British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Saturday that some pro-Palestinian marches in the United Kingdom should be banned outright and that authorities must take a tougher approach to slogans used by demonstrators, following an antisemitic stabbing attack in London this week.
Starmer said chants calling to “globalize the intifada” were unacceptable and should be grounds for prosecution.
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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the scene of the Golders Green attack
(Photo: Stefan Rousseau / POOL / AFP)
“I will defend the right of peaceful protest very strongly and freedom of speech. I have defended those principles all my life and I will continue to do so. And so I’m not stepping back from that one bit,” Starmer told BBC Radio 4’s Today program. “But if you are on a march or a protest where people are chanting, ‘globalize the intifada’, you do have to stop and ask yourself, why am I not calling this out?
“When you see, when you hear some of those chants—‘globalize the intifada,’ the one that I would pick out—then clearly there should be tougher action in relation to that.”
The remarks came after two Jewish men, ages 76 and 34, were stabbed in Golders Green, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in northwest London. The two were taken to a hospital in serious condition, and officials later said their conditions had stabilized.
The attack renewed criticism from Britain’s Jewish community, which has accused the government of failing to stop a wave of antisemitism in the country.
Starmer said he was concerned about the effect of anti-Israel protest slogans on British Jews and called for demonstrators using such language to face prosecution.
Asked whether he wanted tougher punishment for people using such slogans at marches or whether some protests should be prevented entirely, Starmer said: “I think I would absolutely want the first part, and in some cases, the second as well.”