Mick Hartley

Juliet Samuel in the Times this morning:

Well, what did we expect? This began with an impromptu carnival of fireworks and music outside the Israeli embassy on the day in October when 1,200 Jews were massacred by terrorists. It continued with mass chants of “O Jews, the army of Muhammad is coming!”, the wearing of Hamas masks and bandanas, imams filmed in mosques from Redbridge to Bradford denouncing “the filth of the Jews” and the “curse of the Jews”, and the closure of central London every Saturday for the same protest. Synagogues moved service times and many Jews started hiding visible signs of their religion.

Now it is escalating, with credible threats of violence against MPs who do not toe the line, a blockade of Tower Bridge, a January 6-style call for a mob to force “[them] to lock the doors of parliament itself” and the projection of a slogan with genocidal heritage onto the icon of London, the Elizabeth Tower. It goes to show the truth of a very basic principle, from parenting to policing: if you do not establish and enforce acceptable standards of behaviour, even on passionate protests, that behaviour will deteriorate.

So why is it that the police stand passively watching a pro-Palestinian mob halt traffic and yet will, in other cases, rip down posters of Hamas’s kidnap victims or order the removal of a mobile billboard displaying the victims’ faces for the sake of “community relations”?

The answer, quite clearly, is fear. The forces of law and order fear those who break the law on the pro-Palestinian side, but they do not fear anyone on the pro-Israel side.

Last week, we reached a new low. Our constitution was altered under threat of violence. It may have been an apparently minor procedural point, but it was a watershed. Perhaps Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, considered various factors in his decision to upend years of convention last week. But we know that at least one big motive was his fear, based on credible briefings, that several sitting MPs might be attacked or murdered if he allowed a contentious vote on Gaza to proceed. Three backbench MPs have been given police protection. A judge with pro-Palestinian sympathies gave three culprits newly convicted of terrorist offences notably lenient sentences.

And the sitting — non-Jewish — MP for Finchley & Golders Green, a constituency with a large Jewish population, is standing down under threat of attack from Islamists. In short, it is increasingly clear that the new law of the land is fear — fear of Islamist mobs whose aggression and violence have been rewarded with astounding accommodation.

None of this means that Lee Anderson was justified in saying that the mayor of London was “controlled” by Islamists, a claim made doubly absurd by Sadiq Khan’s amoral opportunism and stylistic resemblance to David Brent. It is quite right that Anderson was suspended. Neither does it mean that peaceful protest should be suppressed.

But it is absurd to claim, as some still do, that the biggest threat at present is the far right. What ought to excite more scrutiny and agitation is the steady deterioration of British state authority under threat of violent intimidation. Clearly, the government needs to examine the guidance and norms determining how the authorities respond to extremism and intimidation. The police and political leaders need to rediscover their appetite for confrontation with unacceptable elements of the pro-Palestinian movement, even where it involves risk and the use of force. Our education system needs the resources and political backing to tackle Holocaust denial and classroom extremism.

But what should worry us most is the possibility that our civil society has already frayed too far to be repaired, and that this is only going to get worse and worse. We cannot ultimately police our way out of a breakdown in civic norms brought about in large part by reckless immigration policy. If MPs are no longer safe because of how they vote in our parliament, that tells us something more profound than that our police are weak. It tells us that our society is weak. And that is a problem that none of our leaders has yet been willing to talk about.

Meanwhile:

Ministers must do more to prevent the Israel-Gaza protests from “draining” official resources as policing protests cost Scotland Yard almost £25 million, a report has found.

The figure covers the policing of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protests from the date the conflict ignited on October 7 to December 17 last year.

A cross-party group of MPs who make up the home affairs committee said it was “deeply dispiriting” to see the fight against hate crime get “stuck in Home Office limbo”.

Weekly demonstrations, which have drawn hundreds of thousands of people to central London, have strained the Met Police’s capabilities and impacted officers’ wellbeing, with more than 4,000 forced to abandon rest days over three months to ensure demonstrations passed off safely….

The Campaign Against Antisemitism said the report “fails to address the increasingly urgent need to restore the confidence of the British public and ensure the safety of this country’s Jewish community”.

A spokesperson added: “After months of intimidatory marches, this report offers no concrete recommendations for the here and now, just a long-term policy discussion about workforce planning and new laws that will take years to agree. Millions of pounds are being diverted from fighting crime into policing these relentless marches. The Jewish community is in fear and our city centres remain no-go zones during the protests. We need action urgently.”