The leaders of Britain’s Jews have raised ‘serious questions concerning police impartiality’ and asked that the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) be suspended from any policy role in policing. It comes after The Spectator revealed that NAMP had called Zionism ‘one of the manifestations of anti-Muslim hatred’, described the Israel Defence Force (IDF) as a ‘Zionist terrorist group’ and defended Hamas against ‘unverified stories about acts of violence’ committed on 7 October.
In a letter to the policing minister, Sarah Jones, yesterday the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) pointed out that these extraordinary statements were made in a policy document published on an official police.uk website, which NAMP is for some reason allowed to use. As the JLC’s Russell Langer put it:
A police-affiliated organisation appears to have used official policing infrastructure to advance highly partisan and disturbing political positions while also participating in discussions relating to policing policy, hate crime, counter-terrorism and community relations…
This was… to all intents and purposes, published officially by the police… A reasonable member of the public would fairly assume that material hosted on official policing infrastructure has passed through some form of review. They would expect that its content is broadly consistent with the standards expected of police services. Publication on the police.uk website has institutional significance.
