On the past two Fridays, I posted about the effect the Middle East conflict between Israel and Palestine on British society:
Britain’s Left and the Middle East
Reactions in Britain to the Middle East conflict
Remembrance Day follow-up
Yesterday, I posted about Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday and the abject disrespect and desecration that has taken place in 2023.
Afterwards, another incident came to light, this time in Northern Ireland, where a Catholic woman caused a scene in a Tesco supermarket in front of a poppy seller.
On Thursday, November 9, the Mail reported on the incident, which took place in Lurgan, near Belfast (purple emphases mine):
The irate customer calls the store’s security on the pensioner sitting behind the stall – telling her it is ‘not acceptable’ to the Catholic community for her to be selling the Remembrance poppies.
The Police are now treating the altercation as a ‘hate incident’, a spokeswoman for the PSNI confirmed.
Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie said the poppy selling pensioner looked ‘intimated’ in the video.
In response to a tweet saying the irate woman was upset over ‘RUC and UDR badges’ being sold and not the poppies, he said they are ‘sold every year’ alongside the poppies to raise funds for the British Legion …
The confrontation, at the Millennium Way store in Lurgan, near Belfast, sees customers reacting in fury as the woman berates the pensioner behind the stall.
Filming her shouts, she rages: ‘This is not acceptable! This is not acceptable to the Catholic community in this town.
‘The British Army and the RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] murdered a lot of innocent people, and you’re selling for them?
‘No, I’m not accepting this! I don’t accept this. As a member of the Catholic community in this town.
‘Would I be able to sell … IRA badges?
‘This is not only for poppies for the last World War – this is for murderers of innocent people!’
She went on to scream: ‘security!’ as she waited next to the stall – and passers by told her to ‘get a life’.
As they left the store she shouted after them: ‘Murderers! Murderers! RUC murderers! That’s what they are.’
She claimed the stall was selling badges for the RUC and the British Army as well as poppies. The police service was established in 1922 and played a key role in maintaining British rule in the region.
As well as poppies, the table had remembrance crosses for specific regiments – including the SAS, Ulster Defence Regiment, Police Service of Northern Ireland and RUC
The force had additional military-type security duties, with officers frequently the target of the IRA.
The woman further demanded to know whether the seller had permission to sell the poppies from the Royal British Legion, saying she would contact them about what was being sold.
And when a staff member respectfully told her to leave, she said she would bring down a protest outside the store.
She told the store-worker: ‘This is annoying me as a customer! This is a disgrace.
‘I will set up a protest outside this store! It shouldn’t be in store. There will be a protest.’
She further demanded a list of foods within the store that originated from Israel – and asked if she would be allowed to sell the Easter Lily in the store.
A symbol of remembrance for the country’s patriot dead from the 1916 Easter Rising, it has also been used in memorials to IRA members who died in the Troubles.
During the war-torn era the town’s railway station was the most bombed in the country, with Catholics living predominantly in the north of the town and Protestants in the south.
Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie slammed the confrontation as ‘intolerance’ …
That day, the Mail issued a plea for the protection of poppy sellers, most of whom are elderly:
In the case of the 78-year-old veteran who was physically attacked at Edinburgh’s Waverley Station, British Transport Police have said — unbelievably:
There is insufficient evidence to take the investigation further at this time.
Hmm! Sounds like a cover-up.
On a lighter note, MPs, including Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle, got on their bikes yesterday and took part in a Poppy Ride competition to raise funds for the Royal British Legion. The top six MPs are all Conservative, interestingly enough. Guido Fawkes has the list of participants and where they finished.
Blasts from the past
Increasingly, patriotic Britons have been wondering if a two-tiered policing system is in place.
The questions began in earnest with the protests of June 2020, when law-abiding members of the public stayed at home under lockdown.
On June 7 that year, The Guardian reported (photo at the link):
The UK health secretary has said there is undoubtedly a risk there will be an increase in coronavirus cases following the Black Lives Matter protests this weekend …
Matt Hancock repeated his calls for people not to attend protests if physical distancing cannot be observed, as further demonstrations were planned for Sunday.
“I support very strongly the argument that is being made by those who are protesting … but the virus itself doesn’t discriminate and gathering in large groups is temporarily against the rules precisely because it increases the risk of the spread of this virus,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
He said about one in 1,000 people have the virus so when groups of thousands come together that risks spreading the disease, which could then risk lives.
Asked whether he thought the UK was a racist country, Hancock insisted it was not. He said: “I don’t, but I do think there’s injustice that needs to be tackled and I’ve spent my political life fighting for equality.”
The police did nothing to stem the tide of protesters, who were not socially distancing.
Instead of policing, this is what officers from the Met did:
They were followed days later by a socially-distanced Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer with his deputy leader Angela Rayner:
Now let’s take a look at what has happened in London over the past week. There are clear dividing lines between the Conservatives and Labour.
Friday, November 3
Guido Fawkes (red emphases his) reported that Labour MP Marsha de Cordova took part in Palestine-related protests on the weekend of October 14, in violation of her Party’s instructions not to do so. He has a photo of her at one such protest, pictured alongside:
Battersea [south London] MP Martin Linton, who claimed “long tentacles of Israel” influence UK elections back in 2010, and Cllr Sara Apps, who just voted through her own 172% pay rise.
Ms Apps is proudly holding up a long scarf which incorporates a Palestinian flag.
The day before, Jeremy Corbyn MP, former Labour leader, tweeted his plea for a ceasefire as he remembered the children he met on a 2018 trip to Palestine:
On November 3, the Sinn Féin leader in Ireland also tweeted her call for a ceasefire:
Former footballer and BBC Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker, who earns £1m+ a year thanks to every Briton who pays for a television licence, nailed his colours to the pro-Palestinian mast.
