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Gideon Falter has my sympathy. I was once pulled over by the police in the middle of the night for driving extremely carefully, which they deemed suspicious.

Fortunately, once they realised I was merely bringing my wife home from an evening spent in A&E, the second of the two officers admitted it was simply a quiet night and they had been bored. Lucky me.

The circumstances of master Gideon’s dispute is a little more sketchy. Was he merely attempting to cross the road, as was his right, or was he filming himself walking against the flow of the protest to make his point?

I suppose that is his right too, in a free society. Just as it would be the right of Millwall fans to walk into a crowd of drunken West Ham supporters in the spirit of testing the atmosphere.

Anyway, it would probably have been better for the police to let the man do as he pleased, given that weekly there are openly Jewish protesters marching on that side.

“Just go with the flow,” they might have advised him. Though, of course, master Gideon would say that’s precisely the point. He didn’t want to go with the flow. He should be allowed to go about his business, filming himself walking head-on into a large crowd like every other law-abiding activist.

Sometimes, the police get things wrong. In my case, they eventually let me go, with nothing but a warning about not drawing attention to myself by driving so carefully.

“Yes, of course,” I would have said, because we were both exhausted and just wanted to get home safely. Master Gideon could have tried something like that too, deferring to authority as most of us have to, even when clearly wronged.

But, of course, this was always going to be a story. Either a story of being prevented from walking head-on into a crowd of anti-semitic protesters, or a story of so-called peaceful protesters violently assaulting a British Jew for doing nothing but innocently enjoying a day out in London walking into the path of a large crowd.

I’m not in favour of any kind of intimidation. I want Jewish people to feel as safe as any other people. I believe we should, as far as possible, try to separate foreign and domestic affairs, being careful to distinguish between the actions of overseas actors and the rights of those outwardly or loosely associated with them as a result of identity politics.

Unfortunately, activists of all kinds seem hellbent on perpetuating conflict and mistrust. Or are they? Alas, here the facts are disputed.

If only it were as simple as a pair of police officers giving a weary driver the blue lights because they were bored while out on night-shift. What an exciting non-story that would have made. I could have spun it into a tale of woe.