Antisemitism, Intimidation and Violence in British Politics

“Someone is coming to kill you.” Those are the words of British MP Michael Freer, in an Aish.com exclusive interview, and they describe the fear he has as a pro-Israel politician today, and the reason he’s made the wrenching decision to step down from politics after 14 years representing Finchley and Golders Green, a heavy Jewish area in Northwest London.

Freer entered Parliament in 2010 after a career in finance and local politics. Though he is not Jewish, he is a staunch supporter of Israel and joined the Conservative Friends of Israel parliamentary group, which promotes closer ties between the United Kingdom and the Jewish state. Freer believes his support for close commercial, cultural, and political relations with Israel are unremarkable: “Most voters remain the same” in their support for Israel,” he explains. He was re-elected to Parliament in 2015, 2017, and 2019. Now, fear is pushing him out.

Close Calls

Twice in the past three years, Freer has been violently targeted.

On October 15, 2021, Ali Harbi Ali, a young London-born ISIS supporter, paid a visit to MP David Amess. Amess represented the southern English constituency Southend West and - like Freer - was also a member of Conservative Friends of Israel. Amess was meeting his constituents in a church on England’s south coast. Ali patiently waited for his turn to speak with Amess, then pulled out a knife and stabbed the 69-year-old MP 21 times.

The shocking murder shook British politics, but criticism of Ali in some corners of Britain was tinged with admiration. (The influential British newspaper The Guardian, for instance, insisted on calling Ali, who’d dropped out of college, an “academic high flier” who merely “fell” into extremism in its coverage.) For Michael Freer, his colleague’s murder contained an extra element of terror: reviewing his own visitor logs, Freer discovered that a month before Ali murdered David Amess, he had sought out a meeting with Freer, and had come armed with a knife, intending to kill him.

MP David Amess (L), convicted terrorist Ali Harbi Ali

“He’d been to Finchley several times,” Freer later explained. “He told the police that he’d come to Finchley on 21 September 2021 - I remember the date vividly - armed with the intention to harm. And purely by a stroke of luck, the night before, (former Prime Minister) Boris Johnson had moved me from the whips’ office to courts and equalities. Otherwise I would have been in Finchley and probably attacked.”

Freer’s second brush with violence came just weeks ago. “Then, on Christmas Eve,” Freer continues, “there was the arson attack.” On December 24, 2023, at 7pm, 42-year-old Paul Harwood and 32-year-old Zara Karsory set fire to Freer’s constituency office. They sent an email asserting that Freer is “the kind of person who deserved to be set alight,” though they did not name Israel as their motivation in targeting Freer. Freer later revealed that in addition to these two harrowing incidents, he’s experienced about another dozen “very threatening” episodes, including “Molotov cocktails left on the doorstep, and notes left on the car… And on top of that, routine vandalism. Some of the incidents have been very threatening.”

Freer was forced to alter his home, installing bulletproof windows, security lighting, and panic buttons in every room. When he attends public events, he now wears a stab-proof vest. After years of taking these extreme precautions, the stress has become too much. He will not contest his seat at the next General Election and will retire from politics. Freer notes that while many issues in Britain have become incredibly divisive, he believes it’s his pro-Israel views and the fact that he represents a constituency with a large Jewish community which is singling him out for attack. “I can’t draw any other conclusion,” he said. “The level of abuse I get standing up for my constituents on antisemitism and on Israel has to be a factor.”

“Aggressive and Intimidating”

Each Saturday, central London - and often other British cities as well - hosts a massive anti-Israel march, organized by Britain’s Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC). In one February 2024 post, the PSC estimated that a quarter of a million people demonstrated against Israel in London alone, and posted a video showing people holding banners reading “From the River to the Sea” and shouting “Israel is a terrorist state.” Freer singles out the PSC as a major source of the escalation in dangerous rhetoric in British politics: “Their tactics are particularly aggressive and intimidating.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the protests “had descended into intimidation, threats and planned acts of violence,” insisting that the time has come to battle extremist forces as he warned “democracy itself is a target.”

