The prime minister has called on the police chief to rebuild trust among the Jewish community after an antisemitism campaigner was threatened with arrest at a pro-Palestine demonstration in London on April 13th.
Rishi Sunak told journalists that he shared public shock and anger over exchanges between Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), and officers policing the protest.
He said the head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, must now work to rebuild the confidence and trust of the Jewish community and the wider public, after the commissioner faced calls to resign.
Is everything as it seems?
But not everything is as it seems.
Speaking to the BBC, former Met Police Chief Superintendent Dal Babu has suggested that the narrative being pushed might not be accurate after watching the full 13-minute clip of the event.
“Personally if I was policing that march I would have been inclined to have arrested him (Mr Falter) for assault on the police officer and a breach of the peace”, he said, uring the public not to just accept things at face value.
It is an account that has been backed up by former Met Police officer Chris Hobbs who was at the rally and has attended several others since the outbreak of war in the Middle East.
He said he’d heard about the incident on the day but assumed it would be “of little consequence”.
Others ‘live tweeting’ from the march took a different view:
“There’s a small group of Jewish men, with personal security, demanding to walk through the Palestine protest, and a copper is desperately trying to reason with him to go around. This will be tomorrow’s anti police outrage clip. Sigh.”
A clear agenda
Hobbs has suggested that there could be a clear agenda in play here which involves banning all pro-Palestinian marches.
The Commissioner has suggested that the criteria for such a ban is the anticipation of really serious disorder, such as the life-threatening risks on display during the anti-cuts protests in London in 2011.
But as Hobbs puts it, on a disorder scale of between one to 10, “these pro-Palestinian protests barely register a two”.
“There are small groups amongst the many thousands who might welcome violence but the bottom line is that the Met have policed numerous protests/marches linked to the current crisis and thus far there have been no major public order incidents or serious assaults other than those seen on November the 11th when the far right turned up in their hundreds to ‘protect’ the Cenotaph which also involved attempting to attack a pro-Palestinian protest as it crossed Vauxhall Bridge.
“Perhaps the beleaguered Commissioner should be receiving a pat on the back in respect of these numerous and large protests which largely have been noticeable for a lack of disorder, thanks in part to some exemplary policing.
“Oh, and, as Mr. Falter well knows, as he was observing them on that Saturday, there is a significant Jewish presence at these protests whose theme is ‘not in our name.’”
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