I’d take that 100,000 figure with a huge bucket of salt, demo organisers are always trying to make it sound like they have more support than they actually do, police estimates for the numbers attending are much lower.
Sheer numbers in any case don’t make it a battle, most people there were not involved in any violence, if they were and if it was a battle we would have seen widespread damage and injury or even loss of life. Carol Gould herself was obviously not hiding the fact that she opposed the marchers but wasn’t injured in any way. It seems that she felt intimidated by a big guy talking loudly at her but these debates often get heated.
I don’t see why we should ban the marchers, let them demonstrate, let them have their say, if anybody gets violent arrest them and leave the others.
I witnessed the equivalent protest in birmingham first hand as I work in the city, there were about 200 mostly palestinian people protesting from a metro region with a population of around 4m (if we count using US standards for comparison), of which a few hundred thousand are muslims. No violence, just some chanting, some speeches and some bemused onlookers. It’s easy to be misled as to the scale and intensity of what happened if you only read the press, the reality is often different.
