Starmer: 'Free Palestine' marches in Britain should be stopped 'in some cases'

Under pressure to act following the latest antisemitic attack in Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Saturday that "some" of the marches featuring barely disguised calls for violence may have to be banned.  

Asked about protests featuring calls to "globalize the intifada" and "free Palestine," Starmer pointed out their "cumulative" contribution to the insecurity of Britain's Jewish community, and said he will weigh banning the marches in some cases. 

On  Wednesday Essa Suleiman, a British national born in Somalia, stabbed two Jewish men, in the latest in a spate of recent attacks aimed at Jews in London, less than a year after a deadly attack at ​a synagogue in Manchester.

"Far too many people in this country diminish it, they either don't see it or they don't want to see it," Starmer said on Thursday. 

"Take the marches that happen regularly across Britain. Of course we protect freedom of speech and peaceful protest in this country. But if you are marching with people wearing pictures of paragliders without calling it out, you are venerating the murder of Jews. If you stand alongside people who say, 'Globalise the Intifada,' you are calling for terrorism against Jews. And people who use that phrase should be prosecuted. It is racism. Extreme racism, and it has left a minority community in this country scared, intimidated, wondering if they belong."

Also on Saturday, London's top cop acknowledged the "appalling state of affairs" faced by British Jews. 

"If you overlay three things now — hate crime, terrorism and hostile state activity — you add all that together, that combined effect with that building of ideology online, that is really dangerous and troubling," said Mark Rowley, head of London’s Metropolitan Police. "And Jewish communities feel that and you can see that in how they talk, how it’s making them change their lives. That’s an ­appalling state of affairs."