Published in the Jerusalem Post, 16 November 2023
Leading up to Armistice Day this year, influential voices throughout the UK, including the prime minister himself, Rishi Sunak, urged the head of the Metropolitan Police to prevent the pro-Palestinian march from taking place, but the police chief confined himself to requesting the organizers to postpone it. They refused, and he maintained that the police do not have sufficient powers under the law to ban an event that does not pose the threat of extreme violence.
In a final gesture of
exasperation the then-home secretary, Suella Braverman, penned an article in
The Times, deploring the failure of the Metropolitan Police chief to act, and
asserting that the force has demonstrated bias in their handling of political
rallies. She claimed they favored left-wing groups, citing the pro-Palestinian
rallies which she called “hate marches”.
“Terrorists have been
valorized,” wrote Braverman. “Israel has been demonized as Nazis, and Jews have
been threatened with further massacres.”
A political storm burst around her. There was an instant demand from the Labour Party and its supporters, joined by some in her own Conservative party, for the prime minister to sack her. On November 13 Sunak announced a reshuffle of his Cabinet, and Braverman lost her job.
On Armistice Day, the
pro-Palestinian rally went ahead with some 300,000 people taking to the London
streets. The marchers took more than four hours to proceed along a route
starting in central London and ending at the US embassy on the south bank of
the River Thames.
The antisemitic rhetoric
had been toned down, if not entirely eliminated, but anti-Israel and
pro-Palestinian slogans abounded, many advocating a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
There are media reports that the police spotted a few pro-Hamas banner holders,
and are trying to identify them. It is illegal to support the terrorist group.
But the march proceeded peacefully, and few arrests were made.
A counter-protest,
however, by far-right groups, did turn violent. Police battled with aggressive
protesters and made more than 90 arrests.
The police and Britain’s
counter-terrorism services are well aware that such protest demonstrations are
a highly complex operation, requiring detailed organization ranging from
assembling vast numbers of supporters and controlling the routes of marches, to
the location of rallies, devising slogans to be chanted, and providing banners
and placards telling the same story.
On November 7, an exclusive report in The Daily Telegraph revealed that a former Hamas chief, Muhammed Kathem Sawalha, said to have been active in Hamas as recently as 2019, is behind one of the six groups organizing the pro-Palestine protests.
Sawalha, 62, came to Britain in the late 1990s and founded the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). He was granted British citizenship in the early 2000s. The Daily Telegraph further discovered that, in addition to the MAB, at least two more of the groups that organized the November 11 march have links to Hamas.
On October 27, an
exclusive report in The Times revealed that hostile state activity in the UK
has been directly linked to the Iranian regime, including the spread of
disinformation online and lodging Iranian agents in the crowds attending
marches. Following that report, the police announced that Iranian agents are
hijacking Britain’s pro-Palestinian rallies.
None of this should have come as a surprise. On October 19, Robin Simcox, head
of the independent Counter-Extremism Commission, gave a long and thoughtful
address to the highly prestigious Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Simcox began by
endorsing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s description of the Hamas onslaught of
October 7 as a pogrom. “Hamas reveled in this bloodshed,” he said. “It was
sadism.“
He went on to say that, in the UK, support for Palestinian rights too often translates into rhetoric supportive of Hamas. “Too many in positions of prominence have praised them or their leadership; or sought to rationalize or excuse their acts of terror… The Hamas support network in the UK is entrenched.”
Simcox continued: “What
is underappreciated is the scale of Iranian-backed activity in this country;
and the extent to which Iran attempts to stoke extremism here.”
In March 2023, the UK government revealed that since 2022, there have been 15
credible threats by the Iranian regime to kill or kidnap British or UK-based
individuals.
The Director General of
MI5, Britain’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, has said that
“Iran projects a threat to the UK directly, through its aggressive intelligence
services.”
Now that the UK
government has proscribed Hamas as a terrorist organization, Simcox strongly
advocates that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) should be
similarly proscribed because of its role in plotting violence. Despite the
urging of some government ministers, Britain’s Foreign Office has opposed a ban
because it claims it would cause permanent damage to diplomatic relations with
Iran.
“The IRGC has operated
like a terrorist organization ever since its inception, over four decades ago,”
said Simcox. “And yet it is legal, at present, for the IRGC to be, for example,
hosted in UK institutions.” He believes that the IRGC is operating Iran’s
destabilizing policies in the UK but also worldwide.
In February 2023, acting on police advice, the independent Iran International TV closed its operation in Britain because of threats to its staff from operatives acting for the Iranian regime.
“I cannot believe it has come to this,” said Mahmood Enayat, the station’s
general manager. “A foreign state has caused such a significant threat to the
British public on British soil that we have to move.”
The channel will
continue its output from its Washington DC site. “We refuse to be silenced by
these cowardly threats,” said Enayat. “ We will continue to broadcast. We are
undeterred.”
Valiant words, and an
intrepid attitude – but the truth is that, on police advice, a media outlet
operating legally on British soil has succumbed to Iranian threats. That is
scarcely a satisfactory position. Some in the police have called for legal
clarification and enhanced powers to deal with terrorism and incitement to
violence on Britain’s streets. That would seem a step in the right direction.
Unmasking, charging, and expelling foreign agents masterminding illegal
antisemitic activity would be another.
Published in the Jerusalem Post 16 November 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-773427
https://www.eurasiareview.com/17112023-whos-behind-britains-anti-israel-rallies-oped/
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