I'm John Batchel with Joseph Sternberg, my good colleague. He's in London for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. He writes political economics. And in these hours and these days, there have been waves of protests in London, waving Palestinian flags and pointing to headlines that come from the Middle East. Right now, we're

waiting for headlines about the peace talks, said to be underway in Cairo. However, Joseph

guides me to a column that appeared in London Times by Matthew Syed over these last days.

The columnist went into some of the protesting crowds and asked questions.

I asked a simple question of a pro-Palestinian protest and it turned ugly goes the headline.

Police arrested 493 people at the protest in Chavogar Square. This is date lines October 4th.

Where I encountered, says the columnist, abuse, swearing,

ignorance, virulent, unthinking, anti-Semitism. Joe, I come to you because the headline today

says that the Prime Minister, Mr. Stramer, says these protests are un-British. Sort this out for me.

Who are the protesters? Because I did some numbers here.

There are 4 million Muslims in Britain of 66 million people. Of those very few of the Muslims that

are there are actually from Arab states most involved in the fighting in the Middle East.

The rest are from the South Asia Muslim worshippers.

That's the great number.

So we're not talking about a great big base to draw from for these protests.

That, ergo, the only conclusion I can come to is that there are young British citizens

who were born in Britain and are waving Palestinian flags.

Why?

Why, indeed?

I mean, there is no good reason that anyone in Britain should care so much about this particular conflict,

except for reasons that we'll get on to in a minute.

I mean, what has been going on here

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