Jewish-Israel activist Yael Kahn, a veteran anti-Zionist protester, was violently arrested under the Public Order Act by London’s Metropolitan Police while attending a protest close to the residence of Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, in Swiss Cottage, London.
The protest is organised by Jews and Israelis from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) demanding the expulsion of the ambassador - who defends the genocide in Gaza and the annexation of the West Bank - and are held every Friday since October 27, 2023.
Yael’s arrest took place around 7pm on Friday, just as some 60 pro-Palestine activists were about to leave the picket. Police blocked one of two exits open to protesters and targeted Yael. They surrounded her, before dragging her away, while attacking activists who tried to protect her.
Video footage of the arrest (above) shows police dragging Yael as she and others plead with them to let her go, asking “Do you need to do this?” and stating she is “an innocent woman,” who has “done nothing,” demanding they stop “hurting her,” while calling the police fascists.
Another video shows police violence directed at other activists that evening:
A police woman answered one activist who questioned why Yael was arrested, saying it was because in her speech at the demonstration that evening, Yael referred to someone as a “Nazi Jew.”
According to activists I spoke to who attended the protest, it was confirmed Yael had said “Nazi Israel.” Regarding the accusations made against her, one activist told me Yael:
..didn’t actually say Nazi Jew. She said Nazi Israel. She would never say Nazi Jew. That is the lie that the Zionists fed to the police. There were loads of people taking footage of her speech and those clips will demolish the Zionist lie.
Counter-protesting Zionists - who regularly attend and take photos and film of activists in an attempt to intimidate them - reported Yael to the police, which led to her arrest.
Below, they are seen speaking to police before Yael was grabbed and detained:
These Zionists, I am told, are often seen “cosying up with police,” at the Swiss Cottage protests.
Three Zionists in attendance during Yael’s arrest on Friday are London barrister Jonathan Cohen (above), pub manager Itai Galmudy (above) - who reportedly served in the Israeli army during its attacks on Gaza in 2014 - and solicitor Richard Millett - not above but who reported on the protest on his social media - whose job appears to amount to “defending Israel” against justice-minded students and activists.
The third man in the photo above - seen closest to the police, wearing a black coat and covering his face with a navy scarf - is the same person seen directing Metropolitan Police to target and arrest activists at the national demonstration for Palestine in November. The Skwawkbox reported on him here. Who is he? And why are London’s Metropolitan Police colluding with Zionist informants to target and arrest activists opposed to the genocide in Palestine?
Following her arrest, police took Yael to Holborn Police Station where activists picketed at night and the following day, demanding her release.
Yael’s arrest follows that of British-Jewish journalist Tony Greenstein and Israeli-Jewish filmmaker Haim Bresheeth, at the same weekly events.
Yael was previously arrested while en route to a Palestine protest in November 2023, when she was detained for nearly 24 hours and released without charge.
Born in Naharriya in northern Israel and raised from the age of two near Ashdod, in Kfar Mordechai, Yael has previously spoken of her upbringing having little to no experience with Palestinians. In 1972, when she understood Israeli apartheid was part of the state she lived in, and witnessed the daily racism towards Palestinians, she became an activist in defence of Palestinian human rights.
“When you find out that your life was built on the destruction of other people, you have a responsibility,” to act, Yael said, and how:
For me the only solution, and its obvious, [is] that Palestinians have to come back from where they were ethnically cleansed. There has to be an end of Israeli apartheid.
The daughter of survivors of the German Holocaust, in which some of her family perished, Yael has also lost family and friends because of her activism. Her father’s initial reaction to her pro-Palestinian stance was to call Yael a “terrorist” and included years of “shouting matches” between the two.
Her father eventually came around to Yael’s beliefs after the 1982 Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, after which he became her “greatest supporter.” Yael has reported her father later saying that the racism he suffered in Nazi Germany was “nothing like the racism Israelis have against Palestinians.”
On the targeting of Jewish anti-Zionist activists, British-Israeli journalist Jonathan Cook wrote:
Yael Kahn is the latest Jew to be arrested by Keir Starmer's Met police, using the UK's draconian anti-protest and terror laws, for expressing opposition to Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Remember how Starmer purged 'the wrong sort of Jews' – the ones with the ethical clarity to understand Israel is a brutal apartheid state – from his Labour party.
His political persecution programme has been rolled out nationally to protect Britain's participation in the US-Israeli project to 'remake the Middle East' through slaughter and destruction, and thereby create a whole new generation in the region who hate the West.
Kahn, who lost family in the Holocaust, has begun a hunger strike in her prison cell.
There's been no coverage once again by the UK media. They want you worrying about political repression in Russia and China, not right on your doorstep.
Yael refused to answer questions during interrogation with Holborn police and was released around 23 hours after her detainment, being informed she remains “under investigation.”
When leaving the police station, Yael joined activists picketing for her release and spoke with admirable determination about continuing to protest Israel’s genocide despite attacks against her and other activists, and chanted for freedom for Palestine.
Yael speaks of her arrest on The Crispin Flintoff Show here.
(Many thanks to activist Derek for the clips and photos in this report)
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