LONDON
\nLabeling protesters on pro-Palestinian marches in the UK extremists is divisive, \u201coutrageous\u201d and dangerous, a government adviser has warned. Demonstrations against Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza have drawn hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of London and other major cities in the UK since Oct. 7 last year.
\nThey have drawn criticism from senior Conservative politicians, including former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who called them \u201chate marches.\u201d However, Dame Sara Khan, who is conducting a review into British social coherence and the resilience of democracy, told The Guardian that politicians need to be wary of using divisive rhetoric.
\n\u201cI think it\u2019s really important that we don\u2019t conflate those protesters, somehow saying or portraying them as somehow as being all extremists,\u201d Khan said. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve been really uncomfortable with over the last couple of weeks is the kind of argument that they\u2019re all Islamist extremists on these demonstrations. I think that\u2019s actually outrageous.
\n\u201cSome are not even pro-Palestinian people, just anti-war. There are clearly Jewish people there, there\u2019s a whole range of people there, and to try to frame these demonstrations as Islamist extremism is completely far-fetched and untrue.\u201d Last week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that pro-Palestine protests had \u201cdescended into intimidation, threats, and planned acts of violence.\u201d
\nThis week, the government\u2019s commissioner for counter-extremism, Robin Simcox, wrote in the Daily Telegraph: \u201cWe will not have become an authoritarian state if London is no longer permitted to be turned into a no-go zone for Jews every weekend.\u201d
\nHowever, the government\u2019s independent terrorist legislation reviewer, Jonathan Hall KC, warned: \u201cWhen you\u2019re thinking about something as important as the right to protest, there doesn\u2019t seem to be a solid enough basis for curtailing that because I think we can all think of causes very personal to us that we would want to protest an awful lot and that will make some people very, very unhappy indeed.\u201d
\nThe government is expected to announce a new definition of extremism next week, which will inform what organizations it is allowed to work with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON Labeling protesters on pro-Palestinian marches in the UK extremists is divisive, \u201coutrageous\u201d and dangerous, a government adviser has warned. Demonstrations against Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza have drawn hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of London and other major cities in the UK since Oct. 7 last year. They have drawn criticism …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":61693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61694,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61677\/revisions\/61694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}