1/ I like people and think they're overwhelmingly good and decent.
My default assumption is that whatever the slogans, or extremist elements, the vast majority of the people on the streets are just appalled by the images coming out of Gaza, and are calling for peace.

2/ Has every single person marching got a comprehensive and fool proof 12 point plan for reconciling Palestinian independence, Israeli security, regional geo-stability and the million other factors at play?
No, and that's fine. Marches are about sending signals that we care.

3/ Do I, as a Jew, wish the marchers were a little bit more thoughtful about the implications of some of their messaging?
Sure. I guess.
But it's a mass movement and like all such things, creates its own social incentives for having the spiciest take in the room.

4/ The right is itching to squash protests and criminalizing speech in the name of defending us from anti-semitism.
We as Jews should be careful how we let them 'defend us'.
I have a lot more confidence in the good faith of the average protester than that of a Home Secretary.

5/ Posted with a due sense of exhaustion and dread.
Note: I do not need to see a thousand replies with individual instances of anti-semitism in and around protests. I'm Jewish. Holocaust descendent. I know. I seem the all. I hate it.
Yet I still feel the way I do.
/end