Police in southern England told a Jewish activist from Brighton to stop posting about Gaza—after she was bombarded with antisemitic abuse over the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023.
Heidi Bachram had been targeted with slurs and vile comments about her murdered relatives. Instead of tackling the threats, officers from Sussex Police advised her to stay off social media.
Bachram said she was shocked that her local police appeared to prefer her silence over pursuing the abusers. Her posts on X (formerly Twitter), where she has more than 42,000 followers, have angered pro-Palestinian activists and other trolls who resent her sharing information about those killed and kidnapped in the October 7 pogrom.
She was called “Ugly Zionist scum” and worse, while some users mocked her relatives—Tsahi Idan and his daughter Maayan from the Israeli kibbutz of Nahal Oz—both murdered in the attack.
Sussex Police even advised her not to publicise the murder of her husband’s relative, something she describes as “classic victim-blaming.” This was despite a previous occasion when the same force had alerted her to an antisemitic social media post.
After she posted an image of a Brighton memorial to the victims of October 7 that had been vandalised with human faeces, one person replied:
None of these people died in Brighton. Go f*** yourself, Jew.
In contrast, the next visit from Sussex Police was to warn her off posting online on “controversial” topics. Amid subsequent bad publicity, a Sussex Police representative stated:
We are aware of the concerns raised by Ms. Bachram and have received a formal complaint. The complaint will be fully investigated. Sussex Police maintains a zero-tolerance policy towards hate crimes—there is no place for hatred in the county. We urge anyone affected by hate crimes to report them to Sussex Police, and we are committed to ensuring that every reported incident is thoroughly investigated in accordance with the law, taking all factors into account.
Police forces in England and Wales are already widely criticised for investigating online “crimes” at the expense of real ones on the streets. Their growing reputation for ‘two-tier policing’ will only get worse if such double standards are also applied to social media.
