Yesterday’s knife attack in Golders Green is yet another shocking assault on Britain’s Jewish community. Two Jewish men were attacked in the heart of the Jewish community in north-west London in what the Metropolitan Police are treating as a suspected terrorist attack. The victims, one in his 70s and one in his 30s, were rushed to hospital and are, mercifully, now in a stable condition. A poignant detail is that the two men were treated by Hatzola, the same Jewish volunteer emergency services organisation whose ambulances were set on fire just last month. And it of course follows the horrifying Islamist attack on a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur last October.
This is an absurd framing of events, focusing on the terror suspect’s supposed victimhood rather than the danger he posed to officers and the public
The Golders Green suspect is a 45-year-old British national who was born in Somalia, named as Essa Suleiman. As is becoming grimly routine in episodes like this, we have learnt that he was known to the authorities, with a ‘history of serious violence and mental health issues’. He has previously been referred to Prevent.
At a time like this, the conversation should be about the violence besetting Britain and its Jewish community and what can be done about it. And yet many pro-Palestine voices online have seemed more concerned about the way the police subdued the suspect. Widespread footage of the dramatic arrest shows two police officers in the middle of a street tasing the suspect as he advances towards them, after they loudly instruct him to get on the ground. After falling down, the suspect appears to ignore their repeated commands to ‘drop the knife’ and continue to resist arrest. During this exchange, officers appear to kick the suspect in the head several times.
After posting selective footage of just this part of the scene, left-wing activist Shola Mos-Shogbamimu denounced this a ‘contemptible abuse of police power’. The suspect had ‘clearly been incapacitated’ when officers ‘repeatedly kick[ed] him in the head’ claimed a pro-Gaza author, before comparing them to the IDF. A Muslim lawyer and campaigner suggested that the ‘repeated kicks to the head’ showed double standards compared with the Met’s treatment of a ‘Zionist’ suspect in another incident.
On X, the Met has taken the unusual step of directly replying to prominent posts of the footage, including ones critical of the police, to try and set the record straight.
It says: ‘Our brave officers confronted a man they believed to be a terrorist, who refused to show his hands, who was violent, and who continued to pose a clear threat. Using only their training, courage and tasers, they detained him while he continued to try to attack and stab them. This took true courage.’ Can anyone disagree? Given how easily social media witch-hunts against officers can take root, it seems a sensible move to pre-emptively put out their side of the story in this way.
It’s telling that those criticising the officers seem to have no policing experience and an axe to grind. Former police officer Paul Birch, who served in the Met for 20 years including in counter-terrorism, told me: ‘These keyboard warriors have no idea what it’s like to face immediate and possibly lethal violence armed with, often, nothing more than some irritant spray and a stick. Your priority is to keep members of the public safe, followed by yourselves.’
He adds: ‘These officers would have had no idea in such a fast-moving situation whether the suspect was acting alone or as part of a cell. He needed to be neutralised as soon as possible in order to keep people safe.’
As to claims that the suspect had been ‘incapacitated’, Birch points out that he ‘wasn’t showing his hands; he was still holding a weapon that he had just used to attack members of the public; he had been moving rapidly towards them, and they would have had no idea if he was wearing an explosive vest (wearing a coat in warm weather is never a good sign).’
And yet worryingly, the reflexive anti-police sentiment didn’t just come from pro-Palestine keyboard warriors, but the leader of a political party. The Greens’ Zack Polanski has retweeted criticism of the officers as ‘violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head’. Needless to say, this is an absurd framing of events, focusing on the terror suspect’s supposed victimhood rather than the danger he posed to officers and the public. And this was no fat finger moment. A Green party spokesperson today refused to apologise and indeed suggested Polanski stood by the remarks: ‘Zack has seen the video like everyone else, and doesn’t know the full picture and knows it was a very difficult situation for the authorities, but we do need to understand more about the response’. This hardly puts the matter to bed. If Polanski ‘doesn’t know the full picture’, why is he wading in with defamatory comments about brave officers? As Birch points out, this was a situation of possible ‘lethal violence’, in which police rightly subdued a threat.
Zia Yusuf, Reform shadow home secretary, said: ‘It’s telling that Zack Polanski immediately appears to sympathise with the alleged terrorist and attack our brave police officers, who did an outstanding job. He is deeply anti-British.’ The Greens may have made some strides in recent months with their stances on Gaza, but surely this kind of ghoulish sympathy alleged violent terrorists is way out of step with the instincts of the wider British public.
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