Two Green Party election candidates have been arrested on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred after allegedly posting antisemitic content online, including posts suggesting that attacking a synagogue constituted “revenge” and accusing the British government of being “overrepresented with Zionist Jews.”
The Metropolitan Police detained two women aged 54 and 57 in London on Thursday morning under Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, taking them into custody for questioning. The arrests followed an investigation launched after concerns about antisemitic material posted online were reported to police on 21 April. The Met has not confirmed the identities of those arrested, but a spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Mail that the two women “remain in police custody.”
The alleged posts, reported by the Daily Mail, include the statement “England has a government overrepresented with Zionists Jews,” and “Ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-Semitism. It’s revenge,” the latter appearing alongside an image of two children described as having been “murdered by Israel.”
The arrests come amid a broader pattern of antisemitism allegations against Green candidates ahead of the local elections. Saiqa Ali, standing for the Greens in Streatham, last week apologised for posts she was alleged to have made, which reportedly included an image of an armed man wearing a Hamas headband beneath the phrase “resistance is freedom,” a cartoon suggesting Israel was “blackmailing” American politicians with the Epstein files, a description of Prime Minister Keir Starmer as a “Jewish Zionist,” a claim that Donald Trump is “owned by Jews,” and an image of a snake bearing the Israeli flag wrapped around the globe with the caption: “It’s time to cut the head of this snake.” In her apology, Ali said she “unequivocally rejects antisemitism in all its forms” and claimed her comments had been “rooted in concern for the humanitarian situation in the Middle East.”
Sabine Mairey, a Green candidate for Clapham Town, has separately faced accusations of posting antisemitic content online, including the synagogue “revenge” post.
A Green Party spokesperson said: “This is now a police matter. We won’t be commenting at this stage.”
The arrests came just one day after two Jewish men — Shloime Rand, 34, and Moshe Ben Baila, 76 — were stabbed in a terror attack in Golders Green in an incident formally declared an antisemitic terror attack. Police across the United Kingdom have stepped up patrols in Jewish neighbourhoods in response. The cumulative effect — a terrorist attack on Jewish people in the street and two election candidates arrested over antisemitic posts on the same week — has intensified calls for political parties to take far more robust action in rooting out anti-Jewish hatred from within their ranks.
