Sarah Helm, the wife of National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell, has been at the centre of a scandal as Campaign Against Antisemitism has led media and public outrage at a post that she published appearing to express support for Palestine Action, a proscribed terrorist organisation.
In the post, published on 15th October, Ms Helm wrote: “God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action. Sounds like Adam would have all our books swept off the shelves in a jiffy.”
Given the public interest in the case and media scrutiny, the police quickly announced that her post did not reach the criminal threshold and therefore that no further action would be taken, with a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Service saying: “It was determined that it did not meet the criminal threshold. No further action will be taken.”
However, Campaign Against Antisemitism can reveal further incendiary rhetoric from Ms Helm going back years, including on ‘intifada‘, Hamas, terrorists, Jeremy Corbyn’s antisemitism scandal, Jewish history in the Middle East, and more.
- 15.10.26: “God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action. Sounds like Adam would have all our books swept off the shelves in a jiffy.”
Palestine Action is a proscribed terrorist organisation.
- 16:10:26: “Thank goodness for Francesca Albanese. As she says In Gaza there is (and was the previous times they bombed it) ‘nowhere to go’. It’s got walls and electrified fences all around. Israel bombed refugees inside a prison. Geddit?!”
Francesca Albanese is a disgraced UN Special Rapporteur who has been banned from the United States and several European countries have called for her removal. You can read more about her here and here.
- 13.10.26: “There are many other ways to describe it. Mass slaughter on horrific scale of women children old & young unjustly imprisoned by Israel in a camp called gaza for 77 yrs from which no escape to original homes nearby when the bombs fell.. but many find it simpler to call it genocide.”
77 years ago, Gaza was seized by Egypt, which held the Strip for almost twenty years until the Six Day War, and for many decades after there was much smoother travel between Gaza and Israel than there was during the Second Intifada. In 2005, Israel removed all soldiers and civilians from Gaza, whose inhabitants then elected Hamas to rule, which it did with an iron fist for almost two decades until the war began in October 2023. So the notion that Israel has “unjustly imprisoned” people there for this entire period is, at best, ahistorical misinformation.
- Similar sentiments here.
- 02.05.26: “For PM ‘globalise the intifada’ is anti-semitic call to attack Jews. No. The Palestinian ‘intifada’ means ‘shaking off’ or ‘uprising’ against illegal Israeli occupation. ‘Globalise the intifada’ is a call for people everywhere to help the Palestinians become free.”
‘Intifadas’ have invariably been violent campaigns of terrorism targeting Jews. The Second Intifada killed over 1,000 Jewish people.
According to our representative polling of the Jewish community, 95% of British Jews consider the phrase ‘Globalise the Intifada’ to be a call for violence against Jewish people.
- 01.05.26: Yes, BBC, let‘s just “park” that overwhelming important question in the Israel-Palestine car park of questions nobody dares address for fear of being called anti-semitic. Try mentioning, for example, 1948. That’s parked away in a car park of its very own and locked up.
This is one of a number of posts (more here and here) that appear to downplay antisemitism in the UK or insist that, in line with the ‘Livingstone Formulation’, that accusations of antisemitism are used to silence criticism of Israel.
It is demonstrably the case that the antisemitic hate crimes and terrorist violence that British Jews have faced over the past three years have been motivated by support for Palestine and hatred for Israel.
- 25.04.26: “Why are you, a journalist, even engaging with this all too familiar and bogus and insulting Israeli claim/attempt to justify murdering journalists? It’s simply something they do, always have. Just that now they are murdering far more.”
Parroting debunked claims that Israel has deliberately killed scores of independent journalists.
- 27.02.26: “Indeed. The gov hoping Gaza will just go away. And when, one might ask, will Starmer/Cooper be visiting the West Bank Jerusalem or at least turning up at the Rafah border post demanding to be allowed in to see the evidence of genocide?”
Accusing Israel of committing genocide.
- 08.01.26: “Palestine Action members on hunger strike & near to death in Brit prison awaiting trial for c damage during protest over Brit arms to Israel.Starmer/Lammy have nothing to say. Meanwhile Israel bombs little girls family tent in Gaza during ‘ceasefire’ Anything to say on that? No”
This post is certainly sympathetic to Palestine Action prisoners, at the very least.
