Suella Braverman’s Israel protest clampdown is troubling

It is understandable that Suella Braverman has swiftly written to chief constables demanding them to take a tough line on potentially anti-Semitic protests. She pointed out that while it was true that explicitly supporting Hamas, a proscribed terrorist body, was ipso facto a crime, the police could go much further in discouraging demonstrations of this kind. Waving a Palestinian flag could in suitable circumstances be taken as amounting to a glorification of terrorism, another serious offence; the mere act of chanting ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ might in some cases be a public order crime; and so on. And, she added, something had to be done about what people were saying on the internet. Online offending, she said, ‘is as serious as offline offending’.

Understandable, certainly. But Braverman still needs to tread carefully. In cases like this, where decent people’s sympathy lies entirely with her and the demonstrators’ position could hardly be more meritless, it remains worryingly easy to end up with a cure that is worse than the disease.