Lineker prefers protesting to remembering the 1918 armistice on Saturday, November 11:
He also took exception to Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s condemnation of the protest scheduled for Remembrance Day:
Courtesy of the BBC, we also got an update from the mysterious Mr Fafo, who is an actor. His real name is Saleh al-Jafarawi:
The day ended with a Telegraph article, ‘Rishi Sunak orders police to stop pro-Palestinian protest disrupting Remembrance events’:
Rishi Sunak has demanded that the Metropolitan Police makes “robust use” of all its powers to protect next weekend’s Remembrance events from being disrupted by a pro-Palestinian protest.
The Prime Minister wrote to Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Police commissioner, on Friday to argue that the force had “the powers necessary” to ensure that protests did not “disrupt or disturb” acts of Remembrance.
Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, has called for a planned march on Saturday Nov 11 to be stopped, saying it would be “entirely unacceptable to desecrate Armistice Day with a hate march through London”.
On Friday night, Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, intervened to ban a sit-in for Gaza at King’s Cross station in London because of the risk to train services, but hundreds still attended.
Mr Sunak said there was a “clear and present risk that the Cenotaph and other war memorials could be desecrated” if the protest on Armistice Day went ahead.
There are fears it could disrupt the two-minute silence commemorating the war dead as well as the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall, usually attended by members of the Royal family.
The National Service of Remembrance will be held at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Sunday morning.
In his letter, Mr Sunak said police could apply to the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London for a protest to be banned. Downing Street said it was a “clear signal” the Prime Minister did not want to see Remembrance events disrupted, but whether to ban the protest was an operational matter for the police.
The letter to Sir Mark said the date of the planned march was “provocative and disrespectful” …
A May 2018 letter from the then-MP Nick Hurd to the late Sir David Amess MP, stabbed to death several times in October 2021, states how the law works with regard to protests. At the time, Sir David was concerned about a planned Al-Quds march:
This is the key paragraph:
The Home Secretary has no power to initiate a ban on marches. As set out in the Public Order Act of 1986, section 13 prohibiting public processions, a march can only be banned where the police consider that it would result in serious public disorder and that placing restrictions or conditions on such a march — for example its duration, location and size — would not be enough to prevent this. In the London area, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner would need to apply to the Home Secretary for consent to ban the march.
Saturday, November 4
Another Saturday, another pro-Palestinian protest in central London.
Almost a month after the conflict began – sparked by the barbaric attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants – a huge crowd is expected in Trafalgar Square to demand an end to the bombardment of Gaza.
It is the latest in a series of large-scale demonstrations since the outbreak of war. Saturday’s rally is due to begin at around 2.30pm and comes amid demands by senior ministers, including prime minister Rishi Sunak, for a crackdown on any support shown for hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK.
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters have already assembled outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House where they have waved placards and shouted anti-Israel chants.
Some demonstrators wore face masks and keffiyeh head scarves, while others held picket signs with messages, written in crimson red paint, calling for Israel boycotts and accusing the Israeli and British governments of having “blood” on their hands.
The Metropolitan Police has said there will be a “sharper focus” on using social media and face recognition to detect criminal behaviour at protests this weekend. Police spotters will be out in force, filming the crowds for any activity that might be in breach of public order and terror laws.
While police made some arrests, more memorable are the negative interactions they had with members of the general public, such as a group of veterans who quietly held Union flags. The police told them not to display the flags. One of the veterans said that a car had just passed by with a passenger waving a Palestinian flag out the window. The policeman was adamant and asked the veterans again to stop, issuing a caution:
That evening on his GB News show, Neil Oliver wondered what was happening to the freedoms and rights of the British people and, in a broader sense, where the world was headed. We had coronavirus, then immediately afterwards Ukraine and now, suddenly, the Middle East conflict. He also wondered how these events happened in such short succession. Meanwhile, he said, the general public seem to be powerless in response:
A couple of hours later on Mark Dolan’s show, actor Charlie Lawson, who is originally from Northern Ireland but now lives in England, expressed his deep regret at what looks to be police incompetence in letting these protests go ahead. He said that the police are now ‘a laughing stock’. He said that the veterans he knows are profoundly upset about a Remembrance Day protest. You can see the short interview at the 32:00 minute mark:
Across the Channel in France, The Telegraph reported that someone had stabbed a Jewish woman at her home in Lyon. Fortunately, her injuries were not life-threatening, but, afterwards, someone had painted a black swastika on her door. Her attacker reportedly was dressed in black and had a face covering. The attacker was still on the run as the story appeared on their website. If found, the charge could be one of attempted homicide.
That evening, The Times posted all the photos of the Israelis whom Hamas had taken hostage on October 7. It is a very moving reminder of what a terrorist organisation did to perfectly innocent people.
Sunday, November 5
On that note, in London and New York at least, people have been putting up small posters with the faces and names of those hostages. We had one in our village for a short time last week.
Then the posters, including the one in my area, disappear.
Journalist Hadley Freeman wrote movingly about this sad phenomenon in The Sunday Times, ‘We Jews aren’t even allowed posters of loved ones’:
The railway bridge near my home in north London has become an unlikely battleground. Often in the mornings I see, papered along its sidings, the by-now familiar “missing” posters of some of the kidnapped Israelis, who are still — more than three weeks after the October 7 pogroms — being held by Hamas. But by the time I come home in the evenings, those posters have been ripped down, only shards of red and white paper left behind to prove they were ever there, faded footsteps in the sand. At first I assumed it was the council removing them, objecting to flyposting — but then someone put a photo on social media of a woman tearing them down because, she said, she “didn’t believe” Hamas had kidnapped the Israelis. The posters then went up in the bus shelter at the bottom of the bridge, but they were not only torn off but replaced by “Free Palestine” graffiti, as if the kidnapped toddlers were the bad guys.
Missing posters are an expression of grief …
But more recently they have become something else …
… reminders of the human cost of international tragedies, a plea that individuals not be forgotten amid all the political pontificating. That is why, in the West, the posters of the missing Israelis have become such a symbol of the war in Gaza. Yet something else has become even more of a symbol: people tearing them down.
