The Home Secretary was slammed on Tuesday after she described protests attended by tens of thousands in support of Middle East peace as “hate marches”.
Following a meeting on Monday of the Government’s COBRA emergencies committee, Suella Braverman seized on isolated anti-Israel chanting from the weekend crowds seen in London and elsewhere since murderous raids by Hamas terrorists ignited the latest conflict on October 7.
“We’ve seen now tens of thousands of people take to the streets following the massacre of Jewish people, the single largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, chanting for the erasure of Israel from the map,” the hardline minister said.
“To my mind there is only one way to describe those marches: they are hate marches.”
Labour shadow minister Sir Chris Bryant responded on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Her comments yesterday were absolutely reprehensible. Saying every single person in those marches was involved in a hate march, well that patently isn’t true and it makes it more difficult for police to do their job properly.”
The Muslim Council of Britain denounced “the Islamophobic bigotry that has taken hold in the Conservative Party” after Ms Braverman had previously suggested that merely waving a Palestinian flag could be criminalised.
“During these times of crisis, we call for responsible leadership. We condemn the surge in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents since the crisis started,” the Council’s Secretary General Zara Mohammed said.
“We must all come together to find common ground and speak out against both these ills. Yet, our politicians and sections of our media are fuelling Islamophobia in plain sight and with impunity,” she said.
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael told the Standard: "The government should be working to bring communities together at this deeply distressing time, yet it was disappointing to see the Home Secretary give this grandstanding remark.
"With hate crime on the rise in recent weeks, I would rather ministers spend their time ensuring police can catch the culprits, rather than give interviews which will do nothing to reduce tensions."
Transport minister Richard Holden refused to repeat Ms Braverman’s blanket assertion of “hate marches” but said he sympathised with the fear provoked among Jewish people including over the protest chant of “from the river to the sea” - which is seen by many as antisemitic.
On LBC, he was pressed on the fact that the overwhelming majority have not been marching in support of Hamas but for a humanitarian ceasefire, peace and a two-state solution.
“I’m fully on board with also wanting a short break, a pause, so we can get actual aid into Gaza and also get some of those British people out,” he said.
“But there are definitely groups of people that - and one frankly is too many - when it comes to people actually supporting proscribed terrorist organisations. I think there's quite clearly been some people committing hate crimes on these marches. I think there's no doubt about that.”
