‘Hate marchers’: UK minister accuses police of being overly lenient toward ‘pro-Palestinian mobs’

Britain’s interior minister accuses the country’s largest police force of being more lenient toward pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel demonstrators than other groups, deepening a political feud sparked by the Israel-Hamas war.

In a highly unusual attack on the police, Home Secretary Suella Braverman says London’s Metropolitan Police force was ignoring lawbreaking by “pro-Palestinian mobs.” She describes demonstrators as “hate marchers.”

Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests have been held in London and other British cities every weekend since the war began more than a month ago after Hamas launched a devastating attack on Israel.

The government has criticized organizers for planning a march on Saturday because it is Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of World War I.

The march is a day before the main Remembrance Sunday commemorations, when King Charles III, senior politicians, diplomats, military leaders and veterans attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph war memorial in central London. The planned route does not pass close to the monument, which is steps from Parliament.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has criticized the planned protests on Remembrance weekend as “provocative and disrespectful.” But after summoning police chief Mark Rowley for talks yesterday, Sunak said the government backed “the right to peacefully protest. And the test of that freedom is whether our commitment to it can survive the discomfort and frustration of those who seek to use it, even if we disagree with them.”