Anyone seen the video where the police officer says a swastika is not anti-Semitic at a pro Palestine March?

[EvangelicalAboutButteredToast]

I know there are lots of pro-Palestine supporters in this area of the board. If not anti-Semitic then what else is it standing for in this context? Apparently it was drawn on some protestors banners.

@Comedycook although I have personal links over the years I have met many people from all walks of life who are raising awareness to the plight of the Palestinians. Everyone has their own story on what first brought their attention to it. Whether it was the murder of American activist Rachel Corrie who was bulldozed to death by the IDF. Or the murder of the Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh whose mourners were even attacked at her funeral, or the horrific killing of the Palestinian children who were playing on the beach etc etc. For many this is a conflict that has been ongoing for their entire lifetime not something new.
Whilst there may be some whose motivation may be anti-semitism, I don't think its right and actually quite offensive to say that for the majority the drive is anti-semitism.
Also this conflict is one that has been ongoing for the entire lifetime of many people, not something new or recent.

Very dramatic...there's nothing chilling in what I said. There's currently millions displaced in Sudan and a famine. There's a famine in Yemen. There are dreadful images from many many places in the world. Yet so many are so focused on this particular conflict.

In regards to the actual topic of the thread, to display a swastika on a march is clearly anti-semitic and there is no excuse or other explanation for it.

I think many people are motivated by their own anti semitism...but its actually often quite sub conscious.

Anti semitism is like racism and islamophobia....very very few people who are these things actually admit it to others or even to themselves. They dress it up in many other ways. These are ugly words and ugly concepts. I doubt many of the anti semetic people on the march actually say to themselves I really hate Jewish people ergo I'm going to march. It's a hatred that lies under the surface and when it has a chance it jumps out to say, see I told you so, that's what they're like.

You know it's like the Rotherham grooming gangs. The racists and islamophobes love it because they then get the chance to say, see I told you what they're like

Very dramatic it is a dramatic and heartbreaking situation so it's a pretty reasonable emotion to have. Maybe you're not the type of person who demonstrates against injustices but many others are and suggesting their only motivation is anti semitism is offensive and also an attempt to minimise and distract from what's happening.

Of course there are other conflicts ongoing there always is but the UK and US governments are not actively supporting them. As for Yemen and Sudan, aid agencies are actively working in those regions getting humanitarian aid and support to the people which I and many others are actively contributing to, are you? I am also working with a Sudanese community and helping them with fundraisers and supporting their integration into the community I work in.

Oh here we go...I never said the images weren't shocking or a reaction to them being shocking is dramatic. That's without doubt. I'm saying you calling my post chilling was dramatic. There's nothing chilling in what I said. Yes the pictures coming out are shocking....but there are terrible images from across the world that do not illicit this sort of mass protesting.

What I find strange about this argument is I've never once seen anyone question why people care about the victims of the Hamas terrorist attack. I've never once seen people say well did you care as much about x random attack here or y random attack there? Why is it just accepted that Israeli deaths are to be mourned, to be spoken about, to be remembered but there just has to be some kind of ulterior motive if people care about the deaths of over 10,000 innocent Palestinian children.

But hundreds of thousands of people are not marching every weekend in London about the hostages.

Well we are obviously very different people because I find it chilling that someone cannot understand why others would be motivated to protest at their government for supporting the atrocities they are seeing daily coming out of Gaza and the only conclusion they can come to is because it is Israel.
There isn't as many marches in Ireland because our government has called out Israel and is supporting the current case for genocide, the marches continue in the UK because the UK government still support Israel despite their own legal advisors suggesting it could make them complicit in war crimes

But there have been marches. People here were talking about how they attended pro Israel marches and there were many 1000s people there. Did you question them about why they care so much? Now that you know that these marches have happened are you wondering why people care? Surely you are wondering why do 1000s of British people care about this terror attack, do they march about other terror attacks? Terror attacks happen every day of the week are they out marching for those?

A million Uyghur Muslims detained in china and a possible genocide of them....what's that I hear? No, not a peep.

14 million facing famine in Yemen....again, what's that I hear, the deafening sound of silence.

There likely won't be a peep. Which is tragic. Innocent people around the world have faced and are facing horrendous persecution. I really hope that, if nothing else, the current situation is causing a few more people to become aware of and motivated to act in relation to the less publicised horrors going on in the world today. There have been people at events who genuinely haven't had a clue about situations in China or Haiti or Sudan, and who have been shocked to learn about them.

@Comedycook pretty low and insensitive to use other people's tragedies, death and suffering to make some kind of point against marchers in London.