More than half the posters of missing Israelis put up every week in London are torn down within 48 hours, according to the Jewish Chronicle. Videos of people doing this — in the UK and across the US — are all over the web: young people ripping them down in central London, a middle-aged man tearing them off a lamppost in New York. Some say the posters are propaganda, or provocative, or pointless (more or less so than the “Free Palestine” graffiti that replaces them?); others that Israel brought this on itself. But not even the most strident opponents of American foreign policy ripped up 9/11 posters.
Ultimately, there is only one reason they are doing it: they don’t want to see Israelis as victims.
By now more than 10,000 Palestinian civilians will have been killed in the fighting since Hamas murdered more than 1,400 Israelis last month. Pro-Palestine activists argue — rightly — that Palestinian suffering has frequently been ignored by the West. But too many today seem incapable of fathoming that there is more than one set of victims here …
… But no criticism can be directed at Hamas, only at Israel, as to do otherwise would disrupt the delicate oppressor-oppressed nexus.
If these activists actually wanted to make a point, they would print photos of the killed Palestinians and stick them up alongside the Israeli ones, showing everyone the real human cost of this conflict. Instead they tear the Israeli posters down and deny these murders happened, perpetuating the terrible cycle. Too many are exploiting this Middle East tragedy to release a previously corked-up feeling that Jews have for too long been given too much, accorded too much valuable victim status. Bloody Jews, going on about the Holocaust again! Bloody Jews, demanding sympathy for their murdered babies again! Bloody Jews. Again.
She has a valid point.
Later that day, a tweet appeared concerning a woman who works for the Metropolitan Police Leadership Program and wants support for Israel to be investigated as an Islamophobic hate crime:
On another Metropolitan Police note, the Mail revealed that a pro-Palestinian activist is one of their advisers:
Meanwhile, up in Scotland, the in-laws of the SNP First Minister Humza Yousaf arrived home safely from Gaza. They are the older couple in the middle of the photo. Yousaf is in the back row on the right:
The day’s news ended with a report from the north of England. The Labour leader of Burnley council and ten of his fellow councillors resigned because they are upset with Sir Keir Starmer’s stance on the ongoing conflict. The Guardian reported:
The leader of Burnley borough council has resigned along with 10 other councillors in protest at Keir Starmer’s refusal to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
Afrasiab Anwar, who has been a member of the party for a decade, was among those who called for the Labour leader to step down last week.
He described leaving Labour as a “really difficult decision”, adding: “We just can’t stand by watching and being part of a party that is not speaking out, or at the very least calling for a ceasefire.
Starmer has urged Israel to obey international law and called for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting, but refused to call for an immediate ceasefire, a stance that has divided the party …
Monday, November 6
News outlets featured stories on the happy reunion in Humza Yousaf’s family. Tears combined with joy, no doubt:
Politico reported that Italy’s prime minister Georgia Meloni was the victim of a prank call the week before in which she voiced her fatigue with Ukraine:
World leaders should stick by Ukraine, despite the additional demands of dealing with the Israel-Hamas war, the Ukrainian president’s powerful chief of staff told POLITICO in an interview from Kyiv.
Andrii Yermak, head of the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, also pushed back hard on the idea, voiced last week by Italy’s Prime Minister Georgia Meloni in a call with Russian pranksters, that many are growing tired of the war in Ukraine. On Friday Ukraine faced its biggest barrage of drone attacks in weeks on critical infrastructure in the south and west of the country.
Meloni said in the prank call — in which she thought she was speaking to the president of the African Union — that there was “a lot of fatigue … from all sides,” and that “everyone understands that we need a way out.”
This reminds me of Neil Oliver’s aforementioned editorial on Saturday, November 4. We are on overload with all these crises.
It is difficult to prioritise one area over another, but the EU decided to increase its aid to Gaza.
Guido Fawkes reported:
Ursula von der Leyen has just announced that the EU Commission has agreed to increase aid to Gaza by a third to a total of €100 million. The UK pledged £10 million in humanitarian aid three weeks ago. Previous taxpayer-funded aid was used by Hamas to turn water pipes into rockets…
Meanwhile, back in London, that evening, The Times told us that the Met urged the Remembrance Day protest organisers to think again and cancel:
The Metropolitan Police have urged pro-Palestinian protest organisers not to hold demonstrations on Armistice Day or Remembrance Sunday.
Senior officers met organisers yesterday to raise fears that splinter groups would fuel disorder, with officers urging them to postpone the demonstration.
Objections have been raised to a pro-Palestinian march planned for Saturday, although it will not go near the Cenotaph.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan, who leads public order policing in the capital, said: “The risk of violence and disorder linked to breakaway groups is growing. This is of concern ahead of a significant and busy weekend in the capital.
“Our message to organisers is clear: please, we ask you to urgently reconsider. It is not appropriate to hold any protests in London this weekend.”
The Israeli president also condemned plans to stage pro-Palestinian protests on Armistice Day.
In an interview with TalkTV, Isaac Herzog said that Saturday’s march was “atrocious and hypocritical” and should be cancelled.
He told the Piers Morgan Uncensored show: “I call upon all decent human beings to object to the march and ban it, because the symbol of that day is a symbol of victory and it’s a symbol of doing good, because when you fight evil, sometimes you have to fight. You have to fight evil in order to uproot evil.”
The protest will mark the fifth consecutive weekend of pro-Palestinian demonstrations since Israel was attacked by Hamas on October 7.
Amid concerns the demonstration could overshadow Remembrance events, Rishi Sunak said the police had ministers’ “absolute and total backing” to take action to stop the march causing disruption …
However, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which is organising the protest, said it had changed the route of the march to ensure it does not clash with Armistice Day commemorations. It will set off from Hyde Park in central London and finish 2.5 miles away at the US embassy in Battersea.
