Islamic State

The Met decision to criminalise intifada chant is a blunt attempt to muzzle anti-genocide activism

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by Ismail Patel

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

Metropolitan Police officers form a cordon to prevent hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists and trade unionists leaving following a blockade of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to demand that the UK government ceases arms sales to Israel on 28th November 2024 in London, United Kingdom. [Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images]

When the Metropolitan Police declared it would arrest anyone chanting “globalise the intifada” after the Bondi Beach killings in Australia, it did more than just shift the boundaries of public order policing.

It blurred the crucial line between violent incitement and political expression, while openly revealing its own partiality.

Within days, two people were detained in London for simply shouting “intifada” at a protest. This is not about managing risk; it is a blunt attempt to muzzle anti-genocide activism.

Two facts should expose ministers and senior police officers’ inequity.

First, Australian investigators have identified the Bondi attack as inspired by the Islamic State group (IS), not a Palestinian-organised act. Yet, in Britain, politicians, Israeli embassy officials, and media voices have rushed to tie Bondi to a Palestinian protest slogan, offering no evidence but plenty of noise.

Second, our criminal law already contains clear thresholds for when speech becomes criminal. Encouragement of terrorism requires a statement likely to be understood as a direct or indirect call to commit terrorist offences (Terrorism Act), and prosecutions for racially or religiously aggravated public-order offences rest on harm, intent and context (Crime and Disorder Act 1998).

READ: UK police to arrest protesters chanting ‘globalise intifada’

Ambiguity as a weapon

The Crown Prosecution Service and the Terrorism Act set those tests. They are not suggestions to be ignored simply because some elite and lobby groups in the country support illegal Israeli actions.

Banning or policing a slogan by decree turns ambiguity into a weapon.

“Intifada” is an Arabic word, not an Islamic one, meaning “shake off”. In Palestine, it surged in 1987 as a rallying cry to shake off or rise up against Israeli colonial occupation.

Slogans are the language of frustration, not tidy definitions for opponents to twist. When authorities adopt the most hostile interpretation, it paves the way for racist policing and a slide toward authoritarianism.

In Hong Kong in 2019, protesters were arrested for chanting “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” because the Chinese government branded “revolution” as sedition. Now, British police and the government treat “intifada” the same way.

Criminalising the word intifada is only possible because Palestinians have been racialised within the Israeli Zionist framework, which filters their language and political expression through Israeli racist and colonialist lenses.

So a slogan calling for an end to genocide and occupation – actions illegal under international law – is projected as “violent”. The slogan intifada can only be construed as violent to those determined to keep violence alive.

Banning a slogan also has a chilling effect, making it harder for peaceful campaigns to mobilise.

In fact, the repression of the right to a slogan saps organisations that rely on open, public participation while doing little to deter rogue, clandestine individuals.

The predictable result of the ban is the extermination of peaceful mobilisation and the further radicalisation of rogue individuals. Either outcome should make democratic politicians uneasy.

Deeply biased

A grotesque double standard is at play. The new policing stance echoes the demands of pro-Israeli lobbyists and Zionist interests eager to equate a vague slogan with violence.

Meanwhile, British citizens who aid genocide with weapons, money, or rhetoric are often excused as merely expressing political views or grief.

Police actions are both disastrous and deeply biased. The government is suppressing genuine solidarity with an occupied people, while tolerating rhetoric and actions that fuel ethnic hatred, genocide and daily violence against Palestinians.

This selective zeal of suppressing anything highlighting Israeli violations shatters any claim to impartiality and reinforces the charge of institutional racism.

Policing slogans hands a strategic victory to those eager to delegitimise marginalised, oppressed and underprivileged voices.

Hong Kong showed how Chinese authorities seized on a slogan, exaggerated its most alarming meaning, and used it to justify prosecutions that suffocated dissent.

London is following the same script – stoke fear, blur the line between protest and terror and make arrests routine. The end result is a democracy that punishes words while quietly supporting violence abroad.

READ: UK lawyers launch legal case against Met police for failing to halt “Crusade” protest targeting Muslims

A security game

If governments and police genuinely feared violence on our streets, they would follow the evidence.

They would investigate those British citizens who travel to fight, stop sending weapons to parties accused of international crimes and prosecute those backing illegal occupation, starvation and genocide, instead of criminalising vague political speech that calls for justice and peace.

The solution is both simple and urgent. Police chiefs must show how their new approach aligns with the legal standards set by parliament and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Ministers must resist turning politics into a security game to please powerful lobbies. Courts must remember that criminal law is not a stage for political drama.

Democracy endures because we tolerate uncomfortable, even ugly, speech. Democracy withers when the state decides which Arabic words are dangerous and whose voices are silenced.

