 Britain has erupted in protest against Israel's onslaught on Gaza. On Saturday, thousands of people joined a march in central London calling for an end to the bombing of Gaza and the occupation of Palestine. Organisers estimated that 100,000 people attended the demonstration, which was called or organized by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain. Now, in terms of the size as this footage zooms out here, you can see that it's not just that initial crowd, but this march was snaking all the way down the road, all the way to Marble Arch down Hyde Park, so really, really huge. Now, also flying the flag of Palestinian Solidarity this weekend were two Premier League footballers. So after winning the FA Cup final, one of the probably the highest profile game in UK sport, Hamza Choudhury and Wesley Fafana held up the Palestine flag. Now, these are both players for Leicester City who had won the FA Cup and Hamza Choudhury went on to collect his medal wrapped in the flag. So really powerful image, super symbolic. To my mind, both those protests in London and across the country and the flying of the flag at the FA Cup final were really, really inspiring demonstrations of solidarity. People say, I'm willing to go into the center of town to take out time from my Saturday to go and walk in solidarity with Palestine. And then at the FA Cup, you've got people, it's probably the proudest moment of their life. And they're saying, what I want to, the message I want to send at this period in time is that right now, in a moment that my whole career has led to, I am thinking of the Palestinians. I'm thinking of the struggle of people I relate to when they are fighting against injustice. To me, that's incredibly powerful, especially in terms of the football example. It also follows in the footsteps of other footballers who we've celebrated recently for standing up for the cause of justice. You could think of Marcus Rashford with free school meals, an ex footballer Gary Neville, and he's talking about cutthroat capitalism. Very, inspirational really. Yet not everyone is happy to see these working class celebrities make their voices heard. Stephen Pollard is the editor of the Jewish Chronicle. And in response to the waving of the flag, Pollard wrote, the FA needs to act immediately to discipline them. So just the act of waving the Palestine flag, when Palestinians are being bombed, when children are dying, he thinks that should get you disciplined. Someone else who joined the cry of opposition and anger at these footballers for having an opinion was Gabriel Milland. Now, he's a former special advisor to Boris Johnson, now a someone who works at a PR firm. He tweeted, presumably those defending Chowdry and Fafana won't mind if Chelsea's Jewish owner, a resident of Israel, sends the team out wearing IDF uniforms when they play next week. Football belongs to everyone, not one side in a war. Now, that tweet is from, presumably a smart guy, lots of followers, he's worked in Downing Street, influential guy, and it's such a ridiculous argument. And I think it is quite telling of how desperate now the supporters of Israel and Israel's government are getting, because, most obviously, a military uniform and a flag are not the same thing. So he's saying, what would you think if they came out in an IDF uniform? If you said an Israel flag, maybe the comparison would work. If footballers wanted to go out holding the Israel flag, maybe they would have done. But no one really wants to, because the vast majority of people in this country can see that in this war, there is one side which is systematically bombing civilians and has killed over 200 people. And there is one side who is resisting occupation and has barely any power, barely any force. It's completely desperate. And quite rightly, the solidarity of people in this country lies with the people who are suffering occupation, who are suffering apartheid. And to me, it just seems, you know, both of those tweets, these people should be disciplined. This should not be allowed, because what if the other side wants to do the same thing? It's showing that there is no confidence among the advocates of Israel that they can rally any support for their cause. So what they have to, I suppose, fall back on is this idea that we have to ban any expression of support for either side. We are essentially going to call the manager if anyone comes out and tells us their opinion about this war, because they know that public opinion is going against them. Comparing them having the Palestinian flag to somebody having an Israel flag, I think is the right comparison. And of course, they can flow whatever flag they like. It could be the pride flag. It could be the Union flag, the St George Cross. People might disagree with it. People might think, oh, I think that's a bit wet, or I don't like that, or, you know, they might be homophobes, they might not like the pride flag. But the point is, there is an element of freedom of expression with regards to football, sport generally, of course. And the idea that we don't have politics in sport, well, okay, I'll remind you of that statement the next time we have, you know, November come around and everybody has a poppy on their shirt. And there's a minute silence, as I think is appropriate in a minute silence to remember the war dead. Then, of course, you have some players like the manager Matich or James McLean for personal reasons choose not to do that. And they get a lot of hassle from fans. But I think most intelligent people say, that's their choice, right? It's about freedom of political conscience and freedom of expression. This is exactly the same. And so, I mean, imagine if, for instance, a footballer, please one day, you know, the game isn't so inherently homophobic that people couldn't be outwardly, you know, expressive and open and honest about their sexuality, if a football has a pride flag. Now, imagine if a person on Twitter said, that's, you know, unacceptable, keep politics out of sport, I don't want to see that flag. Well, is it hurting you? I mean, a lot of these people claim to be liberals, right? If it's not hurting you, what's the problem? You know, I would personally find an Israel flag on a football pitch if the person wasn't from Israel. Okay, it's a bit strange. And so I can, if I'm trying my absolute best to get into the head of Gabriel Milland, maybe that's what you might say, well, he's not from Palestine. Why would you do that? That at least is a coherent answer. But I mean, what he tweeted and what a few like Stephen Pollard as well. I mean, like you say, Michael, I think it doesn't really say much about their intelligence, which is positive. But more importantly, I think it's, it's really illustrative of the levels of desperation we're now seeing, where people who've moaned about cancel culture, and their aggressive left, and how we don't protect freedom of speech, many of these exact same people who've apparently been exasperated by identity politics, and not being able to say what you really think. Many of the exact same people are now saying that it's appalling that these two footballers took a flag onto a football pitch. And not that you just disagree, they should be disciplined. I mean, it's really, really utterly ridiculous. It's not congruent with anything we've seen in sports recently. And I think it shows the level to which the argument against that kind of gesture is kind of full. Nobody would say