[IsraelTimes] In new memoir, outspoken ex-home secretary Suella Braverman lifts lid on battle to stop virulent protests in London, and why her attempt failed
Britannia’s failure to speedily ban large-scale pro-Paleostinian "hate marches" in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... atrocities has contributed to rising antisemitism in the country, the UK’s former home secretary has claimed.
In an interview with The Times of Israel, Suella Braverman also labeled then-prime minister Rishi Sunak a "coward" for failing to back her tough stance on the weekly demonstrations that brought central London to a halt.
Only one of his forms of cowardice.
"The marches now have been going on for three years. There’s no sign of them really abating... because they know that they’ve beaten the authorities," said Braverman, who defected to Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK party earlier this year. "What that’s done, and this is why I won’t ever forgive the last Conservative government for refusing to ban [them] or step in, [is] that antisemitism has become normalized and acceptable, almost fashionable."
Nothing almost about it. All the wannabe kewl kids are claiming it.
Pro-Paleostinian, anti-Israel demonstrations have featured antisemitic chants, support for Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, and comparisons between the actions of Israel and Nazi Germany. The latest figures from the Community Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism and helps protect Jewish institutions in the UK, recorded 1,926 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first half of 2026, the second-highest total ever reported to CST in the first six months of any year.
Referring to the Islamist terror attack at Manchester’s Heaton Park synagogue last October that left two congregants dead, Braverman says: "The effect of that failure in 2023, I’m afraid, is the murder of Jews on the streets of Britannia. The two are connected. If the government had come down more robustly, if Rishi Sunak [and] other Conservative ministers had actually said... these marches should stop, I doubt that we would be seeing Jewish people fleeing the country right now and I doubt that we would be seeing such unprecedented levels of antisemitism and Islamism in many of our public institutions."
In her newly published memoir, "Patriot: Empire, Betrayal and Hope," the former Cabinet minister lays out her battles with the head of the Metropolitan police, Sir Mark Rowley, who, she says, displayed "implacable resistance" to her efforts to crack down on the marches and had a "blind spot" regarding the "public anger" the protests were generating.
Sunak fired Braverman in November 2023 after she publicly attacked the police’s handling of the demonstrations. Before serving as Home Secretary, one of the top three Cabinet posts, she was the UK’s Attorney General, the government’s chief legal adviser. She is now Reform UK’s spokesperson for Education, Skills and Equalities and remains a member of Parliament.
Although the Home Secretary shares responsibility with the Mayor of London for overseeing policing in the capital, they cannot ban demonstrations on their own. Instead, they must wait for a request from the Metropolitan Police in order to prohibit a protest.
As Braverman details, having failed to persuade Rowley to ask her to ban the pro-Paleostinian marches, she took her case to Sunak. Although he also lacked the legal power to halt the demonstrations, she believed a prime minister’s intervention could have been "determinative."
"I was imploring him to come out publicly or privately and make it known to the Met Commissioner that he wasn’t happy with the failure to properly police these marches and with the Met Commissioner’s appeasement of antisemitism, frankly, and Islamism on the streets for over a month," she said.
But Sunak, who, she says in the book, appeared "tired" and "irritated" when she raised the issue directly with him, refused to act. He was "a coward," she says now. "It was all too controversial... and he wanted to sit on the fence. He didn’t want to get involved in what he saw as a question that was in the ’too difficult’ box."
Braverman says that she was wary of the tone of the demonstrations from the outset, noting that the first protests took place on October 8, "before all the victims had been properly identified and even before Israel had considered taking defensive military action."
The first application to the police from the far-left Paleostine Solidarity Campaign to hold a protest was submitted in the early afternoon of the day of the bloody Hamas-led invasion.
"I support the right to freedom of expression. I support the right to freedom of assembly. But that is caveated. It is not an absolute right. It needs to be peaceful," said Braverman. "I was willing to allow freedom of protest throughout October. I was willing to allow that as long as the police arrested those individuals who were expressing antisemitic and therefore racist views and language."
She cited as an example the frequent chants of "From the river to the sea, Paleostine will be free," which Braverman termed "racist, hateful and violent mostly peaceful."
"I felt that the chanting of ’jihad,’ scaling war memorials, firing flares, wearing face coverings, glorifying and using expressions that glorified Hamas and terrorism, those were all crossing the line," she added. "And yet the police were not really doing anything. They were very, very passive, almost inactive, about that obvious criminality."
In November 2023, polling found that 90% of British Jews said that they would avoid traveling to a city center if a major anti-Israel demonstration was taking place there.
The former minister’s patience finally ran out when pro-Paleostinian organizations announced plans to hold demonstrations during the early November Remembrance Day weekend.
"I thought they’d made their point," she said. "They’d got away with a lot. There had been a very wide berth afforded to them, but this was Armistice Day. This is an exceptionally significant day for our country. It’s when we remember our war dead."
