‘We operate from a place of love!’ yelled rapper Bobby Vylan to appreciative nods from the crowd below him.
Moments later, he emphasised the point: ‘Everything we do stems from love!’ At which point, he rounded off his sermon on a suitably tender note. ‘I’d just like to conclude with this: Death! Death! To the IDF!’
The crowd around me gleefully joined in with Vylan’s loving call for the slaughter of the Israeli Defence Forces over and over, waving, in equal measure, Palestinian flags, Iranian flags and posters of recently-terminated Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, billed as ‘The Great Martyr. Our Pride. Our Leader’.
A group of teenage girls in front of me were literally jumping up and down for joy.
For two tense, toxic hours this summed up the essence of Sunday afternoon’s Al Quds rally in London: around 3,000 people trying to be as anti-Israeli, anti-American, anti-British and anti-Semitic as possible without actually breaking the law. In the end, the police made a dozen arrests.
Held every year since the late Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini called for an annual show of support for ‘the oppressed’, for Iran‘s theocracy, for the Palestinian cause and for the dream of Islamic ‘victory over the infidels’, ‘Quds Day’ (from the Arabic word for Jerusalem) has usually involved a march.
Given that Britain’s Armed Forces are now actively at war with the Iranian regime, the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood had taken the extreme step of banning this year’s demonstration.
However, the law could not ban a static protest.
Demonstrators arrive at Albert Embankment in Central London for a static protest after the Al Quds march was banned
Pro-Iran demonstrators held signs which read ‘Home Secretary, de-prescribe Palestine Action’
Bobby Vylan – one half of the punk rap duo Bob Vylan – repeated his controversial Glastonbury chant of ‘death to the IDF’ at the rally
A mobile stage and screen had been given police permission for precisely 120 minutes of amplified support for Tehran, Gaza and allied causes at a pre-designated point on the south bank of the Thames just across and upstream from Westminster.
One reason for staging the event by the river was so that the counter-demonstration by Iranian dissidents – in support of the US/Israeli military campaign – could be parked on the opposite bank. Both protests were therefore in sight of each other but separated by the Thames, with several police boats patrolling in between.
The demonstration had been organised by a group called the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), which has links to the Iranian regime.
Opening the show, IHRC organiser Naz Ali urged everyone to lift up their pictures and ‘pay our condolences to the great martyr, Shahid Khamenei’.
He also paid tribute to a longstanding supporter, a kindly old lady called ‘Mrs Hussein’ who had been a regular at this event every year until her recent passing.
We were all invited to join in with ‘the chant she always did’ on these occasions: ‘Marg bar Amrika! Marg bar Israel!’
The crowd duly honoured the memory of Mrs Hussein with this Arabic incantation of ‘Death to America! Death to Israel!’
Mr Ali repeatedly heaped abuse on the Home Secretary, Ms Mahmood – ‘whatever she is’, he added.
Police pictured arresting a protester at the static protest in central London today
Pro-Iran demonstrators unfurl huge Palestinian flags brandished with the words ‘boycott the Zionist’ and ‘Be on the right side of history’
A pro-Iran demonstrator wearing a keffiyeh leads chants through a microphone
Some of it was in a foreign language but I deduced from the sniggering around me that he was making fun of the fact that Ms Mahmood is, herself, a Muslim.
Due to the constraints on time, speakers had been restricted to just three minutes each and most, mercifully, stuck to the plan.
We heard from a mix of clerics, ‘activists’ and academics, some of them quite eminent.
Professor Abbas Edelat, a mathematician from Imperial College, was introduced as a ‘great champion of peace’, though this was a little at odds with the tone of his speech: ‘Ayatollah Khomeini recognised Israel for what it is.
The Zionist regime, he said, is a cancerous tumour that has to be stopped and defeated.
And this was a prophecy – because the Zionist criminals have openly declared the greater Israel project now.’
The US and Israel, he added peacefully, ‘represent the totality of evil in humanity’.
Quite a few speakers also called for the downfall of the ‘lapdog Starmer’, though – for better or worse – Britain is seen as a second-rate non-entity these days, a far cry from the days when Iranian mobs burned Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair in effigy.
A recurring theme was the US attack on an Iranian school which killed 175 girls two weeks ago.
Hussain Shafiei of George Galloway’s Workers’ Party blamed this on ‘the Epstein people’.
An Iranian regime supporter holds an image of Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtada Khamenei
Another speaker railed against the ‘Epstein axis of power’. Such is the reach of the dead paedophile into almost every major news story of modern times.
Most of Sunday’s speakers were of Middle Eastern heritage – mainly Iranian and Palestinian – as were the vast majority of the crowd.
I noticed that almost all the women were in headscarves, dutifully following the diktats of the Iranian regime, which doles out harsh punishments for women who do not cover their heads (or indeed for people who host protests like this one).
There was also a tiny group from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish group Neturei Karta, which opposes the state of Israel on religious grounds.
A minority of the crowd were white British, mainly white-haired Corbynista wrinklies in anoraks and walking boots.
One younger model, a furious student, took to the stage to complain that she had been the victim of ‘Zionist witch-hunting’ the day before.
‘On Sunday, in Brighton, I was arrested by Sussex police for my use of the chant “Globalise the Intifada”‘, she explained, perhaps unwisely given that it is a proscribed slogan.
‘The police are acting on behalf of the Zionists in their endless endeavour to interrogate pro-Palestinian activists.’
The high point was supposed to be Bobby Vylan. Readers may recall that he caused a crisis at the BBC after it screened him shouting ‘Death to the IDF’ at last year’s Glastonbury Festival.
This resulted in accusations of anti-Semitism and a six-month police investigation. It concluded the words were not actionable, so Vylan was going to push things to the limit on Sunday.
He also claimed the ‘pigs’ (police) were ‘cowards’ who were trying to ‘cosy up to the Board of Deputies’ (Of British Jews).
It was a curiously stilted and stumbling address for someone who is allegedly a rap artist. He read it all off his mobile phone, and then lost his way when the Palestinian keffiyeh he was wearing fell from his neck.
There was an incongruous moment during one of umpteen chants of the anti-Israel war cry ‘From the River [Jordan] to the sea [Mediterranean], Palestine will be free’.
Suddenly I heard the distant strains of God Save The King echoing across the River Thames. It was the counter-demo striking a patriotic note. Earlier, I met some of them.
‘We are here to show our support for regime change – but also to celebrate the birthday of Reza Shah Pahlavi [the founder of Iran’s Pahlavi royal dynasty],’ said co-organiser, Niyak Ghorbani, 40, an IT manager.
‘I love Trump and I love my country,’ said Maryam Parsa, 64, who says her family – all back in Iran – are happy to have the bombs falling on the mullahs.
‘When they get weaker, then we will change the regime.’
The decision to ban the organisers from marching through the capital was applauded by the leading thinktank Policy Exchange, which has investigated links between the organisers, the IHRC, and the Iranian regime.
‘To have allowed that march to go ahead at a time like this would have been a step too far,’ said Dr Paul Stott, Policy Exchange’s head of security and extremism on Sunday night. ‘As it was, these speakers were going as close to the wire as they possibly could.’
One may have crossed it. On Sunday night, the Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan said that the arrests had been made ‘for showing support for a proscribed organisation, affray and for threatening or abusive behaviour. We are also investigating chants made by a speaker’.
Watch this space.
