Every now and then you see an event and you think to yourself: ‘This will go down in history.’ Last night’s revolt of the Jews of London against a ‘pro-Palestine’ mob is one such event.

Jews and their allies gathered at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley to defend its showing of a film about Hamas’s fascistic massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October. Unbelievably – or not, perhaps – the ‘Palestine solidarity’ set wanted the screening to be cancelled. No way, said the Jewish rebels, loudly and proudly, many of them draped in the Israeli flag. It was truly stirring stuff, a bold act of people’s defiance against cancel culture and the slow, lethal creep of a new anti-Semitism.

The ‘Palestine solidarity’ set wanted the screening to be cancelled

Let’s call it The Battle of Phoenix Cinema. On one side there was a motley crew of Palestine flag-wavers, curiously irate that a cinema was showing a film about the evils of Hamas. And on the other side a boisterous gathering of Jews and their supporters. Two thousand of them. ‘I’m still standing’ by Elton John blasted from a loudspeaker. Many young Jews were there, some clearly angry, pushed to their limit by the ceaseless demonisation of the Jewish State and the left’s shameful lack of solidarity with the Jewish community as it has come under attack these past seven months. These people really have had enough.

Some of the younger Jews chanted ‘Terrorists supporters off our streets’. It felt like a brilliant modern twist on the slogan of The Battle of Cable Street in 1936 – ‘They shall not pass’. Back then, Jews and their working-class allies gathered in East London to see off Oswald Mosley’s fascists. Yesterday they gathered to see off that mob that obsessively hates Israel and which seems hell-bent on hiding the truth about Hamas’s fascist-like crimes. You shall not pass, the protesters were essentially saying, as they protected a cinema from the McCarthyite rage of the Israelophobes.

The Phoenix Cinema’s ‘crime’ is that it agreed to host the Seret film festival, a festival of Israeli cinema that is supported by Israel’s culture ministry. This is a mortal sin in the eyes of anti-Israel activists who boycott everything that emanates from Israel; who seem to believe that moral cleanliness entails exorcising every Israeli film, foodstuff, product and even person from your life and your community.

Ken Loach and Mike Leigh resigned in a huff as patrons of the Phoenix in response to its hosting of Seret. Loach, of course, gets funding for his films from the British Film Institute, which itself is government-funded and distributes lottery cash. So he’s happy to get cash from an organisation backed by a government that waged catastrophic wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya but he’ll run a mile from a cinema showing films backed by the Israeli government? Make it make sense, Ken.

The Phoenix’s greatest offence was to screen the film Supernova last night. It’s a documentary about Hamas’s brutal slaughter of 360 souls at the Nova festival. Protesters had even daubed the entrance to the cinema with graffiti earlier in the day. ‘Say no to artwashing’, it said. Then they turned up later to register their fury with the showing of the movie. I’m going to say this as plainly as I can: If you are opposed to the showing of a film about a pogrom waged against young Jews at a music festival, then you are not as progressive as you thought. You are not on the right side of history. You are not a good person.

To its credit, the Phoenix refused to buckle to the cancel-culture mob. Even the loss of Loach and Leigh failed to make it bend to the will of the censors. We will never ‘censor or veto the content of screenings’ when our cinema has been privately hired for a festival, it said. This is so unusual these days that it deserves special commendation. Every cultural institution in the land could learn a lesson about freedom from the Phoenix’s defiance of the marauding ‘progressive’ blacklisters.

But it’s the Jewish protesters who deserve the greatest credit. They have done their forebears on Cable Street proud. They have taken a brilliant stand for freedom of expression and Jewish equality. They have defended the right to tell the story of what was done to the Jews of Southern Israel on 7 October. They have struck a blow for truth itself.

And where is the left in this modern, mini Battle of Cable Street? On the wrong side. On the opposite side to the Jews. On the side they never imagined they would be on. These people fantasise that they would have stood shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish workers of East London in 1936, and yet when anti-Semitism returned with a vengeance in the aftermath of 7 October they found themselves on the other side. The left no longer says ‘They shall not pass’ – instead it’s said to them by Jews who’ve had enough.

QOSHE - The revolt of the Jews of London - Brendan O’Neill
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The revolt of the Jews of London

36 24
24.05.2024

Every now and then you see an event and you think to yourself: ‘This will go down in history.’ Last night’s revolt of the Jews of London against a ‘pro-Palestine’ mob is one such event.

Jews and their allies gathered at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley to defend its showing of a film about Hamas’s fascistic massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October. Unbelievably – or not, perhaps – the ‘Palestine solidarity’ set wanted the screening to be cancelled. No way, said the Jewish rebels, loudly and proudly, many of them draped in the Israeli flag. It was truly stirring stuff, a bold act of people’s defiance against cancel culture and the slow, lethal creep of a new anti-Semitism.

The ‘Palestine solidarity’ set wanted the screening to be cancelled

Let’s call it The Battle of Phoenix Cinema. On one side there was a motley crew of Palestine flag-wavers, curiously irate that a cinema was showing a film about the evils of Hamas. And on the other side a boisterous gathering of Jews and their supporters. Two thousand of them. ‘I’m still standing’ by Elton John blasted from a loudspeaker. Many young Jews were there, some clearly angry, pushed to their limit by the ceaseless........

© The Spectator


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