solution, and any organisation opposing recognition of Palestinian statehood can safely be assumed to oppose such a solution, whatever their rhetoric.
Undoubtedly Keir Starmer’s approach to this has been deeply foolish and unhelpful. In a futile attempt at triangulation he delayed the recognition until September, saying it would only occur if Israel did not implement a ceasefire, allow in aid and begin a negotiation process toward a two-state solution. This conditionality is entirely meaningless; Palestine should be recognised immediately by right, not as a bizarre punishment for Israel not ending the war. If Starmer had announced sanctions on Israel and said these would be suspended if the war ended that would have made some sense, but of course he was unwilling to even threaten Israel with meaningful economic consequences. This conditionality opened the door to every pound shop hasbaraist to say that it was the Palestinians who should face conditions, conveniently ignoring the distinction between the PLO/PA who govern the Palestinian cities of the West Bank and Hamas who theoretically govern whatever is left of Gaza. ‘It is totally unconscionable for Britain to effectively reward Hamas terrorism’ claimed Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg, displaying a total lack of logic. The hasbaraist attack on Hamas has long been that it refuses to endorse a two-state solution, that it seeks only the entirety of historic Palestine, but suddenly the UK formally supporting a partitionist outcome rewards Hamas? You can’t have it both ways. Clearly the people the recognition rewards are the PLO, which has supported partition formally since 1988 (and since the mid-1970s informally), hence the supportive statement from Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK. I’m no great supporter of the two-state solution. I would much prefer a single democratic state between the river and the sea with equal rights for all. But for organisations who have waxed lyrical about Two States for decades and made it the litmus test for others to suddenly oppose recognition of Palestine is utter hypocrisy. Phil Rosenberg was asked on a radio programme this week if the Board of Deputies would support recognition if Hamas released the hostages? He refused to give a clear answer, adding further conditions of his own about reform of the Palestinian Authority, already a quisling body that acts as Israel’s policeman in the West Bank. Just as the Israeli government will never support any Palestinian state coming into existence, neither will the Board of Deputies, nor the cavalcade of clowns who are supporting this march. They are perfectly content with a one-state solution as long as the one state is Israel. They won’t declare themselves in favour of ethnic cleansing or apartheid but that is the inevitable conclusion of their position.
Stay Away
It could be so different. Institutional British Jewry doesn’t have to be this right-wing. Assuming its priority is freeing the hostages it could still have led with this, on the understanding that their freedom will only come with an end to the war. It might have said: Free the Hostages – Ceasefire Deal Now – Flood Gaza with Aid – Let Israelis and Palestinians Live in Peace, in line with groups like Standing Together. The right-wing headbangers would have walked out, which would have been a bonus, but I strongly believe that a majority of British Jews would support such a call, just as an estimated 75% of Israelis want to end the war. And think of the credibility we would collectively regain if we did something like this. Instead we have this disgraceful jingoistic demo which essentially calls for more war and no moves toward peace. This is a far-right, anti-peace, anti-hostages march that implicitly demands war without end. It is especially shameful that the Progressive and Masorti movements, who ought to know better, are listed as being amongst the sponsors. I urge as many organisations as possible to withdraw from it and for people to stay away, especially those who genuinely care about the hostages and the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. This is not the way.