It is also planning to start the rally at 12.45pm, nearly two hours after the two minutes’ silence planned to remember the war dead. The PSC has said it is “alarmed” by the prime minister’s statements suggesting that the march threatens the Cenotaph on Whitehall and accused him of trying to “incite action on the streets to stop the protests taking place”.
However, Sunak doubled down on his opposition to the protest taking place this weekend and has made clear that the government would approve a formal request by the Met to cancel the protest.
The Public Order Act 1986 allows the police to request the home secretary and mayor of London ban a planned protest if they believe it would lead to serious public disorder and would not be manageable to police …
Going into Wednesday, we had hope that the protest would be cancelled.
The day ended with an incredible report from The Telegraph, ‘Former Hamas chief “behind pro-Palestine Armistice Day protests”‘:
… Muhammad Kathem Sawalha led the proscribed terrorist group in the West Bank in the late 1980s and is alleged to have “masterminded” its military strategy with involvement as recently as 2019, before moving to Britain where he lives in a London council house.
He is a founder of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), one of six groups behind the under-fire march in London on November 11, and Israeli authorities claim his son, Obada Sawalha, is now its vice-president.
The revelation comes as The Telegraph has discovered that half of the groups organising the march – who are still defying calls from the Metropolitan Police to call it off – have links to Hamas.
It has fuelled further pressure for it to be cancelled, with the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on anti-Semitism saying that it “proves that these marches are not about peace” and the Campaign for Anti-Semitism describing this newspaper’s findings as “extremely serious”.
Sawalha, 62, worked as a director for MAB between 1999 and 2007 and helped found it, after being granted British citizenship in the early 2000s. BBC’s Panorama claimed in 2006 that he was “said to have masterminded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy”.
He now lives in a council house in Barnet, north London, but in 2004 he was named as a co-conspirator in a US indictment for having allegedly helped bankroll Hamas and he reportedly took part in an official Hamas delegation to Moscow in 2019 and served on the Hamas politburo between 2013 and 2017.
Another of the Muslim Association of Britain’s three directors, Dr Anas Altikriti, co-founded a group called the British Muslim Initiative with a senior commander in Hamas, Mohammed Sawalha, and Azzam Tamimi who has been described as a Hamas “special envoy” in Britain.
Dr Altikriti, who has lectured at Leeds University, has written columns for The Guardian defending how “Hamas supports democracy” and insisting that “the Palestinian people have chosen” Hamas “to represent them” …
Meanwhile, Zaher Birawi, a leader of the Palestinian Forum in Britain – another group organising the Armistice Day march – was described in Parliament in October by Labour MP Christian Wakeford as having been “designated by Israel in 2013 as a senior Hamas operative in Europe”, currently living in Barnet, north London, not far from Sawalhi, posing what the MP described as “a serious national security risk”.
He also allegedly met Hamas’ senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in 2012 and was pictured with him.
A third group organising the protest, the Friends of al-Aqsa is founded and chaired by Leicester-based optician Ismael Patel who has also visited Haniyeh in Gaza and has joined the Gaza flotilla. According to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, the Friends of al-Aqsa is “harbouring an intense hatred for Israel, campaigning for its elimination, denying its Jewish character, and supporting Hamas” …
Shocking.
Who is processing these immigration applications, especially one for citizenship, and providing them with council houses? How can this happen?
Tuesday, November 7
Just hours after The Telegraph published their article above, The Times came out with ‘Islamic centre “must be investigated” over alleged links to Iran’. This involves both London and Glasgow:
A Scottish outpost of an Islamic Centre accused of promoting “extremism and radicalisation” must be investigated over alleged links to the Iranian regime, politicians and exiled dissidents have said.
MPs have called for the London-based Islamic Centre of England (ICE) to be shut down after reports that speakers called for the downfall of western democracies and the “compassionate” killing of gay people.
The Times has learnt that the organisation, which is run by a direct representative of Tehran’s supreme leader, also operates a sister centre in Glasgow.
The Al-Mahdi Islamic Centre of Glasgow has openly displayed the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran and an image of Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s late founder, who ordered the executions of thousands of political prisoners and issued a death sentence on the British author Salman Rushdie.
Iranian exiles argue that the premises have become an unauthorised base for the Tehran regime, which they allege is increasing its surveillance and harassment of dissidents.
The Charity Commission opened an investigation into the governance of ICE, based in a former cinema in West London, after it held a vigil for Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander, who was killed in a US drone strike.
Its imam, Seyed Hashem Moosavi, who resigned as secretary in December, according to Companies House, praised Soleimani as a “dedicated soldier of Islam” and said he had died at the hands of “the most wicked members of the human race”.
Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, said that Iranian cultural centres in the UK were part of a “vile threat” posed by the Tehran theocracy. “Sadly, the Islamic Centre for England is not alone,” he said.
The ICE website lists Al-Mahdi as its “other centre” and features photographs of events at the premises on Albert Road.
Hamid Bahrami, a former political prisoner who is now an international relations commentator and journalist, claims he and other dissidents were monitored by unknown individuals when they gathered outside the Glasgow centre …
He fears that information on exiled political opponents in Glasgow is being collated and fed back to the authorities in Tehran …
In 2019 an investigation by The Times found dissidents were being intimidated by Iranian agents in Scotland, who threatened to kill them and their families back home if they did not halt their political activities.
Last year Melika Balali, 23, an Iranian-born wrestler who now represents Scotland, alleged she was threatened by the Iranian state after she held up a sign stating “Stop forcing hijab” at the British championships in Manchester. “They’ve tried to find out where I’m living, but thanks to the police in Scotland I live safely,” she said.
Another Scottish-based exile, who asked not to be identified, claimed Tehran was stepping up its operations in Glasgow. “The Scottish and British authorities cannot ignore the dangerous and malign activities of the Islamic regime in this country any longer,” he said.
