Home Secretary Suella Braverman Brands Pro-Palestine Protests ‘Hate Marches’

Home Secretary Suella Braverman labelled pro-Palestine demonstrations “hate marches” in an interview with Sky News on Monday, demanding a “zero tolerance approach to anti-semitism.”

“Tens of thousands of people took to the streets… chanting for the erasure of Israel from the map. To my mind, there’s only one way to describe those marches,” she said. “They are hate marches.”

Braverman’s comments follow her attendance Monday morning at an emergency meeting of the government’s Cobra committee as concerns grow that the Israel-Gaza conflict has increased the likelihood of a domestic terrorist incident in the UK.

London’s Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley was challenged by Sky News’ Trevor Philips on Sunday about how the police had handled the weekend’s protest.

The Met police has received criticism for not being tough enough against protestors who may be inciting hate. He called for “sharper” laws in dealing with such incidents – like chanting the word “jihad.” In his defence, Rowley said his officers would “robustly enforce up to the line of the law” and that around 100 arrests had been made.

When asked by Sky News about Rowley’s remarks Braverman explained that the police and the Crime Prosecution Service operate independently and are responsible for their specific legal decisions.

Braverman said that police believe there’s a significant number of individuals “deliberately operating beneath the criminal threshold in a way which you, or I, or the vast majority of British people would consider to be utterly odious.” On the matter of changing regulations, she emphasised that they constantly review laws and affirmed, “if there is a need to change the law… I will not hesitate to act.”

When questioned about specific chants from protesters, such as ‘from the river to the sea,’ and if chanting it should lead to arrests, Braverman responded, “I’m not going to get into matters which are operationally independent for the police and the Crime Prosecution Service.”

“I have made my views clear,” she said, “these are hate marches and the police must take a zero tolerance approach to anti-semitism.”