OPINION: On Sunday we march for survival
As hate rises on our streets, this weekend's Campaign Against Antisemitism rally is a call to reject excuses, stand against lies and march for our future
On Sunday, thousands of us will again take to the streets of London for the third national march against antisemitism, organised by the Campaign Against Antisemitism. This is no small thing, no ordinary march. It is a statement of survival.
The first of these marches took place in November 2023, just six weeks after the single most deadly day for Jews since the Holocaust. A day when Hamas murdered, raped, tortured and kidnapped over 1,400 innocent men, women and children.
At that time, the shock for many was not that global sympathy for Jews evaporated almost immediately, only the deeply naïve would have expected otherwise, but the speed and coordination with which the anti-Israel machine mobilised.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) applied for a licence to march in central London on 8 October, while Hamas was still operating inside Israel.
Ask not what they were marching against, but what they were marching for or in celebration of. Look at the genocidal chants, the flags, the banners. Notice the deafening silence when it came to condemning the murderers and the unrelenting arrogance in lecturing a minority with lived experience about what constitutes racism and hate speech.
By the time of the second march in December 2024, we no longer had to speculate about the effects of this toxic environment. The data confirmed our fears. We’d all seen it and felt it, the smashed windows of kosher shops, paint daubed on the walls of buildings housing Jewish charities, threats against Jewish schools and synagogues, marches purposefully routed to pass through known Jewish areas and so many of us having experienced direct incidents of abuse hurled in the streets.
Police statistics confirmed an unprecedented rise in antisemitic hate crimes in the UK, the sharpest since records began. Every day of 2024, more than 10 incidents were reported. And crucially, spikes in antisemitism correlated directly with the Saturday marches, with inflammatory coverage on the BBC and with the relentless demonisation of Israel by Hamas proxies.
And yet, what has been the response of so many who march “for Palestine” to this proven threat that the Jewish community in the UK now face? This appalling trend sees people justify the rise in antisemitism with a shrug: well, if only Israel wasn’t behaving the way it is, then we wouldn’t see this hate on the streets of the UK. How dare you suggest I’m an antisemite; I have lots of Jewish friends, it’s just Israel I have an issue with.
Really? Then why the age-old tropes about Jewish control of the media? Why the regurgitation of Nazi imagery in the depiction of Jews, the grotesque comparisons of the only Jewish state with Nazi Germany, complete with Holocaust imagery and terminology?
Why the blood libels, the “follow the money” jibes? Why the attacks on visibly Jewish people up and down the country every single week? These are not responses to Israeli policy. They are antisemitism, pure and simple.
The test of any society is whether it has the courage to name that hate for what it is, rather than excuse it away. One can criticise the policies and actions of the Israeli government without being antisemitic, but only if you want to. Too many prefer the easier route of a knowing nod and a whataboutery wink.
And yet, none of this is to deny the tragedy of the conflict itself. The loss of innocent life, Israeli and Palestinian alike, is a catastrophe that should devastate us all. The innocent people of Gaza, trapped under the iron fist of Hamas, have suffered enormously. Hamas was always incapable of being a partner for peace; its founding charter and reason for being calls for nothing less than the genocide of every Jew “from the river to the sea.” But tragically, the question we now must ask is whether Israel’s current government can be a partner for peace in its current guise.
The test of any society is whether it has the courage to name that hate for what it is, rather than excuse it away
Any prime minister who allows extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich into positions of power, who turns a blind eye to ultra-right-wing settler violence, has undoubtedly abdicated the responsibility of true statesmanship. We are right to demand that Israel do more to flood Gaza with aid, enable independent journalists to report from on the ground and move past the factually accurate, but tritely unachievable statement, that if Hamas simply released the hostages, then this conflict would be over.
What is needed now is leadership capable of imagining a future beyond endless war. Hamas has never possessed this; but too many Jews in Israel and the diaspora now fear that neither does Israel’s current government.
Until such vision emerges, it is the innocent who will continue to suffer.
Now, in September 2025, as we prepare for this third march, the situation is more frightening than ever. Britain’s Jewish community numbers just 270,000, less than 0.5% of the population, yet Jews are the target of over 33% of all hate crimes. Anti-Zionism has become the socially acceptable mask for the oldest hate, and it is having violent, measurable consequences. That is not sustainable. That is a warning, and we have seen throughout history where such warnings lead.
And what has changed since the last march in 2024? Things have only worsened. We now have a government preparing to recognise a Palestinian state, while 20 Jewish hostages still rot in Hamas tunnels after nearly 700 days of torment and while the same genocidal terrorists who started this war remain in power.
What better thing could you possibly be doing this Sunday than standing with your family and your community against hate?
We have a new political party led by a man expelled from Labour for enabling antisemitism, joined by a woman who once praised “violent resistance” and even celebrated the potential death of Western leaders.
We have a national broadcaster amplifying Hamas propaganda in documentaries, airing chants for the murder of Jews at concerts, and pushing blood libels through its flagship news.
Antisemitism festers in our cultural institutions, the largest teachers’ union passes anti-Jewish motions, a major supermarket chain boycotts Israeli goods under the banner of BDS, and NHS staff openly vilify British Jews, forcing patients to wonder whether they are safe even in the hands of doctors sworn to protect life.
Across politics and society, the mask of “anti-Zionism” has slipped. What is left is unvarnished antisemitism, snarling in full view.
This is Britain in 2025.
Which brings us back to Sunday.
Some may ask: why march? The answer is painfully clear: because history shows us what happens if we do nothing. In 2024, I wrote that the single greatest lesson of the Holocaust, the lesson too many in our community failed to fully grasp, is that no amount of assimilation, no degree of politeness, no attempt to hide, will shield us when institutions turn and the mob stirs.
When that happens, there is no façade, no safety: we are all just Jews.
We march for our ancestors, slaughtered in pogroms and the Holocaust. We march for the innocent men, women, and children tortured and murdered on 7 October. We march for the 20 living hostages still held and the bodies yet to be returned, and for our children, who will face an even graver threat if we fail to act now.
We long for a world free from hatred and extremism, a world in which we can exercise the self-determination that fuels the hate we face. Our march is not born of a desire for conflict; it is driven by the desperate hope for its end.
This Sunday, our cry will not be simply “never again.” That possibility may have existed in November 2023, or even December 2024. But as of September 2025, that ship has sailed. “Never again” is no longer a distant promise, it is an urgent imperative. To march against antisemitism today is not to hope for peace; it is to take a stand against the undeniable truth so many have refused to face: Jews may no longer be safe in Britain, and it is on each of us to demand a space for honest reckoning, and a path toward justice that cannot wait.
So, this Friday night, as you gather around the Shabbat table, ask yourself: what better thing could you possibly be doing this Sunday than standing with your family and your community against hate, and for the very future of the next generation of British Jewry?
If not now, when?
If not us, who?
Stand up. Speak out. Be proud.
See you on Sunday.
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