A pro-Israel MP has said he is stepping down at the next general election after his constituency office was the target of an arson attack.
Conservative justice minister Mike Freer's office was attacked in December amid rising tensions following Hamas’s assault on Israel and the country's military retaliation in Gaza.
Mr Freer revealed Ali Harbi Ali, who killed MP David Amess, also stalked his constituency office. Mr Freer said the attacks “weighed heavily” on him.
Mr Freer, who has pro-Israel views and represents a heavily Jewish constituency, said “I don't think we can divorce” anti-Semitism from intimidation.
Asked whether he thought his support of Israel was related to the threats received, he said he “cannot draw any other conclusion”.
“Before Ali Harbi Ali, the David Amess murderer, I had a couple of run-ins with Muslims Against Crusades and … they made it very clear it was my views that were a factor,” he told Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday.
“We don’t exactly know why I was picked but clearly my views on Israel and the Middle East are very similar to David Amess’s and the level of abuse I get standing up for my constituents on anti-Semitism and on Israel has to be a factor.”
On Wednesday, Mr Freer announced that he would not fight the next election, telling the Daily Mail: "There comes a point when the threats to your personal safety become too much."
Mr Freer is a member of Conservative Friends of Israel and resigned in 2014 as a minister to vote against a motion in Parliament recognising the state of Palestine.
He announced his intention to step down in a letter to his constituency party chairman and in an interview in the Daily Mail.
He said he had avoided being killed by Ali “by the skin of my teeth” in 2021 when he was called to Westminster by Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister at the time, after being promoted in a cabinet reshuffle.
Mr Freer and his staff decided to wear stab vests at public events in his constituency after learning Ali had watched his Finchley office before going on to stab the Southend West MP Mr Amess to death during a constituency surgery in 2021.
“I was very lucky that actually on the day I was due to be in Finchley, I happened to change my plans and came into Whitehall," Mr Freer said. “Otherwise, who knows whether I would have been attacked or survived an attack? [Ali] said he came to Finchley to attack me.”
The incident was “the final straw”, leading to “tense” conversations with family members, which led to his decision to resign, the Daily Mail reported.
“There comes a point when the threats to your personal safety become too much,” the minister told the newspaper.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson, Max Blain, said the abuse and threats aimed at Mr Freer were "an attack on British democracy.”
Mr Blain said the Prime Minister was "saddened" by Mr Freer's decision to step down.
"No elected representative deserves to be abused or intimidated and the attacks and abuse that Mike Freer references are clearly deeply distressing. They're not just an attack on him but an attack on British democracy", Mr Blain said.
He has been subjected to other threats over the years, including by Muslims Against Crusades, who told him to “let Stephen Timms be a warning to you” after the Labour MP was stabbed by an Al Qaeda sympathiser in 2010. He survived.
He said he had also received threats from the group “about coming to stab me” and found “mock Molotov cocktails on the office steps”.
Mr Freer said MPs tend to try to “make light” of threats but it remained at the back of his mind that he could have been killed.
The MP for London's Finchley and Golders Green seat since 2010, Mr Freer said it was time to “say enough” because he could no longer put his family through anxiety for his safety.
In a letter to his local Conservative association, Mr Freer wrote it “will be an enormous wrench to step down”.
He won his seat by about 6,600 votes at the last general election in 2019, seeing off a Liberal Democrat challenger.
Mr Freer joins a series of MPs who have announced their intention not to contest the next election, which is expected later this year.
The Speaker of the House of Commons has called for MPs to “turn down the heat” following Mr Freer’s announcement.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle told Sky News that he wanted to see “a nicer politics” rather than the “election frenzy” that he currently saw in the Commons.
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said she was sorry to hear of his plans to resign. “A champion for our community. This should not be the consequences of public service,” she wrote on X.
Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda, said “no elected official should have to put up with death threats and arson attacks”.
“That’s an attack on democracy itself. I wish him well. We should all think about how poisoned the well of politics is today. And resolve to change it,” he wrote on X.
Sarah Sackman, Labour candidate in Finchley and Golders Green, said she was shocked by the news. “We should have been able to face each other in the polls based on our ideas and merits," she added.
“Instead, politics is now so often skewed by violent language, hate and the dangers of social media.”
Tory former minister Conor Burns said on X that it was a “totally understandable decision".
"The drip-drip of hate (not exclusively from people on the other side) and remorseless cynicism will drive more people out of politics," he said.
