Why won't the Met Police prosecute those who disrupted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra?

Come on, I don't agree with their protest but is police intervention really required for disrupting an orchestra? I think not.

@Lee - I'm unsure on this one, though I guess people get prosecuted for pitch invading at sports games, so why is this any different?

At the time I wrote to the management of the Royal Albert Hall asking them to take action against these disruptive people. I agree the police should have arrested them for public disorder offences, but at the very least, the RAH should have imposed a ban on their attending future events , to act as a deterrent against such behaviour. No action was taken, and in the Times of last Tuesday January 3rd I read a disturbing article in which the secretary general of the IPO stated that the orchestra would probably not return to Britain. He said in a subsequent interview “"At the Proms, the concert was interrupted four times, in a very ugly way. I thought that it was one step away from a situation in which things would be thrown. I don't want to put any of my musicians, some of whom have very expensive musical instruments, in a situation like that again." On the IPO’s 20 city European tour last year, it was only in London that they experienced such unpleasantness.

If only for the sake of London’s cultural reputation, it is time that the police took steps against those perpetrators of disruptive protests inside concert halls as the writer suggests. I do not refer here to legitimate protests outside venues, although intimidating behaviour towards concertgoers should be prevented. Currently other Israeli artists could be deterred from performing in the UK. Unfortunately the cultural hooligans responsible for this type of behaviour have also disrupted other performances by Israelis including the world renowned Jerusalem Quartet and unless action is taken, this type of aggressive cultural vandalism will increase and spread

Personally I'm still waiting for someone to censure Israel for the scores of United Nations resolutions they've flouted since 1967 but I guess you have to pick your battles...

I think you answered your own uncertainty, LibertadYOrden, but the other question is why does someone not bring about a citizens arrest on some of the ringleaders who were there? Until someone makes an arrest the police can hide, like they did during the disturbances in London when they ran away from a violently anti-Semitic mob. But if there is an arrest and the CPS does not then act, one can then ask why?

There's always a double standard when the victims of these "protests" are Jews or Israelis. When Galloway got up and said "I'm going to glorify Hezbollah" (deemed a terror group under UK law) and when Azzam Tamimi called Israelis "thieves and liars and they will all be punished" (read into that what you will) at a public rally for Hezbollah in 2006, the police did nothing. Incitement to kill Jews and homosexuals by various radical imams go unremarked upon, and the police routinely ignore it.

In short, the Uk authorities look the other way. This is just another example of that.

Isn't it interesting that "John" is as one-eyed as the protesters he seeks, presumably, to defend. What they did is acceptable because of what Israel has done. Hmmm...so, if Britain and the US are committing offences in Afghanistan, say, it's perfectly acceptable to disrupt a concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, because the BBC is, of course, an arm of the British state.

Funny how the logic works only with Israel and not with other states.

I wonder why? (The question is, of course, rhetorical)

Bring back hanging (and drawing and quatering while we're at it). In fact, such torture would be too lenient for these people!

Oh, hang on. Did you say it was a concert? And the protest was merely disruptive and noisy? Hmm. In that case, get over it.

I agree that music, like sport, should be free from politics (except when it chooses to get involved) and the disruption sucked for the audience, and the protesters may be idiots but please don't waste the Met's time.

John skimmed over the first paragraph by the looks of things, eh...

Perhaps the IPO should use its pre 1948 name when performing in London The Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra!

Is it possible to go after the police for refusing to do their duties?

Either they have been bribed or they are indulging in political bias, either way, they sound as if they are corrupt and need to be brought to book.

You will the remember the farce of the SmashEdo trial, where the defendants got off scot free although they pleaded guilty to tens of thousands of criminal damage to machinery at a factory which they said supplied weapons parts to Israel, because the trial judge, Bathurst-Norman was shamelessly biased and led the jury by the nose to acquit them.

Caroline Lucas, who heads up the UK Green Party, actually had the nerve to stand as a character witness for one of them!

Jews and Israelis can expect no justice from the UK or any European country. Misguided political correctness means that Islamists' sensitivities have always to be catered to and our leaders and police are frozen and immobile in the face of that.

Leftist protestors are always allowed to get away with this s**t - they have convinced themselves that they are acting for the force of good and should therefore have immunity from criminal prosecution.

The Left has assigned to itself a monopoly on goodness and righteousness.

I'm sick of it - clear out those disgusting anti-bank protestors from St Pauls (and anywhere else they defile society's margins) let them go and camp outside Blair's mansion. Let's start putting people like Gilmour in jail for rather more than a couple of weeks.

The law should apply to everybody.

CPS is a joke, always has been. Bring back police prosecutors in magistrates' courts.

The police and the CPS' failure to bring proceedings in this case echoes the case of the Cathederal worker, Mr Doyle, who was racially abused by a member of the public (he was told to f*** o** you Irish c***) but, nevertheless, the CPS decided to prosecute him for threatening behaviour as opposed to racially aggravted assault. The trial judge strongly criticised the CPS for this decision. The real problem is that the police have very little understanding of the law (as a barrister I am often amazed by what I hear the police saying to members of the public) and the CPS employees who make these decisions are typically failed lawyers who did not suceed in private practice. To ensure that these and similiar problems don't happen again we need to have systems in place that ensure the competence of the CPS and review such decisions.