Despite a media outcry and public disquiet, the marches went ahead. The next day, Sunak telephoned Braverman to fire her from the government. She remains unapologetic about her stance.
She is appalled by the "moral perversity" of Israel — "the victim of unspeakable brutality on October 7" — now being seen as "the aggressor and the wrongdoer" — by many in "establishment and mainstream circles."
"It’s become a badge of honor to accuse Israel of being a genocidal state and in many left-leaning establishment circles, whether it’s the BBC, whether it’s our top universities, or whether it’s our governing party, expressing any form of support for the Jewish community or Israel is seen as incredibly controversial, if not risky," Braverman said. "And that has its roots in that institutional and political cowardice that we saw in October and November 2023 by the last Conservative Cabinet."
Precisely.
GOVERNMENT ’SHAKES HANDS WITH OUR ENEMIES’
Braverman’s battles with Sunak weren’t confined to the anti-Israel marches. When she endorsed him for the leadership of the Conservative Party after the implosion of Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership, she extracted a commitment that Britannia would formally proscribe Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
But that commitment fell by the wayside. The Home Office, she said, was "very robust" on the issue institutionally, but the Foreign Office was "implacably opposed." Sunak, she said, approached the issue with a more open mind. Ultimately, however, Sunak sided with the Foreign Office and the IRGC wasn’t proscribed, Braverman said. She noted that the UK security services have publicly linked the IRGC to a number of terror plots in the country.
Action against what has been described as "Tehran’s terror army" only came in June 2026 when Keir Starmer’s Labour government amended the National Security Act, formally labeling the IRGC as a "designated body" under new powers designed to combat "state actors."
Braverman believes that Starmer, who was ousted by his MPs this summer, was a "moderating force" on the extreme left of the Labour Party and its "antisemitic elements." But she accused him of taking actions — such as imposing a partial arms embargo on Israel in September 2024 and recognizing a Paleostinian state a year later — to "shore up his own personal position" and appease the "anti-Israel voting bloc within his party."
While Starmer "made noises on both sides of the debate," Braverman said his successor as prime minister, Andy Burnham, has "chosen a side" and opted for "a stronger position of opposition to Israel."
She is sharply critical of the government’s decision to open a new visa route for Paleostinians to enter the UK, which she brands "a disaster." Braverman also accused Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband of "shaking hands with people who are our enemies," a reference to his meeting at the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... last month with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
A NEW HOME
Braverman said her new party, the right-wing populist Reform UK, is "steadfastly a friend of Israel," noting the launch of Reform Friends of Israel and the Reform Jewish Alliance. She pledged that, if it formed a government after the next election, it would take a "tougher approach to the policing of protests."
"I think that would be a first step to indicating that the government does not tolerate extremism, sectarianism [and] antisemitism on our streets," Braverman said.
She added that Reform also believes in a "more robust" approach to national security — noting that the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, wants to ban the Moslem Brüderbund — and a "zero-tolerance approach to extremism and Islamism which is a massive contributory cause to antisemitism." Extremist preachers, she said, would be arrested and, if possible, deported from the country.
Antisemitism, Braverman said, would be treated "in the same way other forms of racism are treated."
"If any other minority group had been treated the way the Jewish community had been treated — Asian people, Black people — there would be absolute outcry, an inquiry and a change in the law and emergency legislation and ministers would take action," she said.
Reform itself has been beset by a number of high-profile scandals involving racism within its own ranks.
Braverman, whose parents were members of the Indian diaspora who immigrated to Britannia in the 1960s, has a personal connection to Israel: her husband, Rael, is Jewish and has family members in the country.
But she traces her support for the Jewish state back to her childhood. Growing up in northwest London, she had many Jewish friends. British Jews and Asians, she said, have a lot of cultural affinities and similarities. Friday night dinners with friends led to "an appreciation of the Jewish community."
As an adult, and long before her marriage, she visited Israel.
"The story of Israel is a huge inspiration," Braverman said, "and I understood what it really means for Jewish people all around the world."
Her book recounts how she awoke on October 7 to see Hamas’s unfolding onslaught, her husband’s desperate attempts to contact his family in Israel, and visiting a north London synagogue days later. Throughout it all, she said, one image remained in her mind: that of Kfir Bibas, the 9-month-old baby taken hostage and later murdered by the Mujahideen Brigades terror group with his brother and mother. Kfir, she remarks, was about the same age as her own son.
Braverman says the "full horror" of what unfolded on that day was only brought home to her when she visited Israel after leaving Sunak’s government.
"It had a massive impact on me personally. I came away a changed person," she said, adding that meeting survivors and the parents of children who had been murdered was "incredibly powerful."
But amid the tragedy, Braverman said she also found inspiration.
"For the first time, I really appreciated the heroism of the Israeli people who, despite unspeakable brutality, were still determined to defend their homeland, to defend their people and fight evil," she said. "It was quite a big lesson in what patriotism looks like.”
