Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The revolt of the Jews of London

Hundreds of pro-Israel protesters gather in front of the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley after the building was defaced (Alamy)

Every now and then you see an event and you think to yourself: ‘This will go down in history.’ Last night’s revolt of the Jews of London against a ‘pro-Palestine’ mob is one such event.

Jews and their allies gathered at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley to defend its showing of a film about Hamas’s fascistic massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October. Unbelievably – or not, perhaps – the ‘Palestine solidarity’ set wanted the screening to be cancelled. No way, said the Jewish rebels, loudly and proudly, many of them draped in the Israeli flag. It was truly stirring stuff, a bold act of people’s defiance against cancel culture and the slow, lethal creep of a new anti-Semitism.

The ‘Palestine solidarity’ set wanted the screening to be cancelled

Let’s call it The Battle of Phoenix Cinema. On one side there was a motley crew of Palestine flag-wavers, curiously irate that a cinema was showing a film about the evils of Hamas.

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