Just by Holborn Tube station, I heard the most priceless chant of the day. ‘Here’s our message to the cops,’ they cried. ‘Get a real f****** job!’

Here in the middle of the working week were a band of students (a few of them, it must be said, decidedly mature) holding up the London traffic in order to celebrate the murder of 1,200 civilians – plus the rape and kidnapping of many more.

And they had the temerity to lecture the rest of us on seeking gainful employment. If anyone is likely to face problems securing a job in future, it is likely to be this lot, since anyone spotted on this demonstration may not be allowed anywhere near a position of responsibility for some time.

Given that the police had banned face coverings at this event, and that the world’s media were filming every step of the way, these marchers were certainly taking a risk in making their visceral anti-Semitism quite so brazen. Hence many of them were hiding behind umbrellas, sunglasses, tight-wrapped Palestinian keffiyehs and medical facemasks.

The police had ample grounds to lift several of them for a clear breach of the rules but only nabbed a handful. Nor did they rise to the usual anti-Israel ‘From The River To The Sea/Palestine Will Be Free’ repertoire.

Officers only really asserted themselves later, creating a human barrier between the Hamas fan club and a rather larger counter-demonstration which turned out in Russell Square.

Opposition was inevitable given the gratuitously offensive and incendiary timing of the march by an outfit calling itself ‘The University of London Coalition’. Whatever one’s view on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, October 7 was not the occasion to march for the eradication of the Jewish homeland – as the Government and police had made clear with multiple pleas for this protest (Defence Secretary Wes Streeting called it ‘shameful’) to be called off.

Pro-Palestine demonstrators take to the streets of central London on the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks in Israel 

A protester with an Israeli flag attends a counter-protest by ‘Stop the Hate’ during a pro-Palestinian student march 

Around 150 in number, they were demanding an end not just to ‘genocide’ in Gaza but to the state of Israel itself.

This on the very day when people around the world were remembering all those killed in the bloodiest anti-Jewish atrocity since the Holocaust.

The message of the student march was clear: they deserved it. The public might wonder how the police could, for example, shut down the town of Gosport, Hants, at the weekend to prevent a protest against the arrival of a migrant boat but were unable to stop a protest in the heart of London designed to cause maximum outrage among Britain’s Jewish community.

The Metropolitan Police had issued a statement in advance saying ‘the police cannot ban protests and can only ask the Home Secretary to do so if the risk of serious disorder is so high that it can’t be managed by conditions. That high bar is not met here.’

The difference between the two sides was the counter-demonstration was organised by an outfit called Stop The Hate and had a designated organiser who was given clear instructions by the police where he could protest. Section 11 of the Public Order Act says that a protest must have a named organiser. The student marchers, conveniently, had not identified one, yet the police said that they were still unable to stop them. This had been billed as a march between London University’s two main hubs, King’s College and University College.

The police had preordained a start point, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and an end point, half a mile away, at Russell Square with a 90-minute window. Stray beyond that – or cover your face – and you risked arrest. The pro-Palestinians had clustered together in a circle at Lincoln’s Inn, with banners and keffiyehs stretched around them as a defensive wall while they recited various oaths inside the huddle: ‘No press! No comment! No cautions!…’

Setting off in the rain, they stuck to the usual ‘Free Palestine’ medley and no further comment – for the most part. One man was happy to give vent when I asked him why they had chosen to support Hamas on the day that Hamas had murdered 1,200 people, kickstarting a war.

‘No, no no! 1,200 people didn’t die,’ he shouted. ‘Hundreds of thousands of people died in the last three years. Today, people are going to die. Yes, today is the right day to march!’

Marching alongside, draped in a Union flag and with a trio of police officers hovering around him, was counter-protester Dominic Glazebrook, 58, who said a sheer sense of outrage had impelled him to get a train from the West Midlands that morning.

Protesters outside Holborn station at a pro-Palestine demonstration on October 7 last year 

A demonstrator hold the Palestinian flag in the London during the protests in London  

‘Free Palestine – from Hamas!’, he shouted, before switching tack: ‘If everyone hates Israel, why does everyone vote for them at Eurovision?’ Dissenting voices continued to grow as the march progressed. ‘365 days they have to protest and they choose today to raise the Palestinian flag – the flag that went to massacre Israelis on the worst day since the Holocaust!’ shouted Yoseph Haddad, an Israeli Arab, jumping into their path.

‘I’m not even Jewish. I’m here to remember two brave Arab Israelis who were killed on October 7 trying to save Jewish Israelis. We are all as one.’ He was wearing a T-shirt covered in a QR code linking to footage of some of the atrocities. ‘Scan it! Scan it!’ he shouted at all comers. ‘Just don’t eat before you watch it.’

As the march shuffled into Russell Square, the marchers seemed taken aback by the size of the larger crowd waiting for them with Israeli and Union flags. ‘Terrorist supporters off our streets!’ chanted this rather older crowd, none of them shielding their identities.

‘This is a hateful march and it should be banned,’ said Magda Falka, waving two little Israel flags. ‘I’m not even Jewish. I’m from Poland. But I’m the mother of a British student and I am terrified how the younger generation have been infiltrated. Look at the Green Party saying Zionism is racist. When will they start hunting down the Zionists?’

Counter-protesters held up Stop The Hate placards saying ‘Geno-Lie’ on one side and ‘Actual Genocides’ on the other, with a list going back to the Armenian genocide of 1915-17 via the Holocaust, Rwanda and Darfur.

‘Just this week we have the Green Party vote and now this illegal march celebrating

October 7 and the police bending over backwards to facilitate it,’ said Itai Galmudy, 45, lawyer and head of Stop The Hate. ‘I’d like to say this marks a new low in anti-Semitism but the cesspool of the pro-Palestinian camp knows no limits.’

Counter protestors react as people taking part in an  pro-Palestine march past them 

In total, police made 11 arrests, five of them on suspicion of inciting racial hatred at a separate demonstration outside the north London offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Back in Russell Square, the student march faded into the crowds heading to the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum. The counter-demo gyrated to Israeli folk tunes until the cops called time.

At which point, with perfect timing, a van sailed past them sporting an electric billboard saying ‘Vote Green – Vote Polanski’.

All this, of course, happened to be unfolding in the constituency of Holborn and St Pancras.

Its voters go to the polls today, with Green leader Zack Polanski standing here to replace runaway ex-PM Sir Keir Starmer. The van was roundly booed on its way.

Additional reporting: Cameron Charters