Rishi Sunak’s full support of the Israeli government in the fight against Hamas – “today, tomorrow and always,” the prime minister promised – has a frustrating counterpart on the streets of London and other British capitals, where tens of thousands of citizens spent two consecutive weekends expressing their support to express support for the Palestinian cause and to denounce the bombing of Gaza. Interior Minister Suella Braverman called this Monday from Scotland Yard Chief Commissioner Mark Rowley for a tougher response to the protests. “There must be no place for incitement to hatred or violence,” said a spokesman for the minister.
Downing Street expressed anger after seeing police fail to respond to calls for jihad (Islamic war) outside the London embassies of Egypt and Turkey this Saturday at a demonstration attended by around 300 Hizb supporters ut-Tahrir (Liberation Party) spoke loudly. Alongside the shouts, banners calling on “Muslim armies” to go to war against Israel were displayed.
It is a pan-Islamist and fundamentalist formation founded in 1953 whose basic goal is to impose the caliphate worldwide. It is banned in Germany, China, Russia, Turkey, Indonesia and most Arab countries, but the United Kingdom allows its presence. The Labor governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown sought to add the group to the banned list in the heat of the reaction to radical Islamism that emerged after September 11, 2001, and the London Underground attacks in July 2005 terrorist organizations, but the result was inconclusive. The nature of this group ultimately prevented it from being censored.
“The central argument for avoiding the ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir is that no matter how unpleasant their views may be – for example, their anti-Semitism or their opposition to parliamentary democracy – suppressing Hizb ut-Tahrir would only radicalize its members making it a launching pad for potential extremists. “It is better to prosecute their activities within the law than to enforce their illegality,” says one of the key documents submitted to the House of Commons during an intense debate on the fight against terrorism.
Braverman, and with her a large part of the conservative government, are convinced that law enforcement can do more than before to prevent statements and gestures that, according to the minister, incite hatred and violence. For example, the song that was heard at the two major demonstrations so far: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” [Jordán] to the sea [Mediterráneo]Palestine will be free), which the minister interprets as a call to wipe Israel off the map.
But the call for jihad last Saturday in particular intensified the confrontation between the Sunak government and Scotland Yard. “The police have operational independence, but they must explain the reasons for the decisions they make,” Transport Minister Mark Harper claimed on the BBC. “The word has multiple meanings, although we know that citizens usually associate it with terrorism. “Our specialists have analyzed the video and are unable to identify the specific commission of a crime,” Scotland Yard said in a statement.
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Britain’s anti-terrorism law requires that to be charged with inciting terrorism, it must be proven that someone encouraged others to “commit, prepare or incite acts of terrorism.” The Public Order Law requires that any hate crime or incitement to violence must be directed against a specific person. Scotland Yard was unable to adjust either assumption to Saturday’s events.
“Our job is to make sure that no one crosses the line of the law, but Parliament’s job is to draw that line and perhaps in some cases it is not in the right place,” Rowley said after his meeting with the minister .
The term jihad literally means “struggle” or “effort” and can refer both to the believer’s internal struggle to live his faith or build a society more in line with Islam, and to a holy war against infidels . “We recognize that citizens interpret this language and the divisive impact it creates in a very specific sense. “Our agents therefore identified the man who suggested the chants and advised him not to repeat them again,” the Metropolitan Police clarified.
The BBC broadcast
Sunak, who along with the United States has placed himself at the head of the group of nations most committed to Israel, appears unable to impose his will on institutions that are more constrained in their actions by nuance, such as the police themselves or the BBC. . The United Kingdom is a complex and multicultural society in its major cities, particularly London. Almost four million Muslims live in a country with 67 million inhabitants. Of these, 1.3 million live in the capital.
The Conservative Party, which for decades was more Arabist than pro-Zionist, has become an unconditional ally of Israel since Margaret Thatcher introduced this criterion. The private schools that educate the country’s conservative elites no longer have students who enthusiastically read Lawrence of Arabia’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And the Labor Party, led by Keir Starmer, has sought to stamp out anti-Semitic influence from the era of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. His support for Israel, despite the obligatory postscript demanding that the country respect international law, has made some of the British left nervous. Many local Labor officials of Muslim faith have expressed their opposition to Starmer’s actions.
The tension has shifted to the BBC. Both Sunak and Starmer have called on the public body to start referring to members of Hamas as “terrorists,” an organization that the British Parliament itself has already defined as such by law. To maintain its neutrality, the network preferred to use the word “militants.” Until last Friday. Its CEO, Tim Davie, admitted that day to members of a Jewish community in the United Kingdom with whom he met that the company had decided to stop calling Hamas fighters that way. However, the BBC reiterated its decision not to define them as terrorists. “For several days, we stopped using the word ‘militant’ as a standard description for Hamas members when we realized that for our audience it was a very inaccurate description of the situation on the ground,” he admitted in a statement the British stock corporation.
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