Another week, another protest glorifying killers
A SICKENING pro-Hamas placard emblazoned with a terrorist bulldozer was among a string of antiSemitic incidents being probed by police last night after a fourth weekend of Free Palestine marches.
Scuffles broke out between protesters and police as tens of thousands marched through Central London and occupied Trafalgar Square. It was one of around 40 pro-Palestine marches that brought chaos across the country.
Scotland Yard is investigating a string of alleged anti-Semitic incidents as violence and vile imagery again marred mass protests in the capital. The Metropolitan Police said it had made 11 arrests, mainly for public order offences.
However police chiefs faced mounting criticism from antiSemitism campaigners who claim officers are unwilling to ‘take on’ protesters when they spew hate.
During a day marked by a series of ugly scenes, a group of far-Left activists occupied the carriage of a London Underground train and demanded a Palestinian ‘intifada’, meaning an uprising or rebellion.
Using a drum and loudspeaker, demonstrators on the Central Line chanted: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. There is only one solution, intifada revolution.’
Earlier, the group had gathered 500 yards from the Israeli embassy in Kensington, calling for Israel to be ‘smashed’ and ‘torn down brick by brick’ and waving a huge flag that declared ‘Zionism is racism’.
The Central London demonstrations kicked off at lunchtime when protesters blocked a series of road junctions including Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus.
Police made several arrests but chaotic scenes erupted on Shaftesbury Avenue when demonstrators attempted to block police vans from driving away with the detainees. By mid-afternoon, protesters had flooded Trafalgar Square, where anti-Semitic placards and chants were again on display.
One protester was brandishing a placard with a bulldozer flying the Palestinian flag smashing through a wire fence. The image appeared to be celebrating the October 7 Hamas outrage when terrorists used bulldozers to breach the fence along Gaza’s border and massacred more than 1,400 people in Israel.
A few yards away, protesters were handing out a booklet which praised Hamas as ‘a resistance movement’, adding: ‘We unconditionally support Hamas when it is engaged in military or non-military struggles against Israel.’
Police were forced to shut nearby Charing Cross rail station after hundreds of demonstrators conducted a ‘sit-in’ protest.
One group was waving a vile placard that featured a Nazi swastika and the words ‘If I don’t steal it, somebody else is gonna steal it’ – which it falsely claimed was an ‘Israeli proverb’.
Shockingly, they brandished the sign directly behind volunteers selling Royal British Legion poppies. One volunteer told the MoS that he saw the ‘terrible’ Nazi symbol but that he and his colleagues were not intimidated.
Scuffles broke out in the evening between a group of young men and police in Trafalgar Square. At one point a firework was hurled at officers. Police were last night attempting to identify the protesters with the bulldozer placard, and appealing for information about the swastika placard and the Tube protesters.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism voiced its frustration at the police, condemning inaction against the ‘lawless mob... calling for intifada, celebrating Hamas terrorism, making Nazi comparisons’.
They added: ‘It is clear the police are either incapable of enforcing the law or perhaps unwilling to take on such large groups.’
In Glasgow, people were pictured screaming and shouting towards a person holding an Israeli flag, while in Newcastle, Palestine supporters held bloodied children’s dolls aloft.
Demonstrators also gathered in Tower Hamlets, East London, where Palestine flags have flown from lamp-posts in recent weeks.
Solicitor Amir Gotlib, grieving the loss of five members of his mother’s family in the Hamas massacres, said: ‘The day they were buried I saw the Palestine flag on the lamp-post outside my house. I just feel it is hateful and hurting.’
The Met said: ‘Over the past four weeks we have dedicated thousands of officers to reassuring communities, policing protests and dealing with anyone who breaks the law.’