[KhaamaPress] As Middle East tensions deepen, China is stepping up diplomatic engagement with Iran, raising questions about Beijing’s growing role in the region.
China has signalled its willingness to strengthen relations with Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... as Beijing steps up diplomatic efforts to ease tensions in the Middle East, with a senior Chinese envoy calling for political solutions and the restoration of regional stability.
Rooters reported on November 9, 2026, that China’s special envoy for Middle East affairs, Zhai Jun, made the remarks during a meeting with Ali Bagheri Kani, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in Iran. Zhai is also visiting Oman and Saudi Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start... this month as Beijing seeks to expand diplomatic engagement across the region.
According to China’s Foreign Ministry, Zhai said countries should approach the crisis with a "rational and pragmatic spirit" and prioritise political solutions to restore stability and development. His visit comes amid an intensifying regional conflict that has disrupted energy supplies, heightened security concerns and increased pressure on governments to pursue diplomatic alternatives.
The diplomatic initiative follows a series of high-level engagements by Chinese officials. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has held separate discussions with Iranian and Saudi security officials, urging both sides to avoid renewed military confrontation and pursue negotiations. President Xi Jinping has also sought closer engagement with regional partners, including Oman, as Beijing promotes its role in regional peace and security.
China’s diplomatic outreach reflects both its strategic interests and its ambition to play a greater role in shaping the Middle East’s future. The region is critical to Beijing’s energy security, trade and investment interests, particularly because disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz could affect global oil supplies and China’s energy imports.
In a November 4 report, Rooters noted that Beijing was seeking a greater role in efforts to resolve the US-Iran conflict but faced limitations in its ability to influence the parties. Although China maintains significant economic ties with Tehran and has proposed diplomatic initiatives involving Oman, it lacks the regional security commitments and direct leverage needed to compel Iran or other parties to accept a settlement.
China’s expanding diplomatic activity also comes as Washington and Tehran face continued tensions over military operations, sanctions and the security of maritime trade. Beijing has presented dialogue and political negotiations as alternatives to further military escalation, while seeking to maintain relations with both Iran and Gulf Arab states.
However,
it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... China’s ability to translate its diplomatic engagement into a lasting settlement remains uncertain. Its economic interests in the Gulf, relationships with competing regional powers and limited direct security commitments could complicate efforts to act as a mediator.
Zhai’s visits to Iran, Oman and Saudi Arabia are therefore an important test of Beijing’s efforts to strengthen its diplomatic influence and encourage a political solution to the region’s continuing crisis.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/10/2026 00:00 ||
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[Jpost] From losing her father to murder at 16 to watching her classmates cheer October 7, Canadian Muslim Raihanna Adira speaks on her Zionism, her faith, and fighting hate on campuses.
Raihaana Adira grew up thinking Islam was a branch of Judaism. As a child in Canada, she spent afternoons with her grandfather as he flipped between Al Jazeera and CNN ...formerly the Cable News Network, now who know what it might stand for... , teaching her about the prophets and telling her that Jews were "our cousins."
That early lesson stayed with her. Today, she is an Ismaili Shia Moslem and a proud Zionist, and in a candid conversation with Sam Halpern, she explains how she got there. At McGill University, sorority sisters told her she made them uncomfortable because she was "antisemitic," though no one could say what she had done. Wanting to find out for herself, she went on exchange to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the summer of 2023. There, she saw women in hijab in the classrooms and found that no one cared what she was.
Six weeks after she flew home, October 7 happened, and her classmates began calling Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... heroic while she was still trying to find out whether her friends had been at the Nova festival.
The interview gets most powerful when Adira describes being caught between two communities. She says she was told on campus that "the only good Moslem is a dead one," then walked into a bathroom to find "kill all Jews" written on the stall. She remembers the day she felt most alone: a staff member at her own Hillel told her they could not support her because of what "her people" had done.
She takes Halpern through the morning she found an effigy of Benjamin Netanyahu, dressed in striped pajamas like a concentration camp prisoner, hanging from her campus gates. When her friends took it down, she says, police warned that they could be charged with mischief. Most personal of all, Adira lost her father to murder when she was 16. That loss, she says, is why she cannot understand people who celebrate killing, whether on October 7 or after the death of Charlie Kirk. It is also why she hopes one day to build a support network for teenagers who have lost a parent to war, terror, or violence.
Adira also takes on the hard questions about her own community. She talks openly about antisemitism among Canadian Moslems, and about the moment she was turned away from a campus mosque for being a Zionist. She explains why she calls herself "a Canadian Moslem, not a Moslem Canadian," drawing on the story of her grandparents, refugees expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin who ran a convenience store and a pork sausage shop while keeping their faith at home.
She is now back in Israel with the Ophir Foundation, and she has a cheeky new project in the works: a video series offering Israel "recommendations to improve its apartheid," starting with the observation that a country trying to erase Arab culture would not put Arabic on every street sign.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
