It is impossible for a participant to make an accurate estimate of how many people attended today’s demonstration in London in support of the people of Gaza. It definitely felt like it was in the hundreds of thousands and the ethnic mix of the crowd was very representative of the city’s population.

The most positive thing to be said about the settlement that has ended the Israeli slaughter is that the rate of killings of Palestinians by the Israeli army will significantly reduce, even while deaths from multiple other causes linked to Israeli action will continue.

It was a sense of relief that the most intense and visible horror has stopped which was probably the overwhelming feeling. No rational person could see the settlement as any sort of victory for the Palestinian people. Doing that antisemitic thing of claiming that Jews and the genocidal Israeli state are the same, May Golan, Israel’s Minister of Social Equality and Women’s Advancement (sic), was right when she said “every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did”, adding that she was “personally proud of the ruins of Gaza”. This is a generational defeat for the Palestinian people.

However, in Britain we have seen the most impressive, politicised and rooted mass movement since the anti-apartheid struggle. The whole of bourgeois opinion from Starmer’s Labour to Reform and most of the press tried to make an argument that being outraged by the mass slaughter of civilians by one of the most vicious armies in the world was a hate crime motivated by antisemitism. Hence the appeals not to demonstrate or show solidarity with the people of Gaza. The British political class was giving unconditional, and usually uncritical support, to a genocidal state and hated the people who pointed this out to them.

Rather like the Vietnam war, Gaza has become a culturally defining issue for young people who are radicalising. London’s public transport system was filled with people carrying Palestinian flags, wearing keffiyehs, stickers and badges. It was a beautiful display of compassionate internationalism.

As we can see from the impressive rise in support for a newly radicalising Green Party and the large public meetings organised by Your Party, large numbers of people have concluded that support for the struggle for Palestinian liberation is now an elemental part of creating a radical political alternative in Britain.

When the foreign journalists are finally allowed into Gaza, God only knows what further horrors be revealed. It may just be that the time for marching has ended but the need for material, financial, political and moral action in support of the Palestinians is greater than ever.

(Thanks to Romayne Phoenix for the photo.)