It’s rare that you will see me take the side of a police officer, but sometimes police officers try to do the right thing. The irony is that when they do, it can often land them in trouble.
When people say “all cops are bastards”, it’s because they’re part of a system that expects them to be bastards. Sometimes good guys enter the police force, but they probably won’t go as far as the ruthless authoritarian types.
Case in point: Detective Constable Ibrahim Khan. He was fired from the Metropolitan Police for sharing posts deemed “antisemitic” because they criticised Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
One post deemed antisemitic was captioned: “The irony of becoming what you once hated,” drawing a comparison of Netanyahu to Hitler.
Now I can see why some might feel the Hitler comparison was insensitive, but I can also see how comparing one genocidal monster to another is a valid way of driving home your objection to genocide. If a serial killer kills your family and you the become a serial killer yourself, is it unreasonable to say you have become what you once hated?
What do you think the greater evil is here? That a police officer compared a man wanted for genocide to a man who committed genocide against his people? Or the fact he (Netanyahu) is committing a genocide?
I happen to think it’s perfectly okay to use insensitive words towards someone committing genocide. I think that when it comes to objecting to genocide, sensitivity towards the perpetrators goes out of the window. If you’re more offended by the words than the genocide, you might want to have a word with yourself.
Khan shared his post to a whopping 250 Instagram followers so he was not exactly an influencer. My guess is Zionist trolls were looking for people to get fired and they found an officer who was naïve enough to leave himself identifiable. All they have done here is prove that you can’t criticise Israel in the West without seriously risking being censored or fired, or even getting in legal trouble. Free speech, my arse.
A panel found Khan guilty of “gross misconduct” after looking at the IHRA guidelines which many, including the author of those guidelines, Kenneth S. Stern, have argued are used to stifle criticism of Israel. All this decision has done is prove the point.
Khan wrote on other Instagram posts: “Every day they invent some new bullshit lie to try gain Western sympathy” and “fuck them”. Although specifics were not provided, it was claimed the officer stated that events on October 7th were fabrications, and of course, many were fabrications, such as the baby in the oven and the 40 beheaded babies and the mass rapes.
Perhaps Khan went further, perhaps he thought the whole thing was fabricated, I don’t know. But even if he did, he surely came to that conclusion because Israel has been caught lying, over and over again. Are we finding Khan guilty of thought crime now? Are we saying he is not allowed to challenge the position of a foreign power committing genocide? How are we expected to get to the truth on anything if people aren’t allowed to challenge government narratives?
The Met said that Khan’s conduct was deliberate and sustained over a number of days. A number of days. That means he had a short period where he responded to an event in the news, just like millions of people in the country and across the world. I’m guessing no one has been sacked for siding with Israel or criticising Palestinians, no matter how insensitive those comments might have been.
It’s worth pointing out that many Jews have made the Hitler/Netanyahu and Israel/Nazis comparison. For example, Jewish non-profit Voice of Rabbis shared this image on Twitter. Were they being antisemitic?
Here is the thing: if you are in a position to censor someone’s speech and you are unsure whether you should censor that speech, if you have to consult legal definitions and recommendations and mull it over, you should not be censoring that speech. Speech should only be censored when it’s causing unambiguous harm, like if you’re plotting to kill someone or encouraging paedophilia. If a person is objecting to the mass slaughter of civilians, it does not matter how insensitive you think their objections are, they are still on the right side of the argument and have every right to put that viewpoint forward. It is up to others to decide whether or not they agree with that viewpoint.
What we have here is someone being censored and punished, not because they were being racist, but because they criticised Israel. If you doubt that, just ask yourself if anyone would be sacked for comparing Putin to Hitler or Russians to Nazis. The answer is absolutely not.The last working-class hero in England.
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"Now I can see why some might feel the Hitler comparison was insensitive..."
on April 21, 2025, 2:09 am