Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has again defended the force’s response to Israel-Palestine protests across London this morning, after footage earlier this week showed an officer tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli children “to avoid inflaming tensions“. Rowley, who is currently up in front of City Hall alongside Sadiq Khan, told Susan Hall this was an isolated incident in which the officer made a “pragmatic” judgement:

“There is a danger that people don’t read the facts of incidents… we are being very balanced at dealing with issues that are potentially inflammatory on a very focused basis… on these campaigning posters raising awareness of the kidnapped children, we are not as a general rule intervening in that… however, in one case when it was highlighted to us by a community member that they’d been placed on the shutters of a shop because there was a pro-Palestinian supporter who worked there, it had been placed on private premises and it was seen to be potentially inflammatory…”

He added the Met also removed Palestinian flags from a Jewish memorial earlier in the week, and it is “not accurate” to suggest the force is biased. They’re just being “pragmatic”…