A British MP was questioned under criminal caution for stating that his city and constituency were an Israel free area, calling for a boycott of Israel sourced goods and demonstrations against Israeli sympathisers, because of strong feelings over the Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza.
Now he has been attacked in the street by an Israel supporting assailant railing about the holocaust, calling the MP a holocaust denier and calling him a new Hitler.
I can see no real legal or moral reason to treat a call for a country’s products to be boycotted or supporters demonstrated against to be investigated as a criminal offence. If it was OK for Chile and South Africa, and for cheese eating surrender monkey freedom fries nutters, then Israel should not be excluded.
And when supporters of Israel use the history of the holocaust as an excuse, and accuse people who oppose the aims of the Israeli Government and people as holocaust denier and anti-Semites, they open the door for racists to use the mirror argument that all Jews are responsible for Israeli state actions if critics can be called out as holocaust denier or anti-Semites.
In the UK the way the law on free speech and offensive speech has been rewritten it could be considered an offence:
The following criminal offences raise particular concerns for freedom of expression:
Sections 4A and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 (POA) make it an offence for a person to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour that causes, or is likely to cause, another person harassment, alarm or distress. This can have serious implications on peaceful protestors and others exercising their freedom of expression, as someone who uses insulting language that might distress another were they to hear it could be guilty of an offence;
Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 makes it an offence to send a message by means of a public electronic communications network which is grossly offensive, or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character. This offence is incredibly broad and has been used to address jovial, albeit misjudged communications – it carries huge implications for freedom of expression especially now that social media is so widely used. Section 127 has been used to prosecute a young man who tweeted his frustration about being unable to see his girlfriend due to airport closure. His tweets, which were made without intent to carry out their content or incite others to do so, resulted in his conviction for being a menace under the Act – thankfully that conviction has now been overturned;
In 2006 the Racial and Religious Hatred Act amended the POA to make it an offence punishable by up to seven years imprisonment, to use threatening words or behaviour intended to stir up religious hatred;
In 2008 the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act amended the POA to add an offence of using threatening words or behaviour intended to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation;
The Terrorism Act 2006 criminalises ‘encouragement of terrorism’ which includes making statements that glorify terrorist acts, punishable by up to seven years imprisonment. It is an offence even if the person or group making the statement doesn’t intend to encourage terrorism. As the definition of terrorism is so wide this could criminalise people speaking out against repressive regimes anywhere in the world;
The Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act provides for two new offences aimed at tackling sectarian division and associated violence in Scotland. Liberty has expressed concern that the broadly framed offences in this Act will unnecessarily sweep up individuals exercising their right to free speech who have no intention to commit or incite a criminal offence and in the event do not do so;
A link to some source that discusses the police action would he helpful, don’t you think, in order to debate this? The link in the 2nd reply gives some background, but is more focused on the attack on Galloway as opposed to the earlier action by police, which is what the OP wants to debate.
The Respect MP told the meeting: "We have declared Bradford an Israel-free zone.
"We don’t want any Israeli goods; we don’t want any Israeli services; we don’t want any Israeli academics coming to the university or the college.
"We don’t even want any Israeli tourists to come to Bradford even if any of them had thought of doing so.
“We reject this illegal, barbarous, savage state that calls itself Israel - and you have to do the same.”
A spokesman for the MP previously said the remarks were an extension of a boycott and direct action movement against supermarkets and companies supporting Israel.
Ch Supt Paul Money of West Yorkshire Police said a man of 59 was interviewed voluntarily following complaints about the speech made on 2 August.
Mr Galloway, MP for Bradford West, made the comments at a meeting in Leeds.
The Respect MP’s spokesman said Mr Galloway had co-operated with police.
The force said the matter would be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service when enquiries were completed.
WRT to this specific case, it looks like the MP went a bit far in some ways, such as saying that Israelis cannot come to Bradford. If I’m from Israel, and I’m thinking of (what I’m sure would be) a magical holiday in beautiful bradford, should I be scared? Or if I already live there? What is going to happen to preserve the supposed “no Israelis in bradford” status?
In general, of course criticizing the state and being anti-Semite are two separate things. There are Jewish advocacy groups that are critical of some of Israel’s recent actions for example (I’m thinking of J-Street).
