STEPHEN POLLARD: The pro-Palestine protest on Armistice Day must have been the largest anti-Semitic demonstration in British history... but the BBC turned a blind eye

Jewish families being 'targeted' by pro-Palestinian activists with green smoke bombs who hurl abuse at them as they leave the synagogue. 

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove forced to call on a police escort to get home as anti-Israel protesters threaten him in a train station. Four police officers injured after demonstrators throw fireworks at them.

Then there are the posters and banners of hate – the Star of David intertwined with a swastika, President Biden caricatured as a devil-horned Jew, a snake in the colours of Israel strangling the world – and so on. 

And I haven't even got on to the graffiti saying 'Gaza A Real Holocaust', or the woman videoed calling for 'Death to all Jews' or even the marchers decked in Hamas headbands.

To my mind, the Armistice Day pro-Palestine protest – with its reported 300,000 marchers and default chant of with 'From the river to the sea', which calls for the elimination of Israel and its 9.7 million population – must have been the largest anti-Semitic demonstration in British history.

I'm sure most of the protesters were marching for peace. But if even one per cent of them agree with that chant or the messages of those banners they were happy to walk alongside, that would mean more Jew haters than the worst previous such march at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 – when between 2,000 and 3,000 supporters of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists took to the streets of east London.

Yet listen to our national broadcaster, the BBC, and it was nothing more than a fun, uplifting family day out. 

In her report, BBC reporter Frances Reid informed viewers that, 'there have just been people peacefully protesting... it has been more of a family feel throughout the day'.

Just in case viewers didn't get the message that the march was A GOOD THING, Ms Reid told us that she had seen a placard reading: 'Peace for Palestine, peace for Israel, peace for the world'.

Oh yes, it was all so very kumbaya. She went on: 'That's what people here wanted to do. They wanted to mark Armistice Day as well: some people were wearing poppies as well as carrying Palestinian flags.  

'I think that was what they wanted to get across, that they wanted it to be a peaceful demonstration.'

It's a strange definition of a peaceful demonstration that is the largest gathering of anti-Semites in British history. But each to their own.

The BBC wasn't alone. Channel 4 News posted on social media that 'after being branded 'hate marchers' by the Home Secretary, a massive pro-Palestinian protest passed off peacefully, with hundreds of thousands in attendance. The only scuffles on the day involved far-Right protesters who clashed with police'. After ridicule on social media, Channel 4 deleted the post.

For both news organisations, the appalling violence from a few hundred loathsome far-Right thugs provided the perfect excuse to ignore what was actually happening on a march that meant countless Jews were too terrified to go into central London.

The BBC home editor, Mark Easton, told us that 'the atmosphere as the rally began was relaxed and good natured. But from early in the day police had been concerned about what they categorised as a Right-wing counter-protest'.

The rest of his report was then focused almost entirely on the far-Right violence, with only a cursory mention of the march itself at the end.

And had you watched only the BBC, you might have had no idea until late in the evening that Michael Gove had been followed and then set upon in Victoria Station.

But then our national broadcaster seemed determined to stick with its message of 'a family feel throughout the day'.

The truth is very different. As Home Secretary Suella Braverman said, doubling down on earlier comments, the march polluted the streets of London with 'anti-Semitism, violence and hate'.

• Stephen Pollard is Editor at Large of The Jewish Chronicle.