Boy George releases song in solidarity with British Jews, drawing hate
Last week, British pop star Boy George released a single in support of Jews and Israel.
The song, titled ‘We Will Dance Again’, focuses on the 7th October Hamas attacks on Israel. It characterises Israel’s actions in Gaza as legitimate, and expresses solidarity with Jewish people.
Boy George reportedly parted ways with the manager of his record label, Tony Pontius, over his refusal to release the song.
He has faced backlash over the song, which has resulted in the singer withdrawing from the role of King Herod in the West End revival of Jesus Christ Superstar. He has also apparently now been removed from another online platform.
This is where standing proudly as a Jewish ally gets you in modern Britain. Those in the arts who stand with Jews, like Jewish artists themselves, get ostracised by their industry.
Thank you, Boy George, for your unwavering support to the Jewish community amidst a tsunami of antisemitism.
You can listen to his song on X or on YouTube.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Stephen Silverman talked to LBC News about Boy George’s courageous solidarity and the abhorrent backlash.
Is Hamas-linked fundraising widespread in the UK and Europe?
One of the forces driving hostility toward Jews in the UK is the continued spread and financing of extremist networks across the UK and Europe.
The US Treasury Department has reportedly sanctioned an alleged Muslim Brotherhood leader based in London. According to the US Treasury, Egyptian-Austrian national Mahmoud al-Abyari has allegedly helped raise and channel funds to institutions with purported ties to Hamas.
In January, the US Treasury designated the Egyptian and Jordanian branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organisations. According to our polling, 85% of British Jews think that the British Government should proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group. Yet despite repeated calls to do so, the Government has failed to act.
Meanwhile, MPs reportedly hosted Saif Hashim Kamel Abukishek, an alleged senior figure in the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), at an event in a Parliamentary office. Just weeks earlier, the US Treasury sanctioned him over his alleged leadership role in the organisation, which US authorities allege has provided financial support to Hamas.
Neither Mr al-Abyari nor Mr Abukishek are reported as having responded publicly to the allegations.
Elsewhere, Spanish authorities have reportedly arrested former Berkshire Communists leader James “Fergie” Chambers. The arrest was reportedly carried out in response to a US extradition request relating to allegations that he provided financial support connected to Hamas.
In Switzerland, an investigation by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung alleges that Hamas spent years building a covert network across Europe, including weapons caches and sleeper cells intended for potential future attacks.
At a time when the UK’s terror threat level remains severe and antisemitic incidents have reached record levels, any complacency towards those alleged to support or finance Hamas – a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK – is deeply alarming.
Islamism in bookshops and mosques
Extremism is sustained not only through funding, but through the spread of hateful ideology.
It has been revealed that several Islamic bookshops in the UK have been granted the right to issue ‘skilled worker’ visas, despite selling antisemitic texts.
The works include In the Shade of the Qur’an by Sayyid Qutb, formerly the leading thinker in the Muslim Brotherhood, in which he claims that Jewish people “try to destroy all values and all that is sacred to mankind.” Another of Qutb’s texts calls for the replacement of governments through “physical power and jihad”.
Other works include those by Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Bilal Philips, a cleric whose writings apparently offer advice on beating wives and who has reportedly been banned from the UK by the Home Office.
It is ludicrous that the Home Office would allow booksellers whose wares risk radicalising people in this country to bring in ‘specialists’ to support their business. You can read more here.
Meanwhile, Al-Sunnah Mosque in Cheetham Hill, Manchester is reportedly under Charity Commission scrutiny over several videos published on the mosque’s official YouTube page in 2024.
This is the same mosque allegedly attended regularly by Jihad Al-Shamie, the terrorist whose attack at Heaton Park Synagogue in October last year left two Jews dead, and his alleged accomplice Mohammed Bashir, who were together planning an attack on a British military base. Footage reportedly shows the two men discussing “martyrdom” and terrorism while at the mosque. Mr Bashir was recently sentenced to life imprisonment, of which he will serve a minimum of seventeen years.
The footage, which has since been deleted, reportedly shows an imam who has been identified as Sheikh Al-Dukali Muhammad Al-Alim appear to pray: “God deal with the Jews and their allies…God, seize them with the seizure of the Mighty, the Powerful.” You can read more here.
The Charity Commission must escalate its review into this mosque into a formal statutory inquiry, and the police must also open an investigation.
Islamist terrorists are not radicalised out of thin air. There is an entire infrastructure – much of it supposedly regulated by the Charity Commission – that creates them. Jews have already paid with their lives for the authorities’ failure to clamp down. The situation is urgent.
UK leads surge in antisemitic incidents, according to new report
Britain has seen the biggest surge in antisemitic incidents over the past year, compared with the six other countries which are home to the largest diasporic Jewish communities, according to a new report.
These findings should come as an embarrassment to Britain’s authorities.
Britain is experiencing an antisemitism crisis that has been fuelled by inaction from our decision-makers, who claim to prioritise protecting Jews without properly confronting the perpetrators driving this hatred. Recent actions by the Government to increase protective measures for the Jewish community and ban the IRGC are long overdue, but will have little impact if authorities fail to act forcefully against extremists.
Stephen Silverman, Director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, spoke to BBC Radio 5 Live about the findings – watch him here.
Antisemitism is particularly prevalent on social media.
A separate report has found that antisemitic content is almost seven times more likely than any other content to feature in Instagram’s top-performing videos. You can read more here.
The latest absurd online antisemitic conspiracy theory is the claim that the Jews are to blame for an influx of Moroccan migrants into Spain’s African territories.
Apparently, because the Spanish Government has overseen and arguably encouraged a surge of antisemitism in their country, the Jewish state is supposedly fighting back by somehow sending Moroccans into Spanish territory.