After the Charity Commission launched its investigation into ICE, a representative of the Al-Mahdi Foundation, a charity based in the same Glasgow premises, signed an open letter — circulated by the Islamic Human Rights Commission — accusing the regulatory agency of being “Islamophobic” and “politically motivated” …
Later that morning, broadcaster Kirsty Young, who has worked for the BBC, explained why the network does not like to refer to Hamas as a terrorist organisation. The Telegraph reported:
The BBC refuses to call Hamas terrorists because it fears angering the group and losing access to reporting, broadcaster Kirsty Young has suggested …
She said she understood the difficult position the corporation faces, including the criticism for not calling Hamas terrorists after the mass murders of October 7.
Following a storm of criticism the BBC now refers to the group running Gaza as a “proscribed terrorist organisation”.
Young, 54, said: “It’s not necessarily the BBC that is talking about the use of the word terrorism. They’re answering criticism from the outside and I guess as long as – especially when it comes to something in the Middle East – if you’re getting roughly the same amount of complaints from both sides, which they are, then you kind of know you’re doing an OK job.
“And I think this whole reporting that it is a proscribed terror organisation with reference to Hamas, then that is a legitimate stance if you want to continue to have access and to report what is happening in those places.
“Because what you don’t want to do is get thrown out of places because you’re not allowed to report any more.
“You want to have access. You know the whole point of the BBC in news terms is to show people the evidence as fairly as they possibly can.”
A BBC statement read in part:
The BBC is editorially independent; our role is to explain precisely what is happening so that the public can make their own judgements.
Our longstanding position, including during previous conflicts between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, has been that we do not use the term ‘terrorist’ without attribution, in line with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines.
Veteran columnist, author and editor Charles Moore wrote an excellent editorial for The Telegraph that day, ‘Police insult the public by allowing these marches’:
On the first page of a British passport, “His Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires” that the bearer should be allowed “to pass freely without let or hindrance” and be afforded “such assistance and protection as may be necessary”.
That is what our Government asks of foreign countries. It seems to ask rather less of our domestic authorities. It is surely the right of British citizens to pass “without let or hindrance” through our streets, particularly through the public spaces of our capital city, and to be afforded protection in doing so.
This right is being denied. On October 7, roughly 1,400 Israeli citizens (and smaller numbers from other countries) were massacred in Israel. Since then, the main British street response has been demonstrations by pro-Palestinian supporters who either back the massacres or who march as if they had never happened.
This is itself intimidating. Even if the marches themselves could technically be described as “peaceful” (which not all can), the fact that thousands have nothing to say against one of the most disgusting series of acts perpetrated against anyone, anywhere, since 1945 instils fear. Good people would not march that way, at this time, however much they feel for the plight of Gaza.
When such marches are not merely tolerated but protected, when protesters of other opinions are told to stay away, when streets are blocked, railway stations are occupied by those marching and railway carriages are sometimes jammed with chanting mobs, this amounts to a display of indifference by the police to the citizen.
And when the schedule of “rolling” marches lets the demonstrators own the streets for weekend after weekend and threatens to affect the regular, peaceful commemorations of the war dead which take place on the 11th day of the 11th month, what looked like indifference turns to insult.
The general “right to protest” is not unqualified. It is customary, for example, to reroute marches: the first of this lot was forbidden to approach the Israeli embassy. It is also a matter for discussion when a march takes place. It ought to be obvious to the police that there should be no political marches in central London on the Remembrance weekend – the one time in the calendar formally consecrated to silence, reflection and thanksgiving.
Marches can be stopped and have been …
The Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, may be under the impression that the marches so far have been a success because they have not been riots. He is wrong: they have been much more far-ranging in their threat to Jews and to ordinary citizens than anything Oswald Mosley’s thugs [1930s] ever managed.
Guido Fawkes’s attention was on Labour that day.
Before lunchtime, Guido posted that dissident Labour MPs were teaming up with the SNP (Scottish Nationalist) MPs to force a vote on a ceasefire:
The SNP are planning on holding an opposition day debate next week to formalise support for a ceasefire in the Commons. About a third of Labour MPs have already come out publicly in favour of a ceasefire, explicitly against Starmer’s position. A Labour source told The National that efforts to force a vote on call for a ceasefire had “grown legs” and an SNP MP has confirmed they and others had been in talks with Labour MPs to force the vote. LOTO’s [Leader of the Opposition’s] arms-length position won’t survive much more of this…
That afternoon, Guido told us that the Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands MP wrote to Labour to request that their main backers, the unions, disaffiliate themselves from pro-Palestinian organisations. Guido posted the letter and explained:
Greg Hands has sent a letter to Starmer formally requesting that Labour call on trade unions with links to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, or its weekend marches, to disaffiliate from it. The letter echoes one sent by the Campaign Against Antisemitism last week and labels the PSC an “extreme activist” organisation which “espouses views that encourage the anti-Semitism and violence we are witnessing“. Hands specifically attacks Aslef, GMB, the NEU, and Unite for their intimate interaction with the PSC. Their links are deep and long-held…
Hands points out that trade union leaders are “outwardly disobeying advice from Labour’s General Secretary” by speaking at the weekend marches and are therefore bringing Labour into disrepute. Meanwhile RMT head Mick Lynch, along with the heads of the National Education Union and Fire Brigades Union, have released a video announcing their support the “National March for Palestine” on Saturday. Starmer’s hands-off approach is resembling a tightrope act…
In her column that day, The Telegraph‘s Allison Pearson took a look back at the news thus far — and the double standard of policing — in ‘When poppy sellers cannot honour the dead, we must take a stand’:
… The Met is perfectly capable of stopping the pro-Palestine Armistice Day march under section 13 of the Public Order Act, and so it damn well should. Or it can impose a temporary ban, as it did back in 2011 on marches by the English Defence League, when there are clear safety issues. Instead, with its absurdly polite request to the PSC, it gave the organisers the opportunity to prove they are more powerful than the police. A fact that was ruefully conceded by one young copper when an irate veteran asked him why he was telling people not to display Union Jacks while ignoring thousands of Palestinian flags. “There are more of them than us,” he said glumly.
