At 12:30 I arrived at Kensington tube station, where a few young men in black with covered faces and nervous eyes were walking into the tube station. I made a beeline for the SWP paper seller, and asked her what the situation was at the embassy; she didn't know, not having been there. She sold me a SW and asked me if I wanted to join. Politely, I declined.
Out of the station and on instinct I turned right, which turned out to be the right direction. Someone from another socialist org told me there was an unofficial gathering of around 100 people not far ahead, with the official demo further along. I hung around the unofficial gathering for a bit. There was a great deal of conversation and it seemed to me interest from passers by. One stall-holder was arguing with a woman, a passer by who sounded like she was using the Holocaust to justify Israel's war, for he was pointing out to her that you can't use historical battering of the Jews to justify battering Arabs. Oh, I don't want to batter Arabs she said. That's not what I meant at all.
I walked on to try and locate the embassy and saw someone I recognised from Genoa, and chatted with her for a bit. And then the demo arrived on the scene. The sight made an audible impression on a woman who I assumed was a passer by, who just breathed 'fu-uck' to her companion as the head of the march appeared. I guess it's a spectacle you don't see that often, and was probably given greater resonance by that week's very public discussions of 'Bloody Sunday': the way a march is a time-honoured manifestation of protest, anger and organisation, as well as the danger and chaos it can imply when you're actually there. 'Fuck' indeed.
It was a pretty angry, emotional protest. As you can imagine, the Israeli embassy doesn't exactly advertise itself to casual visitors. There's a hotel on one side, a clothes shop on the other and some gates in the middle. This is presumably the embassy entrance, and it was surrounded by cops, journos and the usual 'inconspicuous' blokes with no apparent function. We presumably weren't allowed to blockade/picket the embassy (which is a shame), so we all had to stand on the opposite side of the road and shout slogans for the duration. A coachload of squaddies passed by at one point, and some couldn't help shouting 'terrorists' at them…The squaddies themselves displayed the usual mix of indignation and facile amusement at, and thoughtful observation of, us. Time was difficult to judge, as were numbers. Anyone got an accurate estimate on numbers?

These were the slogans used, constantly shouted on a rota,:

Stop the war/Stop the crime/ ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE!

Victory to/ INTIFADA!

Arial Sharon/You can't hide/WE'LL GET YOU FOR GENOCIDE!

FREE/Free/PALESTINE!

'Palestine will be free/ From the river to the sea'

and a provocative 'No Justice/NO PEACE!'

but I most appreciated being able to say:

Sharon/ TERRORIST! /Bush and Blair/ TERRORISTS!

For the simple reason that, while these individuals are terror-mongers, one isn't allowed to say so in the current, bourgeois public discourse, for fear of being branded traitor or something. So it was just a blessed relief to be able to speak truth and to escape the censorship for a while.
Also we had the now-standard 'George Bush/we know you/YOUR DADDY WAS A KILLER TOO', and at one point some young men started a 'one solution/revolution' chant which gained some popularity, although some refused to say it because it was altogether too SWP.

By and large, it was a very passionate, if occasionally uncertain demo. One woman took the megaphone and outlined (articulately) the crimes of the occupation, and then said 'and what are we going to do about it?'. She was met, embarrassingly, with silence. 'Fight back!' she said, and of course the crowd immediately began to chant 'fight back! Fight back!' It was an embarrassingly inarticulate and sheep-like moment in an otherwise inspiring afternoon. One wonders if this reflects a genuine political uncertainty on our part, or rather a failure of language, particularly the semiotics of such a demo to engage with complexity…
Anyway, I believe there was also a picket of Selfridges, which sells goods made in the occupied territories marked 'Made In Israel' (!), on the same day; it was announced that some patrons had decided to withdraw credit from the well known bazaar once they were made aware. Can anyone confirm this, or give an account of the picket?

I wrote all that a few days ago, and it's struck me since that the demo could easily be interpreted as a demonstration for Palestinian nationalism, rather than the more inclusive and visionary demo it might have seemed. Where were the representatives of Israeli opposition to the occupation? It was militant, which is cool (I would have been well up for more, er, radical action had it been on the cards), but it seemed at times as pure Palestinian militancy, rather than some kind of pan-revolutionary protest.
In other words, is any radically advanced, visionary Palestine the same as the 'pure' Palestine state that some nationalists might want?

But a Free Palestine? Yeah, I'm all for it. May it be so.