He points to a recent event in Parliament that shook the nation. On February 21, 2024, Britain’s political parties debated calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The debate was highly charged, and Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of the House of Commons, broke tradition, allowing MPs to vote in a way that previously had never been allowed.

Rally on October 14, in London

The rules of the UK’s Parliamentary debates are arcane, but Sir Lindsay’s intervention shocked the country. Sir Lindsay later explained he’d abandoned centuries of precedent due to a shocking fact: MPs are routinely received threats for not being sufficiently critical of Israel now, and Sir Lindsay was terrified of what might happen to MPs who were deemed insufficiently hostile to the Jewish state during the February 21 vote. As the highly charged debate was taking place in Parliament, the PSC projected the words “From the River to the Sea” onto the facade of Big Ben, London’s best-known icon, next door. Sir Lindsay said that he feared for MPs’ safety should he not intervene to alter the rules for parliamentary debate and voting. “I never want to pick up the phone to find a friend has been murdered by terrorists,” he said.

This turning point confirmed Freer’s decision to leave politics. “MPs are particularly agitated about what this means for our security. Protestors are standing outside MPs offices, MPs homes, chanting and demonstrating. It only takes one to go on to do criminal damage.” He also pointed to a February 23, 2023 incident in the English town of Stoke on Trent, when anti-Israel protesters broke into a private Conservative Party fundraising event, abusing attendees there for supporting Israel. “If this remains a permanent change to the way people demonstrate, I don’t know where this will lead British politics,” Freer cautions.

He observes that the “change of tactics” regarding anti-Israel protests “is quite coordinated,” with different anti-Israel groups seemingly employing the same methods. Asked if he believed that foreign groups are working with British anti-Israel protesters to help coordinate activities, Freer notes, “That’s a very good question.”

Pervasive Antisemitism

In the days since Freer announced he is leaving politics, many other British MPs have said they’re being harassed and abused by anti-Israel activists, too. Dame Margaret Hodge, a former MP and now member of the upper Parliamentary chamber the House of Lords, revealed that plainclothes police officers now escort her everywhere in public. “Every time something happens (in Israel), there’s been a spike (of antisemitism in Britain) but this has gone on and on….”

The British newspaper Jewish Chronicle recently interviewed several MPs, many of whom declined to provide their names, who shared some of the vile antisemitic emails and letters they’ve received, threatening them and their children, calling them subhuman, expressing hatred for Jews, and promising violence.

MP Michael Freer

Steve McGabe, an MP from Birmingham from the Labour Party, is the Parliamentary Chair of the Labour Friends of Israel group. He’s shared that since Hamas’ deadly October 7 attacks and the flood of antisemitism around the world the attacks unleashed, his weekly meetings with constituents have been picketed by anti-Israel protestors shouting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” widely seen as a call to eradicate Israel. In January, McGabe canceled an annual social event for his supporters out of fear of anti-Israel violence.

After returning to England from a recent visit to Israel, Percy realized he’d felt safer in Israel at war than he did in peacetime England.

Andrew Percy, a Jewish MP who represents the northern English constituency Brigg and Goole, revealed that he faces pervasive antisemitic abuse in his district. “One woman called me f**ing Israeli scum, hit my arm, then said now she would have to wash herself because she had touched me,” he recalled. He regularly receives hate mail threatening his children, telling him he should move to Israel, saying “no one cares about the Jews,” calling him a “Zionist” as an insult, and expressing the hope that he will “burn in Hell”. He has stopped passing these letters to the police, he says, as “there’s nothing they can do.” After returning to England from a recent visit to Israel, Percy realized he’d felt safer in Israel at war than he did in peacetime England.

