Met Police Defends Shutting Down Pro-Israel Mobile Billboards

Screenshot taken with permission from a video posted on X by Campaign Against Antisemitism showing a billboard van displaying information of children taken hostage by the Hamas terrorist group moving through central London on Oct. 18, 2023. Campaign Against Antisemitism/Screenshot via The Epoch Times

The Metropolitan police has defended its approach after a campaign group alleged officers shut down mobile billboards showing the faces of kidnapped Israeli children.

In a video posted on Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter, Gideon Falter, chief executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) alleged officers told van drivers to turn off the digital billboards on Wednesday instead of taking actions against pro-Palestinian protesters who allegedly intimidated CAA volunteers filming the vans.

He described the incidents on Wednesday evening as “the most disturbing experiences in nine years of campaigning against anti-Semitism” and accused police officers of protecting “the sensibilities of people who sympathize with terrorists.”

The Met later issued a statement, saying officers had been “keen to avoid the billboard vans becoming a point of tension or conflict” as pro-Palestinian demonstrators were nearby.

The force also said officers had taken “similar actions” and prevented pro-Palestinian protests from reaching the Israeli embassy last week, and that it will “carefully consider” whether officers’ responses were appropriate.

On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists slaughtered Israeli civilians and took hostages, including children, while launching missile attacks from Gaza, prompting Israel to declare war for the first time in 50 years.

CAA Considers Legal Options

In the video posted by CAA, which included clips of the event and a statement from the charity, Mr. Falter said volunteers who had been filming billboard vans passing London’s landmarks were “really shaken up” after they got stopped by protesters.

“And then police had turned up and told them to turn off the billboards and clear out of central London. Otherwise there would be ‘a breach of the peace,’” he claimed, accusing the police of “turn[ing] on the victims of terror.”

Mr. Falter said the same thing happened again when he went back to “have a look” after learning the first incident over a phone call.

In footage showing parts of his interactions with police officers, he was heard asking why officers were ordering drivers to turn off the screens when the vans are “private property” and the drivers are “entitled to do what they’re doing.”

A female officer responded, “They are entitled to, but at the same time, we want to make sure that they’re safe, that their property is safe. And what we don’t want to do is have people come in this way and doing any damage to their vans.”

The video also appeared to show a police officer blocking Mr. Falter, saying, “I don’t want you to get run over by a car.”

Screenshot taken with permission from a video posted on X by Campaign Against Antisemitism showing a billboard van displaying information of children taken hostage by the Hamas terrorist group, in central London on Oct. 18, 2023. Campaign Against Antisemitism/Screenshot via The Epoch Times

Describing the incident in the video, Mr. Falter accused officers of physically restraining him from speaking to the drivers. He also questioned whether the police was “protecting the victims of terrorism? The Jewish community? Or is it the sensibilities of people who sympathize with terrorists who are banned by our country?”

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist group in the UK, the U.S., the European Union, among other jurisdictions.

Unlike its secular rival Fatah, which now favours peaceful negotiations for a two-state solution, Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist and uses violent attacks against Israelis, whom they see as occupiers of Palestinian territory.

In a statement emailed to The Epoch Times, Mr. Falter said the campaign group is examining all legal options “in relation to the police for this abysmal failure to uphold our rights and protect British Jews.”

The Met: We Try to Separate Opposing Groups for Public Safety

In a statement published on Thursday, the Met said officers watched the video and “can understand why the intervention of officers was seen as preventing that protest and why it has caused such frustration and upset.”

Calling the kidnapping of Israeli villagers, including children, “an abhorrent act of terrorism,” the Met said officers “absolutely understand” CAA’s campaign, but denied limiting their freedom of expression.

“... we do have a responsibility for public safety and there will be occasions where we try to avoid groups with strongly opposing views coming into immediate contact with each other,” the statement reads.

The Met said a number of protesters were still around at the tail end of a pro-Palestinian vigil in Whitehall, adding, “officers were keen to avoid the billboard vans becoming a point of tension or conflict.”

“We took similar actions on Saturday where we prevented pro-Palestinian demonstrators from reaching the area around the Israeli Embassy given their doing so would likely have led to an escalation in tension and a possible risk to public safety,” the force said, adding that it will review the incident as usual and consider whether different approaches should be taken in the future.

CAA dismissed the Met’s response, saying it “does not hold water.”

The group claimed that the streets were empty when the vans were shut down for the second time, it also said police should have arrested pro-Palestinian protesters in the first incident.

“If you want to protect Jews, instead of telling us to go home and hide the faces of children kidnapped by a proscribed terrorist organisation whose founding charter calls for our annihilation, try letting us exercise our right to call for their safe return and arrest the protesters breaching the peace and intimidating our people,” the group wrote on X. “That’s how you ’tackle hate crime.'”

In a separate post, CAA asserted that the police told van drivers to leave because the group was “a soft target” compared to the protesters.

The Home Office declined to comment.

Spike in ‘Hate Crimes’

Hamas has targeted civilians on the ground while bombing both military and civilian targets, either intentionally or because of its lack of precise targeting capabilities.

Orly Goldschmidt, a spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy to the UK, previously said Israel has not targeted civilians, but acknowledged there will be innocent civilian casualties in the war against Hamas.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have urged civilians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza City to evacuate by sending messages and leaflets, but they also said Hamas has been stopping people from leaving.

The deadly Israel-Hamas war has sparked vigils and demonstrations around the world attended by members of Jewish and Arab communities as well as anti-Israel activists.

British Home Secretary Suella Braverman and the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation Jonathan Hall, KC, have said some of the rhetorics in the so-called pro-Palestinian demonstrations were glorifying terrorism.

The Met said on Friday that there has been a spike in so-called hate crimes across London, including “racially or religiously motivated criminal damage,” online abuses, and other offences.

Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 18, the Met received reports of 218 anti-Semitic offences, 14 times the number in the same period last year (15), while Islamophobic allegations more than doubled, from 42 to 101.

The French government has tried to ban pro-Palestinian protests, although the ban has been overturned by the country’s top court.