A self-styled “keyboard warrior” who threatened Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer with a knife emoji on social media after the October 7 Hamas atrocity has appeared at the Old Bailey to be sentenced.

Accountant Mohammed Nafees Ahmed, 32, dedicated his X account to Gaza and Israel after the terrorist attack on Israel last autumn, the Old Bailey heard.

On Thursday, the defendant, from Tipton in the West Midlands, appeared at the court to be sentenced after pleading guilty to eight charges of supporting a proscribed terrorism organisation.

Opening the facts, prosecutor Peter Ratliff said the charges related to a five-month period when Nafees Ahmed posted messages of an “antisemitic, violent and threatening nature”.

At the time, the defendant had 19 followers but his account was open for anyone on the X platform to view, he said.

Last October 8, then-foreign secretary James Cleverly condemned the Hamas attack.

In a response viewed 22 times, the defendant stated: “Your fool, long live Palestine long live hamas (sic)”.

Last October 11, Nafees Ahmed posted a message seen 15 times stating: “Wipe them off the map. Death to Israel and America.”

He rejected as “lies fake news” an Israeli report that terrorists had gone from house to house murdering entire families.

Other statements included “Long live Hamas, long live Palestine” and a call to “eradicate every Zionist”, the court heard.

Last November 13, then-home secretary Suella Braverman complained about the then-prime minister’s failure to address antisemitism and extremism on the streets of the UK following the October 7 atrocities.

In a post seen 13 times, the defendant replied: “You still alive you witch.”

Last November 29, he reacted to a post by US president Joe Biden by writing “Parish Juda”, meaning death to Jews.

In another offensive post, he called deputy president Kamala Harris a “crackhead cocnut (sic)”, the court was told.

Last December 8, he went on to address Labour leader Sir Keir, saying: “You Zionist, your time will come (knife icon).”

He taunted the Metropolitan Police to “come and arrest me”, describing the force as “a bunch of clowns”.

On January 12, he replied to a post by broadcaster Piers Morgan with offensive swear words and telling him: “If your 3ver s3en in London 1m (knife emoji) str8 in your throat (sic).”

Following his arrest on March 20, the defendant initially made no comment before accepting a device was his and providing the access code.

Mr Ratliff said the defendant had claimed he acted after being “distressed” by images of children killed in Gaza, when at the time he began offending it was Hamas that was killing children.

He went on: “Having regard to his use of a knife icons threatening politicians, a Jewish religious leader and broadcaster in the context of advocating attacks on Israel it is open to conclude the defendant has terrorist motivations.”

The defendant, who has no previous convictions, was charged with supporting a proscribed organisation on September 16.

On October 2, Nafees Ahmed pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates’ Court to eight charges of expressing support for a proscribed organisation between October 2023 and March 2024.

In mitigation, David Martin-Sperry said the defendant acknowledged his actions were “misguided and ill thought out”, describing himself as an “idiot”.

The married father had worked as an accountant during the week and a pharmacy delivery driver at weekends, the court was told.

Mr Martin-Sperry said Nafees Ahmed’s “complete lapse of judgment” came about as a result of seeing images of injured children and he knew little about the organisation he was purporting to support.

The defence lawyer said: “He emphasises he does not see himself as being in any way antisemitic. That is his view when asked about it. He was perfectly clear. He took the position he did on seeing photos and articles presenting injuries to children.

“He has no connections with the part of the Middle East which has been so torn recently.”

On the defendant identifying himself as a “keyboard warrior”, the barrister said he was “in no sense a warrior against anybody on any score” and had been a “good person”.

Mr Martin-Sperry added: “He has contemplated his whole future during the last nine months since his arrest. The real and enduring despair his own actions have caused him cannot be under-estimated.”

It was a “wholly exceptional case”, the lawyer asserted: “He was not brought up to support one side or another in the Palestine conflict.

“He came to it entirely as a result of the postings that he saw relating to children that simply had an effect on him and caused him to stop thinking.

“He is deeply ashamed of his act of idiocy.”

Judge Nigel Lickley will sentence Nafees Ahmed from 2pm.