But one way the distinction can get blurred, is that IME often the sort of person who brings up the topic of Israel-Palestine, then turns out to be an anti-Semite. Every time there’s an anti-Israel protest, some idiot gets the megaphone and starts talking about how the Jews dropped the Chicxulub asteroid on Mexico, or whatever WTF CT is currently in vogue.
Have done a little research. It seems the attacker is an ethnic anglo, possibly lapsed catholic, pro-Israel, anti-Hamas member of UKIP (a right wing nationalist anti-immigrant party.)
Why he chose violence is unknown.
My worry is that if someone had stood up and declared their home town a Russian Free zone because of Russian action in Ukraine, they would be unlikely to be questioned under caution by the police. And it is unlikely that if one said this that some aging Friend of the USSR would attack someone in the street accusing them of denying the patriotic sacrifices of Russians in the defence of the Eastern Front and accuse the person as being anti-slavic.
You’ve already said you don’t think it’s anti-Semitic to believe the traditional anti-Semitic canard that British Jews are more loyal to Israel than the UK, so you already seem to be using the two way street.
I’ll note that you yourself don’t profess to believe that British Jews are more loyal to Israel than the UK, but that you “don’t know” if they are or aren’t, so I don’t want the above to be meant to imply that you’ve expressed anti-Semitic beliefs.
Anyway, your concern that somehow complaining about how attacking anti-Israel activists will somehow promote anti-Semitism seems rather silly since large numbers of people regularly make anti-Semitic or borderline anti-Semitic comments about Jews controlling the media, Hollywood, the government, being more loyal to Israel than their own government, or that anti-Semitism is quite understandable because of Jewish “clannishness”.
Other than knowing that the OP is not a fan of the Government of Israel, I’m still puzzled by what the two-way street is: an MP makes some comments about how he opposes Israel, he gets called an anti-Semite and is assaulted by a different stripe of whacko, therefore Jews something something?
I think his concern is that doing things like calling George Galloway an anti-Semite will cause an anti-Semitic backlash.
I think his concern is heartening but misplaced. People who hold anti-Semitic beliefs don’t need such things and people will note that anti-Semites have a long history of hiding behind the “I’m not anti-Semitic I’m anti-Zionist” and “I’m not being anti-Semitic I’m telling the truth” for a long time.
This story is a reminder that the U.K. still hasn’t got the hang of free speech.
There’s a “royal” committee overseeing what newspapers can print, libel laws (while somewhat reformed) still encourage intimidation via lawsuit, and now it seems that police can question dumbass legislators for over-the-top boycott proposals.*
*as a result of this, I am crossing Bradford off my holiday excursion list, along with Monrovia and Mosul.
I have warned you previously about making up stories about what you say I believe and otherwise misrepresenting my views. I will respond to this if and when you produce the original supposed quotes in context within that post and in context to the post to which it was a response to.
My views are that any out group will have a complex relationship to nationality. There is nothing specific to Judaism in these views. They cover me as a Brit in the US, and as English in Scotland. It includes Caribbean immigrants and their offspring, Indian sub-continent immigrants and their offspring, Irish, Hong Kong and African immigrants equally. It includes Catholics, Jews, Moslems Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists in a Protestant country, etc, etc, etc.
The UK has got the hang of free speech, just a somewhat different take than the US. There is a major fallacy in assuming that the US way is the only way. This is just stupid nationalism.
There is no “royal committee” overseeing what newspapers can print.
Our libel laws are different and used to encourage libel tourist, but no longer do so. We choose to interpret defamation somewhat differently to the US, but less restrictively than many European countries which have more stringent privacy laws.
Regarding police acting in a doubtful manner I need only cite Ferguson.
The question here is should the State of Israel be treated on any way differently from the State of Ruritania regarding criticism of policies, demonstrations, boycotts etc.
To clarify the misrepresentation of my views above, I do not believe that calling George Galloway an anti-Semite will cause anti-Semitism.
What I do believe is that allowing a different response to criticism of Israel than that to other countries leads to accusations (quite valid) of reliance on special pleading that is inappropriate. As a modern westernised democracy we should hold Israel to the same standards that we would hold any other similar country rather than allowing the pogrom/holocaust card to be played for special advantage. Gross unfairness and inhuman mistreatment in previous centuries should not buy special inhuman privilege for a state made up of such sorely abused people. That is often what seems to happen.
