Policing and self-policing antisemitism while the IDF roam the streets of the UK

12 May 2026

I went out for a walk yesterday early evening and quickly found myself pondering how those who are critical of Israel’s ethnic cleansing, genocide and warmongering expansionism are made to constantly self-police, whereas those who identify as Zionist—both non-Jewish and Jewish—are barely policed at all. In fact they get to do the policing. We aren’t allowed to say “globalise the intifada” while IDF military who’ve served in Gaza roam the streets of the UK.

Ever since Jeremy Corbyn became likely Labour leader in the autumn of 2015, many who identify as Zionist get to talk about how afraid they are. They have their viewpoint constantly amplified in the mainstream media. Yet those who are critical of Zionism don’t get to talk about their fear.

This grouping ranges from those in Gaza whose voices have been stamped out and journalists mass murdered, to the battered people of the West Bank, where pogroms are a daily occurrence and land seizures are at an all-time high since the Nakba, to the citizens of Lebanon, who face an illegal invasion rooted in ethnic cleansing, to the citizens of Iran, who live under economic duress and war, to those protestors in the western world who fear Zionist abuse including racism, physical attack, censure, losing one’s job, facing a rigged judicial system, the abuse of police power and the might of the repressive state.

Their fears, our fears, don’t count and might as well not exist.

For a minute I started to feel self-conscious about my “Free Palestine” badge and keffiyeh. Then I remembered how wearing these symbols of solidarity has filled me with a sense of joy and solidarity, leading to many many beautiful interactions. They want us to be afraid but the simple truth is we’re not really afraid. We’d be more afraid if we had to give up our principles.

Nevertheless the self-policing/policing gap has become chasmic and is becoming more dangerous. The Corbyn era established the dramatic script. Following 7/10 it became a nonstop show. The BBC amplified the message every step of the way. So it was heartening when on Sunday night the documentary it commissioned and then refused to screen, “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack”, won the BAFTA for best Current Affairs documentary.

In their acceptance speech the makers challenged the BBC to screen their critical comments of the corporation. The BBC claimed that it did this but in fact cut the part of the speech that ran: “Israel has killed over 47,000 children and women in Gaza... over 1,700 Palestinian doctors and healthcare workers... over 400... in what the UN now calls the medicide.” The BBC also cut the makers dedicating their award to Palestinian medical workers held in Israeli “torture camps”.

Then there’s the matter of the Met Police and safety. The other day commissioner Sir Mark Rowley stated that the solidarity demonstrations pose a significant threat to Jewish people. He argued that their intent, combined with a broader “epidemic” of antisemitism has created the “gravest threat” to the community in its history. He added that organisers proposed routes that “involved walking by a synagogue”, which sends a message that "feels like anti-Semitism.”

It’s essential to fight all forms of actual antisemitism—not the wildly over-extended definition of antisemitism proposed in the absurdly politicised IHRA definition, which is basically a creature of Zionist lobbying—yet talk of an “epidemic”, with references to 1930s Nazi Germany increasingly frequent, is arrant nonsense. Even with the IHRA in play, the latest available figures from 2025 show a 20% increase in Islamophobia and a 20% decrease in antisemitic attacks.

Nor has there been a single demonstration that has requested to walk in front of a synagogue—so the commissioner is telling outright lies. As is well understood by anyone who attends the protests or speaks with participants knows, thousands of Jews participate and are greeted lovingly. In fact more Jews are present on the rallies as a proportion of their total population than any other UK grouping! Non-Jewish protestors couldn’t be happier that some of us are prepared to say of the genocide: “not in our name!”

But the truth doesn’t matter to Zionists who are supportive of the witch hunt because it’s all designed to provide political support for the government’s intention to clamp down on the basic right to protest. This includes the right protest against the greatest crime known to humanity, genocide—an indissoluble crime perpetrated by Israel that has been detailed across thousands of pages of reports and submissions as well as recognised internationally.

The Met have also been policing the Greens, as has the entire UK establishment. The Greens aren’t just promising to introduce some progressive economic and green reforms. Much more threateningly, they are critical of Israel plus leader Zach Polanski has even attended some of the solidarity protests. Whereas it’s now expected that the establishment will clamp down hard on any concerted opposition to the genocide, the Met is supposed to be politically neutral. But that went out of the police van window after Zach had the temerity to criticise the way the Met handled the man who stabbed two Jewish men in Golders Green on 29 April—and, almost entirely unreported, because it disrupted the narrative, a Muslim man earlier that day.

On 30 April Polanski shared an X post that claimed officers “were repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head when he was already incapacitated by Taser”. The video of the incident showed this to clearly be the case. At one point even the police officer who was holding the man down while the other kicked him in the head temporarily let go so he could kick him in the head as well. It was very full-on.

Whatever the crime committed, police are supposed to behave professionally and proportionately, and in this instance the officers behaved like amateur mafioso thugs. However on 1 May Rowley published a letter accusing Polanski—a Jew—of sharing “inaccurate and misinformed commentary” that could have a "chilling effect" on officers and inflame tensions by amplifying “us and them rhetoric”.

