As London again became the centre of pro-Palestine protests over the weekend, Metropolitan Police officers arrested a man who held up a sign reading “Hamas is terrorist”—a statement which the UK government describes as fact.
Niyak Ghorbani, who was holding the banner, was pulled to the floor and handcuffed after being assaulted by pro-Palestine protesters who took offence to his message.
Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, told The European Conservative that the fact anti-Hamas activist Ghorbani was arrested—rather than those pro-Palestine demonstrators who attacked him—“feels like a prime example” of “two-tier policing.” Young said:
No one should be arrested for telling the truth. If Niyak Ghorbani was in danger because he was being attacked by pro-Hamas protestors, the police should have arrested them, not him.
The altercation, which came just days after the government’s counter-extremism commissioner said London has become a “no-go zone for Jews” during weekend-long pro-Palestine marches, turned all the more ridiculous when the Metropolitan Police insisted “the arrest was not made in relation to the placard.”
It said in a post on Twitter that officers “intervened to prevent a breach of the peace” and that Ghorbani was arrested “for assault.” Twitter Community Notes responded that “clear videographic evidence [shown below] of the encounter disproves the met police statement.”
Twitter correctly identified that the footage shows “the man was arrested after standing peacefully and then being assaulted by others offended by the ‘Hamas are terrorists’ sign.”
Ghorbani himself added that protesters
attacked me from behind and hit me in the head. They pushed me and told me Hamas is a protector of Palestine. … The police destroyed my sign and told me that I had harassed someone in the protest and that is why they arrested me.
The person who assaulted Ghorbani was not arrested, and Ghorbani was only “de-arrested” after his friends showed officers (then viral) video evidence of his innocence.
Footage from elsewhere in London over the same weekend shows other officers pushing a man holding a sign reading “For Israel against antisemitism.” There were five arrests in total on Saturday, including for anti-Israel placards and chants.
The Metropolitan Police did not respond to The European Conservative’s request for comment on its alleged “two-tier” approach. Instead, it pointed to its Twitter post which has already been disproved, and to its Commissioner’s complaints that “officers are increasingly getting caught in the middle of public debate.”