very, very, very few people in civil society would say that. But again, Michael, and finally, I think this is a really important point, people like Gabriel Miller and Stephen Pollard, they have been a variable in our conversation about Israel Palestine, I think to an unreflective extent, when you look at public opinion more broadly, I would love to see some polling on that. Is that okay for them to have that flag there? I think most people would say, well, you can have the St George Cross, or there was also a Nigerian flag. Why not a Palestine one? Sure. What's the problem? Who's being hurt? Apparently, that's too complicated for these liberals to understand. These people do seem desperate because the overwhelming majority of public opinion in this country and across the world, quite frankly, is with the people who are being subjected to occupation and apartheid because it's actually quite as much as there are people who try and obfuscate what's going on. It's clear what's going on. There is one side who is being bombed by the world's most advanced military who are being occupied, who are being subject to apartheid, and there are one side who is committing all of those atrocities. And yes, there will be some Israeli civilians who are subject to rockets from Hamas, and that's a tragedy. Anyone hurt in war, that's a tragedy. But in this situation, you have one side who have the overwhelming force and who are quite frankly perpetuating the war through this occupation and through apartheid, and one side who are being victims to it. I suppose that reality, that basic truth, is why 300,000 people plus have signed a petition calling on the UK to place sanctions on Israel. So this is a petition on the Houses of Parliament website. So this means that it should now be considered for debate in Parliament because it got over 100,000. At the time that we went live, it had 328,000 people having signed it. That's probably gone up slightly now. And the petition says the government should introduce sanctions against Israel, including blocking all trade and in particular arms. It's disproportionate treatment of Palestinians and settlements that are regarded by the international community as illegal are on a front to civilized society. Now, I think this is quite significant and quite important because that's, you know, I mean, I don't think that is a radical demand, but it would have been considered and is considered, you know, by many people in, I suppose, the establishment or people who try and set public discourse and say, what is legitimate and what is not a legitimate demand to say, oh, boycott, divention, sanctions, inherently suspicious. Now you've got 300,000 people signing a petition and saying, oh, let's do it. Let's put sanctions on Israel. There are a few things which I think are incontrovertible, which is that the United Kingdom should not be exporting technology to the Israelis, which can have military applications. So, you know, yeah, in Britain since 2014, we've exported that we know of around half a billion pounds worth of kit to Israel since 2014. Not huge sums of money. You know, it's not like the the BAE deal with the Saudis. And what does that consist of? Small arms, you know, guns and so on. But generally speaking, it's components for rather high tech stuff. So for instance, even with their nuclear capability, which includes a submarine element, some of that technology is being exported by British manufacturers, British companies. I think it's it's a perfectly legitimate thing to say. First off the bat, Britain should not be exporting technology to a country which is using its military like this. And I think anybody that would say that's outrageous, I just don't think they should be taken seriously. The idea that that's simply not on the table as leverage by which we can stop these atrocities against human rights. I don't think that's credible. After the military applications, I think you clearly have to say these are illegal settlements, therefore, products manufactured, made, mined, grown in these areas clearly, they should not be, I think, imported into the United Kingdom. Again, I think any of this is no, that's, that's terrible. How could you say that things produced from stolen land are therefore, you know, simply not permitted? There's again another, we talk about this tomorrow, there's a legal argument about this as well, you know, products made on illegally occupied land, you know, de facto, maybe illegal products. Of course, that doesn't really get applied, but it's a conversation to have. And then there's a broader thing, okay, well, beyond the settlements, beyond military exports, what's our economic relationship with Israel going to be? And I personally think, I think boycott divestment and sanctions is a really, really powerful way of going about things. You know, we're told incessantly, violence begets violence, you have to be peaceful. Well, BDS is peaceful. It's peaceful. So if you're really insisting people remain peaceful, and then you say, well, actually, sanctions aren't acceptable, you're not really talking about political tactics or what's ethically appropriate, you're trying to basically stop anything which may change Israel's behavior in Palestine, which right now is leading in Gaza to effectively an open air prison for millions of people. And it's clearly compromising inalienable human rights and rights to self determination self government. And I think that that clearly can change potentially if enough countries impose sanctions on Israel, and it's peaceful. You can't have one or the other. You have to be nonviolent, but you can't use sanctions. Because I think people that say those two things at the same time, again, not credible, not serious, ignore them. Now in this section, we've been talking about, you know, lots of the inspiring things that have been going on this weekend when it comes to Palestine solidarity in the UK. And the overwhelming majority of this is anti-racists who have solidarity with people who are subject to occupation and subject to oppression. It is, I mean, I think it's wonderful to see. But you probably will also have seen a video on social media this weekend of a convoy of cars with Palestinian flags driving through St. John's Woods. That's the majority, or maybe not majority, but it's got a large Jewish Jewish population. And there were people shouting, or at least one man who appears to shout really, really horrific, nasty anti-Semitism from the car, including rape threats, you know, the kind of thing that no one should ever say appalling. And it is worth saying everyone should 100% condemn what we saw in that video for arrests have been made by the Met Police. Now for me, you know, that obviously soured some of those events from the weekend. I don't think in any way it overshadows any of them because we saw 100,000 people, super peaceful, solid heuristic, anti-racist. It's super inspiring to see that. And actually, to be honest, I do think that the outpouring of condemnation that followed that nasty video, I think does show that the overwhelming vast majority of people involved in this movement have nothing whatsoever to do with anti-Semitism and condemn it outright. And that's what we saw happen. So yes, it was right that we saw so many people share that video and say this is wrong, but also that should absolutely not tar what is an anti-racist peaceful movement who are fighting for something positive and to end an occupation and apartheid.