Meanwhile, and quite disgracefully, the Met told Christian Action Against Antisemitism to cancel a prayer walk in Golders Green after police received intelligence that the anti-Israel mob were going to attack the marchers. The “Never Again is Now” event has been rescheduled for November 19. It’s a Sunday since, as one organiser sadly put it, “Saturdays are hijacked in our capital because of the threat of violence and inadequacies of the police.” Why, one might almost think the Met was keener on protecting the right to protest of one group over another.
As for the PSC claim that there have been “low levels of arrest” at their marches, call me cynical, but could that be connected to the fact that the police are too intimidated to make many arrests and are even being advised by partisan elements not to do so? As The Sunday Telegraph shockingly disclosed, Attiq Malik, a solicitor and hard-Left activist who was filmed leading chants of “from the river to the sea” at a pro-Palestinian rally and has also railed against “global censorship by the Zionists”, is a senior adviser to the police on the Israel-Hamas protests. Mr Malik appears to have been present in the police operations room during previous marches when officers on duty were advised not to arrest protesters calling for “jihad” because it was a much nicer kind of jihad than the massacring 1,400 Israelis kind of jihad.
Excuse me? Are our police really allowing people like this to dictate their response to protests which are making life unbearable for British Jews as well as distressing the silent majority? What an absolute scandal …
I wish it was a surprise to discover that a former Hamas chief, Muhammad Sawalha, is behind one of the groups organising the pro-Palestine Armistice Day protests. A founder of the Muslim Association of Britain, Sawalha led the terrorist group in the West Bank in the late 1980s and is alleged to have “masterminded” its military strategy with involvement as recently as 2019, before moving to the UK where he lives in a London council house. Of course he does! No self-respecting leader of a Middle Eastern genocidal death cult should be without the accoutrement of accommodation provided at the expense of the despised British unbelievers who will be exterminated once Hamas has finished wiping out the Jews. (See Hamas Charter for preview of forthcoming events.)
What in God’s name is that individual doing in our country? We are weak, weak, weak. If events over the past month have taught us anything it’s that this country has a serious problem with Islamist extremists who have no interest in integration but, instead, rejoice in the opportunity to act out their vicious anti-Semitism and loathing of Western values. Permitting the abuse of freedom of speech to express racial hatred after the massacres of October 7 is not a sign of the health of our democracy, as some libertarians like to claim. It’s dismaying evidence of a lack of moral courage …
That afternoon in Parliament, MPs began debating the first of the King’s speeches in his first official State Opening of Parliament. It was a historic moment, as Charles III delivered the government’s plans as monarch rather than a stand-in for his mother shortly before she died.
MPs debate aspects of the Prime Minister’s legislative plans for the next year or so and do so over the course of a week.
I happened to see Labour MP Apsana Begum give her speech in Tuesday’s debate. She lamented that neither the King nor the Prime Minister in his introduction of the proposed legislation made any mention of the fact that October is Islamophobia Awareness Month:
Hansard has the full text of her speech, excerpted below:
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate on the Humble Address. People in my constituency are alarmed and appalled at the disregard for Palestinian life that has been demonstrated widely in the recent period. It is therefore very concerning that the King’s Speech did not include a commitment to securing a ceasefire on both sides in Gaza and the release of all hostages, along with a condemnation of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
This is not an abstract point; this is a live issue. The situation is urgent … Gaza, in the words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, is becoming a “graveyard for children”. It is beyond unacceptable that children are paying the ultimate price amidst the failure of political leaders in the US, the UK and Europe to call for an immediate ceasefire and oppose violations of international law.
Every hour, every day, the number of deaths gets higher and higher, and the reports and images of the impact of the military bombardment on refugee camps, hospitals and schools are simply horrifying. Nothing—nothing—can justify these crimes against humanity that we are witnessing in real time … All lives should be valued and cherished—Israeli and Palestinian—yet the ongoing dehumanisation and collective punishment of Palestinian civilians will be marked as a terrible crime against humanity for years to come.
My constituents—multicultural, multiracial, from all faiths and none—would have liked the King’s Speech to address the long-term situation for Palestine … The King’s Speech should have reflected a responsibility to follow through on an international commitment to uphold international law and do all we can to ensure a just and lasting peace based on justice and human rights.
I was also disappointed to see that the King’s Speech did not indicate that the Government will finally recognise Islamophobia or take measures to address the soaring level of hate crimes against Muslims. Indeed, the King’s Speech did not even mention that it is Islamophobia Awareness Month, and nor did the Prime Minister in his speech today.
I am currently facing death threats and a torrent of Islamophobic and misogynistic abuse. In fact, I have received such abuse since being elected and putting myself forward as a candidate for election …
Not only does the King’s Speech fail to address the fact that Muslims live with a constant and persistent fear overshadowing our lives, but it fails to address the role of Governments and politicians, even though the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief has reported that institutional suspicion and fear of Muslims has escalated to “epidemic proportions” and that “numerous” states, regional and international bodies are to blame. How does that relate to leaked Government documents about plans to clamp down on freedom of expression that could unjustly label organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain as extremist?
In conclusion, I believe in human rights, equality and dignity for all. My constituents deserve more than a Government who think and act otherwise.
The day ended with news from the Mail that Sir Mark Rowley, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said the Remembrance Day march would proceed as planned:
Scotland Yard last night gave the green light to a pro-Palestine rally on Armistice Day as its top cop claimed it had ‘no absolute power’ to ban the protest.