Even though Zach spoke a simple truth, the political and media establishment ganged up on him and effectively forced him to apologise in an attempt to be able to talk about the Green Party’s commitments to equality and the environment as well as opposing the genocide. Naturally Zach didn’t get to talk about anything he wanted to talk about. That was the whole point of the faux outrage.

Of course Starmer said he’d met the officers involved and defended their actions, noting the “fear” they faced. Starmer built his entire Labour leadership campaign on the fraudulent claim to want to rid the part of antisemitism—more accurately known as criticism of Israel—so has no trouble reading from his own script. Starmer is known to read briefs avidly and then have nothing to say. On the Israel/Zionism he’s very poorly read yet has loads to say.

Meanwhile the Met Police—which has systematically failed to prosecute violence directed at Muslims in the same way it prosecutes violence directed against (Zionist) Jews—is now run according to the priorities of… Zionism. How are we supposed to feel safe when law enforcement doesn’t respect our basic rights and tells outright lies about us, and nobody in the establishment bats an eyelid—indeed gives the commissioner their wholehearted, unreserved support?

Another example of policing/non-policing and the safety for those who are critical of Israel is the Met’s refusal to prosecute war crimes carried out by British citizens while they serve in the IDF.

Back in April 2025 the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the Public Interest Law Centre submitted a 240-page dossier to the Met’s War Crimes Team that included documented evidence of war crimes carried out by the IDF. More than 2,000 UK citizens have served for the IDF in Gaza. The report named the ten British nationals (including those who held held dual citizenship with Israel) whose crimes were the most explicit. More than 70 legal and human rights experts signed a letter urging the Met to investigate. Yet the Met refused, claiming there was “no realistic prospect of conviction”—even though IDF soldiers are notorious for posting celebratory videos about their crimes on social media, even though the report supplied them with the evidence.

Attorney General Richard Hermer has recounted merrily that he has “dear family” in the IDF. Starmer is married to a Jewish woman and says that “half of his family” lives in Israel, meaning that they’ll have or are serving in the IDF, where service is obligatory (except for the ultra-orthodox). I have a friend who is currently taking a break from me who has family in Israel—so they are either serving or in all likelihood will have once served in the IDF. I have ex-friends—friends who’ve dropped me, you know how it can go—who have kids who’ve gone through or are maybe currently in the IDF. I’m not suggesting these family members are among the 2,000, but it’s possible. Even if none of this grouping in the dossier, the 2,000 detailed in the report are real. It’s a substantial, not entirely benign, military grouping.

Imagine the UK Zionist response if 2,000 IRGC soldiers were discovered to be walking freely in the UK. Given that Starmer and the Zionist movement are already determined to proscribe the IRGC, it’s safe to say there’d be a complete meltdown. Zionists evidently don’t care that there’s no evidence of IRGC activity in the UK. They’re not bothered that—in contrast to the IDF—there’s no record of the IRGC committing war crimes. They can’t even begin to register how claims the IRGC committed crimes against humanity while repressing domestic protests earlier this year are impossible to disentangle from Israel and the US’s epic failure to engineer, arm and guide an insurgency earlier this year.

Yet it’s the Zionist movement and its supporters that have colonised the feeling of fear—with mainly Jewish Zionists doing the articulating and mainly non-Jewish Zionists doing the amplifying. All of this takes place at the expense of those who fear the IDF perpetrators of a genocide walking the streets of the UK. Meanwhile Zionists constantly gaslight and intimidate Jews who are critical of Israel, accusing them of being antisemitic, not Jewish, a self-hating Jew, treacherous, etc.

If a non-Jew were to attack a Jew in this way it would be defined as antisemitic behaviour. Therefore if a Jewish Zionist attacks another Jew in this way it is also antisemitic. How can we quantify the extent to which any current rise in antisemitism in the UK is rooted in Jewish Zionists expressing hate towards Jews who are critical of Israel? To state the obvious, the Zionist movement has no interest in eradicating antisemitism. It needs antisemitism, it thrives on antisemitism, it will invent antisemitism even when it’s not there, and it has engineered such a level of dominance in the west that its war criminal soldiers can claim the streets as their own.

There are many other examples of Zionist policy and the requirement that those of us who are critical of Israel must constantly self-police. The examples of the BBC’s censorship of “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack”, the Met Police’s policing of the Greens, and the simultaneous freedom afforded to British citizens who have served for the IDF in Gaza to walk the streets are just the ones that sprang to mind as I went on a walk.

The thought that someone might spit in my face or assault me didn’t last long. Then I thought: this is no way to think, let’s get some perspective, millions of others have to contend with exponentially greater threats, I’ve enjoyed overwhelmingly life-affirming experiences through the solidarity movement—let’s enjoy the lovely evening and neighbourhood bustle. As I left the local park, a stranger passed by me and, with an American accent, said “Nice pin!” I replied, “Thanks, free Palestine!”