Getting Worse

Michael Freer is confident that the paroxysm of anti-Israel hatred coursing through Britain today will subside. “The level of aggressive opposition to Israel ebbs and flows,” he’s observed through the years. Yet today’s hatred on social media, and anti-Israel activists’ targeting MPs’ families, feels different. “The impact of social media has never been more corrupting,” Freer notes.  Groups like the PSC “have pushed for ever more radical language and intimidation in British politics.”

Protesting in front of “offices and in front of Parliament” has always been a “legitimate” form of political protest in Britain, Freer explains. “But now protestors are standing outside MPs homes. Targeting your family has always been beyond the pale.” No more. He fears another violent attack if protesters continue to push the bounds of what is seen as acceptable and legal.

Freer announced his intention to leave politics on January 31, 2024. Four weeks later, on February 29, Britain’s Parliament gained its newest MP: George Galloway, a virulently anti-Israel demagogue, who won a special election in the northern English constituency of Rochdale. “This is for Gaza,” Galloway declared in his victory speech.

George Galloway; It is not just Jews who need to be worried.

Galloway has a long and radical history, having served in Parliament for decades. Sometimes dubbed Parliament’s “Member from Baghdad,” Galloway’s victory is a frightening harbinger of even more radical voices within Britain’s establishment and political discourse where Israel is concerned.

Galloway ran on a single-issue candidate, criticizing Britain’s mainstream political parties for not being sufficiently anti-Israel. He won over 40% of the vote in a three-way race, gaining backing from Rochdale’s large Muslim minority as well as from non-Muslim voters.

His extreme past was no hindrance. During Israel’s 2006 war with the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, Galloway openly sided with Hezbollah, exulting “I glorify the Hezbollah national resistance movement.” In 2009 Galloway visited Gaza and received a passport from Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. In 2014, Galloway declared the city of Bradford, which he represented in Parliament, “an Israel-free zone,” saying: “We don’t want any Israeli goods, we don’t want any Israeli services, we don’t want any Israeli academics coming to the university or the college, we don’t even want any Israeli tourists to come to Bradford…We reject this illegal, barbarous, savage state that calls itself Israel.”

Galloway leaned into his hateful remarks during his recent campaign and was rewarded with a seat in Parliament, riding a tide of anti-Israel hatred that’s washing over far too much of Britain today.

Spiking Antisemitism

In mid-February, Britain’s Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors antisemitism, released figures showing that 2023 saw the most antisemitic incidents since reporting began, topping even the huge spike in antisemitism that Britain experienced during the Covid pandemic of 2021. In 2023, people reported 4,103 cases of anti-Jewish hate in the UK. It was a 147% rise from 2022 and an 81% rise since 2021. The vast majority of incidents were reported in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The change in atmosphere is impacting Britain’s Jews.

“Everyone will say they are tired, emotionally drained and grieving,” explains Barbara, a Jewish woman in her 60s living in a heavily Jewish area of suburban London, speaking to Aish.com. She and her friends are “worried, mentally exhausted from the constant explanations of Israel’s actions and wondering why their non-Jewish friends and colleagues are silent. I worry about whether it will be safe to continue living here. I am angry a lot of the time.”

“There are marches every weekend” in central London, explains Yehoshua, a 48-year-old father and writer living in Michael Freer’s constituency in northwest London. “It’s very intimidating just knowing that’s going on.” He was shocked to see anti-Israel graffiti on Golders Green High Street, a major thoroughfare through a highly Jewish neighborhood in London, on the morning immediately after Hamas’ deadly October 7 assault.

Michael Freer recognizes the distress the Jews in his district are feeling. “My constituents don’t want to go into central London on Saturdays. If they do go into central London, they will not wear anything identifying them as Jews.” Despite the precarious state of British politics, Freer is optimistic that things will get better. Sadly, he will soon no longer be in Parliament to help effect change. “I’ll have to find a different platform to show my support for Israel,” he explains. His thousands of Jewish constituents fervently hope that he continues to speak out on their behalf and against the rising hate that is distorting British politics and life.