Political Commentator Lin Mei has hit out in defence of pro-Palestinian marches in London, as she compared the demonstration to Brexit rallies.
Appearing on GB News Breakfast, Mei was joined by Former Met Police Investigating Officer Peter Kirkham as they debated the police’s response to the protests over the weekend.
Over 100,000 people took to the streets of London in mass protests to declare their support for Palestine, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Other major rallies were held in Cardiff, Glasgow, Belfast and Birmingham.
Some acts during the weekend protests have been criticised, as groups were heard shouting anti-Semitic chants, and one tube driver has been suspended by TfL after using the train’s tannoy to encourage carriages full of pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets of Central London at the weekend
PA
Mei said the Government’s “hard” approach to freedom of speech is something she “absolutely supports”, but added “now it's something that maybe some people may not like or understand because they're ignorant, they haven't researched what Arabic words mean.
"It's all 'shut down freedom of speech'.”
GB News host Stephen Dixon hit back at Mei’s comments, saying: “Hold on, Lin. I mean part of the issue with this, is the fact that people have been chanting Palestine should be free from the river to the sea.
“Now a lot of people may think, Oh well fine, it's a chant, but that would require the destruction of Israel. So that's anti-Semitic, isn't it? That's illegal?”
Mei replied: “No, if you go and speak to multiple people, there are people at the moment in Gaza that are in an open air prison. They are not allowed to leave. So the whole rhetoric, if you ask the majority, there was 300,000 people there. I guarantee that the majority just mean free Palestine in terms of freeing the civilians.
“One minute they're given 24 hours to move because their homes are going to be bombed. Then where they've moved to also is bombed. So just to say free Palestine, I don't think anybody wants to eradicate. Well, there are some people that want to eradicate Israel, but it's such a small fraction, just like Brexit.
Mei continued: "I voted for Brexit and we know that the marches for Brexit had a small fraction of racists. Should we now cancel Brexit marches? No, we shouldn't. Should we tell people to stop saying we need to curb migration because some people feel it's racist? No.
“Everyone across the board, whatever your political stance, should be able to say we're fed up of migration, but we're also fed up of what Israel's doing to Palestine currently.”
Political Commentator Lin Mei defended the pro-Palestine marches in London
GB News
In response to Mei's comments, Peter Kirkham shared his thoughts on the protests and the police response, as host Ellie Costello highlighted: "If we're talking about the Israel Hamas conflict, the threats of of violence should warrant police action?"
Kirkham agreed: "Absolutely right. But this isn't a threat of violence per se. Yes, the context is important, but when you're talking about threats of violence they need to be a bit more specific than against the group.
"There are other offences that apply to groups, there's inciting racial hatred and such like, but all of them have got technical terms that need to be defined and and the police need to be sure that they've got one of those.
Kirkham continued: "Another difficulty is, we've got the difference between Jews as a religious group and anti Jews stuff would be caught by the religious hate crime and other things.
"And we've got Israel as a state, and Israel as a state can be criticised just like any other state. It's not anti-Semitic to do that. And so that's another complication. I don't think you could come up with a more complex set of circumstances than this."