Sajid Javid should make a clean break from failures of the past and work to proscribe Hizballah before its supporters parade through London in June

As Sajid Javid takes over from Amber Rudd as Home Secretary, the eyes of the Jewish community will be on one issue in particular: what will he do about supporters of Hizballah, the terrorist organisation which seeks a genocide of all Jews worldwide, whose supporters parade through London every year?

Mr Javid is a friend of the Jewish community. It was he who called the recent parliamentary debate on antisemitism, but there have also been times when he has failed to act, for example over the disgraceful Palestine Expo debacle.

Now, as he steps into the Home Office as Home Secretary, we look to him to make an urgent decision on a matter which the entire Jewish community has long felt threatened by: a parade in support of a terrorist organisation that wants us dead and has been blamed for two bombings in London targeting Jews and Israelis.

Every year, organisations disgracefully permitted to operate as charities, lead by the self-appointed Islamic Human Rights Commission, organise a parade in support of Hizballah, with adults and children draped in the terrorist group’s flag.

Each year, London’s most iconic roads are closed to permit the parade to pass, and nothing is done by the authorities in its aftermath. Indeed it has fallen to Campaign Against Antisemitism to privately prosecute the leader of the parade because the Crown Prosecution Service refused to act.

Hizballah is proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000, and any person giving a police officer “reasonable suspicion” that they are supporting the terrorist organisation commits an offence, but a perverse and dangerous loophole is being used to permit Hizballah supporters to operate: only Hizballah’s “military wing” is proscribed.

Hizballah’s imaginary “political wing” is not proscribed, enabling those on the annual Hizballah parade to claim to be supporting Hizballah’s political wing, not its military wing.

Even Hizballah finds this false distinction ridiculous. In October 2012, Hizballah Deputy Secretary-General, Naim Qassem, said: “We don’t have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hizballah on one hand and the resistance party on the other…Every element of Hizballah, from commanders to members as well as our various capabilities, are in the service of the resistance, and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority.”

Hizballah is also clear what resistance means. Its Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, who is the leader of any fictitious “wing” of Hizballah that the government may wish to imagine, said: “If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

Hizballah has been true to its mission, bombing Jewish targets from Buenas Aires to Burgas, and it has even been blamed for setting off two bombs in London outside buildings used by Jews and Israelis.

The only person who can order that Hizballah be proscribed as a terrorist organisation in its entirety is the Home Secretary.

Campaign Against Antisemitism, and many others comprising the full spectrum of the Jewish community, have long called on the Government to proscribe Hizballah.

As the incoming Home Secretary, we call on Sajid Javid to part with the failed compromises of his predecessors and urgently proscribe Hizballah before the next pro-Hizballah parade on 10th June.

We will be undertaking campaigning activity on this matter in the weeks ahead.