UK: Pro-Palestine protesters charged with calling for 'intifada'
Three pro-Palestine protesters have become the first to be charged for allegedly chanting "intifada" at a demonstration in December.
The Metropolitan police announced the charges on Monday. In December, the Metropolitan and Greater Manchester police forces announced they would arrest people for chanting "globalise the intifada" or holding placards displaying the phrase.
The police forces said: "We know communities are concerned about placards and chants such as 'globalise the intifada' and those using it at future protests or in a targeted way should expect" the two forces "to take action".
Abdallah Alanzi, 24, Haya Adam, 21 and Azza Zaki, 60, were arrested at a protest against the Ministry of Justice in Westminster on 17 December.
They have been charged with using "threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour intending thereby to stir up racial hatred", and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 23 February.
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The Met said the three were "identified as being allegedly involved in chanting calling for an 'intifada'.
"An investigation was subsequently launched by the Met’s Public Order Crime team which considered not just that specific chant but other chanting heard during the course of the protest," the Met added.
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.
In October, following a deadly attack on a synagogue in Manchester that killed two Jewish worshippers, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the call to "internationalise the intifada" was a "call to attack Jewish communities around the world".
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