London’s police force ordered the relocation on Tuesday of an anti-Israel protest due to the proximity of its planned location to a synagogue.
“We assessed that the protest would have caused serious disruption to the lives of Jewish Londoners attending a nearby synagogue and a private Chanukah event in the immediate vicinity,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement about the “Prisoners for Palestine” event on Tuesday.
Central Synagogue of Great Portland Street is situated within 50 yards of Portland Place, where protesters had planned to gather. Dozens of them gathered south of Oxford Circus in keeping with the police’s instructions to organizers.
Last month, anti-Israel protesters gathered outside London’s St. John’s Wood synagogue, prompting indignation over their targeting of a house of worship. Throughout the West, authorities and Jewish communities have raised their awareness of threats facing Jewish worshipers on Chanukah after the murder of 15 people at a celebration of that holiday on Dec. 14 in Sydney, Australia, allegedly by a Pakistani man and his son with ties to global jihadists.
The group that organized the protest in London is also representing people on a hunger strike for the release of at least 33 people detained in the U.K. in connection with illegal protests against Israel in recent months.
One of the protesters, Umer Khalid, was arrested by counter-terrorism police in connection to the action at Royal Air Force Brize Norton base, where damage to the tune of about $10 million was caused to two military aircraft.
Another was Heba Muraisi, who was arrested on Nov. 19, 2024, in a raid in connection with vandalism of more than $1 million in damage caused to a research center owned by Elbit Systems.
Also on Tuesday, Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the British Labour Party, published a petition signed by more than 50 lawmakers from at least six parties demanding that Justice Secretary David Lammy to meet with the lawyers of the eight activists who are on a hunger strike.
Of the co-signatories, 26 were from Labour, five were from the Green Party of England and Wales, four were from the Welsh center-left Plaid Cymru party, and seven were from the Sinn Féin Northern Irish party. None of the cosignatories belonged to the Conservative Party.
“The government needs to wake up, take responsibility, and show some humanity before it is too late,” Corbyn, an anti-Israel far-left politician, wrote on X about the hunger strikers, which Prisoners for Palestine says includes two who had not eaten in over 30 days, and five who have been hospitalized.
