The UK’s Absurd Political Repression of Pro-Palestinian Dissent

News:

On the 5^th of July 2025 the UK government declared ‘Palestine Action’ – a non-violent campaign group targeting military support for the genocidal Zionist entity coming from the UK – to be proscribed under anti-terror law making expressions of support for the organization illegal and punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper proscribed the group after members sprayed red paint on RAF plFanes, but critics note the action was property damage, not violence. In the weeks since, police have arrested over 100 people nationwide under counter-terror laws – including an 83-year-old priest and Quaker pensioners. Armed officers even threatened to arrest people holding signs just saying “Free Gaza” or “Genocide”.

​Comment:

The first target was Muslim opposition to Zionism, but now has come the turn of the political Left in the UK. This savage repression of peaceful protest against genocide under the guise of combating terrorism is part of a deep-rooted campaign to smear all serious criticism of the Zionist entity as ‘antisemitism’, which is the mother of all crimes. Sanctification of the Jews as a cover for supporting the West’s Zionist project in the Middle East reached fantastical proportions this week with the suspension from her party of Labour party MP Diane Abbott – the Commons’ longest-serving Black woman – after defending her past remarks on racism. Abbott had written in 2023 that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people face prejudice analogous to racism, but not “all their lives” in the same way as people of colour. Her distinction prompted a flood of accusations of antisemitism, and she apologised at the time but was still suspended. Abbott later told the BBC she stood by the basic point: "Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism, because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don't know. You don't know unless you stop to speak to them or you're in a meeting with them. But if you see a black person walking down the street, you see straight away that they're black. They are different types of racism." For that, the Labour promptly suspended her again. Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell called it “extremely bizarre” to punish Abbott for an interview in which she “forthrightly condemns antisemitism and racism in all its forms”, while more powerful figures have faced no sanction for using racist language. Abbott’s crime was to reverse the Western dogma that antisemitism is uniquely evil and to state that because Jews generally in the UK are not easily identifiable, they actually experience less racism than people with a different color of skin.

The false equation of opposition to the Zionist entity as antisemitism was used to justify the UK’s ban on Hizb ut Tahrir Britain in January 2024. Home Secretary James Cleverly claimed Hizb ut Tahrir “actively promotes and encourages terrorism,” for example by celebrating the 7 October attacks despite it being widely known that the party works on a purely political level. Counter-terror analysts had warned for years that banning Hizb ut Tahrir is therefore a political gesture rather than a response to any terror threat. After the Zionist entity’s genocidal onslaught upon Gaza following Hamas’s military operation against the ring of steel surrounding Gaza, criticism against the daily massacres of Palestinian civilians from Muslims and many other sections of British society mounted. It was claimed that antisemitism increased dramatically, but this was based on the devious lie that criticism of the Zionist state is antisemitic. The mainstream media downplayed Palestinian suffering and showered disproportionate sympathy upon the Zionist narrative. First Hizb ut Tahrir was banned and then the secular Palestine Action and most recently a Labour MP was punished for a second time.

An Orwelian climate of fear has been ushered in where mis-speech is a crime. No one is safe from the accusation of antisemitism. Not the Muslims for sure; and not the left, and not even the Jews are safe from the accusation of antisemitism if they dare to oppose or even question the sacred doctrines that have perverted societal discourse in the UK.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Dr. Abdullah Robin