CHRISTMAS is a time for messages of peace. Last Saturday, the Metropolitan Police intervened to prevent a major outbreak of disorder, a threat to peace on the streets of London.

Using powers under the Public Order Act, they imposed a section 14 condition designed to prevent serious disruption to the community. Dozens of police officers surrounded about 30 people drawn from members of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities, and some of no faith.

Led by a priest, they had gathered to sing reworded carols that drew attention to Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. Earlier in the day, the police had used the same powers to impose a curfew on another threatening event — PSC’s rally in Whitehall, which was part of a national day of action.

In both cases, they were probably right to do so. What could possibly constitute a greater threat to peace than people listening to carols which called for an end to genocide and Israel’s practice of the crime of apartheid?

The earlier rally had ended with a gathering outside Downing Street at which Michael Rosen read his poem Don’t Mention the Children. It was written in 2014 in response to the Israeli state authorities acting to prevent B’Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights body, from placing an advert listing the names of the more than 1,000 children slaughtered by Israel during its assault on Gaza that year. It contains the lines:

“People must understand that it would be dangerous
to know the names of the children.
The people must be protected from
knowing the names of the children.
The names of the children could spread
like wildfire.
The people would not be safe if they knew
the names of the children.”

When Michael finished, we read the names of just 50 of the children killed in Israel’s current genocide. Imagine how dangerous it would be if these names were known by everyone in Britain.

Imagine if everyone knew the harrowing findings of a recent study conducted by a Gaza-based NGO that 96 per cent of the children remaining in Gaza feel as though death is imminent, and 49 per cent wanted to die to end their trauma.

Imagine if everyone knew, because it was a major news story Amnesty International’s finding, that Israel is guilty of the crime of genocide, the crime for which it stands trial at the world’s highest court. Imagine if the BBC, when South Africa had presented its case to that court, had decided to broadcast it live instead of only broadcasting Israel’s defence of the case.

Imagine the threat to order such events would precipitate. An order which allows the government to continue to arm, lend military assistance to and treat as an ally, a state still ignoring the injunction from the International Court of Justice not to use starvation as a weapon of war.

An order in which companies like Barclays bank can make claims about respect for principles of ethical investment while refusing to divest from companies supplying weapons to Israel and still act as a primary dealer in Israeli government bonds.

An order in which British universities and local authorities can feel free to collectively invest billions of pounds in companies supporting Israel’s crimes.

For 15 months, the political Establishment has, to preserve this order, tried to sell the lie that history began on October 7 2023, and that people should view all of Israel’s actions through the lens of self-defence.

They tell us now that they want a ceasefire but seemingly only a ceasefire which would allow undisturbed the order that existed for Palestinians before October 2023: peace defined by the absence of the use of force, even as enshrined within international law, to resist an illegal occupation.

Rosen’s poem reminds us of the realities of “order and peace” before October 2023, an order in which Israel periodically “mowed the lawn” in Gaza, slaughtering Palestinians if not at the industrial scale and intensity we have seen now for 15 months.

The reality is that Israel has for 76 years maintained an unbroken chain of violence to dispossess an indigenous people, ethnically cleanse the majority of them, and subject those it does not ethnically cleanse or kill to a life under a system of apartheid that denies them rights across all of the land between the river and the sea.

Western governments who have provided support for this oppression have effectively told Palestinians for 76 years to make peace with this reality. But real peace, of course, can never be built on a foundation of injustice.

This is the age-old truth that the solidarity movement has been bringing to communities across Britain, whether through street mobilisations of historic size and duration, through boycotts and divestment campaigns of growing momentum and impact, and, yes, through simple acts of solidarity like the singing of carols.

One year ago, on Christmas Eve, the Palestinian priest Munther Isaac delivered a searing sermon from his pulpit in Bethlehem. He said to the world: “We will not accept your apology after the genocide. What has been done, has been done. I want you to look in the mirror and ask where was I?”

Those singing carols last Saturday were seeking to hold up Munther’s mirror outside Parliament. In their words:

“Sing all ye people,
Sing in indignation,
Be with the citizens of Palestine
Sing out for ceasefire
Ending of apartheid
O come, let's not deny it, O come, let’s not deny it, O come, let’s not deny it.
Tell all the world.”