Why did an 'openly Jewish' man cross the road?

He wanted to be safe … but not yet

There was quite a kerfuffle recently when a man tried to cross the street in central London. Fearing that the man might come to harm, a policeman attempted to keep him safe. Unfortunately, the man did not want to be kept safe. That is not to say that he wanted to come to harm. Nor did he want to cause any harm. But there is good reason to think – and if this Irregular Thoughts series is about anything, it is about thinking based on good reason – the man wanted to place himself at risk before restoring his safety.

The incident I am referring to will be well-known to readers based in the UK. Others will want an explanation (which follows below). But, even in the UK, the why’s and the wherefore’s of the event have largely been lost in the subsequent noise.

The facts are not, I think, in dispute. During a pro-Palestinian rally in Aldwych, London on 13 April, Gideon Falter tried to walk across the street. Falter is Chief Executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism and, on this occasion, he was wearing a skull cap. He was prevented from crossing the street, not by the marchers, but by the police. The event made the news at midday the following Friday when a video emerged of a policeman barring Falter’s way, saying: “You are quite openly Jewish. This is a pro-Palestinian march. I am not accusing you of anything, but I am worried about the reaction to your presence.” Later in the same video, Falter was threatened with arrest if he did not leave the area because his mere “presence” was said to be “antagonising”.

The incident made the news again that evening when the police issued an apology for one of their officers having used the phrase, “openly Jewish”. The incident featured in more news the next day when the police apologised a second time because the first apology had said of Falter (and those filming him) that “they must know that their presence is provocative”. Wiser thoughts down at Scotland Yard had rumbled that it’s not clever to double down on the idea that the mere presence of a Jewish person is provocative.

Then Falter called for the Met Chief, Sir Mark Rowley, to resign. That triggered more news. In fact, it triggered two parallel rounds of news. One set of reports indicated that the reason the Met Chief was being called upon to resign was on account of the “openly Jewish” remark and the messed-up apologies. To many people, that was an absurd reason for the Chief to have to resign.

But another set of reports had Falter calling for the Met Chief’s resignation on the very different basis that the Chief had allowed "countless antisemitic hate crimes" to be committed on the streets of London as a result of his failure to curtail the marches. Reactions to that explanation probably depended on one’s prior view of the reasonableness of allowing the marches.  

The actual petition calling for the Met Chief’s resignation was in the form of a lengthy statement by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) which mentioned all of the above points and more besides. It was a bit of a ramble and so it was not surprising at all that news outlets were divided over how to select the key point to highlight. Those reports that focussed on the language used by the individual police officer managed to make the CAA look rather stupid. In future, I hope the CAA choose their own language more carefully when making grand announcements.

In subsequent interviews, Falter has said that he doesn’t blame the individual officer(s) who barred his way. His complaint is that marches should not be allowed which contain, in his words, “displays of anti-Jewish racism and [the] glorification of terrorism.”

There are, I suspect, many protestors who would challenge that characterisation of the recent pro-Palestine demonstrations. They would probably say that their rallies are simply peaceful shows of support for Palestinians in Gaza. But one thing we can be sure of: the police on duty clearly agreed with Falter’s assessment. If that were not the case – if the police officers on duty thought that all the marchers could be relied upon to be peaceful and non-racist – why on earth would they have considered that a man crossing the road while being Jewish was in any way a threat to himself or to anyone else?

Falter wants the marches banned. He has told us so. He wants senior officers in the Met to recognise that the marches are not law-abiding. It seems clear that Falter thought that, by walking across the road, he could test that point. The fact that he was barred from doing so, and the manner in which he was barred, has served to demonstrate his point very effectively, albeit not in the way he intended.

And yet the debate has almost entirely been around the language and the behaviour of the frontline police, not the conduct of the marchers that influenced the police’s thinking. Some, including the Prime Minister, have criticised the police officer. Others, including the Met Chief, have said the officer acted commendably. The Times newspaper has gone so far as to express the view that the manner of the officer’s attempt to keep Falter safe was a sign of the police’s “antisemitic bigotry”.

But the marches go on. So the answer to the question “Why did the openly Jewish man cross the road” is, ironically, “to get absolutely nowhere.”

[Note: The article has been updated to include the word “ironically” in the final paragraph in place of a different word and to correct a typing error in the full title of the CAA.]