Do you think the Palestinian protests should be restricted?

[Yriovd]

With talk of the potential police powers, what do you think?

YABU - no restrictions, allow them to go ahead every week as they currently do.

YANBU - restrict them so they’re allowed less frequently, or ban them altogether.

Do you really think a scruffy 20-something white person with dreadlocks singing 'from the river to the sea' and 'globalise the intifada'is a humanitarian mission that will end the war in Gaza? Honestly?

I find it completely deluded and embarassing

There are weekly (or more) protests outside my office as I work at a University. It's awful and I've been using my annual leave to avoid them. They yell all sorts of horrible things, wear the scarves and masks and are just really frightening. Oddly they also wave trans flags around (though an area of the world less friendly to trans people is hard to imagine). I think the way these protests have developed into some sort of oddly expanded 'protest all the things' is bizarre and very distracting from what should be their core principals.

I will repeat to anyone listening that I have no issue with anyone protesting for anything they like (I regularly attend protests and marches with my children) but the actual feel of these as a Jewish person is really, really awful. It frightens me and encourages hate. I'm not saying this is the intent and it certainly (for most people anyway) didn't start like this, but it's absolutely what it's turned into.

And my continual reminder that my daughter was the victim of 2 different attacks at school after all this started - one 2 years ago when she was 10 and she was surrounded on a school trip by her classmates yelling 'free palestine' and 'who do you root for?' and 'my family wants yours dead' (and that child was the one family to not apologise at all) and once in high school last year when she was 11 and a group of children surrounded her in the stairwell and yelled 'free palestine' and waved their scarves in her face and wouldn't let her leave until she 'promised to tell her family to get out of here' (where 'here' was is unclear). They then told her that they'd 'get our cousins to come find you' so we had to track her back and forth to school for a while - and sometimes I still do on a bad day.

My daughter has never been to Israel. She is the only Jewish child in a school of 800 children (and my son the only Jewish child in 450 children in the primary school) and I am worried every.single.day for her. She has nothing to do with this and to be honest - these stories could have been far worse if her schools hadn't immediately jumped right in to support her. So while I can't imagine 99% of the protesters want this to happen, it has absolutely created this situation for my family.

The first ask for any of this should be to get rid of Hamas - being ruled by a terrorist organisation is horrible (as per the Taliban) and anyone with any sort of wish for safety or security or women's rights or anything we all hopefully value in our society here in the UK should be really worried about giving Hamas our support.

That’s appalling, @PurpleThistle7 - I’m so incredibly sorry your daughter was subjected to that, it must be terrifying for all of you.

I’m not Jewish, but find the marches deeply intimidating, even though I know plenty of people who participate in them and know that they’re motivated by horror at the situation in Gaza and concern for the people there. I share their concern, but am appalled by their readiness to align themselves with flags and slogans which, intentionally or otherwise, call for the annihilation of Israel. I find the fact that marches went ahead following the attack in Manchester absolutely abhorrent, and have felt completely alienated by people I know and love draping themselves in the Palestinian flag and kefiyeh for the past two years.

As for Ireland, there is something incredibly unsettling about the insistence on aligning Irishness with the Palestinian cause. An Irish TD wrote a piece for the Guardian not long after 7th October in which he said that Ireland was able to take a more clear sighted view because they didn’t have any Jews they needed to appease. It sent chills down me just reading it.

That sounds like a made up person?

The people I know who attend are of all ages, professional backgrounds, races and hairstyles.

Absolutely not. Peaceful protest is surely a fundamental right which is carefully being eradicated in the UK.

Acts of terror here should not be used in the political game of the rights and wrongs of war crimes and a humanitarian crisis.

@PurpleThistle7 that bullying of your daughter is absolutely appalling and the parents should be utterly ashamed.

I notice that the people saying peaceful protest should be allowed carefully avoiding addressing the calls for violence and the murder of Jews, the celebration of October 7th, the support for Hamas which seem to keep happening at these marches.

Why do they keep happening at these peace marches? Are they a bug or actually a feature?

