Why were Western leaders silent on Jerusalem’s hate march?

An event last week exemplified the chronic levels of anti-Arab racism, Israeli exceptionalism and Western double standards that have dominated the last eight months. The issue involves marches and protests.

In many Western cities, protesters have gathered in vast numbers on a frequent basis. London hosted the UK’s 15th national march for Palestine last Saturday, with more than 200,000 people taking part, according to the organizers.

Opponents of these protests have routinely slammed them as “hate marches,” festivals of antisemitism and worse. Leading politicians have pitched in. Yes, there have been some unrepresentative outliers with vile antisemitic placards, but the overwhelming majority of protesters have peacefully called for a ceasefire in Gaza, in tune with the vast majority of the public. The protest camps at American and other universities have also been recipients of unwarranted bile and hatred.

Shift to Jerusalem. It was Jerusalem Day on June 5. This is the day when tens of thousands of Israeli Jews march to celebrate the capture of the eastern part of the city in 1967, the moment when the Israeli occupation began. Children are part of the march, boys and girls alike.

Sounds harmless? Think again.

This is what a true hate march looks like. Entering the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, thousands chant “Death to Arabs” and “May their village burn,” as well as a particularly gruesome revenge song. Some liken it to Northern Irish Protestants provocatively marching in Catholic areas or Ku Klux Klan marches in the US, but the Jerusalem version is arguably even more violent and intimidating.

Hordes of Jewish youths dressed in white carried out their typical rampage through the Muslim Quarter

Chris Doyle

Nir Hasson is an Israeli journalist for Haaretz who has routinely covered these marches. In an article entitled “I’ve Seen Every Jerusalem Flag March in Last 16 Years. This One Was the Ugliest,” his assessment was chilling. Given the record of previous years, this is quite some description.

Palestinians knew what was coming. Every year, they board up their shops. They cower in fear knowing that these thugs could beat the hell out of them. Hordes of Jewish youths dressed in white carried out their typical rampage through the Muslim Quarter. They threatened, bit and spat at Palestinians and journalists too. The last marchers left behind them piles of garbage by the Damascus Gate.

The leading symbol on the marchers’ shirts was the Kahanist fist. The star of the show was the Kahanist-in-chief and convicted criminal Itamar Ben-Gvir, the man who boasted in 1995, “We’ll get to him,” referring to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by an Israeli extremist just weeks later. Ben-Gvir is, of course, a leading member of the Israeli Cabinet as national security minister. Surrounded by his thugs, he was in his element.

His message to Palestinians was chilling: “In every house in Gaza and the north — there are pictures of the Temple Mount (Al-Haram Al-Sharif) and pictures of Jerusalem. And we say to them that Jerusalem is ours. The Damascus Gate is ours. The Temple Mount is ours … Today, according to my policy, Jews freely entered the Old City. And on Temple Mount, Jews prayed freely. We say in the simplest way, this is ours.”

It is state policy to facilitate this intimidation and to encourage Palestinians to leave the Old City

Chris Doyle

It required Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deny that the status quo at Al-Aqsa had been altered, as no doubt Ben-Gvir intended. He always looks to outflank Netanyahu with his base. This was one bit of arson that not even Netanyahu seems ready to indulge in right now.

This annual bout of ultranationalist triumphalism is facilitated by the Israeli authorities. None of these extremists get arrested. Nobody is held accountable. The police made it clear they would not arrest anyone for racist chanting. It is state policy to facilitate this intimidation and to encourage Palestinians to leave the Old City so that Jewish settlers can become the majority.

What have all the world leaders said about such marches? Absolutely nothing. Not a word. While damning largely peaceful marches in their cities, they just ignore violent, provocative, racist rampages in the occupied part of the most-contested city on the planet. In fact, these racist marches have become so normalized that much of the Western media also ignores them. Have Western leaders even sanctioned Ben-Gvir or his partner in crime, Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister?

Is it any wonder that these leaders do so little as Israeli forces enact in Gaza the very chilling threats these Kahanist racists were screaming in Jerusalem? They want villages to be burned in the West Bank just as refugee camps are being burned in Gaza right now.

This mirrors the way in which Israeli lives are treated as more valuable than Palestinian lives. It explains the silence after the UN releases estimates that half of Gaza’s population will face death and starvation by mid-July. Is it any wonder that Western leaders celebrated the rescue of four Israeli hostages while not even commenting on the more than 200 Palestinians killed in the process?

• Chris Doyle is director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding in London. X: @Doylech