Wes Streeting slammed for linking intifada chant to 'terrorist action'

Pro-Palestine campaigners have criticised British Health Secretary Wes Streeting for claiming that the protest chant "globalise the intifada" is linked to terrorism.

Streeting made the remarks in an interview with the BBC on Monday, the day after the antisemitic massacre that killed at least 15 people and wounded 40 on Bondi Beach in Australia.

Streeting said: "There will be a whole bunch of daft people in this country who've used those words online or used them in the streets, and watching the TV right now will be shouting, 'of course it doesn't mean terrorism against Jewish people'.

"I have to say to those people clearly and robustly, what on earth do you think globalise the intifada means?" he said.

"And can't people see the link between that kind of rhetoric and attacks on Jewish people as Jewish people?

"Because that's what really struck at the heart of Jewish people in our country today - an attack on Jewish people organising around Hannukah, coming together as Jewish people. 

'Globalise the intifada is received by and seen as support for terrorist action against Jewish people'

- Wes Streeting, health secretary

"It's an attack on their faith, their culture, their family, their community. And those of us who are not Jewish have a responsibility to stand with the Jewish community against that kind of antisemitism."

On the first day of Hanukkah, members of the local Jewish community in Bondi had gathered for religious celebrations, when two armed men began firing upon the crowd.

Pro-Palestine activists have strongly denied that "globalise the intifada" is antisemitic or a call for violence, and British Jews have been prominent in pro-Palestine marches in the UK. 

Intifada comes from the Arabic root word nafada, which means "to shake off" or "to rise up", and translates to "uprising".

Some uprisings in Arab history that have been labelled intifadas were peaceful, while the intifadas in occupied Palestine involved both civil disobedience and armed resistance against Israel.

'Undermines the fight against antisemitism'

Pressed on whether protesters who use the phrase "globalise the intifada" should be prosecuted, Streeting - who many see as a likely contender to become Labour prime minister if Keir Starmer is ousted from the role - refused to "step out of my lane now and start making decisions for the home secretary and the prime minister".

But he insisted the phrase "is not an expression simply of solidarity with the Palestinian people and their just cause". 

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"Globalise the intifada is received by and seen as support for terrorist action against Jewish people," he said.

Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), one of the groups which organise the regular national pro-Palestine marches in central London, told Middle East Eye: "The widespread attempt across the political establishment to use a grotesque and indefensible violent antisemitic massacre as a weapon to further repress those protesting for the rights of Palestinian people is reprehensible and undermines the fight against antisemitism and broader anti-racist principles."

Ismail Patel, chair of Friends of Al-Aqsa, another group that plans London marches, said Streeting "is cynically using the tragedy to silence those who speak up for Palestinian rights and to divert attention from the ongoing genocide in Gaza".

"It is precisely his misrepresentation of the slogan that seeks to discredit peaceful solidarity that in turns fuels violence," he said.

Patel explained that intifada means "to shake off the Israeli occupation" and "globalising the intifada" is simply a way of expressing global solidarity with efforts to end an illegal Israeli occupation and to strive for a just peace.

"We cannot hope to achieve peace for Israelis if it comes at the expense of Palestinian rights."

'We have to be far stricter'

British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said on Monday that "for far too long we have allowed chants such as globalise the intifada", which he claimed "incite hatred and which inspire people to engage in hate action".

"Why is it still allowed?" he said, adding that the meaning of chant was "what happened on Bondi Beach yesterday".

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"We have to be far stricter with regard to what people are allowed to say and to do in a way which incites the hatred, which produces the violence that we have witnessed."

In October, following a deadly attack on a synagogue in Manchester that killed two Jewish worshippers, Prime Minister Starmer said the call to "internationalise the intifada" was a "call to attack Jewish communities around the world".

Jamal said all forms of racist violence must be condemned, whether targeting Jewish people or Palestinians.

"Government ministers lose any moral foundation to condemn the appalling Bondi beach massacre whilst they continue to be complicit in the ongoing genocide via material and political support for it, and whilst they continue to devote energy not to holding Israel to account but attempting to demonise and repress those protesting Israel’s actions," he added.

The Labour government is currently pushing new protest restrictions through parliament which would enable police to consider the  "cumulative impact" of frequent protests on local areas and require demonstrators to change the location of a planned protest.

Such measures have been widely criticised as authoritarian and part of a gradual erosion of the right to free expression in the UK, particularly with regard to Israel.