A little while back I wrote about how London’s Metropolitan Police had decided that they would apply the law and arrest supporters of the now banned ‘Palestine Action’ group should those sympathetic to this group decide to openly support this group during demonstrations. With the Met’s appalling reputation since the 7/10 Pogrom in Israel of treating ‘Palestine’ protestors with kid gloves I was worried that the initial arrests of ‘Palestine Action’ supporters at London demonstrations might have been a one off event to give the public the impression that they are dealing with these thugs, but it seems that I might have been wrong.
The Met are indeed starting to be consistent with their approach to ‘Palestine Action’ supporters. At a recent demonstration in London those demonstrators who showed support for ‘Palestine Action’ either by their words or placards or clothing or other emblems have been nicked. The Met are saying that 41 people have been arrested at a recent London ‘Palestine’ demo for showing support for the ‘Palestine Action’ group.
Whilst I do praise the Met for making these arrests which occurred during the demonstration rather than by way of public appeals for information after the demonstration, I do worry that all that the Met are nicking are those who are the low level useful idiots who are turning out for ‘Palestine Action’ because the see support for such a group as ‘edgy’. I doubt very much that the Met are getting to the higher level supporters and organisers of ‘Palestine Action’ with these arrests. At present I reckon that the Met are only getting a few middle class left ‘Tarquins’ into the cells and not this group’s hard core organisers and activists. The Met are with these arrests getting the cannon fodder of ‘Palestine Action’ and not those loading and aiming the cannon.
I’ve noticed that those who have been high profile and vocal about their support for ‘Palestine Action’ such as the idiot MP Zarah Sultana have been unusually circumspect about their written and verbal support for this group since the ban on ‘Palestine Action’ was imposed by the Home Secretary. I would assume that there are other high profile supporters of this extremist group that are doing similar things to not make themselves martyrs to this twisted cause. I suspect that the big backers of ‘Palestine Action’ are keeping quiet themselves about their support for this group whilst letting the useful idiots take the rap for supporting ‘Palestine Action’.
Whilst I welcome the action taken by the Met against ‘Palestine Action’ it’s only sweeping up the bit part players and not the main actors. I would like to assume that something is going on behind the scenes to target those behind ‘Palestine Action’ but I suspect that this might be a bigger job than just going after the low level useful idiots. This is because the leadership or high profile supporters of this group are probably quite clever in avoiding direct links to this entity and the group itself might be cellular in structure and therefore difficult to pin down. It’s going to take some serious intelligence entryism to uncover ‘Palestine Action’s movers and shakers and their funders as unlike foes like the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the 1980’s there’s probably no obvious command structure for the security forces to infiltrate and destroy from within.
The arrests of the ground level ‘Palestine Action’ operatives is a good thing in my view but it’s not enough. What’s worse is that we need not have even got to the stage where the Met is having to arrest public supporters of a banned terrorist group if they’d employed more robust policing tactics on these ‘Palestine’ demonstrations from the outset. The Met gave too much of a free hand to these ‘Palestine’ clowns and that decision did not reduce the level of violent extremism present in these ‘Palestine’ demonstrations, but encouraged its growth.
Links
Met police statement on ‘Palestine Action’ arrests