In a thinly veiled swipe at the Home Secretary, Metropolitan Police chief Mark Rowley said the laws of Parliament and intelligence gathered by its sources did not justify a ban.
The country’s most senior police officer said the protest, which is expected to draw in 70,000 people, could only be banned if there was a ‘real threat’ of serious disorder.
This was despite fears of violent clashes between the marchers and Right-wing activists. The rally’s organisers had already rebuffed the Met’s pleas to postpone.
Wednesday, November 8
The day began with news of the first resignation from Labour’s shadow front bench, that of Imran Hussain MP, a Jeremy Corbyn supporter.
Guido told us:
Labour’s first frontbencher has resigned over Starmer’s position on Israel/Palestine. Imran Hussain, a member of the Corbynite ‘Socialist Campaign Group’, was a work minister since 2020 and was appointed shadow minister for “the New Deal for Working People” in September. He resigned from the front bench at 11 p.m. last night, saying its current position prohibited him from being a “strong advocate” for a ceasefire. Guido hears things got to a head after Hussain was blocked from signing a ceasefire-supporting early day motion…
Early that afternoon, Guido posted a fiery discussion between TalkTV/talkRADIO presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer and former Labour MP Chris Williamson, who has been avowedly pro-Palestine:
Guido wrote:
Julia Hartley-Brewer and arch-Corbynite former Labour MP Chris Williamson have had a mega 15-minute spat this afternoon on Julia’s TalkTV show over Israel/Palestine. Alongside the usual Hamas apologist lines Williamson claimed the “zionist entity” is responsible for “spurning” peace and Israel is “worse than Nazis actually in some respects“. Hartley-Brewer was having none of it and came back swinging. The clip’s worth a watch…
That evening, The Sun‘s political editor — and Guido alum — Harry Cole told us that one of the organisers of the Remembrance Day march worked for Sir Keir Starmer until just a few days ago:
THE organiser of this weekend’s Armistice Day anti-Israel march worked for Sir Keir Starmer until this week, The Sun can reveal.
Ben Soffa is the Secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who have led the marches through London for the last four weeks.
Sir Keir had warned Labour MPs they “should not under any circumstances attend any of these events”.
Yet until just days ago hard-left Soffa was also the Labour Party’s £61,000 “Head of Digital Organising”.
When confronted by The Sun last night, Labour sources said he had moved on in recent days.
But last night his social media accounts still claimed he worked for at the party’s HQ …
Last night a Labour source said: “We’re grateful to Ben for all his work for the party and wish him all the best for the future.”
The PSC and Ben Soffa did not respond to requests for comment.
On TalkTV, Piers Morgan attempted to give the pro-Palestine supporters a pass, but conservative-minded Douglas Murray, who is covering events from Israel, asked why protesters in the UK kept going to the marches week after week. Murray asked, ‘Wouldn’t you drop out by Week 3? I would’. Piers had to concede, ‘That’s a good question’:
The Telegraph‘s Allister Heath asked where Rishi Sunak was and said there is a general malaise involving all of the UK’s prominent institutions in ‘Extremism is thriving in Britain and our leaders have already surrendered’:
… The law is being reinterpreted in bizarre ways and thousands of anti-Semites – Islamist extremists and the far-Left principally, for now – are getting away with behaviour that wouldn’t be tolerated were it directed at any other minority. Are all still equal in front of the law?
This is not about one demonstration on Armistice Day: the crisis is far greater. It is about the total failure of all of our institutions, the implosion of an entire ideological superstructure, the ruination of a country’s very idea of itself. It is about extremists being asked to provide advice and embedding themselves within the police and military, it is about the normalisation of calls for the destruction of one country – and only one – based on a falsified narrative, it is about the gradual waning of our collective memories of the Shoah, it is about hate preachers who don’t even care if their words are caught on film, it is about the Left-wing middle class’s moral cowardice.
Don’t get me wrong: Sunak is on the right side … Yet what is he, in practice, doing about the explosion in Jew-hate that is shaming our great country? Going ahead with the endlessly-delayed Holocaust memorial is not enough. Ministers are acting like commentators, not leaders, and their (usually excellent) words are being drowned out.
The Government cannot even find it in itself to ban Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps or vote against a call for a ceasefire at the UN, even though opposing such a move is its policy. It seemingly can’t tell any of the quangos what to do. It isn’t properly fighting the battle of ideas, let alone using its legislative powers …
The Tories have also failed in another way. They turned a blind eye to the rise of Critical Race Theory, that crucial component of the woke belief system which, among many other terrible pathologies, is explosively anti-Semitic …
Yet it isn’t too late. Sunak could make a speech that is even more powerful than that delivered by the German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck. He could legislate to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir and other groups. He could launch a massive counter-extremism plan. I pray that he will rise to the occasion.
However, it was Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s column for The Times that provoked the most sensational responses from all over the country, ‘Police must be even-handed with protests’, in which she suggested that policing has had a clear double standard in recent years:
… It is the pro-Palestinian movement that has mobilised tens of thousands of angry demonstrators and marched them through London every weekend. From the start, these events have been problematic, not just because of violence around the fringes but because of the highly offensive content of chants, posters and stickers. This is not a time for naiveté. We have seen with our own eyes that terrorists have been valorised, Israel has been demonised as Nazis and Jews have been threatened with further massacres.
Each weekend has been worse than the previous one. Last Saturday, in central London, police were attacked with fireworks, train services were brought to a halt by demonstrators and poppy sellers were mobbed and prevented from raising funds for veterans.
Now as we approach a particularly significant weekend in the life of our nation, one which calls for respect and commemoration, the hate marchers — a phrase I do not resile from — intend to use Armistice Day to parade through London in yet another show of strength.
Here we reach the heart of the matter. I do not believe that these marches are merely a cry for help for Gaza. They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups — particularly Islamists — of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland. Also disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster are the reports that some of Saturday’s march group organisers have links to terrorist groups, including Hamas.
