When the limits of public speech are determined not by elected officials, courts and police but by how many extremists are willing to shout, menace and threaten, we are no longer governed by democratic institutions but by mob rule
August 20, 2025 08:18
When authorities shrink from confronting hatred, democracy itself is in retreat. On Saturday, Leeds offered a stark example. The city played host to yet another anti-Israel march. The Jewish community, rightly alarmed by the roster of extreme speakers, had urged West Yorkshire Police to impose conditions. Their pleas were ignored. The march went ahead, and the results were as predictable as they were chilling.
What took place was not mere criticism or vilification of Israel. Speakers targeted the Jewish community directly. Synagogues and schools were denounced as guilty of “Zionism”, smeared as the expression of “Jewish supremacy” by one of the flagged speakers, Dr Rameh Aladwan. “There are no anti-Zionist Jewish schools or synagogues in Britain,” she declared. “If we’re going to see everybody as equal, we have to see our Jewish community as equal too and hold them to account.”
The “Israel lobby” – a familiar dog whistle for Jews – was alleged to control Western governments. Dr Aladwan deployed a curiously precise statistic, claiming that “25 per cent of MPs are directly run by the Israel lobby". The figure was probably intended to give the air of forensic evidence to a hateful conspiracy. Those MPs, she claimed, “put the interests of Israel above Britain’s” and should be regarded as “collaborators” and “foreign agents”. The rhetoric did not stop at conspiracy. Calls of “Death, death to the IOF”, or Israel Occupation Forces – a sneering corruption of IDF, the Israel Defense Forces – were heard, along with vile abuse of counter-protesters, who were called “paedophiles” and “rapists”, all under the watchful eye of the police. No one was arrested for these chants. The police’s priority, it seems, was to declare the day a success – if one defines success as the absence of riot, while ignoring the open vilification of a minority community that now feels utterly betrayed.
More extraordinary still, even after reviewing the footage, the police announced there were no grounds for further action. That conclusion beggars belief. Can anyone imagine such things being said about any other community in Britain – its houses of worship, its schools, its alleged infiltration and nefarious control of parliament – without immediate public outrage and police intervention?
As the Leeds Jewish community said in a statement after the protests, "History teaches that once the authorities accept racism on the streets, a society becomes racist.” For almost two years, “pro-Palestine” demonstrators have tested Britain’s incitement boundaries and found them wanting.
In one of the most restrictive hate-speech regimes in the Western world, Jews and Israel are subjected to language and intimidation far beyond what would be tolerated against any other minority or country.
Time and again, the police and political class seem to have chosen to prioritise short-term public order on the day of the protests – avoiding arrests to keep a lid on potential violence – over the long-term rights and safety of the Jewish community. Whether or not that was the case in Leeds, the pattern across the country is clear. The cost is the creeping normalisation of the once unthinkable.
This is not only a Jewish problem. It is a national one. When the limits of public speech are determined not by elected officials, courts and police but by how many extremists are willing to shout, menace and threaten, we are no longer governed by democratic institutions but by mob rule. The loudest and most aggressive sectarian agitators are setting the boundaries of debate, importing not only the hatreds but the political norms of the Middle East onto Britain’s streets.
And so peaceful counter-protesters holding signs such as “Hamas is terrorist” are arrested – not for what they say, but for fear of how marchers might react to this statement of fact that is also government policy. Meanwhile, anti-Jewish rhetoric is often allowed to pass not because the speech is indeed objectively harmless or legal but out of fear of the reaction of those who voice or support it.
The authorities may think they are buying societal peace. They are not. They are merely kicking the can down the road, and each kick erodes our democracy and the safety of our community a little further. Sooner or later, you run out of road. Some may argue we already have.
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