Police in the United Kingdom have made their first arrests since announcing their intent to crack down on people making public calls to “globalise the Intifada” after Australia’s Bondi Beach attack, speciously linking largely peaceful protests against Israel’s genocidal war with a deadly targeting of a Jewish festival.

London’s Metropolitan Police posted on X late on Wednesday that it had made four arrests at pro-Palestinian protests held outside the Ministry of Justice in Westminster, “all involving the alleged shouting or chanting of slogans involving calls for intifada”.

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The arrests were made at a demonstration that had been called in support of eight imprisoned hunger strikers, whose lives are in peril. They were jailed over connections to the Palestine Action group, just hours after the Metropolitan (Met) and Greater Manchester Police (GMT) said they would be “more assertive” in policing pro-Palestine protests to counter alleged anti-Semitism.

UK Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips backed the Met’s action. “I cannot think of any interpretation other than that [it] is inciting people to violence, which has the terrible consequences,” she was cited as saying by The Times of London.

But Ben Jamal, from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, pointed out in a statement that the Arabic word “intifada” means “shaking off or uprising against injustice”.

In the Palestinian context, the word is understood to mean civil uprising against military occupation and illegal settlement expansion, with key historical instances in 1987-93 and 2000-05, drawing brutal responses from Israel that left thousands of people dead.

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Jamal criticised the lack of consultation over the new police stance, saying on X that “forces across the political establishment” were using the “grotesque racist violence on Bondi beach” to delegitimise any protest against “open genocide”.

The police crackdown follows father-and-son gunmen killing 15 people Sunday at a Hanukkah festival on the Sydney beach and an October attack on a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

“Violent acts have taken place, the context has changed – words have meaning and consequence. We will act decisively and make arrests,” said the commanders of the Met and GMP in a joint statement.

Jewish groups welcomed the announcement, with the UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis calling it “an important step towards challenging the hateful rhetoric we have seen on our streets, which has inspired acts of violence and terror”.

Groups like the Community Security Trust (CST), which works to provide security to protect British Jews, say anti-Semitic incidents have risen in the UK.

In the meantime, Islamophobia and attacks against Muslims in the UK, prompted by racist rhetoric in mainstream politics on the right of the political spectrum, most prevalently but not only by Nigel Farage’s Reform party and its supporters, have soared in recent years.