The silent majority

The extremists marching in Jerusalem last night were by no means representative of the Israeli mainstream, so why was there no counter-protest?

July 24, 2007

Last time I wrote about Nadia Matar, her response was to brand Josh and me as "Palestinian agents". She fired off a mass email to her acolytes, to this effect, calling for them to be vigilant against our espionage. Ignoring the thinly veiled threats she'd made against us, we headed back into her lair again last night and witnessed what happens when Nadia is allowed to pull the strings of a few thousand puppets in the heart of Jerusalem.

Her Women In Green organisation was behind yesterday's march round the Old City of Jerusalem. The march is an annual event that coincides with Tisha Ba'av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. By fasting, and reading the Book of Lamentations, Jews around the world commemorate the series of tragedies connected with this date that have engulfed the Jewish people over the centuries (including the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the expulsion from Spain and the Holocaust).

However, subdued mourning and introspection do not appeal to Nadia Matar and her merry men. Instead, they hijack the event in order to stick the boot in to the Arab residents of East Jerusalem by way of their inflammatory march.

It is, to all intents and purposes, the Mediterranean equivalent of the Orange Order parade in Drumcree. Even the colours are the same, thanks to the presence of the anti-disengagement crowd whose orange T-shirts and flags bear their latest, shamelessly sectarian slogan, "The Land of Israel for the People of Israel". Two thousand people gathered in Kikar Safra, West Jerusalem, where Nadia worked herself and the crowd into a frenzy, stalking round the square in her trademark green baseball cap while preaching her message of hate and war through a microphone.

I asked a passing demonstrator if he was worried that the Arabs might react badly to such an incendiary march, but was reassured that "they know better than to mess with a crowd this big". He strode off into the distance, while Josh, Alex and I debated the wisdom of our three-man Cif cell spending the next two hours in such delectable company. Trying to spot Nadia in the crowd before she clocked us was like playing a real-life game of Where's Wally, and in this furtive manner we made our way down to Damascus Gate to begin the parade.

The roads were cordoned off and manned by a huge police presence, meaning that the protesters were free to strut their stuff as provocatively as they liked - and they did. One burly man, dressed in sackcloth in honour of the occasion, spotted a group of Arab youths on the other side of the road, and purposefully stormed over to wave his flag in their faces as he smirked triumphantly. Resisting the urge to connect my right fist to his temple (first or second - either would do), I decided instead to approach my new friend and casually enquire as to what he hoped to achieve with his actions.

In a booming American accent, Eliyahu told me "I don't hate them, I just want them to understand that they can only live here under Jewish rule." As I struggled to keep up with his frantic pacing, I asked him whether he thought this method of getting his message across was likely to do more harm than good in terms of Judaeo-Arab relations. He exploded like a cluster bomb. "Look," he screamed, "I don't care whether they like it or not. They need to understand that they lost the war; we won, they lost. Why it's taken them 40 years to get the picture I don't know, but we're not going to stop until they understand who's in control."

Warming to his theme, he went on to deride "the chutzpah that the Arabs have - they demand that we can't even live in their midst and want us to withdraw. You're from England, so answer me this - what if all the Pakistanis in England said we don't want any whites living in our area, they've all got to go? What would you say to that?"

For all his incendiary posing, Eliyahu was by no means a major player at an event like this. That accolade belongs to the rightwing member of Knesset, Arieh Eldad, whose firebrand speech in front of his adoring audience was as frightening as it was surreal. With the walls of the Old City lit up behind him in a fluorescent glow, he bellowed out his message: "We must take back the Temple Mount, if we are to avoid another Churban [Destruction] befalling the Jewish People. We are doomed unless we bring in a strong Jewish leader to rule a land which is meant for Jews, a land which is not meant for Arabs." He left the stage to thunderous applause, the crowd lapping up his battle cry and hanging on his every word.

What disturbed me most about the entire evening of marching and sabre-rattling was not the protesters themselves, since our recent trip has left me rather immune to their ranting and raving by now. Instead, it was the absence of counter-protest by fellow Israelis who knew this event was going ahead, yet were either too apathetic or too intimidated to do anything to stand up to the fascist face of the Israeli far right.

When I was young, my parents would regularly take me on anti-NF rallies at Trafalgar Square. They instilled a firm belief in me that standing by and doing nothing makes you (almost) complicit in the crime itself. The extremists marching round the Old City last night are by no means representative of the Israeli mainstream, but they're far better organised, far more passionate, and far more prepared for action than any other section of society here.

With the likes of Nadia Matar and Arieh Eldad at the helm, an event like last night should send an urgent warning to their opponents that it's time to stand up and show the world that this type of hate will not be tolerated.