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00:00The United States and the United Kingdom are facing general elections later this year.

00:09And in both countries in the run-up to these polls, we are seeing a fallout of the Israel-Hamas

00:14conflict on domestic politics.

00:16In the UK, for example, there is now data which shows that there has been a huge increase

00:21in hate crimes against Muslims since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

00:28And many of those who have been targeted or who have been at the receiving end of these

00:32hate crimes that also include physical assault have been Muslim women.

00:36In the midst of this, the Conservative Party and Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, have

00:40been under particular attack for not saying enough or doing enough to condemn Islamophobic

00:46comments made by members of their own party.

00:49Rishi Sunak, for instance, was forced to distance himself from a fellow MP, even expelling him

00:54as an MP, for Islamophobic comments that he made about London's Mayor.

00:59But instead of calling these Islamophobic comments, Rishi Sunak kind of sat on the fence.

01:04He said that what Lee Anderson said was wrong, but refused to actually dub them as Islamophobic

01:09comments.

01:10For far too long, we've seen politicians sitting on the fence when it comes to hate politics,

01:15when it comes to polarization.

01:17But the fact is that this needs to be called out very strongly, particularly by citizens.

01:23How this is going to play out ahead of the elections in the UK will be interesting to see.