For the past 18 years, customers have been flocking to Salah’s takeaway — ‘Best for value, Best for Food’ — on the bustling Leeds Road in Bradford.
The outlet, with its hard-to-miss red façade and décor, has become something of an institution, serving kebabs, burgers, wraps and speciality fried chicken late into the night. Locals often have to wait in a long queue to be served, such is the popularity of Salah’s.
But violence recently erupted outside the popular fast food outlet. The window of the restaurant was smashed, the door was damaged, the police were called and arrests were made.
So what do you think was the cause of the near-riot. Was it: (a) a drunken brawl on the pavement; (b) the culmination of a feud between rival gangs; or (c) the fact that Coca-Cola was being sold at Salah’s?
Chilling social media footage: Moment the violent brawl erupts outside kebab shop between workers and pro-Palestine protestors
The last answer, almost unbelievably, is actually the correct one. The shop was targeted by a group of up to 50 pro-Palestine protesters who claim owner Salahudin Yusuf is turning a blind eye to the ‘illegal occupation of Palestine’ because Coca-Cola has a distribution centre on the Israeli-controlled West Bank and he should not therefore be selling the drink.
‘Your profits are covered in Palestinian blood,’ they screamed again and again outside the takeaway, at a pitch that would have drowned out a jumbo jet taking off.
An accompanying video on TikTok is entitled: ‘Salah’s in Leeds Road sells Zionist products: Baby Killers.’
Staff eventually came out to confront the baying crowd and a mass brawl ensued.
Peaceful protest or mob rule?
Even fellow Muslims, many of whom have made their feelings known online, were in little doubt. ‘Shame on those Muslims who have done this,’ one wrote. ‘This is not what Islam teaches.’
Another declared: ‘You are an embarrassment to the Muslim Ummah [community] and the whole Palestinian cause, trying to gain clout off people dying.’
The intimidation is working, however. There is no sign of any Coca-Cola in Salah’s today, but hundreds of Coca-Cola cans are stacked in unopened multipacks in a lock-up at the back.
Mr Yusuf, who sustained a bruised lip in the melee, has a second takeaway a few miles away in Great Horton Road and, despite a Free Palestine Poster being prominently displayed there, about a month ago the business was spray-painted with the Israeli flag bearing the Star of David.
Understandably, Mr Yusuf is now keeping a low profile. ‘He does not want any trouble,’ said his brother, who was at the Leeds Road premises. ‘It’s not just us,’ he added. ‘All of Bradford is selling Coca-Cola.’
The fact Mr Yusuf feels he has to keep his head down, aside from having his livelihood compromised, for simply selling the world’s most popular fizzy drink is difficult to comprehend.
But then many recent events seem unbelievable — from pro-Palestinian extremists targeting MPs at home, projecting what many believe is a genocidal, anti-Semitic slogan — ‘From the river to the sea’ — on to Big Ben, turning Tower Bridge into a no-go area during rush-hour and placing ‘unsustainable’ pressure on the police’s ability to respond to neighbourhood crime by marching through central London.
Controversial: Ismail Patel (right) with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (left)
Opinionated optician: Dr Ismail Patel, founder and chairman of Friends of Al-Aqsa, at a Pro-Palestine protest in London in November
Wave of protests: Muhammad Sawalha, a senior Hamas operative living in Britain, is one of the original founders of the Muslim Association of Britain
‘There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule’, is how Rishi Sunak summed up the state of Britain in the wake of the Gaza conflict.
The chilling effect all this is having on ordinary people up and down the country, which often goes unreported, is perhaps epitomised by what happened at Salah’s. One group which arguably provides the inspiration for the boycott of Coca-Cola is the Friends of al-Aqsa, an NGO based in Leicester.
It is understood that the organisation denies any involvement with the violence at Salah’s but on its website says: ‘Join our call to #BoycottCocaCola until it stops operating in Atarot.
Atarot, according to the Friends of al-Aqsa, is an ‘illegal Israeli’ settlement on the West Bank. It previously called for a National Day of Action boycotting restaurants and cafes that sell the soft drink.
Yet Coca-Cola is not boycotted in Gaza where, until the recent bombardment at least, two plants, licensed by Coca-Cola, provided hundreds of jobs for Gazans.
Bradford, incidentally, has a population of around 546,000 and almost a third of residents are Asian or British Asian, with the vast majority identifying as Muslims.
What are the odds that many of them drink Coca-Cola?
The founder and chairman of the Friends of Al-Aqsa is Ismail Patel, 61, an optician, who has a practice in the Midlands catering for both NHS and private customers. He is also one of the key figures behind the Gaza marches — where police have been accused by many of a softly-softly approach to some protestors displaying naked hatred towards Jews — which continues to cause so much costly disruption; the police bill alone has already topped £25 million.
Many of the leaders of like-minded groups involved in the marching campaign have remained largely anonymous. One, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC), is affiliated to major trade unions. Another, the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), was established by a former senior figure in Hamas.
All three groups publicly condemn bigotry, but somehow bigotry always seems to rear its ugly head at the marches and demonstrations they help organise.
The Prime Minster did not name them when he warned of the dangers of ‘mob rule’ but all three groups, it can be assumed, are likely to be among the main protagonists who have fuelled such fears.