And if they are a feature, is that really what we want to be encouraging? Saying they should be arrested is all well and good but where are we two years later? Hate chants still ongoing and Jews murdered on the streets of the U.K. Not that the protestors give a shit.

I think that these chants, anti semitism and calls for violence (globalise the intifada) is still continuing after 2 years, shows that protesters don't actually care and believe these things. I couldn’t march alongside that. They appear unable to control themselves. It doesn't look or sound peaceful either. Perhaps they want violence here, terrorism here, it seems that way calling for globalise the intifada, they will probably get the extremists to do just that. They hear them call it enough times. Will they be happy when that happens, some will no doubt.

The right to peaceful protest is a pillar of our society. No restrictions, thank you.

Be very, very careful what you wish for.

If there is hate speech and an incitement to violence, there should be arrests in that regard.
Peaceful protest is a staple of democracy and cannot be undermined simply because some people disagree with the cause.

Thousands of people attending a peaceful protest don't have control over everyone who shows up. You could argue the same thing about every protest - why are people happy to march alongside small groups of people who show up with horrendous views?

Those kinds of views aren't the point of the march, and people who genuinely want peace can't stop others with malicious views from attending. That's an issue in many protests.

If people show up to marches (or indeed anywhere) spreading hate speech or inciting violence, that is a crime and a matter for the police. It doesn't mean others should stop marching for peace.

That large number of arrests was of peaceful activists sitting on the ground holding up placards. They were arrested not because of violence but because Labour decided PA is a terrorist group. Nothing more.

“There should be arrests”

There haven’t been. People are dead, which is what some people on these marches have called for and celebrated. What now?

Why are peaceful people continuing to march alongside these hate mongers instead of calling them out or refusing to march alongside them or leaving the hate speeches or reporting them to the police?

More judgement of them is needed for enabling it.

They are fuckwits who decided that despite Palestine Action being allowed to appeal their proscription through the courts have decided to get arrested to fuel their own sense of self-righteousness. This is more important to them than allowing police to free up resources to protect Jews in the recent aftermath of a terror attack

The Palestine Action protestors are selfish and despicable people.

The police do arrest people for that and for supporting terrorist organisations. Around 500 were arrested at last Saturday's 'peaceful ' protests. It costs a fortune policing week in and week out and all the other days they select too.

I disagree
They are protesting against Labour overreaching.
Prescribing PA as a terrorist group is an attempt to shut down protests which as we’ve heard from some MPs is exactly what they want.

The protestors are standing up for Free Speech
I applaud all those who try to maintain our rights and deplore those who try to take them away

Yes they should have restrictions, and no face coverings either.

Those protestors are standing up for the right to attack our U.K. military, endanger our national security while we are at war, and on the side put a police officer in hospital.

If I was going to be arrested, it wouldn’t be that group I’d be getting a criminal record for.

If it were Russia doing it, people would be horrified and scared. Stick a keffiyeh on it and mindless idiots will laud them as heroes.

Only authoritarian regimes ban protests!

We've been all over the country last few years - uni visists - seen a lot of these marches all have been peaceful and a surpsing variety of people.

The marches we've seen often get ignored in the press - no racists or antisemitism chanting and I haven't seen face coverings.

However I don't think these marches are having any poltical effect and looking at recent press many are getting more militant so do agree they are increasingly looking counter productive.

Ultimatley I think Labour are playing politics just as previous Tory did getting more authoritarian laws passed using them as convienet cover so what ever I think about the marches keeping a long term eye on where we are going it does look a bit concerning.

I’m sick of them. London is horrific at weekends now.

Dd was there on Saturday. She is quite a liberal but she came back saying she was disgusted by protestors yelling and screaming in the police’s faces, and also shouting at and frightening tourists.

The right to protest should be protected, but I think for a core group it’s less about protesting a cause and more about a day out aggressively causing trouble and getting a chance to attack the police.

The point is try and stop a genocide going on before our eyes. It's not a matter on which one can agree to disagree.

Can you link to the article about the Irish TD please, I'd like to read that for myself.

How? By walking through English cities carrying a flag and shouting at police officers? Wouldn't it be better to spend the day doing overtime and to send that day's wages to a Palestinian charity/cause?