British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman after she accused the police of being too lenient with Pro-Palestinian protesters.
The government said in a statement on Monday that Braverman left her post as part of a Cabinet shuffle.
However, Sunak was under growing pressure to fire her, after she sparked outrage accusing the police of “play(ing) favorites when it comes to protesters”, and showing more tolerance toward pro-Palestinian demonstrators than to right-wing protesters or soccer hooligans.
“Terrorists have been valorized, Israel has been demonized as Nazis and Jews have been threatened with further massacres,” she wrote in an article, published in The Times of London on November 9.
PSC welcomes the sacking of Home Secretary Suella Braverman. By trying to prevent lawful protest, defaming over a million peace marchers and whipping up serious far right violence in Whitehall, she confirmed her unfitness for office. But she did not act alone (thread) pic.twitter.com/zgTtJhxNUF
— PSC (@PSCupdates) November 13, 2023
On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people – estimated by some to have crossed the one million threshold – marched through central London, meeting at London’s Hyde Park and then walking to the US embassy. The demonstrators protested against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and demanded an immediate ceasefire.
Braverman, an outspoken right-winger, has repeatedly threatened to criminalize waving a Palestinian flag or chanting for Palestinian freedom.
“It is not just explicit pro-Hamas symbols and chants that are cause for concern. I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world,” she wrote in a letter to chief constables in England and Wales a few days following the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza.
London’s largest protest marching towards US Embassy for ‘Ceasefire’
New aerial footage shows over 1 million of protesters, according to organisers estimates, continuing their march to the United States Embassy. The protest reported to be the largest in two decades and one of… pic.twitter.com/xG3Ah6vtS1
— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) November 11, 2023
“Context is crucial. Behaviors that are legitimate in some circumstances, for example the waving of a Palestinian flag, may not be legitimate such as when intended to glorify acts of terrorism,” the letter added.
Braverman was replaced by Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, whose old post was assigned to former Prime Minister David Cameron.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