- 01.12.25: “He should take a look in UN archives where he’ll find records of the 750 Palestinian villages destroyed by Zionist/Israeli forces in 1948+ UN calculation of compensation owed by Israel to every Palestinian refugee still not granted right of return.”
This post appears to express support for the so-called ‘right of return’, a one-sided proposal that would demographically destroy the Jewish state.
- 16.10.25: “And it’s important to add that after the 2014 war it was HAMAS that crushed emerging Isis/Salafi groups before they took root in the aftermath then. People inside Gaza today say they fear the Arab gangs -Israeli collaborators often -far more than Hamas trying to crush them.”
This post – in conjunction with the post that it is quote tweeting – appears to be a bizarre attempt to sanitise Hamas. There is another example here.
- 08.08.25: “Excellent from Zomlot, except it has in fact been going on since the first Jewish settlers arrived from Russia in 1882, promising “to take out” the Arab population ‘bit by bit’.”
Approving the claim from the styled ‘Palestine Ambassador’ that Israel has been waging a 77-year campaign of ethnic cleansing and that is why its military entered Gaza since 2023, but Ms Helm goes even further than the ‘Ambassador’, saying that the ethnic cleansing began ever since Jewish people began returning to their ancient homeland in sizeable numbers, which she alleges that they did in order to remove the Arab population.
- 26.07.25: “Utterly absurd. I have spent a very long time in Gaza and I would say that at least one in three families I met there had at least one person who supported Hamas in some way or at some time.”
Read in conjunction with the post that it is replying to, this post appears to be criticising the BBC’s belated decision to check whether Gazan interviewees have affiliations to Hamas. This came after the scandal of the BBC airing a documentary narrated by the son of a senior Hamas official whose family received licence fee money for the boy’s appearance.
- 15.06.24: “Leaders/media near silence about Nazi camps in WW2 was in part due to lack of evidence then BBC on at last receiving reports from Auschwitz in Autumn ‘ 44 said cd not be broadcast as they were so awful “nobody would believe them”. Today everyone believes but still deathly silence https://x.com/TomLondon6/sta/TomLondon6/status/1801365934436716842”
This post appears to associate, if not compare, Israel to the Nazis. If the latter, it is notable, as according to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism.
- 07.10.2023: “Not for the first time Von Der Leyen is spouting empty dangerous glib tropes on a subject she apparently doesn’t understand.”
This post is in response to the President of European Commission saying, on 7th October 2023, that the EU stands with Israel.
- 03.08.18: “The fact that Corbyn didn’t yell abuse at a Holocaust survivor definitely makes him antisemitic https://independent.co.uk/voices/antisemitism-labour-party-jeremy-corbyn-jewish-holocaust-survivor-abuse-a8474846.html”
This post was written at the height of the Labour antisemitism scandal during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as Leader. The EHRC would later find that the Labour Party had unlawfully victimised and discriminated against Jewish people, following a referral by Campaign Against Antisemitism.
- 27.04.17: “Calling Marwan Barghouti a terrorist won’t silence him”
This was posted several days into a mass prisoner hunger strike led by Marwan Barghouti. Mr Barghouti was convicted by an Israeli court in 2004 on five counts of murder relating to attacks during the Second Intifada and is serving five life sentences.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “So it’s illegal to express support for a proscribed terrorist organisation if you’re an ordinary person, but if you allegedly do it when you’re the wife of the National Security Advisor, that’s okay? Aren’t we supposed to be a country where everyone is equal under the law? With decisions like this, it’s no wonder that 89% of British Jews think the authorities are not doing enough to tackle political extremism. Police inaction in this high-profile case beggars belief. It’s another nail in the coffin of British justice.
“Our research shows that Sarah Helm has strong opinions on antisemitism and the Jewish state. Her X feed reads like that of a hardened anti-Israel activist. This is shocking from the wife of the National Security Advisor. At a time of the worst antisemitism in living memory, how can British Jews be reassured when these sentiments are so close to the person charged with protecting us all?”
