OPINION: The idea that the hostages rally was apolitical is for the birds

I attended the Downing Street rally after the “March for Hostages”, though I had been sceptical.

Beyond the obvious demand for Hamas to release the hostages, the march’s overriding message focused on Keir Starmer’s recent statement regarding potential British recognition of a Palestinian state.

At best, this felt like a displacement activity, ignoring an obvious but uncomfortable fact: that there are leaders with far greater influence than Starmer over whether the hostages are released, not least Israel’s own prime minister.

Having worked with several families since the days following October 7, it seemed out of step with the politics of many of them and wildly out of kilter with their Israeli campaign.

The organisers intervened, not to help restore order and allow their invited speakers to finish, but to side with the mob and hook the rabbis

Nevertheless, I and others like me, put aside political quibbles and showed up. I wanted to stand with my community, in solidarity with the families of hostages to demand their release. The harrowing, sickening footage of Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, starved and helpless in the hands of murderous, sadistic captors chills the bones.

It makes clear the urgency. We have to raise our voices. We have to keep them on the agenda and if that means standing alongside people who are not our usual bedfellows and listening to messages and speakers we wouldn’t necessarily choose, then so be it.

What followed, however, was worse than the worst report you’ve read about it. The senior rabbis of progressive Judaism in this country, Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy were heckled with a vehemence and menace that I have never seen at a supposedly cross-communal event.

The organisers intervened, not to help restore order and allow their invited speakers to finish, but to side with the mob and hook the rabbis.

Onto the stage came the Reverend Hayley Ace, the event’s MC, which in this instance stood for master of censorship,  to usher the two rabbis off stage.

It was a textbook example of how easily democratic political movements can be steamrollered by autocratic ones if they are not aware or brave enough to stand up for themselves.

For our communal institutions this should be a watershed moment in who they choose to align with and on what terms. The rally organisers, “Stop the Hate” had sent a whatsapp message to their supporters. “There may be some voices on Sunday we don’t all align with,” it read, “and that’s okay.”

I understand Stop the Hate is a broad coalition but it is a pitiful indictment of some of their supporters that this needed saying. Subsequent events showed that, in practice, it was a dishonest message too. For some of the organisers and the baying mob, difference was demonstrably not OK.

Some have said that the rabbis had been too political. But many of the speakers brought their own politics to the stage in some way, and the level of invective against the British government from some was more strident than is sensible and far from apolitical.

Only the progressive rabbis were silenced.

“We call for an end to this war, through a deal that brings the hostages home, and the permanent restoration of humanitarian aid to Gaza”, the rabbis had attempted to say. This is a call heard the length and breadth of Israel by hostage families and their supporters daily. The rabbis had clearly made the mistake of thinking they were speaking at a hostage rally.

And for some people it was.

For the organisers and many in the crowd, however, this was less about coming together and tolerating differences in the name of the shared goal of freeing the hostages, and more an assertion of dominance over the Jewish street

For Adam Ma’anit who bravely shared the story of Hamas livestreaming the murder and kidnap of his family members and demanded more for the remaining hostages from an indifferent world. For Ayelet Svatitzky, whose two brothers were murdered by Hamas, one on October 7 and one in captivity. Their voices needed to be heard and as they spoke, any political qualms I had evaporated into the Whitehall sun. Because their stories need to be told and retold and no one can be allowed to look away.

For the organisers and many in the crowd, however, this was less about coming together and tolerating differences in the name of the shared goal of freeing the hostages, and more an assertion of dominance over the Jewish street. The  “unity” on show was a sham. It was not a unity of consensus around a shared message. It was the faux unity of not upsetting those who shout the loudest and most violently.

The Chief Rabbi, in his speech, played the unity game with aplomb. He read the room.

But some rooms need to be more than read. Rooms where gently worded dissent is met with intimidatory, maniacal yelling need to be challenged. Rooms where the organisers do not protect their speakers but their verbal attackers must be confronted.

The final speaker, Natasha Hausdorff, came to the stage to a hero’s welcome. She could have used her status to restore some sense of order, decency and unity to the event. Instead she further riled the crowd, congratulating them on their treatment of the rabbis. It was disappointing to see a popular, charismatic speaker further incite a crowd against a perceived – and to my mind unfairly maligned – enemy within.

As a community we constantly remind ourselves of the dangers that await when “good people do nothing.” This has always been a democratic community in which a variety of views are considered legitimate. On Sunday, two Jewish leaders attempted to represent opinions held by a large proportion of British Jews in the most moderate of ways and were steamrollered by extremists. And too many good people did nothing. If they continue to do nothing, the future of our communal politics will be ugly, shrunken and undemocratic.

We must all continue to strive for the release of the hostages. Time is running out and ideally their release will come before any future rallies. If it does not, however, then I hope at the next rally I attend, honesty about the steps needed to release them will not be considered taboo.

• David Krikler is a communications consultant and former Israeli Embassy communications advisor