We all agree that violent terrorism and hate must be eradicated. That is exactly why the law must be applied fairly.

Arresting people for chanting a vague slogan like “globalise the intifada”, without any plan for violence, is repression masquerading as public safety, and it is anti-Palestinian racism.

This article was first published at Middle East Eye on 23 December 2025

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.

Continue ReadingThe Met decision to criminalise intifada chant is a blunt attempt to muzzle anti-genocide activism

US Bombs Over 75 Targets in Syria After Assad Falls

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

F-15 fighters escort a U.S. B-52 bomber in this August 31, 2021 photo. (Photo: Japan Air Self-Defense Force/U.S. Indo-Pacific Command/flickr/cc)

“The Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky,” said Yanis Varoufakis.A-10 ground attack aircraft

U.S. military forces launched dozens of airstrikes on more than 75 Islamic State targets in Syria on Sunday after the fall of longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid ongoing Israeli and Turkish attacks on the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.

According to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), warplanes including B-52 bombers, F-15 fighters, and A-10 ground attack aircraft “conducted dozens of precision airstrikes targeting known ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria.”

CENTCOM called the strikes “part of the ongoing mission to disrupt, degrade, and defeat ISIS in order to prevent the terrorist group from conducting external operations and to ensure that ISIS does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria.”

The U.S., “together with allies and partners in the region, will continue to carry out operations to degrade ISIS operational capabilities even during this dynamic period in Syria,” CENTCOM added.

“The Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism.”

Responding Monday to the latest attacks on Syria by U.S. forces, Danaka Katovich, national co-director of the peace group CodePink, told Common Dreams: “We condemn the U.S. airstrikes in Syria. The U.S. has sowed chaos in Syria and the entire region for years and the Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism.”

U.S. and coalition forces have killed and maimed at least tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations as part of the anti-ISIS campaign and wider so-called War on Terror.

Commenting on the dearth of coverage of the strikes by the corporate media, prominent Greek leftist Yanis Varoufakis said on social media that “the Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky.”

“Is there no bottom to the moral void of the Western press?” he added.

Sunday’s U.S. strikes came as al-Assad and relatives fled to Russia—where they have been granted asylum—amid the fall of the capital, Damascus, to rebel forces.

Also on Sunday, Israeli forces seized more territory in Syria’s Golan Heights and ordered residents of five villages to “stay home and not go out until further notice” if they want to remain safe. Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has unlawfully occupied it ever since. In 1981, Israel illegally annexed the occupied lands.

“We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border,” right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—said in a video posted on social media.

Numerous Israelis celebrated the seizure on social media, while others cautioned against boasting about what is almost certainly an illegal conquest.

https://twitter.com/WharfRat_DE/status/1866116193771291096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1866116193771291096%7Ctwgr%5Ee770ed2ba1900981f5f8655bf89a951e783a93fe%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fus-bombs-syria-again

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Meanwhile in northern Syria, Turkish airstrikes in support of Syrian National Army rebels—who are battling U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters in and around the Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij—reportedly killed numerous civilians along with dozens of militants.

In what it called a “horrific massacre,” the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that 11 civilians from the same family, including women and six children, were killed in a Turkish drone strike on the SDF-controlled village of Al-Mustariha in northern Raqqa Governate.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingUS Bombs Over 75 Targets in Syria After Assad Falls

Syria and Daesh/Isil – What the UK parliament daren’t discuss

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The UK government is today discussing joining the Western alliance bombing Syria.

After doing an evening’s research last night I almost feel like an expert on Syria and Daesh/ISIL. I also get regular updates from Juan Cole’s Informed Comment which is an excellent resource. It’s important to check internet sources since there are some misleading accounts out there.

There’s the Neo-Conservative ‘Clean Break’ document published in 1996 proposing an aggressive policy in reshaping the Middle East so that Israel is able to “transend” the Arab-Israeli conflict.

We have a 2012 document 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency Document:
West Will Facilitate Rise of Islamic State “in Order to Isolate the Syrian Regime”. This document shows that Daesh/ISIS/ISIL was created and maintained by Western powers.

It is only since Russia recently commenced air strikes supporting Syria that Daesh/ISIS/ISIL’s illicit oil trading business has been targeted. Russia accuses Turkey of facilitating and profiting from this illicit trade while also supporting Daesh/ISIS/ISIL militants. There are accounts of strange deaths of journalists in Turkey and associated support of the Daesh/ISIS/ISIL militants by Turkey’s MIT secret service.

That it is only recently that Daesh/ISIS/ISIL financing has been targeted by Russia suggests that it was accepted by the coalition allegedly fighting Daesh/ISIS/ISIL i.e. Daesh was tolerated as it attacked the Syrian regime.

ed: Aren’t those who engage in terrorism terrorists?

