Starmer calls for action on chants at Palestine marches

Sir Keir Starmer has called for a police crackdown on antisemitic chanting at demonstrations, including pro-Palestine marches, saying the government "won't tolerate" it.

- MILLIE COOKE

The prime minister's official spokesperson said that while “free speech is an important right in this country, that can’t extend to inciting hatred or harassing others”, saying the police will use their powers “more robustly” to tackle the proliferation of antisemitism.

It comes after two gunmen attacked a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Australia on Sunday, killing 15 people and injuring a further 27.

Yesterday, a spokesperson for a Jewish security charity warned that violent chants at protests, “if they are left unchecked”, can lead to deadly atrocities like the Bondi Beach attack.

Dave Rich, director of policy at the Community Security Trust (CST), which provides protection for Jewish communities in the UK, said it is “not a difficult connection to make” between hatred directed at Israel during marches and “this kind of violent terrorism”.

He said calls for “intifada” and the phrase “river to the sea”, used by some protesters at pro-Palestine demonstrations, had not been challenged properly.

Meanwhile, chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis warned that “hate speech has the potential to become translated into hate action”.

He said: “We have seen, on a weekly basis, people out in the streets of cities in our country crying slogans which incite hatred - ‘from the river to the sea’; ‘globalise the intifada’.

“What does ‘globalise the intifada’ mean? Well, on Yom Kippur at the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester, we discovered what it means. On Bondi Beach, Australians discovered what is meant by those words.