They aren't as high profile and should be, but as has been pointed out to you before the UK are not actively complicit in them so they are unlikely to generate a protest march in the UK but people can support the agencies that are providing humanitarian support to the people impacted. I am not sure on the aid agencies in the UK but in Ireland you can donate to Concern, WFP, UNHCR, UCICEF and many others

How would some posters here feel if I said that the vast majority of pro Israeli government protestors were Islamophobic? Would you accept it? Would you think it is a valid point? Of course not and neither do because it is simply untrue.

I don't think he was saying that displaying a swastika isn't anti-semitic (which of course it is) – he was saying that it isn't necessarily illegal (which it isn't), but it might be under the Public Order act and that's what they have to work under. (And was, in fact, the legislation they used to arrest the person she was talking about as per the Met's clarification.)

Whether displaying a swastika should in and of itself be illegal is a different debate.

Plenty has been said and done

https://uhrp.org/responses/

No it would not be ok. No one should be projecting propaganda onto our public buildings. The police should be stopping it not just standing by getting paid to do nothing.

I don't think the UK government and activity and vocally supporting the Chinese government in their persecution of the Uyghurs though are they.

All deaths are to be mourned and war is inhumane. However, the 7 October attacks were so sadistic that I think the world is still reeling in shock that people can be hunted down for hours, raped, tortured, mutilated, burned alive, hacked to bits, dragged off to be spat on by cheering crowds, etc. At least one survivor from Nova Festival said that they prayed to be hit by a missile rather than captured.

This has nothing to do with the value of Israeli vs Palestinian lives, and everything to do with the DELIBERATELY horrific nature of their deaths.

I guess that's the nature of terrorism.

Why, then, is there such a widespread assumption that there must be an ulterior motive to people expressing grief or concern over the deaths of over ten thousand Palestinian children?

Your post quotes another post about that, but doesn't address the point made.

I didn’t call the poster “geographically challenged” for finding the comment “from the river to the sea” provocative only when Palestinians say it, but not when Jewish people like me say it for Israel. That is hypocrisy and islamaphobia.

I called them geographically challenged for thinking that the top of Israel is bounded by the Jordan river and the bottom by the Mediterranean Sea (the river and sea being referred to in the statement) and also for thinking that Israel is the only country bounded by the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea.

Your “disingenuous” comment I will respond to in a response to your selective cut and paste Wiki post.

@Dibilnik At least one survivor from Nova Festival said that they prayed to be hit by a missile rather than captured

What was the point you were trying to make including this sentence?

So, you have disingenuously only cut and paste the usage of the phrase, as it was 55 years ago by PLO in 1969. There is alot of context you have not included:

Let’s establish facts first
”"From the river to the sea" (Arabic: من النهر إلى البحر, romanized: min an-nahr ʾilā l-baḥr; Palestinian Arabic: من المية للمية, romanized: min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye, lit. 'from the water to the water')[1][2] is a political phrase that refers geographically to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea”

History of the phrase
“Israeli-American historian Omer Bartov notes that Zionist usage of such language predates the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and began with the Revisionist movement of Zionism led by Vladimir Jabotinski, which spoke of establishing a Jewish state in all of Palestine and had a song which includes: "The Jordan has two banks; this one is ours, and the other one too," suggesting a Jewish state extending even beyond the Jordan River.”

The PLO appropriated it in the 1960s as you have posted in carefully curated isolation.

In 1977, the concept appeared in an election manifesto of the Israeli political party Likud, which stated that “between the sea and the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty.” (As I have pointed out upthread)

By the 1990s, the usage of the phrase in protests had transitioned to a focus on freedom, not nationalism including replacement/occupation of Israel with a larger Palestine which was actually not “from the river to the sea” but a “from the water to the water” phrase:
“The version min an-nahr ʾilā l-baḥr / Filasṭīn sa-tataḥarrar (من النهر إلى البحر / فلسطين ستتحرر, "from the river to the sea / Palestine will be free") has a focus on freedom.[28]

The version min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye / Falasṭīn ʿarabiyye (من المية للمية / فلسطين عربية, "from the water to the water / Palestine is Arab") has an Arab nationalist sentiment, and the version min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye / Falasṭīn islāmiyye (من المية للمية / فلسطين إسلامية, "from the water to the water / Palestine is Islamic") has Islamic sentiment.[29] According to Colla, scholars of Palestine attest to the documentation of both versions in the graffiti of the late 1980s, the period of the First Intifada.[29]

In English
"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"—the translation of min an-nahr ʾilā l-baḥr / Filasṭīn sa-tatḥarrar—is the version that has circulated among English speakers expressing solidarity with Palestine since at least the 1990s

Hamas 2017 charter clarifies this phrase means freedom for Palestinians with national aspirations with the 1967 UN borders:
The phrase was used as part of its 2017 revised platform where they state "Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea [...] along the lines of the 4th of June 1967".[37]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea

There are children in Gaza who are reported to be praying for a relatively quick death by missile strike rather than continuing to starve to death.