A decade or so ago, my son and I went on a motoring holiday to rural Wales. For me, there were two high points of that holiday: first, a visit to Powis Castle that housed a fraction of Robert Clive’s post-Plassey loot and, second, a pilgrimage to the second-hand bookshops of Hay-on-Wye.

We didn’t spend the night in Hay but in the neighbouring village of Baskerville — chosen entirely on account of its name and its association. In most small villages of Britain, the thing to do is to locate the parish church. A walk through the cemetery and a close examination of the gravestones offer the best insights into local history. There, I discovered that the Baskerville family line had gone extinct sometime in the early 20th century. The last son and heir to the family name had died, fighting for king and country, in some muddy field of Flanders in 1917-18.

More than a century after the great upheaval, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate the havoc resulting from the Great War of 1914-18. What had begun as competitive bravado involving the grandsons of Queen Victoria turned into a monumental bloodbath of epic proportions. The quantum of sadness the four-year global misadventure brought to Europe is incalculable. On paper, and despite the millions dead throughout the Empire, Britain was among the victors, but this victory also resulted in the crippling of its ruling elite. It broke the back of high-minded Victorian imperialism and, in effect, destroyed the will that had kept the British Empire going.

The larger historical significance of the Great War took some time to sink in but within a short time Armistice Day (November 11) and Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph in Whitehall and countless war memorials all over the country assumed special significance. With the ubiquitous red poppy as the symbol, it was the time Britain paid homage to its war dead in all the wars since 1914. It was also the time the veterans came out to salute their departed colleagues and the war widows shed a silent tear. As George Orwell had once noted, the English (presumably he was talking of the British as a whole) tend to be remarkably undemonstrative about their nationalism. Yet, if there is something remotely resembling a National Day, it is marked by the monarch, the political leaders, and the representatives of all the Commonwealth countries placing wreaths at the understated Cenotaph designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

The significance of the 1918 armistice in British national life is colossal and enduring. Even the BBC that loves to flaunt its independence from Whitehall on the question of describing Hamas as a ‘terrorist’ organisation is careful to have its news presenters wear a poppy ostentatiously for a few days till November 11. More than anything else, wearing a poppy is a small gesture of respect for all those who gave their lives to preserve the liberties of Britain. No doubt, the story is more complicated than a simple good prevailing over the bad tale, but even in the countries that were part of the British Empire in 1914 — and that includes India — Armistice Day is observed by, at least, the armed forces. Indeed, during his visit to France in 2015, Narendra Modi became the first prime minister of India to lay a wreath at the memorial for fallen Indian soldiers in the battlefields of Flanders.

Considering the profound symbolism attached to the minute’s silence at 11 am on Armistice Day, the wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph and many other war memorials across Britain and the Commonwealth, and the march-past of veterans from the different wars, it would have been prudent for the assorted friends of Hamas and Palestine in the United Kingdom to shelve their plans for their Saturday show of strength. As of now, the metropolitan police commissioner of London, whose operational autonomy from the home secretary is protected by convention, hasn’t issued any order to ban the pro-Palestine march. At the same time, the London police isn’t giving any guarantees that a militant fringe from the Palestine march won’t raise disrespectful and offensive anti-Semitic slogans such as the “gas the Jews” chant at a similar rally in Sydney, Australia. Nor are there any assurances that a day that also commemorates the triumph over those responsible for the clinically organised slaughter of six million Jews of Europe will not witness placards abusing and desecrating the Star of David.

Under the guise of freedom for Palestine, something unacceptable is being witnessed across the world, most notably in Europe and North America.

First, there is little doubt that the protestors are not pressing for a sensible two-state solution in the region, as envisaged by the United Nations partition resolution of 1947 that was peremptorily rejected by the Arabs. What is being consistently demanded by the advocates of a free Palestine ‘from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea’ is the complete obliteration of Israel and the expulsion of its Jewish population. True, countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Egypt have diplomatic relations with Israel and the US-promoted Abraham Accords would have extended the process to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, Hamas has managed to arouse the Arab street very successfully against the impulses of moderate Arab regimes that, alas, aren’t democracies and, consequently, very vulnerable to public mood swings. The street protests in London and elsewhere are gatherings of ‘useful idiots’ in support of the interests of Iran’s ayatollahs.

Secondly, by conferring a de-facto legitimacy to the indiscriminate slaughter of Jewish civilians on October 7, the trendy, street and campus radicals of Europe have made anti-Semitism respectable, once again. It is interesting that the pro-Palestine demonstrations in Germany involved a section of the crowd chanting (in English apparently) “free Palestine/ from German guilt.” In plain language, this suggests that the friends of Hamas realise that their vile, anti-Semitic agenda can be taken a big step forward if the memories of the Holocaust can be airbrushed out of the global consciousness.

Ironically, the more the Hamas agenda takes precedence over the post-War standards of political decencies, the greater will be the temptation of hardliners in Israel to further push the interests of Palestinians into a corner. Curiously, that won’t displease many of Jerusalem’s Arab neighbours who would rather negotiate a permanent peace with the old enemy.