OPINION: The war in Gaza appears over. The ideological battle in the UK is not

As the long-hoped-for Gaza deal solidifies, I look at my social media and see two entirely different sets of responses.

On the pro-Israel side, there is hope and jubilation.

“We will finally get to take off our stickers and use our tape as tape”, said Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin, whose son, Hirsh, was murdered in Hamas captivity. Other people, including Mike Huckabee, the American ambassador to Israel, have spoken about how they are looking forward to never having to wear a hostage pin again.

These statements are entirely understandable. They are also diametrically opposite to the responses of the wider anti-Israel movement in the West.

“We won’t stop marching until the genocide ends. We won’t stop marching until the arms are no longer sold. We won’t stop marching until the war criminals face justice. We won’t stop marching until Palestine is free from occupation”, was the line from ‘Your Party’, the protest vehicle with severe mechanical difficulties set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.

“It is not time to stop our resistance. It is time to finish what the Palestinians started on October 7th”, wrote a university professor. “Those in power will try everything to make us move on. But continue calling for boycotts, continue isolating the settler colony until it is dismantled, and Palestine is free.”

A student group in Leeds circulated a message saying “Our work was never about a ceasefire…our duty is to ensure Zionism is completely eradicated.”

In other words, the wider pro-Palestinian movement is making it clear that the protests are not over, but are instead transferring to a new phase of ‘struggle’. What all such groups are effectively saying, in a variety of different ways, is as follows: They see the situation in Gaza as the symptom and Israel – and Zionism – is the malady. And you can treat a symptom, but ultimately you have to deal with the malady.

Their shopping list of demands hasn’t gone away. The end of any arms sales to Israel. An economic, academic and cultural boycott. The targeting of any Israeli person who was in the IDF in any capacity over the last two years – or just targeting Israelis altogether.

In this effort, they will be aided by a growing number of MPs – not just among the so-called ‘Gaza Independents’, but the Green Party, as well as elements of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

There are a mixture of people within the International Watermelon Alliance. There are the grifters, who having previously made their personalities all about another specific cause, effortlessly jumped on-board the Keffiyeh cult immediately after 7 October, sensing that this would either be a great outlet for raking in cash from the credulous, or simply a way to further feed their voracious, insatiable egoes.

But there are also true believers, sucked up into the cult of anti-Zionism by a toxic blend of mindless Tiktok videos, nauseatingly self-satisfied ‘post-colonial’ screeds on university sociology reading lists, and a burning desire to be a part of ‘something that matters’. These people genuinely think that they are going to be telling their grandchildren about how they heroically raised barricades inside their university libraries, or scrawled some graffiti a hundred yards from a business where the Managing Director once went on holiday to Tel Aviv. “The Most Important Cause of our Lives”, proclaimed one university society poster advertising an event on the second anniversary of 7 October 2023, the day that Hamas murdered 1,200 people and took more than 250 as hostages, advising fellow travellers to “grab your flag and your keffiyah”.

This isn’t going to calm down now that a ceasefire agreement has been reached. In fact, chances are that the demonstrations will increase in regularity and shrillness. A cursory glance at social media will show certain journalists whose hostility to Israel is undisguised cannot wait to be able to enter Gaza freely and misreport on the situation there. The ICJ case brought by South Africa (the same South Africa which three weeks after bringing that case welcomed the leader of the militias carrying out mass murder in Sudan, lest we forget) is still ongoing. The attempts to try and turn Israel into an international pariah are decades-long; they are not going to let up now.

It has been a very difficult two years for our community; the temptation will now be to treat this conflict as being over – and at least in Gaza, God willing, it will be. But the conflict here is far from finished. It will continue – and our enemies here, far from being exhausted, have been energised like never before. If we lose sight of that, they will not hesitate to exploit that advantage to its utmost.