Over two and a half years after the start of the Zionist genocide in Gaza, the undefeated struggle of the Palestinian people continues to attract widespread international support, including here in imperialist Britain. Refusing to concede anything beyond the empty recognition of a Palestine Authority governed ‘state’ and occasional mealy-mouthed disapproval of Zionist excesses, the pro-Israel British Labour government is ramping up its attacks on the solidarity movement, weaponising anti-Semitism, restricting protest and blatantly interfering in the legal process against protesters. NICKI JAMESON reports.
On 23 March four ambulances belonging to Jewish charity Hatzola were set on fire in Golders Green, north London; four young men were subsequently charged with arson. On 29 April two Jewish men were stabbed in the same location by Essa Suleiman who has a history of violence and poor mental health. Earlier that day he had stabbed a Muslim friend of his in south London, a fact given scant media coverage.
These incidents sparked a cacophony of outrage and fake panic in the press and Parliament, and by the police. On 29 April Finchley and Golders Green Labour MP Sarah Sakur declared: ‘The attacks on British Jews are an attack on Britain itself’. On 30 April, the Head of Counterterrorism announced a raised threat level of attack. On 5 May Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted a Downing Street ‘Tackling Antisemitism Forum’, attended by ‘representatives from business, civil society, health, culture, higher education and policing’. Also referencing an incident at a Manchester synagogue in October 2025, in which three people were killed (two by the police), Starmer pledged increased funding for police patrols at synagogues and in Jewish communities, as well as a further £7m to ‘tackle antisemitism in schools, colleges and universities’. Finally, the King was sent to Golders Green to enthrone the ‘antisemitic’ crisis narrative as gospel.
While many sources attest to a rise in all types of racial and religiously motivated attacks in recent years (even allowing for reporting by the Zionist groups such as the Community Security Trust, who intentionally conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism) the selective focus on attacks on Jews, and complete lack of equivalent response to the equally prevalent and often more violent attacks on Muslims starkly expose the politics at play here.
Policing language and protest
There is no evidence to suggest that Suleiman or those arrested for the ambulance arson shouted any slogans or had ever participated in pro-Palestine solidarity marches; yet the political leap to further restrictions on protest was immediate. On 30 April Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley told the BBC that anyone using the words ‘Globalise the Intifada’ would face arrest. On the same day Starmer told a news conference ‘people who use that phrase should be prosecuted… It is racism, extreme racism’. On 2 May he told the BBC that he not only wanted to police language, but in some instances to ban marches altogether. The Telegraph and Times ran repeated articles about coming restrictions on protest.
The pro-Zionist British establishment is desperately trying to reclaim the narrative from all those who stand with the Palestinian resistance. To do this, it has to equate every show of solidarity with anti-Jewish racism. Liberal figures such as actress and presenter Nadia Sawalha, Green Party leader Zack Polanski and photographer Misan Harriman are being hounded by the right-wing broadsheet press for the mildest of comments. The most docile of protests organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Stop the War (STW) are routinely labelled ‘hate marches’, subject to route alterations and conditions, and heavily policed, with anyone holding suspect placards pounced on and dragged into police custody. The PSC/STW leadership has shown itself to be supine in the face of this intensified state repression, with STW leader John Rees reassuring BBC Radio 4’s The World at One that the marches are currently far more infrequent than at the start of the genocide, and that anyone on them stepping across some unspecified line would be dealt with by the organisers who ‘deal with them far more often than the police deal with them’.
The 16 May PSC commemoration of the 1948 Nakba (when some 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes by Zionist settlers) was prevented from assembling in central London or marching to Parliament. Police warned organisers they would personally be liable if speakers promoted ‘hate speech’ and that anyone chanting or displaying the words ‘Intifada’ or ‘Death to the IDF’ would be arrested.
In the event there were relatively few arrests, as the organisers capitulated to police demands and participating groups censored themselves to avoid arrest. Veteran anti-Zionist Jewish activist Tony Greenstein managed to walk most of the march route carrying a placard reading ‘Globalise the Intifada’ before being bundled into a police van and held in Hounslow police station for seven hours.
British imperialism continues to back Zionism to the hilt, and the state will clamp down on any movement that actively works against this expansionist settler ideology. We must refuse to be contained within the ever-narrowing parameters in which we are hypocritically told we retain the ‘right to protest’, and find ways to resist criminalisation of solidarity with the Palestinian people’s righteous struggle for liberation.
Defend the right to defend Palestine!
