UK Lawyers for Israel waves criminality threat at mayor Lutfur Rahman and council with claim local Jews feel threatened – a tactic seen and discredited before – but police already said in October no offence had been committed

Right-wing pro-Israel pressure group ‘UK Lawyers for Israel’ (UKLFI) has tried to force Tower Hamlets council and its mayor Lutfur Rahman to remove Palestinian flags put up by residents in solidarity with people facing occupation and genocide in Gaza – by threatening Rahman and his colleagues with criminalisation if they do not.

The group has form. Manchester University – to widespread outrage in the art world – pressured its museum director to resign for daring to host a display by Forensic Architecture, the science group that has criticised the Israeli regime for extrajudicial killings and other illegal actions, after UKLFI claimed the display was provocative. Forensic Architecture is also known for having debunked Israeli military lies attempting to blame the bombing of Al Ahli hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of refugees sheltering there, on a misfired Hamas rocket.

UKLFI also pressured Chelsea and Westminster hospital into taking down a harmless display of plates painted by Palestinian children by claiming Jewish patients had said they were distressed by them – but a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that not a single complaint had been made by patients or visitors.

The group was criticised by Jewish human rights group Na’amod for inviting an Israeli right-wing extremist group to speak in the UK and has been accused of links with the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs. The European Legal Support Centre accused UKLFI of using ‘lawfare’ as a ‘politically motivated’ weapon and said that the group “has been attempting to smear and disrupt the work of Palestinian human rights groups and their partners for years”.

UKLFI paid an out of court settlement to a Palestinian children’s charity it had libelled by claiming the charity gave “financial or material support to any terrorist organization” and admitted that UKLFI supported the ‘Ministry of Strategic Affairs’, an ‘Israeli black-ops department’ that tries to undermine the ‘Boycott Divestment and Sanctions’ campaign against the Israeli occupation and to delegitimise Palestinian solidarity actions globally. Broadcast regulator Ofcom rejected a UKLFI complaint that a Channel 4 video featuring Palestinian young people was unfair to it.

Tower Hamlets council appeared to call the group’s bluff. A council spokesperson said:

As one of the most diverse areas in the country, we are monitoring any community tensions closely with our tension monitoring group, which includes the police and representatives from a broad range of community organisations.

A number of Palestinian flags have been put up by the public in recent months. While we appreciate people want to express their support for Palestine, we have a routine responsibility to monitor and maintain council infrastructure. The situation is under regular review…

We are not aware of any criminal offences related to Palestinian flags not being removed, and we will continue to work closely with police partners to manage the situation.

And the council has reason to be confident. When attempts – not explicitly linked to UKLFI in reports – were made in October to us a similar tactic to force it to remove Palestinian, the Met Police said that as far as they were concerned, no criminal act had been committed.