An asylum seeker accused of murdering a pensioner in the street told police he was motivated by “the conflict in Gaza and to further his desire that Palestine would be free from the Zionists”, a court has heard.

Ahmed Alid, 45, denies murdering Terence Carney, 70, in Hartlepool town centre, as well as the attempted murder of his housemate Javed Nouri, and assaulting two female police officers who had interviewed him after his arrest.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced £3 million in extra funding to protect schools, synagogues and other Jewish community buildings in the UK in response to Hamas’ attacks in Israel.

The money will be given to the Community Security Trust (CST) after the group, which acts on the behalf of British Jews on matters of policing and racism, said it had recorded a 400% spike in antisemitic incidents in the UK since the weekend’s assault.

No 10 said the additional money will enable the CST to place additional guards at schools it supports and allow for additional security staff outside synagogues on Friday nights and Saturday mornings when Jews are marking the sabbath.

Mr Sunak said: “This is now the third deadliest terror attack in the world since 1970.

“The United Kingdom must and will continue to stand in solidarity with Israel.

“At moments like this, when the Jewish people are under attack in their homeland, Jewish people everywhere can feel less safe.

“That is why we must do everything in our power to protect Jewish people everywhere in our country.

“If anything is standing in the way of keeping the Jewish community safe, we will fix it. You have our complete backing.”

It brings the total funding for Jewish community protection security for 2023-24 to £18 million.

The CST said it had recorded 139 antisemitic incidents, including assaults, in the past four days — a 400% increase on the same period in 2022.

The King held a private audience with the Chief Rabbi at Buckingham Palace to personally express his deep care and concern for the Jewish community in the UK who are suffering grief, fear and anguish, the palace said.

Following the meeting, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, who also met with Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday, said the King’s words offered strength to the Jewish community “at this dark time”.

Mr Sunak convened representatives from UK policing and the Jewish community with ministers at Downing Street on Thursday for discussions on policing protests.

The roundtable, chaired by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, comes ahead of expected protests and marches taking place across the UK this weekend.

No 10 said specific guidance will be provided to police on the beat on where and when to intervene.

It comes after Mrs Braverman wrote to police chiefs this week saying that waving a Palestinian flag and chanting pro-Arab songs could amount to a public order offence if it could be deemed to be in support of terror atrocities.

Jordan said on Thursday it would lead a campaign to raise funds for the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees, to help it survive after the United States cut its funding.

Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said a meeting next month in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly would mobilise support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to continue core education and health services.

“Any shortage in funding will drive hundreds of thousands towards deprivation and despair,” Safadi, whose country has 2.2 million U.N. registered Palestinian refugees, said in Amman after meeting Pierre Krahenbuhl, the UNRWA head. Jordan will call for an Arab League meeting to lobby for donors to cover the $200 million shortfall needed to shore up UNRWA, Safadi said.

UNRWA has faced a cash crisis since the United States, long its biggest donor, earlier this year slashed funding, saying the agency needed to make unspecified reforms and calling on the Palestinians to renew peace talks with Israel.

The agency was founded in 1949 after the first Arab-Israel war, in the wake of the exodus of around 700,000 refugees who fled or were driven out of Israel on its founding as a state.

UNRWA now looks after more than 5 million descendants of those original refugees, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“One cannot wish 5.3 million Palestine refugees away. These are people who have rights and for many years now, for decades have faced a plight and injustice that is simply immense,” UNRWA’s Krahenbuhl said at a news conference with Safadi.

“As long as a just a lasting solution has not found of the issue of Israel-Palestine conflict we will continue to implement the mandate that the General Assembly has given us.”

The Palestinians assert the right under international law to return to homes abandoned in Israel or be compensated. Safadi said funding cuts for UNRWA undermine that right.

“The continuation of UNRWA means continued commitment by the international community to working towards a just solution of the refugees that guarantees the right of return and compensation,” Safadi said.

Safadi last week raised the plight of UNRWA with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington where officials say he warned of “dangerous consequences” to regional stability if the financial crisis were not resolved.

