Letters - 16 May 2025
From further demands to burial places
Further demand
In attempting to validate the official reason given by police for invoking the Public Order Act in banning the demo at the BBC headquarters in January, Ol Rappaport (Letters, 2 May) continues to dig a hole for himself by doubling down on the falsehood that Palestinian demonstrators are in some way a threat to Jewish synagogue-goers. The police justification for the order does not stand up to minimum scrutiny, for reasons already given.
Antisemitism exists. Along with other forms of racism, it is overwhelmingly associated in the UK with extreme nationalist and white-supremacist groups – ironically some of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Israeli state. The continuing attempts to conflate it, without any evidence, with progressive causes such as opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, is frankly despicable. One of the dangers of doing so is that it trivialises actual hostility to Jews, focusing as it does instead on criticism of Israel, and seeking to demonise campaigners by setting out to raise alarm among Jewish communities.
Antony Rawlinson
Regarding the response in the 25 April edition to Ol Rappaport’s previous letter: would Friends try to correct with the same force a member of any other minority group? To explain at such length that they were mistaken to perceive prejudice against them?
We know that on 14 January 2025, three Youth Demand (YD)protestors were arrested outside Broadcasting House. They were there in support of Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC), who marched on the following Saturday, the 18th. The YD protestors seem to have been in breach of a notice intended in part to keep protestors away from the Central Synagogue and the BBC on the 18th. The march went ahead and there were many arrests there, dozens – including arrests for suspected support for terrorist organisations and for placards bearing material critical of Israel which crossed the line into antisemitism.
However much some Friends may agree with the motives, or the practices, of YD, and perhaps the PSC which they acted to support, are Friends really sure that the right response, the Friendly response, to a Jewish Friend having concerns about those organisations, is to lecture him about how wrong he is?
Keith Braithwaite