There will be time for proper discussion about how we got to this point. For now, the issue is how do we as a society police groups that insist that their agenda trumps any notion of the broader public good — as defined by the public, not by activists.
The answer must be: even-handedly. Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters. During Covid, why was it that lockdown objectors were given no quarter by public order police yet Black Lives Matters demonstrators were enabled, allowed to break rules and even greeted with officers taking the knee?
Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law? I have spoken to serving and former police officers who have noted this double standard …
Thursday, November 9
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper got up in the Commons to speak against Suella Braverman’s aforementioned Times editorial on the police.
Guido has the video and a summary:
Labour are trying their best to capitalise on Tory grumblings over Braverman’s late-night Times op-ed in which she hit out at the police over the weekend’s march. Yvette Cooper has sprung to the Commons with urgent question to “ask the Home Secretary to make a statement on the operational independence of the Metropolitan Police“. Cooper got to attack Braverman for running “an endless Tory leadership campaign“, ask if Number 10 approved the op-ed and attack Rishi for being “too weak to sack her“.
However, many Britons believe that Suella got it right, especially those who are disillusioned with the current direction of the Conservative Party.
That evening, the Mail featured a headline:
Rishi Sunak is warned he risks a mutiny from the Tory Right if he sacks Suella Braverman following her unauthorised attack on police handling of pro-Palestine marches
Even better was their front page headline referring to that story:
COME FOR SUELLA AND YOU COME FOR US ALL
How true!
That evening on his GB News show, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, defended the Home Secretary and her supporters. The Telegraph reported:
Speaking on his GB News programme on Thursday night, Sir Jacob defended Mrs Braverman’s comments and said she was correct to criticise police “inconsistencies”.
He said: “The Home Secretary is right to highlight these inconsistencies. Policing needs to be impartial and affect everyone in the same way.
“[She] has said what many people are thinking and the calls to sack her seem to be disproportionate because whether she’s broken the ministerial code or not is something of a moot point.”
Friday, November 10
A poll by Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now for The Telegraph indicates that 72 per cent of Conservatives agree with Suella:
Nearly three quarters of Tory voters back Suella Braverman in calling for Saturday’s pro-Palestine march to be banned, The Telegraph can reveal.
Exclusive polling for this newspaper shows that more than 72 per cent of Conservatives believe that the planned pro-Palestine march should not be allowed to go ahead on Armistice Day.
In contrast, just a quarter of Labour voters believe that the march should be halted.
The polling, which was conducted on Thursday, also reveals that only 16 per cent of those aged over 65 believe the protest should be permitted, compared to over one in four of those aged between 18 and 24.
In total, just over half of respondents believe the London march should not go ahead, compared to 26 per cent who think it should …
Rishi Sunak has accepted that the protest will go ahead, but warned the Met Police chief that he will be held accountable if Remembrance events are disrupted.
The Prime Minister has also faced calls to sack the Home Secretary over comments she made in an article in The Times, accusing officers of “playing favourites” with Left-wing protesters …
More to come next week.
Jeremy Corbyn
I will end with a separate section on the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who is fiercely pro-Palestine.
Corbyn, who visited East Germany when it was behind the Iron Curtain many years ago, has lost his friends in 21st century unified Germany.
On November 8, Guido reported:
It looks like Corbyn’s list of friends keeps getting shorter as Jezza is disinvited from a left-wing conference in Berlin over his position on Israel/Gaza. The German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, a socialist think tank connected with the hard-left Die Linke party, is organising an event this week on European politics populated mainly by Die Linke politicians. Corbyn’s invitation to speak has been withdrawn after the hosts at iconic Volksbühne Theatre intervened, saying: “Due to Jeremy Corbyn’s current stance on the Middle East conflict, we have decided not to offer him a public audience at the Volksbühne“. How things change, Jezza will have to stay away from his old East Berlin stalking ground…
In fact, on November 9, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Germans are taking it very seriously indeed. EuroNews told us:
The German Chancellor has pledged to protect Germany’s Jews, in the face of rising anti-Semitism since the start, of the Israel-Hamas war.
Across Germany, people from various institutions, including schools, city halls, synagogues, churches, and parliament, gathered on Thursday to mark the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, also known as the “Night of Broken Glass,” which occurred in 1938 when the Nazis terrorized Jews across Germany and Austria.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Germany’s primary Jewish leader, Josef Schuster, delivered speeches at a Berlin synagogue to commemorate the anniversary. This particular synagogue had been targeted with Molotov cocktails just last month. Chancellor Scholz has made a commitment to safeguard Germany’s Jewish community, especially in the face of increasing anti-Semitism following the Israel-Hamas war …
Undeterred, Corbyn pledged his support for the Remembrance Day march in London. He tweeted:
We will be marching for a ceasefire on Saturday, not in competition with Remembrance weekend, but as part and parcel of it.
We are remembering all those who have been killed in war, and we are trying to prevent more human life from being destroyed.
Well, if hardcore German leftists don’t want him speaking, he has a problem.
We can but pray that London’s march is not as bad as we fear it might be.
Whatever happens, two names will be in the weekend’s news through next week: Suella Braverman and Sir Mark Rowley. Everyone thinks one of them will have to go. But is that reasoning too simplistic? We’ll have to wait and see.
Churchmouse Campanologist 
2 comments
November 21, 2023 at 4:45 pm
Middle East protests: Met Police and protesters 1, Suella Braverman 0 — part 1 | Churchmouse Campanologist
[…] post from last Friday discussed events leading to the pro-Palestine march on Remembrance Day, Saturday, November 11, […]
LikeLike
November 21, 2023 at 9:02 pm
Middle East protests: Met Police and protesters 1, Suella Braverman 0 — part 3 | Churchmouse Campanologist
[…] Mr Fafo — an actor whose real name is Saleh al-Jafarawi — is still […]
LikeLike