🔴 Pro-Palestine Protests After Synagogue Killings Spark Fury

Violent clashes, dozens of arrests and a wave of controversy marked pro-Palestinian protests held in defiance of police pleas just hours after a deadly synagogue terror attack, raising stark questions over timing, intent and the troubling optics now confronting Britain

In Manchester a terror attack left two Jewish worshippers dead and several others injured after a knife assault outside a synagogue by 35-year-old Jihad Al-Shamie, a British citizen of Syrian descent who was subsequently shot by armed police.

In the immediate aftermath one might reasonably expect a pause, a moment of solemn reflection, or at the very least restraint from further public disorder. Instead Britain was treated to the sight of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, some long-scheduled and some hastily convened, proceeding regardless of police warnings and common sense alike.

The Metropolitan Police had urged organisers of the principal London march, fronted by Defend Our Juries, to postpone in order that stretched resources could be diverted to the protection of vulnerable communities. That plea was ignored. The event went ahead, accompanied by the predictable disorder and the equally predictable violence, culminating in more than forty arrests from a relatively modest gathering. The irony is stark when set against the recent Unite the Kingdom march which drew upwards of four hundred thousand people yet produced just twenty-six arrests. One crowd dwarfs the other by several orders of magnitude, yet it is the smaller one that ends in scenes of chaos.

Compounding this display was the addition of a smaller flash protest on Whitehall, hastily called outside of the main event. This one, police confirmed, was assembled only hours after the Manchester killings and it was here that most of the arrests occurred.

Whether or not intended, the optics are unmistakable. A synagogue attack leaves two Jewish citizens murdered, the assailant’s name happens, with gruesome irony, to be Jihad, and almost immediately a demonstration takes place that can be read—morally if not legally—as aligned with that act of violence. The claim by organisers that their cause is wholly separate collapses under the weight of such timing.

The home secretary said she was "disappointed" pro-Palestinian protests went ahead on Thursday in the aftermath of the synagogue attack in which two men were killed.