Uri Avnery, a left-wing peace activist who in 1982 became the first prominent Israeli to meet in public with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, died on Monday in a Tel Aviv hospital. He was 94.

The encounter took place during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and war with Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), then designated a terrorist group by Israel. Avnery crossed into west Beirut from the Israeli-held east.

“It was the first time Arafat had met with an Israeli, and from this perspective, it could be called a ‘historic meeting’,” Avnery wrote in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper in February.

Secret negotiations a decade later led to interim peace deals with the PLO on establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, a veteran right-winger, said Avnery had been dedicated to building “a strong and free society” in Israel, praising him despite their “fierce differences”.

Avnery fled Nazi Germany with his family as a boy and became a journalist and politician, serving as one of the most vocal and articulate voices of the Israeli left.

His meeting with Arafat, after he travelled to Lebanon at the invitation of the Israeli military as part of a reporting trip, lasted about two hours and “dealt entirely with the possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinian people”, he wrote.

It was broadcast the same night on Israeli television and Avnery was questioned by police but ultimately faced no charges.

Avnery served as a lawmaker from 1965 to 1974 and, from 1979 to 1981, as head of a left-wing party. His death, after a stroke, was headline news in Israel on Monday.

In 2003, during the Palestinian uprising, Avnery travelled with other Israeli activists to Arafat’s headquarters in the occupied West Bank, to act as a human shield against what they said were Israeli plans to assassinate Arafat after a Palestinian suicide bombing.

Avnery wrote that working to prevent such an act was “the most patriotic thing” to do at that time since killing Arafat would have been a disaster for Israel. Arafat died in 2004.

Egypt is finalising details of a long-term truce deal between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, an Egyptian security source said on Thursday, amid easing tensions on the border of the enclave where some two million Palestinians live.

Cairo has brokered an interim truce that has allowed commercial goods into Gaza ahead of the Muslim Eid al-Adha feast which starts next week.

“We are putting the final touches to the terms of the truce that will be signed by all sides, and we expect to announce the terms next week if Fatah helps us to do so,” the source said, referring to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s mainstream party which dominates the occupied West Bank.

Officials from Fatah have not joined those of Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, and other Palestinian factions for the talks in Cairo on the long-term truce.

But Fatah’s backing is crucial for any deal as the party retains a large presence in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and has overall control in areas under Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

“The period of calm will be for one year, during which contacts will be held to extend it for another four years,” the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A long-term truce could pave the way for talks on other issues, including the easing of a blockade that has crippled Gaza’s economy and allowing a possible swap of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.

The source said Egyptian intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, was expected to meet Abbas in Ramallah after similar talks in Israel, and a deal could be announced by next week. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Kamel had met with Netanyahu in Israel this week, but gave no details.

A Palestinian source in Ramallah said Kamel has left without seeing Abbas, who had been preoccupied with a Palestinian leadership conference. But the source said Abbas had informed Egypt that Fatah representatives would join the Cairo talks later this week or next week.

EASING BLOCKADE

Apart from the opening of its Kerem Shalom commercial crossing into Gaza, Israel also expanded the enclave’s fishing zone, in waters under Israeli naval blockade, from three to nine nautical miles off the southern coast and to six nautical miles in the north, according to the head of Gaza’s fishermen’s union.

The Egyptian security source said the extended truce would also include opening a sea lane from Gaza to Cyprus under Israeli supervision.

A Palestinian official in Gaza familiar with the talks said Palestinian factions were demanding a “total lifting of the blockade on Gaza, opening all crossings with Israel and Egypt and a water corridor”.

Israel says its blockade is a self-defence measure against Hamas, a group that has called for its destruction.

Israel’s security cabinet, a forum of senior ministers headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, discussed the Gaza situation on Wednesday and an Israeli “diplomatic official” said Hamas would have to prove its commitment to the truce.

As well as wanting calm along the border, Israel has said Hamas must return the remains of two soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war and release two civilians whose fate is unknown. It says they are being held by Hamas in Gaza.

“That’s the only way,” Israeli Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said on Thursday when asked if a broad arrangement depended on the return of the soldiers’ bodies.

