Lawyer threatened with arrest for driving van with anti-BBC and Gary Lineker slogans

Daniel Confino, the son of a Holocaust survivor, claims threatened arrest highlights a police double standard over the Israel-Hamas war

A lawyer was allegedly threatened with arrest for driving a van with “Gary Lineker is Hamas’s bitch” emblazoned on the side.
Daniel Confino, the son of a Holocaust survivor, says he was ordered to move on by officers while staging a protest outside the BBC’s London headquarters earlier this month.
The red camper van had “BBC is Lineker’s pimp” written on the other side.
The 65-year-old, who was in Israel on October 7 when Hamas fighters launched its devastating terror attacks from Gaza, was trying to protest against the BBC’s indulgence of its Match of the Day lead presenter. 
Lineker has called on the Israeli football team to be banned from tournaments.
Mr Confino claims the police response betrays a “double standard”, pointing to multiple recent incidents where pro-Palestinian demonstraters have not been arrested despite carrying placards calling for “jihad”.
Although Mr Confino complied with the police requests to drive away, he says the officers followed him and pulled him over nearby.
They then told him he could be arrested under the Public Order Act.
He took the van home and later visited his local police station to establish what language he could use without risking arrest, but says the response he received was vague.
“I explained that I wanted to be sure from the same group that deals with Palestinian protests that my wording was cleared, or to identify any offending language,” he said.
“The confusion of the police seems to be that a word in isolation like “bitch” gets them very excited but individual less forceful words which when put into a sentence are deeply threatening and alarming and distressing and harassing like ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ are waved through, no problem.”
In October, the Metropolitan Police said that protesters calling for jihad would not automatically be arrested. Instead, officers were told to call their control room for advice.
Met leaders also said protesters would not be arrested for chanting “from the river to the sea”.
Mr Confino added: “On the face of it, this is yet another example of overt police bias in the interpretation and application of the law”.
He added that the Public Order Act is so arbitrarily applied that it was practically impossible for a law-abiding citizen to demonstrate using provocative slogans without fear of arrest.
“I feel sorry for the police. They have to enforce a law which is entirely subjective,” he said.
The following week, Mr Confino did manage to get through via the 101 number to an operator who advised him that a different slogan regarding the Today presenter Mishal Hussein was acceptable.
He was given a reference number to quote to officers in case he was stopped.
The slogan said: “This is Gaza Today with…Michal (I was once a journalist) Hussain.
Mr Confino – and his van – are no stranger to controversy. During the 2019 election, he demonstrated with “Labour under Corbyn is a racist endeavour” on the side.
He has written to The Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to highlight “system failures” in the current policing.
The Met did not respond to a request for comment.