Is change coming?

The policing operation on upcoming ‘Nakba Day’

The Met police have given a very strong statement on the pro-Palestinian ‘Nakba Day’ march this weekend which is a significant shift in their communications and approach. But it’s incredibly complex unless you understand what’s been happening for the past two and a half years.

The devil really is in the detail when it comes to policing and I’ve been on a steep learning curve.

For the first time the police have admitted that the hate marches have in fact been hateful. Previously they have been opaque about the negotiations they’ve had with organisers and minimised the arrests. Often those arrests have only come after being monitored by Jewish people or exposed on social media. It’s been a battle to eke out any action at all.

The police state that in the run up to marches they had to  “intervene to change the route for 21 out of the 33 protests. On 17 of those occasions that intervention was necessary to protect Jewish communities because the organisers were trying to assemble near, march past or finish near synagogues. These marches always take place on Saturdays which is the Jewish holy day, when Jews are attending religious services. This only adds to the fears already being felt.” That’s half of the marches. 

Police say the organisers made “persistent attempts to assemble and march in this way” which hints that this was a deliberate attempt to intimidate Jews or at least be entirely lacking in care about the community’s fears. This is a damning indictment given how police have resisted attempts to ban the marches and have often downplayed the Jewish community’s worries about them. That is unforgivable given the levels of hatred and violence that have exploded since October 7. It undermines the trust and faith in messaging coming from those who are supposed to protect us. The political winds allow for the truth to come out but only after there’s been dead and stabbed Jews, burned ambulances and firebombed synagogues.

Putting that betrayal and gaslighting aside, let’s examine what the police say they will actually do now.

They say strict conditions are now in place that the assembly point, route and finishing times are set in stone and any deviance from those will result in arrest. In previous marches breakaway wandering extremists have ended up causing chaos in different parts of London. The police may now arrest anyone who does this. Good. They also have powers to remove masks and search people. Excellent.

Police have stated that speakers “don’t break the law by using these events as a platform for unlawful extremism or hate speech”. Again the devil is in the detail as to what constitutes both. They mention “intifada” chants and “death, death to the IDF” though the latter was only in relation to chanting it at Jews. Given the counter protesters Stop the Hate are not planning to be there, this seems redundant. No Jewish person is going to put themselves in the vicinity of these extremists. A hate chant is still a hate chant even if Jews aren’t around.

They will take an “assertive approach to chanting and the displaying of phrases on placards or banners that incite hatred or indicate support for terrorism or other forms of extremism”. We have not seen much of that and it has been said before so the proof will be in the pudding. 

This is interesting. They say they want to “reflect on language that prosecutors have previously advised didn’t meet the threshold for prosecution to see if that position may now change”. That could mean the other hate chants like “from the river to the sea” or “Zionism no more” may be acted upon. Who knows. They’re still being quite opaque. This is where the problem has always been. Anti-Israel hate and antizionism have been tolerated for too long and we are weak on the overlay of antisemitism in this area. The authorities have not recognised what this language is and where it leads. We’ve seen the horrible impacts of that failure in the past year as attacks on Jews have exploded.

I truly hope this is a turning point. That the authorities are having an enlightened moment that means they will act on the hatred we’ve witnessed for years. 

That the detail beats the devil.