LONDON — When Mike Freer announced last month he would leave Britain’s House of Commons at the next general election, it added to the grim domestic fallout surrounding Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group.
The justice minister, who represents Finchley and Golders Green, home to the UK’s biggest Jewish community, is a staunchly pro-Israel voice who has faced a string of threats since entering parliament in 2010.
Three years ago, he narrowly avoided death at the hands of an Islamist terrorist.
Many — although, he stresses, not all — of these threats are related to his stance on the Middle East.
Interviewed by The Times of Israel, Freer speaks in measured tones, choosing his words carefully as he describes his decision to step aside when Britons go to the polls in an election expected later this year.
An arson attack at his constituency office last December — which appears to have been the work of a local criminal and not politically motivated — was simply “the last straw,” he says.
“While MPs, to a degree, sign up for robust debate and a certain level of abuse, none of us sign up to having our lives put at risk,” Freer says.
“I’ve actually got to put my family first,” he adds, noting his husband Angelo’s fears about his safety.
None of us sign up to having our lives put at risk
Those fears are longstanding. A year after he took Finchley from Labour in the 2010 general election, Freer was targeted by Muslims Against Crusades. Its members burst into a local mosque where he was having one-on-one meetings with constituents, calling him a “Jewish homosexual pig.” A message posted ahead of the incident on the group’s website made reference to another MP who was stabbed by an Islamist extremist while holding similar meetings in east London the previous year.
Freer, who is not Jewish, says one of the ringleaders of the campaign against him was “radicalized” on the 2010 Gaza flotilla. He believes that his calls for Islamist Sheikh Raed Salah to be banned from visiting the UK at the time also made him a target.
Two years ago, it emerged that Ali Harbi Ali — who saw himself as a “soldier of Islamic State” — had visited Freer’s constituency office less than a month before he went on to murder fellow Conservative MP Sir David Amess in October 2021. By chance, Freer had been away from Finchley when Ali had carried out his reconnaissance, but he has little doubt about his potential fate had he been there. Again, the MP says, his position on the Middle East “fed into why Ali came after me.” While on different wings of the Conservative party — he describes himself as a “social liberal and fiscal conservative” — Freer and Amess held “very similar views” on Israel and Iran.
The accessibility of politicians — including government ministers — to their constituents is much higher in Britain than in many other countries. “That’s what makes our democracy really quite special,” says Freer. “I don’t want to hold my [one-on-one meetings] with a police officer sat next to me because that changes the whole dynamic.” Nonetheless, he now takes precautions, such as wearing a stab vest at scheduled constituency events.
However, despite abusive and threatening phone calls, notes left outside his home, and a fake Molotov cocktail left outside his constituency office, Freer has refused to be silenced. A member of Conservative Friends of Israel, he has continued to speak at rallies and meetings in support of the Jewish state since the Hamas-led massacre last October that saw 1,200 people brutally butchered in southern Israel and 253 abducted to the Gaza Strip.
Utter lack of nuance from both sides
Freer believes the debate surrounding the subsequent war in Gaza is too polarized and crowds out the ability to have a “rational discussion.”
“The problem is there’s no nuance. There’s no ability to debate the issue. If you support Israel, you are a genocidal baby killer and if you don’t, then you are a saint,” he says.
Like the government as a whole, Freer is clearly frustrated about aspects of the way the police have handled the massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have occurred in London and many British cities since October.
The minister is keen to stress that the police have operational independence from the government. “The policing of the streets is not dictated by government,” he says. “You really don’t want politicians dictating who should be arrested and who shouldn’t be arrested.”
At the same time, however, he says he has met with police chiefs in London to express his concern about the apparent lack of visible policing and deterrence. The police, he says, understand these concerns and have “significantly increased” the number of arrests they are making of those who are clearly breaking the law.
“The police sometimes have a fear of wading into a crowd because they don’t want to cause a riot,” he says. “My view is: you’re the police. If you need to arrest people and if that causes a riot, you have to deal with it.”
Freer recognizes that some of those at the demonstrations, while naive, are “quite genuinely concerned about what’s going on and genuinely want to see a Palestinian state.” He also shies away from using former home secretary Suella Braverman’s description of the protests as “hate marches.”