 

3/12/15 3.40pm I’ve found that Dr Nafeez Ahmed has also considered the2012 Defense Intelligence Agency Document:
West Will Facilitate Rise of Islamic State “in Order to Isolate the Syrian Regime” document and reached similar conclusions that Western governments were creating, supporting and maintaining extremist terrorists while claiming the opposite. As an aside I notice that Daesh was not mentioned in this document and wonder whether the ‘new’ ISIS is to move on from ISIS/ISIL/ISI.

It follows that those that accuse others of being “terrorist sympathisers” are actual, literal terrorists … while – of course – hiding and pointing the finger at others.

Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS

Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion’

by Nafeez Ahmed

Image of Western sponsored terrorists ISIS ISIL ISI Daesh

A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these “supporting powers” desired the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in Syria to “isolate the Syrian regime.”

According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the “Syrian opposition” — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated “Salafist Principality” as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad.

…

The newly declassified DIA document from 2012 confirms that the main component of the anti-Assad rebel forces by this time comprised Islamist insurgents affiliated to groups that would lead to the emergence of ISIS. Despite this, these groups were to continue receiving support from Western militaries and their regional allies.

Noting that “the Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the document states that “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition,” while Russia, China and Iran “support the [Assad] regime.”

The 7-page DIA document states that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor to the ‘Islamic State in Iraq,’ (ISI) which became the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,’ “supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media.”

The formerly secret Pentagon report notes that the “rise of the insurgency in Syria” has increasingly taken a “sectarian direction,” attracting diverse support from Sunni “religious and tribal powers” across the region.

In a section titled ‘The Future Assumptions of the Crisis,’ the DIA report predicts that while Assad’s regime will survive, retaining control over Syrian territory, the crisis will continue to escalate “into proxy war.”

The document also recommends the creation of “safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command centre for the temporary government.”

…

The conventional wisdom is that the US government did not retain sufficient oversight on the funding to anti-Assad rebel groups, which was supposed to be monitored and vetted to ensure that only ‘moderate’ groups were supported.

However, the newly declassified Pentagon report proves unambiguously that years before ISIS launched its concerted offensive against Iraq, the US intelligence community was fully aware that Islamist militants constituted the core of Syria’s sectarian insurgency.

Despite that, the Pentagon continued to support the Islamist insurgency, even while anticipating the probability that doing so would establish an extremist Salafi stronghold in Syria and Iraq.

As Shoebridge told me, “The documents show that not only did the US government at the latest by August 2012 know the true extremist nature and likely outcome of Syria’s rebellion” — namely, the emergence of ISIS — “but that this was considered an advantage for US foreign policy. This also suggests a decision to spend years in an effort to deliberately mislead the West’s public, via a compliant media, into believing that Syria’s rebellion was overwhelmingly ‘moderate.’”

…

Continue ReadingSyria and Daesh/Isil – What the UK parliament daren’t discuss

2012 Defense Intelligence Agency Document: West Will Facilitate Rise of Islamic State “in Order to Isolate the Syrian Regime”

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2012 Defense Intelligence Agency Document:
West Will Facilitate Rise of Islamic State “in Order to Isolate the Syrian Regime”

2012 Defense Intelligence Agency Document: West Will Facilitate Rise of Islamic State “in Order to Isolate the Syrian Regime”

…

Astoundingly, the newly declassified report states that for “THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…”.

…

The newly released DIA report makes the following summary points concerning “ISI” (in 2012 “Islamic State in Iraq,”) and the soon to emerge ISIS:

  • Al-Qaeda drives the opposition in Syria
  • The West identifies with the opposition
  • The establishment of a nascent Islamic State became a reality only with the rise of the Syrian insurgency (there is no mention of U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq as a catalyst for Islamic State’s rise, which is the contention of innumerable politicians and pundits; see section 4.D. below)
  • The establishment of a “Salafist Principality” in Eastern Syria is “exactly” what the external powers  supporting the opposition want (identified as “the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey”) in order to weaken the Assad government
  • “Safe havens” are suggested in areas conquered by Islamic insurgents along the lines of the Libyan model (which translates to so-called no-fly zones as a first act of ‘humanitarian war’; see 7.B.)
  • Iraq is identified with “Shia expansion” (8.C)
  • A Sunni “Islamic State” could be devastating to “unifying Iraq” and could lead to “the renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.” (see last non-redacted line in full PDF view.)

 

UK MPs: SYRIA VOTE Wed:
So Many Lives Are in Your Hands. Get Informed Now!

Continue Reading2012 Defense Intelligence Agency Document: West Will Facilitate Rise of Islamic State “in Order to Isolate the Syrian Regime”