Mick Hartley

David Rose at the JC:

Members of Parliament from both main parties have revealed new details of the threats and abuse they have faced for supporting Israel after October 7, saying that they and their colleagues have been forced to adopt unprecedented security measures.

One Labour MP told the JC of an anti-Israel mob that pickets his weekly advice surgery, chanting the genocidal slogan, “from the river to the sea”. A Conservative MP, meanwhile, received emails calling him a “Zionist c***” and expressing the hope that his children will die….

Dame Margaret Hodge, the veteran Jewish Labour MP for Barking, who earlier in her career faced down threats from the extreme right-wing British National Party, told the JC she had never known a period comparable to that since October 7.

“Every time something happens, there’s been a spike,” she said. “But this has gone on and on. I’ve had to have plainclothes police officers accompany me everywhere I go in my constituency. My staff have dealt with most of the abuse, and they have been fantastic. If I’d looked at all of this material, I’d have gone crazy.”…

Tory backbencher Andrew Percy said that as a Jewish MP, he had felt safer on a recent visit to Israel than he did on returning to Britain. In the past, he has had to take out restraining orders against individuals who had abused and threatened him in his constituency. “One woman called me ‘f***ing Israeli scum’, hit my arm, then said now she would have to wash herself because she had touched me,” he said.

Since October 7, Percy said, he has faced a continuing torrent of abuse. One message he showed the JC told him to “leave my country, pack your bags, go to Israel, I hope your kids suffer the same fate u wish on others”. Another told him “put on the uniform of the IDF and f*** off to Israel.” He had also received messages that denied the Holocaust, asserted that “no one cares about the Jews” and called him a “Zionist c***” and a “lying fascist bigot” who should “tramped in the gutter” and “burn in hell”.

Percy told the JC: “I’ve given up forwarding most of them to the police because there’s nothing they can do.”

He has been given enhanced security but remains fearful that “something really bad is going to happen – to a politician or the Jewish community. I worry that something is going to blow”. Percy blamed the police for failing to take decisive action against hate speech when the protest marches began after October 7, which had seemed to legitimise them.