But, he continues, “there is clearly an element that has an agenda that is clearly antisemitic, an agenda that is clearly anti-Israel, or has a slightly wider agenda of using the demonstrations to sow civil unrest.” He says there is some evidence of social media being “manipulated by state actors.”
The minister gives short shrift to protesters who’ve appeared under the banner of Queers for Palestine and the feminist group Sisters Uncut.
‘If you want to argue for gay pride in Gaza, I’ll pay your airfare and let’s see how long you last’
“If you want to argue for gay pride in Gaza, I’ll pay your airfare and let’s see how long you last,” Freer, who is gay, responds. If gay men want to campaign for a Palestinian state, he adds, they’re perfectly entitled to do so, but “don’t try to argue Queers for Palestine is a legitimate tagline. It is patently ridiculous because there is no state [in the Middle East] apart from Israel that recognizes minority rights.”
Antisemitism claims painted with too wide a brush
Freer says he understands why some Jews fear traveling into central London during the demonstrations. He nonetheless rejects the suggestion of the government’s counter-extremism commissioner that the heart of the capital has become a “no-go zone for Jews.” This characterization is “a little too harsh,” he says.
While the war has sparked a huge rise in antisemitism in the UK, Freer believes that the impact of the hard left’s five years running the opposition Labour party is also still being felt. Prior to Jeremy Corbyn’s election in 2015, antisemitism was “contained” if not in decline, he claims. Corbyn, he says, “made antisemitism respectable and once the genie is out of the bottle, [it is] very hard to get that back in.”
He continues: “I think it is going to take us quite a few years to reset the relationship and educate people on what antisemitism is, what the Jewish community is all about and what Israel is all about.”
As the MP for Finchley, Freer is cautious about headlines suggesting a growing number of Jewish families are considering leaving the UK.
“I think people are genuinely worried and will always contemplate it,” he says. “I understand why the community might be feeling that a future in the UK is not for them. I think that’s possibly the wrong analysis.”
“I try to reassure people that the vast majority of the UK, the vast majority of Londoners, are warm and tolerant and open, and we shouldn’t allow the whole narrative to be dominated by a very vocal and noisy minority,” he adds.
Freer believes one problem is that “the vast majority of Brits don’t know a Jewish family,” with much of the community concentrated in a few urban areas, such as north London, Manchester, and Leeds.
“I always joke about 60 percent of the UK’s Jewish population [live] a 10-minute’s drive from my house,” he quips. He recalls the “amazing experience” of attending his first Shabbat meal and urges the community to “open the doors.”
‘I always joke about 60 percent of the UK’s Jewish population [live] a 10-minute’s drive from my house’
“I think there’s an opportunity to throw open the door to synagogues, throw open the doors to Jewish schools and homes and embrace the wider community so people get to understand what the Jewish community is and stands for and then we’ll start to break down the stereotypes that people sometimes have,” he says.
Ten years ago, Freer left his government post so he could vote against a backbench motion calling for the UK to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. (Ministers and parliamentary aides are required by protocol to abstain on such votes.) A two-state solution, he said at the time, “should be the end, not the start of the process.”
He dismisses suggestions that the British government’s opposition to unilateral recognition had weakened following Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s reported hints of a shift.
“I’ve spoken to David Cameron and our position on the two-state solution has not changed,” Freer says. “What he said, and he’s right to say, is that we should lay out the steps that need to be taken for a Palestinian state.” These include an end to the current conflict. “That means Hamas having no role in the governance of Gaza, demilitarization, the release of all hostages, all of the preconditions for peace,” he says.
Then there is the question of “What conveys statehood?” he says. “Do you have a functioning government? Can it function, not just politically, but financially and so on.”
The foreign secretary, Freer says, was simply making the point that “you’ve got to give the ordinary Palestinians hope, otherwise they will continue to be radicalized under the yoke of Hamas.”
Israel, Freer adds, remains “an incredibly strong ally and friend” of the UK. Whatever disagreements might exist between the two governments, he believes, “doesn’t mean that we’re not in lockstep in ensuring that Israel is able to be the flourishing state it is without the fear of having rockets and people coming across the border murdering their citizens.”
