Chief Rabbi says police are failing to protect Jewish community
Met told pro-Palestinian marches which assemble close to shuls frighten people on Shabbat
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis has waded into the long-running row between the Jewish community and the Metropolitan Police over the Met’s refusal to divert pro-Palestinian demonstrations away from central London synagogues.
The chief rabbi accused the Met of failing to protect Jews after it became clear that two of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s “formation points” for a planned demonstration on January 18 would start close to two inner London synagogues — Central Synagogue and Western Marble Arch.
However, other communities not under the auspices of the Chief Rabbi might also be affected by the demonstrators — including West London Reform Synagogue, and two Chabad congregations which meet in Belgravia and Bloomsbury.
There have been months of talks about the proposed route of the demonstration, which is specifically planned to start outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House in protest against perceived bias of the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
The chief rabbi said: “The Metropolitan Police are responsible for upholding the right to peaceful protest, and for ensuring that Jewish Londoners feel safe. There can be no justification for not making a clear commitment that the routes of pro-Palestinian marches will not come anywhere close to local synagogues. It is hard to see the absence of such a commitment as anything other than a failure of the Met’s duty to members of Jewish communities who no longer feel safe walking to and from their synagogues on the Sabbath”.
Rabbi Daniel Epstein, from Western Marble Arch, told Jewish News that “we don’t want to have to reach a situation like this. We don’t have an issue with freedom of speech, under which the vast majority of those protesting operate — but we have had many conversations with the Met where we believed they were taking our concerns into account, but nothing seems to have changed”.
He said the knock-on effect on his community of the repeated marches since October 7 2023 was incalculable. He had hoped that after Covid, attendance figures would return to normal, but now “people are afraid to come to shul. And for our family, Shabbat afternoon walks are out”.
Rabbi Epstein said that the marches impinged on the Jewish community in terms of its right to practise its religion freely, under Article Nine of the Human Rights Act, and under Section 14 of the Public Order Act, relating to offences and assembly.
A Met Police spokesman said: “We are aware the PSC are planning a national callout on Saturday, 18 January. A route has not yet been agreed and we continue to liaise with organisers to address concerns raised by members of the Jewish community.”
The Met said its officers were constantly balancing the rights of protesters to demonstrate lawfully and the rights of the public to go about their lives without serious disruption, adding: “We know that the cumulative impact of more than a year of regular protest on London’s Jewish communities has been significant and that understanding informs our approach”.
Police had “repeatedly imposed conditions on form-up locations, routes and start times to limit disruption precisely because we’ve listened to concerns raised. Often we’ve done so in the face of strong objections from protest groups. The measures we’ve taken aren’t seen by everyone as being enough, but we believe they have been proportionate and reasonable. We will continue to engage in good faith will all parties”.
A spokesman for the Chief Rabbi’s Office said the essential difference between the Met and the Jewish community was how each side framed its starting approach. “The Met says, we believe the marchers have the right to protest outside Broadcasting House. We say, we believe the marchers have the right to protest”.
The PSC’s statement says that its march “does not go past any synagogue — there is a synagogue some streets away from where the march assembles”. But the Jewish community says this misses the point: that with coaches of demonstrators arriving in streets surrounding the synagogues, anyone trying to attend services has to make their way through crowds of people, often carrying placards which frighten and intimidate Jewish families.
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