“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a chant I’ve been hearing outside my front door in central London for more than two years.
Published: 18 December 2025
Globalise the intifada” is another.
Or there’s “Hey hey, ho ho, Zionism has got to go”.
Many of these chants come from pale-faced young women from the Home Counties.
I try to be charitable and assume ignorance rather than hatred is a prime motivator, but I don’t believe it.
I wear on my lapel a brooch that says, “I stand with Israel”.
And where I get the chance, I explain to the young that what they are really calling for is the eradication of Israel.
And that I call myself a Zionist although I have no Jewish blood because I admire and like Jews and think they have as much right to a Jewish state as the French have to France.
I also add that Jews have been driven out of almost all Arab states whereas Arabs flourish in Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.
The nightmare I’ve been living with since I first became a Zionist is that stupidity and moral cowardice will see Israel inadvertently destroyed.
I fear the “Ooops moment”, as in: “Ooops, all we wanted was to give Palestinians equal rights so they could share power democratically
“How were we to predict they would drive the Jews out of Israel?”
Anyone with a titter of wit, it seems to me, would have known after the horrors of October 7, 2023 that vast numbers of Palestinians loathe Jews and want them eradicated.
Palestinian young men are organising Jew hunts in European cities.
And politicians are standing idly by, calling weakly for brotherly love and avoiding harsh criticism of anti-semitism in case it hurts Muslim feelings.
In Westminster, some realists resist appeasement.
Like Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, whose feet seem to me to be firmly on the ground when it comes to contentious issues.
Kemi has never, for instance, wavered from her belief that women are women.
Or that the West is becoming an unsafe place for Jews.
She has fiercely called out anti-semitism, denounced Islamism, called Hamas “genocidal terrorists”, described Keir Starmer’s recognition of Palestine as weak, reaffirmed Israel’s right to self-defence, and called for protection for Jews on campuses and in their communities.
“We’ve said ‘never again’ so many times,” she said this week.
“Let’s actually prove it.”
I’m as pleased as anyone that on Bondi Beach, Muslim Ahmed al-Ahmed – the fruit shop owner who tackled one of the terrorists behind last weekend’s mass shooting which targeted Sydney’s Jewish community at a Hanukkah event and left 15 people dead – showed courage, but it shouldn’t deflect us from facing up to the Islamist threat.
Yoni Bashan of The Australian wrote this week that anti-Semitism “never goose-steps into the ball dressed as anti-Semitism.
“It doesn’t wear a sign.
“It arrives in the costume of the moment. As nationalism. As anti-capitalism. As social justice.”
As Brendan O’Neill of Spiked put it: “As 2025 comes to a close, one question matters above all others: are you on the side of the Jews or not?
“Their safety and our civilisation depend on how we answer.”
I know where I stand.
Do you?