Antisemitism is not only morally abhorrent, but it makes people profoundly stupid.
Antisemitic criminals and others face little consequence
Even as antisemitism reaches record levels, too many offenders continue to escape with penalties that fail to reflect the gravity of their actions or instil deterrence.
Last week alone, the outcomes of several cases involving alleged antisemitic crimes and disruptive protest activity underscored concerns about an inadequate response from the criminal justice system:
- Mohammed Alamrein, who came to the UK from Gaza a year before 7th October 2023, was videoed performing a Hitler salute towards Jewish counter-protestors at a Palestine hate march in July 2025. He has only been fined £250. You can read more about the case here.
- Ryan Ferguson, 26, appeared in Bristol Magistrates’ Court where he pleaded guilty to racially aggravated harassment, alarm or distress. During a protest in March 2026, footage apparently showed Mr Ferguson shout “Heil Hitler” at Jewish people. He pleaded guilty to the charge, and was merely issued a fine of £348. You can read more about the case here.
- Daniel Day, 30, has been given a fourteen-month prison sentence suspended for the next two years for scaling Big Ben with a Palestinian Authority flag in a seventeen-hour protest in March 2025 that caused road closures in the heart of Whitehall. You can read more about the case here.
- Monday-Malachi Rosenfeld, a Politics and International Relations student at the University of Greenwich, has reportedly been found guilty of criminal damage after she and another individual covered up a Picasso painting at London’s National Gallery with an image purportedly of a Palestinian mother and child. She has reportedly been arrested on multiple occasions in connection with disruptive protest activity before and since, but these multiple alleged arrests do not seem to be deterring her activity. We have written to the University. You can read more about the case here.
This is not how to address the worst levels of antisemitic extremism in living memory.
In a time when antisemitism has skyrocketed on social media and Jewish people have been murdered at synagogue, offences targeting Jews and Jewish institutions must be treated with the seriousness they deserve.
Supreme Court to hear appeal against Palestine Action ban
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal against the proscription of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000.
This follows a Court of Appeal judgment in June of this year, which upheld the ban after the High Court had earlier found the decision to proscribe the group to be “disproportionate”. The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in the autumn. You can read more here.
The fight against extremism in Britain cannot afford to go into reverse. The Jewish community has borne the brunt of much of Palestine Action’s criminality. If the ban were ultimately overturned, it would send entirely the wrong message at a time when Britain should be confronting extremism, not making concessions to it.
Thank you to our friends at Shomrim!
At a time when Britain’s Jewish community faces unprecedented levels of antisemitism, the dedication of community security organisations is more important than ever.
Recently, Shomrim hosted CAA at their annual Open Day.
We really enjoyed the opportunity to speak to attendees about our work and community safety – thanks to those who stopped by our stand and picked up some of our merch!
Join the fight against hatred in education
Community security is essential. But preventing the next generation from embracing hatred starts with education.
That is why we are hiring an Education and Outreach Officer to help lead this work.
Applications are considered on a rolling basis, so don’t delay to find out more and apply now.
Diane Abbott’s re-entry into the Labour Party is a bad omen
Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North & Stoke Newington, has been readmitted to the Labour Party following a suspension in relation to antisemitism.
Ms Abbott has repeatedly courted controversy in relation to Jews and was twice suspended from Labour.
First, she was suspended over a 2023 letter to The Observer in which she claimed that Jewish people suffer prejudice similar to red-headed people but not racism. She was suspended for a year and apologised.
Then, in an interview with the BBC, she said that she did not regret her remarks and was suspended again, also having referred in a tweet to the Israel Defence Forces as the “Jewish Defence Force”.
Now, apparently following a “process conducted under Labour Party rules and approved by the independent review board” but conveniently concluding just as Andy Burnham became leader of the Party, she has been readmitted once again, with a ‘formal warning’.
What is this warning against? Not to repeat the same behaviour for the umpteenth time? She still has pinned to her Twitter profile the interview in which she says she has no regrets about the very incident that got her suspended in the first place. A warning can serve little purpose to someone so brazen.
We were supposed to be past all this, but it seems like the moment Sir Keir Starmer makes way for Andy Burnham, Labour risks turning the clock back.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Chief Executive Gideon Falter spoke to Rachel Johnson on LBC about Diane Abbott’s readmission to the Labour Party – watch his interview here.
Hackney’s historic link with Haifa under threat
Last week, Hackney Council voted to commence the dissolution of its 58-year-old twinning arrangement with Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city.
Hackney Mayor and Green Party councillor Zoë Garbett has faced criticism after she set a deadline of 7th October to discuss ending the arrangement with Haifa mayor Yona Yahav.
This date marks the third anniversary of Hamas’ brutal 7th October 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, in which some 1,200 people were murdered, and 251 were kidnapped.
The Council has reportedly apologised for the “insensitivity” of its timing.
Elie sat down with the daughter of Lord Stanley Clinton Davis – the man who decades ago established the Hackney-Haifa link – to discuss the history of the twinning arrangement, and its importance to the local Jewish community. Watch here.
Politicians recognise the threat, but will they act?
British politicians acknowledge the scale of the threat facing Jews in this country, but recognition alone is not enough – it must be matched by meaningful action to tackle antisemitism.
This week, Housing Minister Angela Rayner spoke about the extraordinary levels of security required to protect Jewish institutions: “One of the things I’ve found when visiting – whether it’s a Jewish school or care home facilities – is seeing a huge amount of security. This is the kind of security I only see when I’m going into GCHQ and I find that really troubling.”
Ms Rayner is right to point it out, but words alone aren’t enough.
The new Government must finally turn words into action. Until they do, we will continue to hold them to account.
