Four anti-Israel protesters were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of trespassing on the grounds of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s constituency home, according to the BBC.
Police in northern England said the men were arrested “within one minute of them entering the grounds” of Sunak’s residence near Northallerton, a market town and civil parish in North Yorkshire.
The four were detained at around 1 p.m. and escorted off the property, officers said. They remain in police custody.
“The prime minister thanks the police for their swift response to keep him and his family safe,” said a spokesman for the prime minister, according to the report.
A protest group called Youth Demand posted a video online of a man entering a lake on Sunak’s property and defecating into it. The defecation was later reported to have been fake.
Posted with the video on X, the group wrote, “As a thank you and a parting gift to Rishi Sunak and the Tories for the last 14 years of service, we have given the Tories exactly what they have given us. A Shitshow.”
According to the group’s website, it demands “a two-way arms embargo on Israel and an end to all new oil and gas licenses in the U.K.”
The extremist group accused both Sunak’s Conservative Party and the Labour Party of supporting Israel.
Sunak, who was in London for the visit of the Japanese emperor, told The Jewish Chronicle on Tuesday that if re-elected in the general elections scheduled for July 4, he would pass new laws to clamp down on anti-Zionist protests and would not “bully” Israel by threatening to recognize a Palestinian state.
Labour is expected to win big in the coming elections.
A recent poll showed Labour’s share of the prospective Jewish vote at 46% with only 30% backing Sunak’s Tories, indicating Labour has largely succeeded in winning back Jewish voters following the ouster of its former leader Jeremy Corbyn, who espoused virulently anti-Israel views and had been accused of repeatedly having “associated with, sympathized with and engaged in anti-Semitism.”
