Peace, Israel and the voices of reason.

Peace, Israel and the voice of reason.

On a day of sweltering heat in London, a small knot of  passionate voices could be heard quite clearly across a similarly simmering West End. This was the peace rally on behalf of peace, tolerance, goodwill to everybody, kindness and generosity to one and all. It probably sounds a ridiculous plea to those who preach the gospel of evil, hatred and murderous intent but, after the recent events at both Manchester, London Bridge, Westminster and last night Finsbury Park in North London, we seem to have reached a critical crossroads, a signpost that could lead into the most treacherous territories.

But in a little corner of London we all gathered next to the American Embassy and pumped out an incessant barrage of peace songs, of commonsense, of civilised behaviour and there was a willingness to live at one with each other. This almost sounds like a heavily simplistic cry from the heart but the impression is that a crossroads has been reached in the great global quest for rationality. Humanity has  to be at its most united and there has to be a readiness to believe that there is a way out of this, an answer to this cynical nastiness, this repetitive ill will and hostility when quite clearly this is not a way of solving underlying problems for which there can be no definitive solution.

Still my wife and I did our very best to lend a supportive voice and presence to an increasingly disillusioned society that strives desperately to hold everything together in the face of obvious adversity. We all arrived together en masse and barked out our enduring love for Israel, a country that has been tragically torn apart over the years, horribly and unforgivably disfigured by violence and murder, a country broken and fractured by the combined forces of the bomb, gun and the bullet. But now a small, but nevertheless important representation of British Jews had given Israel a vital projection to the outside world and suddenly Israel felt completely united and more loved than ever before.

But not for the first time the British Jewish community boomed out their conciliatory chants, their naked anger and fury, their commendable opposition to the forces of vile nationalism and extremism. From far and wide they came, seemingly overlooked voices in the wilderness, voices that seemed to be carried right into the heartland of the West End - Oxford Street and Marble Arch, London's vast shopping streets that were, you felt sure, deeply and spiritually attached to events nearby. A yellow and brown tourist bus passed by and the mutual appreciation was there for all to see.

And so it was that a huge forest of blue and white Israeli flags flew proudly in the blameless blue sky where a kind of metaphorical warmth was somehow entirely fitting on this Sunday in June, a day  when high summer had arrived with a vengeance. There were hundreds of blue and white Israel flags, a whole variety of speakers expressing themselves clearly, loudly and categorically. They were understandably furious, fired and fuelled with all the pent up anguish that simply poured out onto the grey pavements with real intensity and emotion.

There were times throughout that afternoon when I looked across at the huge placards, the banners, almost locking together inextricably and firmly linked together in mutual harmony and unity. For what seemed like ages we seemed to be hemmed into a corner, barricaded in, corralled and trapped. It's hard to know why but it did seem that maybe our voices were about to fall on deaf ears, swallowed up and drowned in a sea of oblivion, never to be given the proper platform they so fully deserved.

As the afternoon reached its most emotive point the people spoke and then sung with feeling, fervour and an infectious zest for life. They sounded like the stirringly sonorous choir that couldn't be repressed for any longer. They shouted Shame, Shame on You! We Want Peace. You Want War. Keep off our Streets,a permanently unifying influence and then, delightfully, the Israeli national anthem topped off by a repertoire of Jewish melody making that swelled my heart and those around me. They waved their fists at the enemy literally yards away and for a moment or two, your heart began to churn with undisguised fear and anxiety.

But then once the speakers had made their most sterling contribution to the afternoon, the chants became progressively louder and louder, the heavy police presence spreading welcome re-assurance.  Then we began to wonder, with much justification, whether our voices had been warmly received by a public that had now become hardened by terror and bloodthirsty aggression. Could this tiny corner of the West End be heard on some remote tropical island?  Had they been  widely acknowledged by a public who just wanted to rally together and dissociate itself with war and conflict?

So at roughly 5pm in the afternoon a silence began to fall across the West End of London. This had been my childhood on a Sunday afternoon, a time when everybody could open their back door at any time of the day, invite the neighbours in for a friendly cup of tea, coffee, sugar or milk, finish off the Sunday paper crosswords and still have time for a convivial pint or two with our family and friends. But now in June 2017 a sense of calm and stillness had fallen almost reverentially over the West End. A couple of gulls and birds seemed to swoop and dart playfully in the soft rays of London's evening sunshine.

 We had achieved our objectives, we had done what we had set out to do and we had vocalised our frustration, our sense of abiding injustice, our inner need to keep the whole peace agenda firmly to the fore. Is it too much to hope that one day peace will finally break out, that something good might happen. But the world keeps fighting, keeps blowing everything up, keeps killing, keeps raging against that dying light. One day though, the world will wake up with a clear head and find there was nothing worth fighting about? Maybe one day we will shake hands, drop the boom boom of ammunition and arms and replace co-operation with confrontation. We have to talk and we have to communicate on all levels and we have to believe that it will happen one day. It is our fondest hope.