Mr Patel is pictured on the frontline of a number of recent Gaza marches in London.
He has an impressive CV: a qualified optometrist (eye specialist), he also has a master’s degree in racism and ethnicity studies from Leeds University, where he is a visiting research fellow, and he has written a number of academic books.
But he has a past which could not be further removed from running a high street opticians.
In 2012, Mr Patel attended an event in Gaza at which the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was present. He was also filmed at a rally saying: ‘Hamas is no terrorist organisation. The reason they hate Hamas is because they refuse to be subjugated, to be occupied by the Israeli state, and we salute Hamas for standing up to Israel.’
The comments were made before Hamas had been proscribed as a terrorist organisation. The Friends of al-Aqsa had its bank account closed by the Co-op Bank in 2016 along with as many as 25 other Palestinian-affiliated groups.
The bank carries out due diligence checks on all customers. A spokesman said at the time: ‘Unfortunately, after quite extensive research, the charities involved did not meet our requirements or, in our view, allow us to fulfil our obligations.’
Friends of al-Aqsa, also a limited company, is registered at the same address as Ismail Patel’s optician’s business and is currently sitting on assets of £272,267.
A statement on the group’s website says: ‘We’ve been campaigning for Palestine for 25 years . . . our work is led by volunteers and based on international law and UN resolutions.’
Hardly a day seems to pass without a protest — often as spurious as the Coca-Cola one in Bradford — kicking off somewhere in the country by the pro-Palestinian lobby.
Only recently there was a demonstration by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign outside the Radisson Blu hotel in Glasgow, where competitors were registering for the World Athletics Indoor Championships even though no Israelis were taking part, prompting a TV correspondent at the scene to tweet: ‘No athletes from Israel competing, but demo organisers here say they’re angry they weren’t banned from doing so anyway.’
Some things are beyond parody.
Meanwhile, the London-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), was behind the protest that saw them occupy branches of Barclays on Saturday over the bank’s historical links to Israel.
And it was the PSC at the heart of a now notorious attempt to get thousands of supporters into Parliament to lobby MPs to vote in favour of a ceasefire in Gaza last month.
‘We want so many of you to come that they will have to lock the doors of parliament itself,’ former social worker Ben Jamal, a director of the PSC, told supporters in a speech beforehand. Security stopped them entering Westminster Hall.
Jeremy Corbyn is a long standing patron of the PSC (no surprise there) and 15 trade unions — including Unite — are affiliated to the group.
The PSC insists it is ‘unequivocally’ opposed to anti-Semitism and is dedicated to ‘the principles of peace, equality and justice.’
But a study in 2017 accused some activists of promoting ‘Holocaust denial’, global Jewish conspiracies’ and ‘classic anti-Semitic tropes.’
‘There is a major problem with some of the activists who buy into a vision that a global Zionist elite is responsible for many of the world’s problems,’ the report concluded.
Like the Friends of al-Aqsa, the PSC also had its account with the Co-op Bank closed.
The recent activities of the PSC have highlighted what the government, and indeed many members of the public believe, is the laissez faire attitude of the police to protests.
Nothing illustrates this more than what happened at the Mirchi Indian restaurant in Stoke last month where a dinner was held for the Conservative crime commissioner.
The event was gatecrashed by the PSC, who proceeded to call guests ‘Zionists’ and ‘child murderers’. Afterwards, a councillor who was at the event tweeted: ‘This ‘peaceful’ protest involved men screaming “Tory Scum” at my daughter.’
What did the police who had been alerted to the protest do? They let them in. Footage posted online shows one of the two officers on duty outside holding the door open for an activist; all four protestors went in.
‘Everyone who was going to the fundraiser in our upstairs room was dressed very smartly in suits [unlike the protestors],’ said the restaurant owner.
‘At least one of the officers should have followed them upstairs to check they were invited.’
A guest at the function came downstairs to ask the officers for help to escort the protesters out of the building.
Instead, the organisers of the dinner were advised to abandon the event and leave by the back door. The response of Staffordshire police?
‘Officers balanced the rights of the protesters and those affected by it,’ the force said.
One other group, mentioned earlier, intrinsically involved in the current wave of mass protests is the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). The MAB was once described in Parliament as the British version of the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Egyptian group which believes in Jihad, or holy war, something the MAB denies.
Muhammad Kathem Sawalha, 62, is among the group’s original founders.
He is a former Hamas chief, who led the proscribed terrorist group in the West Bank in the late 1980s and is alleged to have ‘masterminded’ its military strategy with involvement as recently as 2019. Back in Bradford, in the kebab shop next door to Salah’s, is an official Coca-Cola vending machine but the cans have replaced by generic cola.
‘No More Coke’ customers are informed in a handwritten sign on the machine. Whether this has been done voluntarily or out of fear of what happened last week, we were unable to discover because no one there admitted to being able to speak English.
‘I turned up after the police arrived,’ said the brother of Mr Yusuf, the man who owns Salah’s. ‘I could see there was damage to the big window and the door, just because we were supposed to be selling Coca-Cola. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Everyone is shocked.’
Peaceful Protest or mob rule?
- Additional reporting: Tim Stewart and Nic North.