“Nothing will be done to enable (Gaza’s) significant rehabilitation and the improvement of infrastructure and ports and other such fantasies, unless they release the bodies and the two Israeli captives,” he told Israel radio.

The Egyptian security source said the long-term truce would also envisage Israel freeing hundreds of detained Palestinians in a prisoner swap.

However, the Palestinian official denied any talks were taking place on a swap, saying Hamas opposed mixing the issues.

Egypt has brokered a Palestinian reconciliation agreement that provides for Hamas to cede control of Gaza to Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. A dispute over power-sharing has hindered implementation of the deal, but the Egyptian source said Cairo was still seeking progress on the issue.

Thousands of protesters rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday against Israel’s new law declaring it the nation-state of the Jewish people, legislation that has angered the country’s Arab minority and drawn criticism abroad.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended the law, which says only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country and downgrades Arabic from an official language, saying it is necessary in order to fend off Palestinian challenges to Jewish self-determination.

The protesters, mostly Israeli Arabs, waved Palestinian flags and held up signs that read ‘equality’ in Arabic and Hebrew.

“The law legitimises racism,” said Laila al-Sana, 19, from a Bedouin village in Israel’s southern Negev desert. “It’s very important to show we are here, to resist,” she said.

Israel’s Arab population comprises mainly descendants of the Palestinians who remained on their land after the 1948 war at the time of the creation of the modern state of Israel. Hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes or fled.

Many of Israel’s Arab citizens also identify as Palestinian. They make up about a fifth of the state’s 9 million people. Israeli law grants them full equal rights, but many say they face discrimination and are treated as second-class citizens.

“When I heard about the law I felt I should defend my hometown, our land, the land of my ancestors,” said 68-year-old Sheikha Dabbah at the rally.

Largely declarative, the law was enacted just after the 70th anniversary of the birth of the state of Israel.

It stipulates that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it”. It also downgrades Arabic from an official language alongside Hebrew to a “special status.”

“I feel ashamed that after 70 years I have to accentuate my nationalism instead of being generous towards all those who live here,” said Gila Zamir, 58, a Jewish Israeli from the Arab-Jewish city Haifa.

Netanyahu posted on his Twitter page a video from the demonstration of a few protesters waving the Palestinian flag and chanting: “With spirit, with blood we shall redeem you, Palestine” and wrote: “There is no better evidence of the nation-law’s necessity.” Separate TV footage showed a few Israeli flags being waved.

Critics have said the new law is undemocratic because it differentiates between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Its defenders say civil equality is guaranteed in existing legislation.

Arab leaders in Israel have said the law verges on apartheid. Rights groups and Jewish groups in the Diaspora have spoken against the legislation, as have the EU, Egypt and Israel’s own president.

Last Saturday a protest against the law by Israel’s Druze community, which numbers about 120,000 citizens, drew a far larger crowd.

The Druze are ethnic Arab members of a religious minority that is an offshoot of Islam incorporating elements of other faiths.

Their outrage over the law has had more resonance in Israel, despite their small numbers, because of their reputation as loyal supporters of the state. Unlike the wider Arab population, many Druze serve in Israel’s conscript military and security forces, and some have risen high in the ranks.

Druze leaders have voiced a deep sense of betrayal over the law, striking a chord among many Israelis. However, efforts by Netanyahu to appease the Druze community have so far failed.

These murals on the walls of a West Bank hotel in the Middle East have brought more interest onto the conflict in the region and follow a range of Banksy murals that have been painted onto the entrance to the West Bank and at checkpoints within the Holy Land.

The latest Banksy murals leave a view of the banal nature of the conflict with a hooded Palestinian youth having a pillow fight with an Israeli soldier. The murals by Banksy has been drawn in the Walled-Off Hotel in the city of Bethlehem and the room had a view of the walls that separate communities and people in the area.

Israel on Monday formally rejected France’s invitation to take part in a Middle East peace conference in Paris later this year, saying it was a distraction from the goal of direct negotiations with the Palestinians.

