Hours after banning use of the phrase “Globalize the intifada” at protests, police in London arrested four people for using it at an anti-Israel rally on Wednesday night.
The arrests in front of the Ministry of Justice headquarters in London at a Palestine Coalition protest were for “racially aggravated public order offences, all involving the alleged shouting or chanting of slogans involving calls for intifada,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement. A fifth arrest was made “for obstruction of a constable.”
The Metropolitan Police and police in Manchester announced on Wednesday that the slogan “Globalize the intifada” will be considered hate speech and that people using it will face arrest.
The arrests follow a tightening of the enforcement of hate speech laws following the murder of 15 people at a Jewish community Chanukah candle lighting event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. The slogan “Globalize the intifada” was a staple chant at countless anti-Israel events in Sydney since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel and triggered a regional war.
Jonathan Sacerdoti, a British-Jewish journalist and pundit, on Thursday welcomed the arrests but said they came belatedly and as part of a response that was too weak to confront the threat facing British Jews.
“The announcement [about banning the ‘Globalize the intifada’ slogan] has been framed as a response to a ‘changed context.’ But what it actually represents is an admission, belated and heavy, that the authorities spent years refusing to see what was directly in front of them,” Sacerdoti wrote on Substack.
He noted that many Jews and others understand the phrase as a call to repeat terrorist attacks carried out in Israel against Jews and others worldwide. The meaning of the words has not changed, he added, and the shift in the police’s enforcement “occurred in the difficulty to deny the truth brought about by the death of 15 more innocents slaughtered by Muslim terrorists.”
Police on Wednesday also prevented the Palestine Coalition protesters from gathering near Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, Parliament Square and surrounding areas, as well as in the area north of Oxford Circus, citing planned Chanukah candle lighting events. The protesters were allowed to gather only near the Justice Ministry’s headquarters.
Many Australian Jews and others have blamed the Canberra government for inaction in the lead-up to the Bondi Beach massacre, which a Pakistani man and his Australia-born son were filmed perpetrating. Australian authorities said the alleged perpetrators had ties to jihadists from the Islamic State terrorist group.
Palestine Coalition is an umbrella group uniting several anti-Israel organizations, including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Stop the War Coalition and the Friends of Al-Aqsa.
British authorities have faced allegations of inaction, though they have taken steps that Australian counterparts had not. In July, the government banned the activities of a different group, Palestine Action, over its involvement in repeated break-ins of facilities tied to Israel, sometimes through use of violence against police and security officers.
Hundreds of Palestine Action activists have been arrested for expressing public support for the proscribed group. Several Palestine Action activists who are in prison for violence and breaking and entering have gone on a hunger strike, and some rally organizers have been holding protests not only against Israel, but also for the release of the imprisoned activists.