At a meeting in Jerusalem with Israel’s acting national security adviser and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic adviser, French envoy Pierre Vimont was informed that Israel wanted nothing to do with the effort to revive talks that last broke down in 2014.

“(They) told the French envoy in a clear and unequivocal manner that Israel’s position to promote the peace process and reach an agreement will only come through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Vimont, who later met Palestinian officials for talks in Ramallah, made no comment following the discussions but the French foreign ministry has said it still plans to hold the conference before the end of the year.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, said Vimont had made clear at the meeting that France would issue invitations to the conference in December.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said: “We are in favour of holding the conference and we welcome it regardless of whether Israel participates or not.”

France has repeatedly tried to breathe new life into the peace process this year, holding a preliminary conference in June where the United Nations, European Union, United States and major Arab countries gathered to discuss proposals without the Israelis or Palestinians present.

The plan was to hold a follow-up conference before year-end with the Israelis and Palestinians involved and see whether the two sides could be brought back to negotiations. The last, U.S.-backed talks ended in failure in April 2014.

Israel, which regards the United States as the chief broker in the Middle East, has long maintained that only direct negotiations with the Palestinians can lead to peace and sees France’s efforts as a diversion.

“Any other initiative, including this one, will only distance peace from the region,” Netanyahu’s office said, adding that it expected France “not to promote a conference or a process that is contrary to (our) official position.”

Israel says an international conference will also give Abbas a platform on which to grandstand, rather than engaging directly with the Israelis.

The Palestinians say they cannot resume talks with Israel until it suspends the building of settlements on occupied land the Palestinians seek for an independent state and meets previous commitments, including the release of prisoners.

Despite two U.S. attempts to resolve the conflict during Barack Obama’s presidency, talks have stalled over issues including settlements and Palestinian political divisions.

While most of the so-called “final status” issues are clear to both sides, critics say there will be little chance of a breakthrough without genuine U.S. pressure on Israel to halt settlement building and without the Palestinians overcoming the internal splits between Hamas and the Fatah party.

Many analysts believe the prospect of a two-state solution to the conflict is now beyond reach, with no signs of Israel ending its nearly 50-year occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want for their own capital.

We see the cycle of hatred, an Israeli Jewish couple murdered, Jewish settlers retaliate by running over innocent Palestinians and burning olive groups, apart from the harassment and humiliation they mete out to Palestinian farmers.

A Jewish man is stabbed in the Old City by young Palestinians, whilst Palestinian children are shot and killed in cold blood by IDF soldiers as they demonstrate. Palestinian houses are demolished so that families pay the price for their relatives and Palestinians and Israeli Jews work out ways how they can disentangle themselves forever. Is this what we have come to?

The cycle of violence carries on and the propaganda and political pitches are played out by both sides. Yet, in all of this, children are dying once again, looking like they are in an eternal sleep as they are laid out on hospital beds in Gaza and within Israel and the West Bank.

Israel deserves peace, of that there is no doubt. But a future state of Palestine must be born with its security protected. It must be born for the sake of future peace and it must be given life without the crushing occupation that seeps into the daily lives of Palestinians. In all of these discussions, we must never fail to mention the fact that the occupation in the West Bank must and should end. It provides no security to Israel and most of all, it destroys hope in the eyes of young Palestinians who have seen nothing but humiliation and occupation. It must end and end now!

Furthermore, the conflict in Israel and the Middle East affects Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities globally. The Al Haram Al Sharif, also known as the Temple Mount, will spark regional tensions if it is continually used politically by the Netanyahu Government. Such tensions when ignited are sadly sweeping into the West Bank, Gaza and within Israel itself, but they play into the hands of those who want to destroy Israel at all costs. It strengthens the hardliners and weakens the pragmatists. But then again, Netanyahu can hardly be called a pragmatist.

Our only call, is that those who truly believe that Israelis and Palestinians can live together, step forward and demonstrate their opposition to the politics of division. For it is only at moments of trauma that cousins regret historical relationship breakdowns and yearn for another chance to repair the bonds. That window of opportunity is fast fading and the future is one which could see many more young children sleeping the eternal sleep of peace.